About

Who am I?

I grew up in the American Midwest, and spent most of my youth (as far as I can remember) reading and playing the double bass. I studied English literature at Goshen College and the University of Oxford, and then took a job at a nonprofit providing mental health care to underserved populations. I am currently writing a thesis on Joyce and Schoenberg at La Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris while working as a primary school teacher.

Even though I studied English at university, my primary interest has always been music. I have been in love with classical music since the age of eleven when I heard the Lacrimosa of Mozart’s Requiem, and my passion for it has only grown through the years. It is the anchoring principle of everything I believe about life, love, God, and the meaning of existence, and not a day – hell, not an hour – goes by when I don’t think about it.

This blog was born partly out of a desire to get some of my writing on literature into the public sphere, but mostly because I wanted to explore this passion for music more deeply. I never had the chance to write long-form essays on music when I was an English student, and have always wanted to try my hand at marrying my love of music with my love of words. I am in no sense a musicologist, nor have I had any specialized training in that area. All I try to do when writing about music is analyze it in ways that make sense to me, and to communicate as best I can why it is, truly, one of the most important things in the world.