Medieval Alphabet

Douglas Boyce is a musical philosopher whose work draws on early music, literature, and aesthetic thought. These are not mere affinities for Boyce, they comprise different components of his core conviction that music can be a forum for enlightened discourse. Working with text gives him the opportunity to merge semantic and abstract expressive meaning, an expansion of possibilities. From the most conventional setting in the program, A Book of Songs, through the exploration of an unconventional instrumentation for the Byrne:Kozar Duo, and finally with Ars Poetica for spoken word poet and ensemble, Boyce explores how text can shape the sound of the music and music can frame the meaning of the text.

The book investigates the nature of intellectual activity in the Middle Ages from the perspective of the Scandinavian periphery.

How the invention of writing gave humanity a history. From hieroglyphs to emojis, an exploration of the way in which the technology of writing has shaped the world we live in.