And the winner is...

Just for fun, I thought I'd make a list of the blogs for this course that have received the most comments (as of today).

Right now, two posts are tied with 10 comments each, but, taken by topic, there are two clear current leaders:

• The two musical detail blogs have had a combined 16 comments, and


• The two blogs with explanations of why compositional/stylistic restrictions were imposed ("Why Atonal Music?", and "Express Yourself?") have also had a combined 16 comments.

The three blogs relating to our musical clichés project received 10 total comments, and both the Kandinsky series and my "Composition Issues" series have had 9 comments.

The number of comments received is in the first column. Each blog title is a clickable link:

10    On Musical Detail
10    Why Atonal Music?
7     Next Project: Using Musical Clichés in Creating Art
7     Creative Angst; Welcome to the Club!
6     Musical Detail Addendum
6     Express Yourself?
6     Kandinsky's Theories (1)
6     Notation Software Woes
3     Congratulations
3     Kandinsky's Theories (2)
3     Writing a Play
3     Available Instruments
2     Composition Issues (2)
2     Composition Issues (5)
2     Composition Issues (6)
2     Composition Issues (9)
1     Using a Musical Style or Cliché as a Point of Departure
1     Composition Issues (1)

I'm not sure if there is enough data on which to scientifically base any conclusions, but here are a few possibilities:

• The musical detail blogs may have helped make a number of you more aware of the importance of this issue, and engendered some good discussion;


• Some of you seemed to appreciate having the opportunity to read and discuss the reasons behind the restrictions in projects (Why Atonal Music?, and Express Yourself?);


• The more-philosophical thread about Kandinsky's Theories actually elicited a few more comments than I anticipated, which would suggest that at least some of you like to think and write about these things; and


• My 9-part Composition Issues thread got 9 comments total, which isn't terrible (I guess; but possibly it is!), but no single entry received more than 2 comments. This probably means that it wasn't a great idea to post them all in August, since people tend to be most aware of what ever blog entries are most recent. They are an attempt to get you thinking about issues of potential relevance to composers, so I'll probably continue to recommend them to students in future composition courses.

→ Any further thoughts on this from any of you? What sorts of blogs did you find most interesting, or helpful, or useful?

Below is the screenshot from which this data originated.