Charles Petzold



The Wrath of God and the Ethics of Belief

February 21, 2024
New York, N.Y.

Some crazy stuff pops up in the news these days, but I truly wasn’t ready for the Chief Justice of a state Supreme Court to invoke the “wrath of a holy God” in a court ruling.

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Reading (and Listening to) “Time’s Echo”

January 31, 2024
New York, N.Y.

Music has the power to speak very directly to us over decades and centuries. Yet often some context and additional information can enhance the experience. The innovations of Beethoven’s Third Symphony, for example, can become more evident with knowledge of the earlier symphonies of Haydn and Mozart. Familiarity with the later works of Beethoven and other composers allows us to consider the Third Symphony as a pivotal work in western music.

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Reading “The World of Yesterday”

January 26, 2024
New York, N.Y.

Vienna, 1901. A budding 19-year-old author named Stefan Zweig has written something for the feuilleton section of the Neue Freie Presse (“New Free Press”) — the part of the paper that covered literature and art rather than news and politics. He brings his “little prose essay” to the feuilleton editor who, to his surprise, begins reading it on the spot, and when finished, puts the manuscript in an envelope and tells the young man “I am glad to tell you that your fine piece is accepted for publication in the feuilleton of the Neue Freie Presse.”

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Can an AI Compose Music?

January 22, 2024
New York, N.Y.

Can an AI experience music? Has an AI ever had an emotional reaction to music? Has an AI ever felt its heart rate increase while listening to music? Has an AI ever felt the hairs on the back of its neck stand up while listening to music? Has an AI ever swooned while listening to music?

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Swing States Graph, Logarithmic Style

December 29, 2023
Roscoe, New York

Earlier today I published a blog entry with an interactive graph that had some visual flaws. Here’s that questionable graph again:

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The Swing State Crapshoot

December 29, 2023
Roscoe, N.Y.

One argument sometimes advanced in favor of the Electoral College is that if the voters happened to blunder and select someone who was clearly unfit, unsuitable, or unqualified to serve as President, the Electoral College could step in to override the people’s choice and choose a more appropriate candidate.

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Electoral College Pathologies

December 22, 2023
Roscoe, New York

Two candidates face off in a Presidential election: One candidate gets 22% of the popular vote and the other gets the remaining 78%, but the one who gets 22% is declared the winner. How is this possible?

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The Systemic Racism of the Electoral College, Revisited

December 18, 2023
New York, N.Y.

The concept of one-person-one-vote is central to democracy. No person’s vote should have more power or influence than anyone else’s. In a 1964 case Wesberry v. Sanders, the Supreme Court stated this explicitly: “As nearly as practicable, one man’s vote in a Congressional election is to be worth as much as another’s.” In Reynolds v. Sims the concept was extended to state legislatures. In 1964, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote “People, not land or trees or pastures, vote.” (These quotes are from a 1986 New York Times article “One Man, One Vote: Decades of Court Decisions”.)

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AMC Disrespects Martin Scorsese

October 23, 2023
New York, N.Y.

When Nicole Kidman strides into an AMC cineplex and begins extolling the joys of seeing movies on the big screen, I believe every word she says. That is exactly the way that I too like to see movies, and AMC has done a lot to improve the theater experience, such as reclining seats comfortable enough for a nap. But with these improvements, blatant missteps become all the more painful and inexcusable.

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Rereading Aldous Huxley’s “Point Counter Point” and “Devils of Loudun”

September 12, 2023
New York, N.Y.

When I was a teenager, I was an Aldous Huxley “completist.” I didn’t know that word at the time. It was not in common use. But I exhibited all the symptoms: After being blown away by a reading of Brave New World at the tender age of 14, I thought the author’s genius probably wasn’t limited to just one book, so I began an obsessive search for Huxley’s other works. Most of the novels were readily available, but I didn’t stop there. Fortunately I grew up just a 45-minute bus ride from New York City, and when I was 15, my mother started letting me take that bus by myself. I would visit the used bookstores on the famous (but now merely a fond memory) Book Row where I found many of Aldous Huxley’s collections of essays, short stories, travelogues, and yes, even poetry, all of which I ravenously read.

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Reading “Humanly Possible”

August 11, 2023
Roscoe, N.Y.

When some Facebook friends recently began posting prose and poetry generated by ChatGPT, I had an odd reaction. I didn’t feel astonished, or amused, or intrigued, or frightened, or threatened. (Well, maybe a little.) Mostly I felt disgusted. I felt that I was witnessing a travesty of human creativity, a mockery of human communication, and a belittling of human morality.

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Celebrating the Ligeti Centennial

July 2, 2023
Roscoe, N.Y.

The 100th anniversary of the birth of Hungarian composer György Ligeti was this past May, and I celebrated with daily posts of Ligeti’s music on Facebook that went on for 50 days. Here are those posts on one convenient webpage.

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In Praise of Don Lancaster

July 1, 2023
Roscoe, N.Y.

In 1977, I had a Univox Electronic Piano that had stopped working well, and I had an idea that I could adapt the core electronics into an electronic music sequencer — a device that repetitively plays a sequence of notes. But I had no idea how to do this. My adolescent forays into electronics and four years at an engineering and science school had given me only a background in analog circuits. Consequently, I imagined some kind of electro-mechanical wiper switch.

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Morons and Oxymorons

June 26, 2023
Roscoe, N.Y.

It’s well known that MSN shovels a lot of crap onto the homepage of Microsoft Edge, but sometimes it reeks so bad that I want to scream. The latest offense was this (seemingly innocuous) headline:

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Building a Virginal: Feeling Like I’m Just Getting Started…

May 17, 2023
Roscoe, N.Y.

Today I finished installing all the jacks in my Zuckermann Troubadour Virginal with Celcon plectra and red cloth dampers:

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Building a Virginal: Actual Music

May 11, 2023
Roscoe, N.Y.

The virginal that I’m building from a kit now has 20 jacks installed, each with a plectrum and a cloth damper, ranging from B♭3 through F5, a range that allows me to play the first four measures of Bach’s Prelude in C Major from Book 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier:

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Building a Virginal: Preparing the Jacks

May 10, 2023
Roscoe, N.Y.

One week ago today — on Construction Day 20 — I prepared all 55 jacks for the Zuckermann Troubadour Virginal that I’m building. As I discussed in my previous blog entry, the jacks connect the keyboard with the strings (i.e., wires). They come supplied with tongues held by a stiff little metal wire that allows them to swivel, and a slot for some damping cloth:

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Building a Virginal: The First Jack

April 24, 2023
New York, N.Y.

In a harpsichord, a finger presses a key down and the tail end of the key goes up. On the end of the key sits a wooden jack with a plastic plectrum that plucks the string.

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Building a Virginal: Stringing Progress II

April 24, 2023
New York, N.Y.

At the conclusion of my last installment of this series of blog entries documenting my construction of a Zuckermann Troubadour Virginal, I realized that my approach to stringing the virginal using a tool I described was flawed. I assumed that each wire would be positioned so that it ran parallel to the face of the jack. This is not so. When I took a ruler to the Mylar drawing, and measured the locations of the bridge pins relative to the inside bottom of the case, I discovered that the left bridge pins were positioned between 2¾ inches to 15 inches, while the right bridge pins were 2⅛ inches to 14½.

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Building a Virginal: Stringing Progress I

April 16, 2023
Roscoe, N.Y.

As I was brushing shellac on the wooden components of my in-progess Zuckermann Troubadour Virginal on Friday, perhaps I could be forgiven for briefly feeling that I was in the home stretch. The lid sure looked fine in the afternoon sun:

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Building a Virginal: Tools for Stringing

April 15, 2023
Roscoe, N.Y.

In the Zuckermann Troubadour Virginal that I’m building, the strings (i.e., wires) begin at the hitchpins at the left, go over the left bridge, pass a jack (which will someday pluck the string), go over the right bridge, and then end at a tuning peg on the right. On the bridges, the strings are held in place by bridge pins, which help convey vibrations of the strings to the soundboard.

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Building a Virginal: Keyboard Balancing

April 14, 2023
Roscoe, N.Y.

When I was a kid in the 1960s, I made lead soldiers. The lead was melted in a little pot on an electrical heater. The insides of the molds would be lubricated by holding them over a candle flame to get a carbon coating, and then you’d clamp the mold together, and pour the lead in. It looked something like this, although I suspect I wasn’t so nicely dressed:

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Building a Virginal: The Lid and Music Stand

April 12, 2023
Roscoe, N.Y.

The lid for the Troubadour Virginal is optional, but I knew I wanted one, and yesterday and today — Virginal Construction Days 11 and 12 — were partially devoted to getting the lid onto the case. Much of the work I’m doing these days is leading up to applying a finish to the case, which is still uncertain. I know I’m going to shellac it, but after that I don’t know.

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Building a Virginal: Case Enhancements

April 10, 2023
New York, N.Y.

An exceedingly important role in harpsichords and virginals is played by little blocks of wood — about 1/8” by 1/2” by maybe 3 inches — called “jacks.” Each jack is associated with a key on the keyboard. When you press the key, the front of the key goes down and the tail end of the key goes up. The jack sits on that tail end of the key and it goes up as well. Sticking out of the side of the jack is a little plectrum that plucks the string.

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Building a Virginal: Preparing the Soundboard

April 5, 2023
New York, N.Y.

I’m trying to document every little task involved in constructing a Zuckermann Troubadour Virginal, but some of these jobs aren’t as glamorous as others. After installing the soundboard, some of this less glamorous work needs to be done to begin preparing the soundboard for stringing. I did this work on April 2, Construction Day No. 9.

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Building a Virginal: Cushioning the Keyboad

April 4, 2023
New York, N.Y.

When I first constructed the keyboard frame of the Troubadour Virginal and loaded it up with keys, I got a kick out of “playing” it and at least hearing the sound of clacking wood.

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Building a Virginal: The Transposition Feature

March 31, 2023
Roscoe

It is one of the most recognizable sounds in music: A lone oboe in the middle of an orchestra plays an A above middle C. The rest of the orchestra (except the strings) join in, tuning their instruments to that tone. Then the concertmaster (the first violinist) plays that same note, and the rest of the strings tune up. To the audience, this common and familiar ritual is both relaxing and exciting, for it signals that the conductor will soon enter the stage and the concert will begin.

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Building a Virginal: Installing the Soundboard

March 30, 2023
New York, N.Y.

An essential part of Zuckermann’s Troubadour Virginal kit is a lovely life-size schematic drawing of the virginal internals, 64 by 36 inches, printed on Mylar, and suitable for framing if you had a wall big enough and lived with someone who was as much of a harpsichord geek as yourself.

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Building a Virginal: Assembling the Case

March 28, 2023
Roscoe, N.Y.

I began building my Zuckermann Troubadour Virginal with the keyboard frame and then performing some early work on the keys called easing. Usually, however, the construction of a harpsichord or virginal begins with assembling the case, which makes sense because almost everything else goes into the case.

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Building a Virginal: Easing the Keys

March 13, 2023
New York, N.Y.

I spent much of Saturday performing a job that the Zuckermann Troubadour Virginal Construction Manual calls “easing.” The 55 keys (on the top in this photo) must be transferred to the keyboard frame (on the bottom) that I assembled earlier this month:

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Building a Virginal: The Ed Kottick Connection

March 8, 2023
New York, N.Y.

During the 18th century, several mathematicians attempted to come up with a formula that defined the motion of a vibrating string. These mathematicians included Brook Taylor (of the Taylor series) in England, Daniel Bernoulli and Leonard Euler in Switzerland, and Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert in France. But the problem required more sophisticated mathematical tools than were available at the time, and the problem wouldn’t be adequately solved until the techniques developed by Joseph Fourier.

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Building a Virginal: The Keyboard Frame

March 5, 2023
Roscoe, N.Y.

Yesterday was my first full day in assembling a Zuckermann Troubadour Virginal kit, and I succeeded in putting together all the wooden parts of the keyboard frame, but stopping short of laying down the felt cushions and getting all the keys to work.

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2023 Project: Building a Virginal

March 3, 2023
Roscoe, N.Y.

Don’t be alarmed: A virginal is merely a compact type of harpsichord, and I hope to be building one from a kit over the next couple of months.

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