John Michael Cooper
BLACK REINSCRIPTION, WHITE REPRISAL: ELIZABETH KECKLEY AND MARGARET BONDS
(Prefatory note: I began this first of the twelve Black History months of 2024-25 down with simultaneous COVID and flu – and the lost...
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John Michael Cooper
- Feb 16
- 7 min
SEQUINA DUBOSE: FROM “BLURRED LINES,” A MESSAGE CRYSTAL CLEAR (pt. 1 of 2)
In some ways, the year 2023 was a year of revanchism and regression in classical music. Just a few years earlier, many voices –...
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John Michael Cooper
- Nov 11, 2023
- 5 min
Margaret Bonds and The Ballad of the Brown King
Some Historical Errata, Corrigenda, and Addenda As December nears, so do more performances of one of Margaret Bonds’s most important and...
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John Michael Cooper
- Oct 5, 2023
- 2 min
The Tombstone’s Tale (2)
This post is an update to my post of March 26, 2023. As I noted there, in 1912, two years after the death of Dr. James H. Smith, father...
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John Michael Cooper
- Jul 10, 2023
- 4 min
ANTI-SEMITISM AND ANTI-JUDAISM IN ROMANTIC MUSIC (Part 4: Science's Betrayal, Music's Losses)
IN TODAY’S POST: (1) European anti-Jewish intellectuals tender a hopelessly confused mélange of cultural anthropology, history, and...
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John Michael Cooper
- Jul 5, 2023
- 4 min
ANTI-SEMITISM AND ANTI-JUDAISM IN ROMANTIC MUSIC (Part 2: Richard Wagner)
Richard Wagner's "On Jewry in Music," first published pseudonymously in 1850 and finally published in pamphlet form under Wagner's...
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John Michael Cooper
- Jul 5, 2023
- 5 min
ANTI-SEMITISM AND ANTI-JUDAISM IN ROMANTIC MUSIC (Part 1)
This post and the following three are about the phenomenon of anti-Jewish attitudes and deeds that were pervasive in the musical worlds...
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John Michael Cooper
- Jun 26, 2023
- 5 min
RACISM IN ROMANTIC MUSIC (4): CANONICAL SILENCING, AND SOME CONCLUSIONS
As a prefatory exercise for this post, consider the “rule of 4%”: less than four percent of the players in professional orchestras with...
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John Michael Cooper
- Jun 25, 2023
- 3 min
RACISM IN ROMANTIC MUSIC (3): ARCHIVAL SILENCING
In Parts 1 and 2 of this four-part post I attempted a systems-level analysis of the means and mechanisms (“linchpins”) by which racism...
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John Michael Cooper
- Jun 24, 2023
- 3 min
RACISM IN ROMANTIC MUSIC (2): SILENCING BY MUSIC PUBLISHERS
In Part 1 of this series of systems-level commentaries on Racism in Romantic Music (RRM), I discussed how the pervasive racism of the...
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John Michael Cooper
- Jun 23, 2023
- 7 min
RRM – RACISM IN ROMANTIC MUSIC (Part 1 of 4)
Dear Constant Reader, I’ve been absent from this blog for a while, partly because I needed to recharge, partly because I’m currently...
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John Michael Cooper
- Mar 24, 2023
- 4 min
MARGARET BONDS, LANGSTON HUGHES, AND THE JOY OF “JOY”:
A Conspirare Premiere and a Gratuitous Youthful Photo Langston Hughes’s poem Joy was first published in the collection The Weary Blues...
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John Michael Cooper
- Feb 22, 2023
- 5 min
A FATHER-DAUGHTER GIFT FOR TODAY
The Margaret Bonds / W.E.B. Du Bois Credo Returns to Its Roots Margaret Bonds’s relationship with her father was complicated but rich –...
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John Michael Cooper
- Feb 19, 2023
- 3 min
A HISTORIC RE-ENACTMENT
Margaret Bonds’s Montomery Variations and Credo on the Same Program with the Hartford Chorale and Hartford Symphony Orchestra Margaret...
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John Michael Cooper
- Dec 11, 2022
- 2 min
A MOST AUSPICIOUS OCCASION
The world premiere of the “revised and extended” version of Margaret Bonds’s The Ballad of the Brown King (December 11, 1960) HISTORY WAS...
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John Michael Cooper
- Nov 19, 2022
- 4 min
MARGARET BONDS: “NO MAN HAS SEEN HIS FACE” (1968)
Fifty-one-year-old Owen Brady was found unconscious and riddled with bullets inside a wrecked and burning car that had crashed into the...
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John Michael Cooper
- Nov 11, 2022
- 4 min
COALESCENCE, CULMINATION, AND EMANCIPATION:
Four Early Performances of Margaret Bonds’s Spiritual Suite [This note is about Margaret Bonds’s Spiritual Suite – the surviving magnum...
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John Michael Cooper
- Nov 1, 2022
- 3 min
J.S. BACH AND THE HARMONY OF THE SPHERES AT THE ROYAL OBSERVATORY GREENWICH
Pianist Elena Piccione and Romanian Astronomer Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu Enact the Composer’s Worldview on November 4 The notion that all...
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John Michael Cooper
- Jul 1, 2022
- 3 min
“I DEDICATED IT TO MOTHER”
On the Origins of He’s Got the Whole World in His Hand by Margaret Bonds Margaret Bonds is justly celebrated for her inspired and...
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John Michael Cooper
- Jun 20, 2022
- 6 min
ON THE VERY FAMILIAR, AND VERY MYSTERIOUS, SCOTT JOPLIN
[This is the sixth in a series of posts of “blogified” short entries from the forthcoming second, enlarged edition of my Historical...
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