"Timely" Articles

Just dropping by to share a few articles with you that I chanced upon in recent days, and that weigh in nicely on our ongoing meditations/discussions this semester (and perhaps they'll even give you some ideas for your multigenre essays). The first, "The Quest for Permanent Novelty," deals with the way writers (from Keats to Orwell) struggle with time, those hallelujah moments, and the "fading of aesthetic freshness." Then there's "The Piccolo and the Pocket Grouse," which seeks a definition of music and wonders to what extent birdsong can be understood as music (and in which Emily Doolittle refers to zoomusicology as a term that accounts for the ways that animal sounds are and are not like music). Finally, more germane to our current inquiry, there's this informative review -- "Soundtrack to the Century" -- of David Schiff's book, The Ellington Century, in which Schiff uses Ellington's example to ponder if jazz is "as subtle, complex, and emotionally expressive as classical music."