good lord i’m sad after finishing the biography of charles...

good lord i’m sad after finishing the biography of charles griffes. this once “ultra-modern” (and unapologetically gay) american composer seemed poised, after decades of struggle, to make a sudden and indelible mark on the history of american music, and then died in 1920 at age 35 at exactly the moment of that recognition, from overwork and, perhaps, depression. the identity of american music reshaped and reidentified itself within a couple years, and his music still remains absent from programs and largely unpublished. i’ve played his work in all fifty states, and just recorded some for Tido, and yet i’m overwhelmed with the sense that there’s so much more to do, to compensate for, to discover, and to amend.