Back from a beautiful vacation in Denmark, I am now heavily working on the completion of my doctoral thesis. Medtner resonates everywhere in my soul and brain, keeping me jolly despite the sticky weather. Produced six pages of condensed 11 pt, 1.5 cm margin, no-indent English text today. Phew.

Just finished a paper on historical theories of sonata form in Russia and the early Soviet Union. It is fascinating to examine how, after relying on translations and adaptations of Western European textbooks by Hugo Riemann, Ludwig Bussler, and Ebenezer Prout, the contributions of Russian scholars such as Anton Arensky, Sergei Taneyev, Georgi Catoire, and Boris Asafiev gradually paved the way for a more individual approach towards the traditional model, regarding sonata form as a paradigm of both composition and analysis. The article will, hopefully, soon be published in ZGMTH, the journal of the German Music Theory Association.

Held my first lecture on techno music today. It’s been a pleasure discussing a popular music topic with an audience of music theorists, and I very much enjoyed talking about the stuff I was totally crazy about as a teen, back in the 1990s—the intriguing productions of former rave music duo RMB. Their tracks used to provide inspiration for my own humble attempts to create electronic dance music, and continue to fascinate me to this day. Thank you also, Rolf Maier-Bode, for answering my questions on the role of movie soundclips in your music.