<p>Join us this week in a new format of "Music For a While," where we listen along with John to recordings of pieces he has written. John follows along in his original score as he provides commentary on musical content, as well as stories and insider information about the composition, rehearsal, and performance of the piece. Enjoy the first installment, John's "Centennial Te Deum."</p>

Join us this week in a new format of "Music For a While," where we listen along with John to recordings of pieces he has written. John follows along in his original score as he provides commentary on musical content, as well as stories and insider information about the composition, rehearsal, and performance of the piece. Enjoy the first installment, John's "Centennial Te Deum."

Episode 57: Commentary on "Centennial Te Deum"

John's podcasts and poems are frozen still moments recorded as mental photos that run in the reader's imagination like full films. As both participant and chronicler John removes himself from the action, makes his observations quickly (and hopefully cogently) and then escape. If John is a good observer, he sees things that by themselves are extraordinary revelations about each of us which seem as caricatures rooted in ordinary life and amplified by the focus of each person's mind on the "other" … ourselves. In other words, if a kid is "an indefatigable nose picker with bluster all his own" we get a complex message about human behavior that we got from an unmentionable source: us. Long after hearing  John's podcasts and poems, the scenes he describe live "rent free" in the reader's mind.

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John's podcasts and poems are frozen still moments recorded as mental photos that run in the reader's imagination like full films. As both participant and chronicler John removes himself from the action, makes his observations quickly (and hopefully cogently) and then escape. If John is a good observer, he sees things that by themselves are extraordinary revelations about each of us which seem as caricatures rooted in ordinary life and amplified by the focus of each person's mind on the "other" … ourselves. In other words, if a kid is "an indefatigable nose picker with bluster all his own" we get a complex message about human behavior that we got from an unmentionable source: us. Long after hearing John's podcasts and poems, the scenes he describe live "rent free" in the reader's mind.

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Episode 57: Commentary on "Centennial Te Deum"

Episode 57: Commentary on "Centennial Te Deum"