Some tech chaos today (not to mention me being powered by cold brew after days of late-night grading), but at least I got to show the film music students the weirdness of Mozart Mozart (in the context of a lecture mostly about Stephanie Russo's "anachronistic turn" in biopics like Marie Antoinette)

Hmmm, I do have some vague ideas about "Margical History Tour," although that might be a bit on-the-nose for this CFP.

Erin Grievances@erinbartram.bsky.social · 6d ago

I would love to read pitches that explore labor, gender and family relations, childhood, religion, political parties, the show's place in the history of adult animation, its racial politics, how it manages time passing but also not passing, and steamed hams.

I am so excited to hear about this book! I have frequently used Linda's blog Not Another Music History Cliché in my previous teaching and would love to design a history or appreciation course around these essays! libraries.clemson.edu/press/books/...

I have so much grading, sleeping, and winter/spring job searching to do (not to mention so much much-delayed research) and do not have time to check this out. But I am very charmed by the image of Ponto and Gérald playing Holmes and Watson.

Ponto@pontomtl.bsky.social · 2w ago

J'ai réalisé le visuel d'une soirée meurtre et mystère, dont l'intrigue se déroule autour d'un nid-de-poule, qui se passe demain soir au @memmtl.bsky.social (Mon musée préféré à Montréal!). Info et billets: memmtl.ca/programmatio...

We're scheduled to talk about Jaws, but apparently it needs to be "you have to actually read your sources and not just trust Google, AI, or automatic citations" day in film music.

My chapter on "Gossip and Anecdote" is now available in the (in-progress) Oxford Handbook of Musical Biography and Life-Writing! It uses the gossip and conspiracy theories surrounding Salieri and Tchaikovsky to consider the intersections of misinfo studies, composer biography, and musical fiction!

I have seen things that I suspect were AI in response "what new thing did you learn or find interesting from doing this reading?"

Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · last mo.

One thing I find endlessly funny about the rise of AI is that it has revealed that there is a large number of people who believe that the reason they wrote essays at school or university is their teachers were desperately waiting for them to provide a definite answer to “Lear: what’s up with him?”

Among everything else, it's that time of year and I need a job for winter/spring term! If anyone has leads on sessional work in music history, gender/sexuality studies, or interdisciplinary/comp lit (esp. historical or crime fiction or life writing), I am here (in Montreal or online)!

Shoutout to the person seated near me at tonight's performance of Amadeus who said "Well, there it is" to the tune of "Whoomp! (There It Is)" when the actor playing Joseph II came out for bows. I will never be able to un-hear this, but it also seems perfectly aligned with the irreverence of it all.

The last few days/weeks/...months have been slightly chaotic, so I completely missed the yearly "on this day" posts about the anniversary of Salieri's birth. That said, it's never a bad time to listen to these delightfully weird (and also quite late!) orchestral variations. youtu.be/GbC1wRk20vA

Salieri - 26 Variationen über "La Folia di Spagna" | Reinhard Goebel | WDR Sinfonieorchester

YouTube video by ARD Klassik

youtu.be

I was very busy IRL and not on social media much when this was big on historian bsky, but--on top of the claims, the social media discourse, and the similarities and differences between the two books--I continue to think that a lot of historians just fundamentally misunderstand historical fiction.

thene@thene.bsky.social · 3mo ago

out it goes: my long post about Rachel Hope Cleves's claim that Tillie Walden plagiarised her book. It's long because Cleves's claim is much, much more bizarre than it looked on first reading. I'm not going to bury the lede here. Cleves's claim does not hold up. buttondown.com/thene/archiv...

I've said the same thing as Maria Adelmann re: "a strange, depressing dissonance to leveling up in a career—achieving, essentially, all the milestones of tenure—yet never having the opportunity to advance, never mind having the dignity of stability" nearly word-for-word about my own career.

Rebecca Colesworthy@rcolesworthy.bsky.social · 3mo ago

“Some unis have been cowed into dropping their DEI programs by the Trump admin, but how deeply dedicated these institutions ever were to equity is unclear, given that they run on the backs of highly skilled, low-paid, precarious labor.” www.thenation.com/article/soci...

"Well, there it is!" Excellent production! Definitely focusing more on the comedic elements of Shaffer's text, with Salieri (Tom Rooney) in particular having a great deadpan delivery. Very much looking forward to seeing it during the regular run in September!

Long-lost autograph volumes by Antonio Salieri have been rediscovered nearly 200 years after the composer's death. The collection contains 149 vocal works, including pieces previously unknown to scholars. Read more at moto-perpetuo.com/antonio-sali... #AntonioSalieri #ClassicalMusic

I will be giving a guest lecture on Peter Shaffer's many rewrites to Amadeus at the Shaw Seminar in August! (The Shaw Festival is also doing Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth, and part of me feels like I should finally find the time to read the mysteries the Shaffer brothers cowrote.)

I've got some exciting public scholarship opportunities coming up this summer! It would be great if I had a stable job to keep doing this work! Also, I would like to be able to write an article on Schubert's and FXW Mozart's reference letters without unsuccessful job documents being too relatable.

Another shout out to Medievalists!! A reminder for all your public scholarly needs: the link in the quoted post is for publications and podcasts that take pitches. This link is for those who haven't done public scholarly work before but have a lot to say about Emperors, Popes, and Anti-Popes.

Shifting to Public Scholarship – Black and White and Read All Over

Public scholarship is rapidly becoming a crucial part of our academic CVs. Personally, I (Vaughn) find public scholarship to be the most important part of our job as communicators of the past, using o...

blackwhiteandread.com

Dr. Vaughn Joy@gvaughnjoy.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Shout out to all the Medievalists drafting public history pieces on anti-popes! It's so fun how every historian's work gets to be relevant all at the same fucking time. As a reminder, we have a page called Pitchables on our site with links to public scholarly publications that accept cold pitches:

If anyone is free at 3pm EDT on April 24 and wants to hear some works-in-progress talks about Salieri reception history, the Encounters with Eighteenth-Century Music series has you covered! encounters.secm.org/events/salie...

For a variety of reasons, this case of a postdoc being denied PR because "AI" invented job duties totally separate from her submitted education and work experience (and then penalizing her for not meeting them) terrifies and infuriates me. As it should you.

Nathan Kalman-Lamb@nkalamb.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Today in AI: Canada rejected the PR application of a McMaster postdoc from the Sorbonne who works in the immunology of aging because the generative AI being used to process applications (😱) entirely hallucinated her credentials. Everyone involved should be fired. archive.is/ELrCI#select...

This sounds like a job for @amsafterdark.bsky.social

I support Somali-Americans@adamrothman.bsky.social · 9mo ago

I'd watch a muppet show movie where the muppets infiltrate an academic conference.

I just watched @acollierastro.bsky.social's YouTube video on this and--in addition to everything she says about this sort of person as an instructor and colleague--I can't help but think "what about the people who unsuccessfully applied for his position who don't use 'AI' to do their work for them?"

I've written this blogpost on ICE protest chants & songs, w/ a large section of transcriptions of singing at protests by faith leaders and the Singing Resistance. It also includes songs about ICE agents' perceived masculinity issues and new songs protesting ICE. medium.com/@norikomanab...

ICE protest songs and chants, Minnesota general strike (January 23) and beyond

Transcriptions of singing at ICE protests by faith leaders and protesters. Songs about ICE’s masculinity issues. Other songs about the ICE…

medium.com

Looking for something to read after watching (the 2025 television adaptation of) Amadeus? Here's a short thread! These aren't necessarily the most reliable sources--I might do a more scholarly thread next week--but they are the things I thought of at specific moments while watching the show.

Me: Mozart fictions really do not do enough with Salieri's more meta operas, probably because they require dealing with questions of comedy and also linguistic identity Both Mozart/Mozart and the new adaptation of Amadeus: so, how do you feel about unexpected references to Der Rauchfangkehrer?

I would pay good money I don't have to watch Ényì Okoronkwo star in a Lorenzo Da Ponte biopic.

Franz Süssmayr, you are very much in the wrong kind of biopic to be making so much sense.

Constanze Mozart (as played by Gabrielle Creevy) ca. 1823, accurately describing the experience of watching a production of Amadeus that doesn't make cuts to the monologues.

I have a lot of Amadeus-shaped thoughts, but it is already well after midnight on a Monday. So I will just say that I gasped when Pushkin showed up and also could not stop giggling at Constanze's reaction to him saying he was working on a new play.

One episode left to go in Amadeus and some marzipan-flavored rooibos seemed appropriate.

My book Imagining Musical Pasts: The Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson is now open access! It originally came out in 2023 (based on my 2019 dissertation), but is now freely available as part of JSTOR's Path to Open initiative. doi.org/10.2307/j.ct...