Showing posts with label Twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Twitter. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Follow me on Twitter, I guess

Heaven help me, at the prodding of the powers that be at the Register, I have opened a Twitter account. Now the thing to do, I guess, is to get as many "followers" as possible so I increase my vast influence and power! So I'm making a blatant plea to follow me on Twitter. If you follow me, I'll follow you. If you're not on, it's easy and free to sign up at http://twitter.com. Not that I would coerce anyone.

UPDATE: My Twitter handle is alanwbock.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

National Symphony goes on Twitter

I'm something of a congenital late adopter -- I don't have a Twitter page and have no immediate plans to get one, and just went up on Facebook a month or so ago. And when it comes to symphonic music I'm something of a traditionalist. Most efforts to popularize symphony music or make it more youth-friendly are either mildly ridiculous and don't work or cheapen the product. Nonetheless, the art is perpetually one generation from extinction, so I'm glad to see orchestras trying things to make the music more relevant or accessible, even if most of them don't work.

So this story about the National Symphony in Washington planning to Twitter a performance of Beethoven's 6th (the Pastorale, used in Fantasia) is at least intriguing. The orchestra will send small messages throughout the performance with the conductor's commentary and various parts, e.g., noting that Beethoven annotated the score such that Nightingale=flute, Quail=oboe, Cuckoo=clarinet. One can sit in a special section of WolfTrap during the concert -- presumably so others won't be bothered -- and read the tweets as you listen.

Sounds
promising to me. It's not all that different from the way I sometimes use liner notes or booklets when listening to a piece I haven't heard before, to get a little more depth of information, which to me translates into more depth of appreciation, about the piece.