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Dec. 9th, 2005 12:57 pmApparently some people want to know what to get me for Christmas. Well, I now have an Amazon wishlist. Incidentally, if anybody wants to get me stuff from this, secondhand stuff is absolutely fine.
I was trying to think of whch modern (living) composers whose work I really liked. I realised the answer was "none of them really - that's why I'm a composer." I vaguely respect James MacMillan and Arvo Part, but I don't particularly enjoy listening to their music. MacMillan is too complex for most orchestras to perform well, and Part isn't at all interesting once you've heard a few pieces. He writes good background music, but it's not got enough interest to stand alone.
I do like Shostakovich though, in case you can't tell from the wishlist. I still want to forge an academic career, and I really enjoyed the work I did on him. I also like Britten and Stravinsky. And science fiction. More stuff to be added later.
(I found a book that I'd used for my dissertation, about Stravinsky, for only 47p, and bought it. Whee.)
ETA: I am rather uncomfortable about Amazon saving my credit card details and using them automatically, though. Is there any way that you can set it to automatically ask you for the credit card number each time? Not least because I have five different cards that I could pay for various things with, depending on whether they're for me, for Ash, for the business, and whether I'm poor this month and prefer to put them on a credit card. It is handy to remember some of the details, but it's annoying. The best I can do at the moment is to delete my card details after each transaction and hope that it won't then refuse to accept the same card when i put it back in.
I was trying to think of whch modern (living) composers whose work I really liked. I realised the answer was "none of them really - that's why I'm a composer." I vaguely respect James MacMillan and Arvo Part, but I don't particularly enjoy listening to their music. MacMillan is too complex for most orchestras to perform well, and Part isn't at all interesting once you've heard a few pieces. He writes good background music, but it's not got enough interest to stand alone.
I do like Shostakovich though, in case you can't tell from the wishlist. I still want to forge an academic career, and I really enjoyed the work I did on him. I also like Britten and Stravinsky. And science fiction. More stuff to be added later.
(I found a book that I'd used for my dissertation, about Stravinsky, for only 47p, and bought it. Whee.)
ETA: I am rather uncomfortable about Amazon saving my credit card details and using them automatically, though. Is there any way that you can set it to automatically ask you for the credit card number each time? Not least because I have five different cards that I could pay for various things with, depending on whether they're for me, for Ash, for the business, and whether I'm poor this month and prefer to put them on a credit card. It is handy to remember some of the details, but it's annoying. The best I can do at the moment is to delete my card details after each transaction and hope that it won't then refuse to accept the same card when i put it back in.
