Joplin’s was a curious story. His compositions became more and more intricate, until they were almost jazz Bach.— Music publisher Edward B. Marks, 1934 In 1991, when I was eight years old, I found a simplified version of Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” and relished playing it for most of the year that I was in […]
Author Archives: Adrienne Davich
Posted inPlaylist
An Actually Erotic Classical Music for Sex Playlist
Early this fall, I asked friends to tell me which pieces of classical music they believed to be “the all-time sexiest.” I promised there were no wrong answers. I wasn’t being disingenuous—though I was thinking about how erotic classical music playlists on Spotify and elsewhere, if not “wrong” or “bad,” are full of famous pieces […]
Posted inRankings & Roundups
Piano Entanglements
In the spring, while stuck at home avoiding the coronavirus, I read Lea Singer’s forthcoming novel, The Piano Student, which tells the story of Vladimir Horowitz’s affair with a 23-year-old male protege, Nico Kauffman. Drawing from Horowitz’s actual letters to Kauffman, Singer depicts a forbidden relationship in which Horowitz vacillates between ardently declaring his love […]
Posted inReview
Transformed By Absence
As the Midwestern fall turned into a frigid, icy winter, I listened to Glenn Gould playing Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” and read Philip Kennicott’s Counterpoint: A Memoir of Bach and Mourning. Alternating between listening and reading, I found myself overwhelmed by emotion and flooded with the desire to do something. I wanted to clean house, dance […]