Welcome to Musicuratum – a website, begun in the middle of 2012 and based for a decade in Amsterdam, now located in Madrid, though it is written by one whose native tongue is English, joined with pages on Youtube, Soundcloud, and Spotify.
On all of them the aim is to draw attention to a diverse group of musicians, singers, composers, and the like. While the criterion for featuring them is unabashedly my personal preference, perhaps others, encountering them in the expository notices or the essays in these pages, will be filled with a similar enthusiasm.
The website as formatted is largely self-explanatory. In addition to the standard method of opening a text posted on the front-page, under the masthead there is a menu entitled “Words,” which in turn comprises two menus: the first, “Articles,” when clicked leads to a page with their titles and dates, with the most recent first. A further click on any of these will take the reader to the text; once there, by clicking on the masthead in the upper left-hand corner, one may return to the front-page, or proceed to the previous or the next via the titles shown at the bottom. The second, “Introductions,” functions similarly, and will take the reader to a small number of auxiliary texts, amongst which is the one that re-inaugurates this website.
In the entries themselves, quotations are rendered in bold red type, allowing the inverted commas to be omitted; this practice, however, is complemented by the use of italics or parentheses to signalise an approach in the mode of textual criticism or some other manner of close engagement with a text (which may be given with small grammatical adjustments). Furthermore, italics are employed in the case of lyrics, bit of poetry, etc., when these are not set on lines of their own. Also printed in black are the occasional excerpts that, to whet the appetites of the curious, have been placed apart from the main column in self-contained blocks.
To assist the visitor in navigating through the website, a search function for the whole of it, along with an archive of all the entries, and a subscription form, will be found on the sidebar which slides open when the toggle-switch in the upper right-hand corner is clicked.
Under the menu entitled “Reference,” a page containing a bibliography may be opened whose scope, hopefully, will seem neither too broad nor narrow. In it are also included works of visual art mentioned in the text, but not the sources of lyrics or libretti cited in the texts. In addition, for curious readers, a page with suggestions for further study is provided under the same menu. (An earlier, more diffuse incarnation of this compilation has been retired.)
Those readers who would like to study the texts published on this website during its Amsterdam years, will find them, apart from a few bits of ephemera, assembled with an introduction into a Compendium that is presented as a virtual book, and also as a PDF file; they may be opened by means of the “Books” and “Documents” menus, respectively. Compiled into a separate part are the texts published from Madrid. Alongside these, two volumes of selected essays have been presented likewise. (The compendia as PDF files may be downloaded via either menu.) Lastly, for the curious, an Album is offered: an excerpt-book stemming from my reading, which touches the concerns of this website from a number of sides.
Finally, please note that an earlier experiment with a twin site having exactly the same content but a different graphic presentation, by the name of Musicuratum LP: Large Print, has been fully retired. Under present or likely any circumstances, one website to maintain is more than enough.
A word about embedded items. While looking over the articles, every so often readers might notice that some of the visual or audio recordings which I had included initially, subsequently have been removed by their makers (or else by the sites which hosted their work). Of course, over these decisions I have no influence, but for my part, generally I’ve let the players stand as empty shells, if only because as such they’d remind one how fleeting even music itself can be, sometimes.