By: Greg

Greg — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 22:18:20 +0000

I have one tiny question about Faroese: The song is about TÃ³rshavn. But the lyrics use the name Havnin. Is this a nickname? A diminutive form? Dialect? Slang? Nico responds: I am anything but an expert on these matters. But the way that works is that havn is the word for harbor, and the -in ending is a definite article; like in Icelandic, definite articles are stuck on at the end. This usage mirrors how I speak about New York, viz., "I got home to the City last night," implying that while there are many cities, there is but one City.

By: Daniel Wolf

Daniel Wolf — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 09:38:23 +0000

Your puppetry problematic is related to one reason I decided not to move to New York years ago. In a community with as many composers as that city has, there’s immense pressure to esstablish some name-brand identity, to sharply define the territory in which you work as well as the borders to the territories in which you do not work and others do. While these sharp divisions have led, in many cases, to beautifully concentrated work, I never could figure out how my own working methods, without an easily identifiable aural footprint, could function in such an economy.

On the other hand, when I actually did compose for a honest-to-goodness puppet play (a handpuppet opera, actually, with Edward Gorey’s libretto and puppets), I found that the experience was anything but confining. Lou Harrison advised me, correctly, that “with puppets, you can do anything: if you want a fleet of ships to set sail on stage, you can have a fleet of ships setting sail on stage.”

Comments on: A Puppet Show, Nationalism, Chicopée

By: Greg

By: Daniel Wolf