The Fredösphere

I'm enjoying Frank Pesci's blog, and finding a strong affinity with his posts, once I've mentally edited out the occasional F-words.  Here's a cri du coeur that transcends the silliness that artistic manifestos are prone to:

I will refrain from hitting the bullet points of my still relatively new, narcissistic zealtory. Nor will I evangelize. But suffice to say that there are many battles to be waged on this VERY broad front, as there are as many fragmented semantics as there are people involved with the planning and execution of liturgical music in American Christendom. What I will talk about (briefly) are my standards for writing this type of music: It must not be secular.
Honestly conceived for a sacred purpose; sustainable through the established traditions of liturgical music, using a modern voice without consciously dipping into the trappings of musical secularism; functionally viable in terms of having an honest understanding of the likely abilities of performers I write for, and for the congregations who will allow it to enhance their worship, as that is it's ultimate purpose. These are my standards when writing this kind of music - when I'm confronted with the complete self-aggrandizing idiocy that getting published...

I also urge you to take a test of pitch memory Frank found from UCSF.  Be warned, however, that the test is tough; it gives you only three seconds to identify the pitch.  I guess they are looking for ultra-reliable pitch memory.

I found it telling that the preliminary questionnaire includes a question about synaesthesia.  Have I mentioned that synaesthetes are subhuman freaks?  People with a moderately reliable sense of absolute pitch are, on the other hand, quite well balanced.  (By coincidence, that is the category to which I belong.)