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The earliest symphonies by Sammartini, Stamitz, Monn, and others are often episodic, sectional, and driven by contrast rather than tight motivic or harmonic integration. And they were written to divert. What’s wrong with Arnold revisiting that assumption?

I’m not taking it personally. I just think you need reflection on this and related matters. Don’t worry, you’re far from alone.

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1. The 5th Symphony, for instance, uses matching motivic and thematic materials in multiple movements. How is that not cohesion? 2. Why is cohesion so important to you anyway? The earliest symphonies didn’t have much cohesion. Did the cohesionists get to dictate what a symphony is for all time?

So you regret that he doesn’t compose like a good German classicist. That goes for many symphonists. Are not the melodic materials often excellent? The dramatic elements? The timbral imagination?

Can you be more specific? Which random techniques? How are these symphonies not journeys?

….intellectual exercises? Whaat? They’re some of the most immediate and pop-inflected music you’ll hear.

Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

I’ve been adding musicology articles.

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Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

“[Charles] Rosen convinces me entirely of Chopin’s technical prowess as a composer. But I still somehow doubt that Chopin’s stature as a dominant figure of 19th-century music rested on his structural skills alone.”—-Susan McClary, review of Rosen, The Romantic Generation, Notes 52/4

Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

One conductor here is great at Mahler while the other is not.

Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

My review of Samuel Hasselhorn’s and Ammiel Bushakevitz’s latest Schubert lieder disc from Harmonia Mundi’s Schubert 200 series. I enjoyed this one very much! classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2026/05/schu...

Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

😂😂😂 But I wasn’t wrong.

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Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

😂😂😂 (Jan Swafford, “Johannes Brahms: A Biography” [Vintage Books/Random House, 1997], pg. 338.)

Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

If you’re not joking, in which universe is Ode to Joy not a good tune? Surely not the one we actually live in…where it’s recognized and sung (in hymnals and elsewhere) by wide swaths of non-Geeks. And there’s something self-ownish about a medievalist scorning someone who’s been dead for 199 years.

Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

Right here. The gold standard, as far as I'm concerned.

Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

One of my personal heresies: Beethoven never again equaled his Razumovsky Quartets. The late ones, while in some ways "deeper" and even more impressive, don't have the same expressive directness and emotional sweep.

Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

Nice! I’ll check them out.

Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Haha maybe so. Thanks for reading!

Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Paavo Järvi is not a great Mahler conductor.

Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Martin Romberg’s songs and piano music have been a wonderful recent discovery.

Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Rattle isn’t a true Romantic. He’s better with stuff that doesn’t call for lusty emotion.

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Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

I love this symphony. One of my favorite Weinberg works .

Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

Why do you think of the new Gardner? I’m reviewing that one soon.

Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

I’m honored to be chosen for the Music Library Association’s 2026 Eva Judd O’Meara Award for my review of Byron Adams’s and Daniel Grimley’s “Vaughan Williams and His World” in Notes.

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Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

Your music isn’t great just because your story is sad.

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Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Saddened to hear of Tamás Vásáry’s death. A very fine pianist who left behind some terrific Chopin recordings among other things.

Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Review coming today or tomorrow. Will post. Positive.

Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

I agree with you on Manze’s RVW symphonies. What did you think of his recent Butterworth/Holst disc?

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Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a very good composer.

Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

He did some good stuff early on. But this just seems like someone trying to eke out territory in well-trodden repertoire. Of course many critics are eating it up. They’re just thrilled with anything different…doesn’t have to be good.

Ryan Ross @ryanmross.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

“There is always a danger in musicology of making too much out of too little.”- Alan Walker, “Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times” (Picador, 2018), p. 478. I’d say over 50% of musicology I read has this problem. Amplification of mere possibility, + impatience with the limitations of primary sources.