Musings & Perusings and Goines 0n have been published

Publication Date: Dec. 24, 2025

75th Birthday Gift Fulfilled

By Moristotle

On January 8, 2018 , in his post, “An Immodest Proposal: A Birthday Surprise Ruined in 750 Words," Geoffrey proposed that I put together a collection of my writings in book form. On several later occasions I apologized for not having yet acted on the proposal, which came from Jennifer as well. Now, at last, I can announce that I have completed the project. Or, rather, Geoffrey and I have completed the project, because he provided consultations and invaluable editing without which I might neither have completed the project nor have achieved as good results as I think we did.
    Musings & Perusings: A Moristotle Reader is available in both paperback and ebook on Amazon. 

Publication Date: Dec. 23, 2025

Goines Has Delivered!

Almost two years ago, after his retirement from blogging, Goines submitted the manuscript of his book Goines On: A self-portrait in fictional vignettes to an agent in the William Morris Endeavor agency. He never heard from the agent, so he decided to self-publish the book along with Musings & Perusings: A Moristotle Reader. Goines is grateful to everyone who encouraged him along the way and helped him get the Goines On book out. He hopes his words of acknowledgment in the book’s front matters adequately convey his thanks.
    Goines On: A self-portrait in fictional vignettes is available in both paperback and ebook on Amazon.

Both books can be accessed from my author page on Amazon.

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Copyright © 2025 by Moristotle

Farewell to Moristotle & Co.

By Valeria Idakieva

When I was talking to Geoffrey Dean about my experience on the European route El Camino and he said “Why don’t you write something about it for my father’s blog? It doesn’t have to be something long and complicated and if you don’t want to do that, we can make it as an interview, you would only answer some questions,” I didn’t know “Adventures from Bulgaria” would become part of the great adventure called Moristotle & Co. But now that I know, I also know I will miss it. I will miss every bit of it – sharing the experience which made me live it once again, the encouraging words from other members, their colorful stories, the considerate, never tired, and always understanding Moristotle who not only looked through my eyes to make my texts sound better, but supported and encouraged me as an editor and a dear friend. I will be forever thankful for everything, Morris. You made my life more meaningful.

Copyright © 2023 by Valeria Idakieva

Farewell to Moristotle & Co.

By Geoffrey Dean

My dad asked his family one morning, “Is it time for me to stop blogging?” He said he felt he was trying to do more things than he had the facility for. If he stopped blogging, he could concentrate on preparing the musings & perusings collections that Jennifer and I suggested five years ago.

Parting Words from Moristotle

Portrait of Moristotle
by Susan C. Price

By Moristotle

Why am I retiring from blogging? For a long time, I have known my sun was slowly setting, but it seems now to be sinking fast, as memory and memories fade. Some mornings even my fingers can’t remember what was the best way I’ve yet found to hold the coffee grinder to brush out the shards of bean.
    But the existing content will still be here, and more posts are already scheduled for August – a few more statements of farewell (suggested by Maik Strosahl, to whom I’m indebted for the idea), a “Father’s Art” column by André Duvall, and poems by Maik, Michael H. Brownstein, and Eric Meub, whose sonnet “Afterlife” will appear last because its title rather caps my going off.

From the Alwinac: 1907-8: Alwin’s Gap Year, Part 1 Encore: The 1907 Farewell Playlist

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[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]

In the leadup to his departure from the US, Alwin Schroeder’s 1907 farewell concerts started with a February 3 program at Boston’s Chickering Hall. Reviews of the Kniesel Quartet’s March and April 1907 concerts in New York, Boston, New Haven, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Pittsburgh, Louisville, St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, and other cities all make special mention of Schroeder, noting his incomparable skill and status as a solo and ensemble cellist on the occasion of his final US appearances. In Baltimore he received a 10-minute ovation, Philadelphia admirers gave him an inscribed gold watch, and in New York a “superb silver punch bowl” was his parting gift, presented after a eulogizing speech by the music publisher Gustav Schirmer. (Ever dignified and self-effacing, Schroeder himself never addressed his audiences from the stage, even to offer a few parting words.) During this period there was much speculation about the future of the Kniesel Quartet without Schroeder, and Franz Kniesel himself seriously considered disbanding it until a group of New York patrons funded his search for a new cellist from Europe. Here's what he played on these concerts….
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Read on…on the Alwinac website itself…. (It includes a link to listen to the playlist.)

Copyright © 2023 by Geoffrey Dean

From the Alwinac: 1907-8: Alwin’s Gap Year, Part 1

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[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]

“His technical command of his noble instrument is infallible, his tone full and pure and his style free and genial, like his personality. It is said that he has more friends than any other musicians that have lived in the United States for any length of time, and he is affectionately known across the breadth of this country as “Papa” Schroeder. His loss to the Kneisel Quartet will be irreparable, but he will return again and again to this country for concert tours.”
                                    Indianapolis News, April 6,1907, p. 9

Alwin Schroeder spent the 1907-8 season in Europe, then returned to the United States. This was not his original plan. What happened? Before getting to the reasons that he came back, I will explore the motivations for his decision to leave the US.
    First, some context. The preceding season (1906-7) was Alwin’s 16th year as the cellist of the Kniesel Quartet. This ensemble was then at the apex of its powers and popularity, and was hailed in many quarters as the best quartet in the world. Season after season, Schroeder had been heard regularly in solo performances on the quartet’s concert tours throughout the US. But for the four transplanted European musicians, there had always been a longing to return to the old world, to be remembered and recognized on their old stomping grounds before their powers waned. They said as much in 1903, when they resigned their principal positions in the Boston Symphony Orchestra to devote themselves to quartet and, in the case of Kniesel and Schroeder, solo playing. Four years later, the quartet’s many admirers were “astonished” to learn that Schroeder was leaving the quartet and the country to settle in Frankfurt, Germany. Why would he want—or feel he needed—to go?....
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Read on…on the Alwinac website itself…..

Copyright © 2023 by Geoffrey Dean

From the Alwinac: A Composition Update and Remembrance of Dimiter Christoff

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[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]

It has been about a year since, on a fine spring day in 2022, after the last April snow “surprise” hereabouts, I started to compose. I had little prior evidence of my own abilities as a creator of music, unless you count a number of arrangements I have done of others’ music, and in some ways perhaps these do count, but the act of writing a new piece of music requires a level of inspiration and confidence that I wasn’t convinced I had. Aside from a modest store of musical knowledge and experience, what really did I have to go on?
    Twelve months and more than fifty brief pieces later, I can say that a small kernel of inspiration goes a long way. Most of the way in fact. It’s what Beethoven called the poetic idea, or what Bruce Adolphe in his wonderful new book on composing refers to as the vision stage of the creative process. It can be a mood, a rhythm, a melodic gesture, an intriguing quotation from literature, a photo or other image, a blade of grass, anything. Not necessarily anything grand or elaborate, or even all that specific. For many of the pieces I have composed (most for piano), my inspiration has come from students whose choices of musical parameters such as tempo, rhythmic motif, interval size and direction, and character have excluded other choices I might have made on my own and provided a more sharply defined and differentiated starting point for each student’s piece. As with any other type of inspiring kernel, these pre-determined aspects help guide and speed my journey down a creative path that is unique for each piece.

    I have long marveled at others’ ability to thrive under what might be considered self-imposed creative constraints. My father’s very successful forays into the sestina form in poetry, where a set of pre-determined words must end each line in a pre-determined order that shifts from stanza to stanza, come immediately to mind. So do the always arresting works of Bulgarian composer Dimiter Christoff, who rarely used an interval wider than a whole-step. I too have discovered the hidden delights of such constraints, and find myself eagerly seeking them. One of my more recent solo cello compositions uses just four notes (albeit over four octaves). Others tend toward direct repetition over motivic development or transformation. One recent composition for cello and piano is limited to textures reminiscent of Beethoven, while another evokes those of Chopin, and a third those of a pop ballade. Sometimes my initial plan plays out much as expected, but with many pieces it morphs into something else along the way. I enjoy stepping back and hearing what is taking/has taken shape and how it happened, and to wonder at the very existence of something that wasn’t there before....
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Read on…. [it gets better and better, says the editor]

Copyright © 2023 by Geoffrey Dean

From the Alwinac: Posthumous Dialogues: Roumen Balyozov, Bulgarian Cellist-Composer, and J. S. Bach

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[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]

Listen to Balyozov’s Baza i nadstroika (string duo version of Bach's first cello suite)

During the month of March my thoughts often turn to Bulgaria, not least because this is the month of the martenitsa, a kind of good luck bracelet that Bulgarians exchange on March 1 in anticipation of the coming spring. In the Bulgarian calendar, March is named for Baba Marta (Grandmother Marta), the feminine figure that deftly navigates the challenging transition from winter. Musically I try to spend extra time this month with the music of Bach, whose birthday is celebrated on the 21st. Recently I discovered this exquisite string duo arrangement of Bach’s first cello suite that deserves wider attention, and it got me thinking about the arranger, a Bulgarian musician with whom I collaborated on a number of projects over the years.
    Roumen Balyozov (1949-2019) was one of the most colorful personalities in the Bulgarian artistic community. An accomplished cellist, he was for many years a member of the Symphony Orchestra of the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR). He is best remembered as a composer, a kind of self-styled Bulgarian John Cage with an insatiable appetite for musical provocations. It was Rumen (Balyozkata), with his impossibly thick glasses, long unkempt hair curling out from a quasi-Amish black hat, and a toothy smile that made his eyes twinkle and his nose wrinkle, who knew more about the American avant-garde than I—resident American musician of Bulgaria—did….
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Read on…on the Alwinac website itself….

Copyright © 2023 by Geoffrey Dean

From the Alwinac: From Ballenstedt to Berlin: Life of Alwin, Part 2

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[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]

Part 2 of my biographical sketch of Alwin Schroeder is titled “Ballenstedt and Berlin.” It deals mainly with the years 1868-1874, when the teenaged Alwin was playing viola with his older brothers in a professional string quartet, and is now live on the schroeder170.org website. Read Part 2 here, or start from Part 1, here.

Copyright © 2023 by Geoffrey Dean

Poetic Diversity

By Ken Marks


Last Sunday night I wrote my first poem in years. Its inspiration was an email from an old friend who said he couldn’t recall a single limerick that wasn’t risqué and asked whether I could. I didn’t want to leave him hungering for a limerick that wasn’t sexually suggestive, so I wrote one:

From the Alwinac: 19th Century Cellists in the US: George Knoop (1797-1849)

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[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]

“If you would hear the very soul tell all its deepest, most inner feeling,
if you would listen to language as from another world and from some matured spirit in a more exalted and perfect state than here below,
go to hear Knoop.
You will feel as if he were drawing out of you your very soul.”

C. P. Cranch to Miss Julia Myers, April 11, 1842

in The Life and Letters of Christopher Pearse Cranch

Johann Georg Knoop (sometimes spelled Knop, 1797-1849) was a celebrated German cellist who spent the last decade of his life as one of the most highly regarded instrumental performers in the United States. Because his name was commonly abbreviated as G. Knoop, he is often confused with his younger brother Gustav Knoop (1805-?), also a cellist. Georg was born in Gottingen, may have studied with Romberg, and made his concert debut at the age of eight. in 1816 he succeeded Dotzauer’s teacher Johann Jakob Kriegk as first cellist in the Meiningen court orchestra. His first wife was Kriegk’s daughter Louise, and their cellist son Huldreich (1820-1898) played alongside Carl Ludwig Dotzauer in Spohr’s orchestra in Cassel. Georg and Gustav had six other siblings, including the Basel music publisher Ernest Knoop and Wilhelm Knoop, a violinist in the Meiningen orchestra. Their father Conrad Knoop was a Gottingen music dealer and teacher. (letter from Conrad Knop to Louis Spohr, March 28, 1822)
    In addition to his Meiningen duties, Georg Knoop toured as a soloist in Europe, performing to acclaim in Paris and London from 1833. He seems to have made regular appearances in England for several years, performing concertos at the Philharmonic concerts and earning the epithet “violoncellist to her Majesty.” (London Morning Post, July 14, 1835, p. 3) In the spring of 1835 Knoop was in direct competition with other leading cellists of the day, performing solos on the same concerts as A. F. Servais and Carl Schuberth. Of the Knoop/Schuberth play-off, the Morning Post wrote, “…both the violoncellists displayed great talent, particularly Mr. Knoop, in a Swiss divertimento, in which he introduced the harmonics with excellent effect.” (May 30, 1835, p. 3) Georg’s solos on another London concert were described as “both beautiful in style and extraordinary in execution.” Both Knoop and Servais were found “wanting that body of tone which no one except [London cellist Robert] Lindley has yet acquired, and which is necessary to fill a large space.” (Court Magazine and Belle Assemblee, October, 1835, p. 176) Knoop himself confided to Spohr that “My stay in London was not particularly pleasant, as the artists there placed many obstacles in my way….
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Read on…on the Alwinac website itself….

Copyright © 2023 by Geoffrey Dean

Moristotle 80th Birthday Interview

Interviewed by Geoffrey Dean

I posed a number of probing questions to Moristotle recently. His answers give us new insights into his mind and heart, while on a lighter note, they also helped me figure out what to give him for his 80^th birthday tomorrow!

     Thanks to my sister, Jennifer, for taking the photos above.

What three (or more) words would you use to describe yourself?

Skeptical, optimistic, helpful. I’m surprised how easily those three words came, and how confident I am of them….No, those came too fast; they need qualification, elaboration.

From the Alwinac: Wooden Angels: Silent Night for Cello Ensemble

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[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]

Looking up from the organ loft at St. Trinitatus church in the Thurginian town of Holzengel (“wooden angel”), home of Alwin Schroeder’s paternal forebears, a musical score comes into view. Foregrounded diagonally within a music-themed quadrant of the church's painted wooden ceiling, the meticulously reproduced sheet music is readily identifiable as the soprano and alto parts of Gruber’s Christmas carol “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht.” With my warmest wishes for love- and music-filled holidays, I hope you will enjoy this cello ensemble version of Silent Night, performed by the cellists of the Philharmonia Orchestra.
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Read on the Alwinac website itself….

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean

Interview: Alexandra Dotcheva

The Author of
It Really Is Simple:
A Holistic Approach
To Self-Confidence

Interviewed by Moristotle

Today’s interview was suggested by my son, contributing editor Geoffrey Dean, who discovered and read Alexandra Dotcheva’s book and was so affected by it that he wrote a testimonial for it, which we published here as a “rave book review.” Geoffrey first approached Alexandra about an interview, and we are both delighted that she agreed to participate, because she is a very busy person.

Rave Book Review: It Really Is Simple

A life-changing book

Reviewed by 

Geoffrey Dean

Over the last six months I have experienced intense and exponential growth in my creativity, self-confidence, and capacity to find meaning and joy in everything I do. Changes in diet and exercise have played an important role in this, but the courage and motivation to make these changes, and the determination to stick with them with a level of consistency I have rarely achieved before, are attributable to a life-changing book that I read last spring. Alexandra Dotcheva’s It Really Is Simple is a compellingly-written, comprehensive guide to achieving the kind of life you want for yourself and your loved ones. It is all about setting very specific goals and mastering the steps to achieving them.

From the Alwinac: Catching Up: My Most Recent Cello Performance Videos

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[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]

Earlier in the year I was able to record a handful of cello pieces to add to the collection on my YouTube channel, and today I actually added them to the collection! Of course there is a story behind each of these pieces, and I hope to get around to telling these stories in the near future. For now, here are the video links, with some suggestions for further reading and my wish for pleasant listening.
    F. Prume, Melancolie, Op. 1. Several European cellists, George Knoop and Theodore Ahrend among them, played versions of this once-popular violin piece after settling in the United States. Read my post about Ahrend here. The Knoop story is on the way.…    _______________
Read on….

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean

From the Alwinac: Boston Symphony First Cellists: New Random Facts

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[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]

During a recent visit to the Boston Symphony Orchestra Archives, I came across documentation of some interesting facts related to the orchestra’s principal cellists of yesteryear.

Carl Bayrhoffer, BSO first cellist for the latter part of the orchestra’s inaugural 1881-2 season, wrote to BSO founder Henry Lee Higginson in 1892, hoping to return to the BSO. At about the same time, a Mr. Underwood in Glasgow was asking Higginson about the workings of BSO as Underwood helped start the permanent Glasgow orchestra. Higginson may have suggested that Bayrhoffer contact founding BSO conductor George Henschel, because the following season Bayrhoffer joined the new Glasgow organization under Henschel, renewing the working relationship started a decade earlier in Boston.

Wilhelm Mueller, Boston Symphony first cellist from 1882-1885, was breaching his BSO contract during his final BSO season by playing in New York orchestras. The programs of the New York Philharmonic from the 1884-5 season show Mueller sharing the third cello stand with Adolph Hartdegen. Knowing that Mueller had accepted outside work prohibited by his current BSO contract, BSO manager Charles Ellis sought New York legal help, hoping to make an example of Mueller, because at the time several other BSO players were also in breach of contract. The result seems to have been that Fritz Giese was called in to serve in Mueller’s place that season, even as Mueller’s contract was still in force.

Fritz Giese cabled Higginson in May 1887 that he was delayed in Grand Rapids, MI, due to an unsettled case, the nature of which was not discussed. Then in Dec. 1888 Giese cabled Higginson from Philadelphia, asking to be excused from two rehearsals and saying that conductor Gericke had already agreed. Later in his last BSO season, Giese was out for several concerts due to injuries sustained when he fell out of a carriage in New York. At least as concerning at the time was the damage to his Stradivarius cello, for Giese had fallen on top of it....
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Read on….

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean

From the Alwinac: Introducing my new online Alwin Schroeder biography

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[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]

I recently uploaded the first installment of my expanded Alwin Schroeder biography. This first part covers Alwin’s ancestry and early childhood (1855-1868), with details on the musical activities of his father and older brothers in Alwin’s native Neuhaldensleben. Read it here.

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean

From the Alwinac: Schroeder Student Spotlight: Ernest Lachmund (1865-1954)

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[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]

Among the Oscar Cobb opera houses highlighted in my previous post was one that existed briefly in Duluth, Minnesota. In a surprise Schroeder connection, one of the musicians who made his studio in the Temple Opera Building before it succumbed to fire in 1895 was Ernest Lachmund, a cellist, pianist, and composer who counted Alwin Schroeder among his teachers. I recently had the pleasure of collaborating with the Duluth concert organization Matinee Musicale (founded in 1900) in unearthing a cello piece by Lachmund that hadn’t been heard in a hundred years. Cellist Ifetayo Ali-Landing’s subsequent performance of Lachmund’s rediscovered Waltz-Serenade for Matinee Musicale can be heard here.
    Ernest Lachmund’s father Gustav Otto Lachmund had fled Germany following the failed 1848 revolution, going first to Missouri, where Ernest’s older brother Carl was born in 1853, then to Clinton, Iowa, where Ernest was born in 1865. Carl and Ernest both studied music in Germany. Carl attended the Cologne conservatory as a piano and violin student from 1867 to 1871, and Ernest followed in his footsteps, arriving in Cologne as a 13-year-old in 1878. Two years later Ernest was at the Royal Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin, studying chamber music with Joachim Quartet members Joseph Joachim, Emanuel Wirth, and Robert Hausmann, and cello with Anton Hekking. In Berlin Ernest attended the first local performance of Wagner’s complete Ring cycle and heard Brahms as a pianist. Meanwhile Carl had become an ardent follower and piano student of Franz Liszt in Weimar, and Ernest himself observed Liszt’s classes during the summer of 1884....
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Read on….

Copyright © 2022 by Geoffrey Dean

Museful Mornings: Pre-Pandemic Poetry (#7)

By Geoffrey Dean


Threesomes

got rear-ended
honor defended
license suspended

ladies befriended
here’s how it ended
life upended