I mean, people were doing vicarious participation in the 1830s; they'll be doing vicarious participation in the 2030s, and the 2130s...

"Have I not already requested you to stop reminding me in any way of my theatrical declarations and the women to whom I may have made them? In case you have forgotten I ask you again." 😭 (he was 22)

[Also Parisians were shipping him with George Sand]

snowblower deployment: solution to the masculinity crisis question mark?

From 2004: "Trustee salaries comprise about half of the Endowment’s total operating and administrative expenses."

www.sacurrent.com/arts/putting...

Which circles back to your point, that if these kinds of folks are the backbone of your community, idk what positive outcomes we can reasonably expect

Oh yeah no I know. But I hadn't heard that twist in the story.

Also apparently Bugg set up a succession plan to pass the endowment (which was set up in such a way that Bugg got remunerated $$$+) to the best-qualified expert overseers..............i.e., his sons

sanantonioreport.org/qa-tobin-end...

I was going to say it was cursed by J Bruce Bugg singlehandedly running the Tobin Endowment that funds so much arts stuff in the city, and just googled him out of curiosity, and he died suddenly in August after a back surgery???

bring a nice thing into the hole lol

happy early birthday 💕

Hello. I am here as a fellow human to acknowledge that Tchaikovsky has, as we know, written a piano concerto. youtu.be/SS4orsrhhwE?...

This is a major passage about it from Nancy B. Reich's 1983 Clara Schumann book. So Clara was doing it around 1837, like you say. And as best I understand it, Franz started doing it around 1839, but only became a sensation in 1841 with Lisztomania taking hold in the public consciousness

also @eyesack.bsky.social for the record I apologize so profusely for sabotaging your interesting post 😭 💕 tl;dr let's stop forcing musicians into mental health crisis over this yay

Yeah like @doodlyroses.com says, Clara standardized it (w/Liszt) 💕

I'm not sure that lack of time was the *primary* driver in changing norms. It was more about Romantic Era trends, beliefs, and aesthetics; Clara's disruptor dad teaching her memorization; and the changing role of improvisation

I think not-memorizing was a trend that was popular then for many reasons, and memorizing is a trend that is popular now for many reasons.

People will always seek out chances to feel superior, regardless of those trends. They did then; they do now

Yesss! When you step back and think about it, it's so bizarre

For sure, yeah. It was a number of things and people and arts and influences coming together at the same time. It was never a preordained conclusion at ALL that we'd end up with memorizing everything being the gold standard of performance

Then Liszt started doing it around the time he started doing solo recitals. It became another way to make it into a show, and play into Romantic archetypes of artists channeling music from God, and bond the performer & audience, because suddenly we were v invested over if there'd be a memory slip

Also I'm not an expert on this, but my pet theory is it became normalized because Friedrich Wieck was self-taught, and he didn't come to piano teaching with much pedagogical lineage behind him, and he started Clara on memorization from the beginning, and it was a way she could differentiate herself