Author: Scott D. Strader

My visit to the land of romance

The Twitter account @PulpLibrarian–when not posting covers of the absolutely baffling history of Nazi BDSM fantasy magazines of the 70s or the less baffling 50s/60s/70s sci-fi magazines–periodically posts covers from romance novels. One thread had focused on the covers of a specific, named, artist; another on those covers that shared similar landscapes and poses (e.g. that of a frightened woman, fleeing a Victorian castle, across the forbidding moors). I was surprised when in the first artist-focused thread, many readers commented on how much they appreciated the artist and knew their name, referencing other books whose covers they were responsible for. Seldom in other genres are artists so recognizable. (Although, admittedly, I have done my own research on pulp sci-fi covers, and it’s likely this is a common venture. I can now spot in the wilds the hand of several of the more productive artists.)

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Documenting the available recordings of Ussachevsky and Luening’s 1952 concert

Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening performed a concert of new electronic music on 28 Oct 1952 at the Museum of Modern Art. From Paul Griffiths’ Modern Music and After:

The Russian-born Vladimir Ussachevsky (b. 1911), who taught at Columbia University, gave a demonstration of the new medium’s potential in 1952, and he was soon joined in his endeavours by Otto Luening (b. 1900), who had studied with Busoni. They presented the first concert of electronic music in America, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on 28 October 1952: representative of the pieces then heard are Ussachevsky’s Sonic Contours and Luening’s Fantasy in Space, based on the sounds of piano and flute respectively. Out of their efforts grew the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, which was formally founded in 1960.

Paul Griffiths, Modern Music and After
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