Summary: <a href="https://d3fr1q02b1tb0i.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/13093035/architectural-digest-232x300.jpg"></a><br> <br> A little inside information about me. Since I was a kid, I have loved architecture and home design magazines: house porn, to be honest. The one constant in my reading has been Architectural Digest, to which I’ve been addicted since I was a teenager. Other mags have floated in and out of my consciousness over the years, including one called “Metropolitan Home”, to which I subscribed for many years (but no more; there’ just so much time for mags, I’m afraid).<br> <br> “Is this going somewhere” you ask? Yes: bear with me…<br> <br> “Metropolitan Home” had a regular feature (perhaps it still does) in which a designer would be asked to identify “the 10 things you cannot live without;” basically “your favorite things”. These good people would vie with each other to come up with the coolest, hippest, most sophisticated things-they-could-not-live-without: the caviar and lobster frittata at the Revo Café in Dubai; “my platinum Faberge cuticle scissors”; vicuna cashmere scarves: “my Swarovski crystal-studded Lixil Satis Smart Toilet” (this can be yours as well for just 130k);“my solar-powered Black & Decker Nose Hair Trimmer”, and so forth.<br> <br> (As best as I can recall, not one of those questioned ever came up with any of those things that we really can’t do without, like a good night’s sleep, clean water, hydrocortisone cream, a sympathetic therapist, a refrigerator, lube, a decent cocktail shaker, etc.)<br> <br> “Is this going somewhere?” Yes, yes: just hang in there a moment longer.<br> <br> As the editors of “Metropolitan Home” are unlikely to ever ask me to identify the “10 things I cannot do without” I’ve decided to ask myself. To avoid being gratuitous, I have in fact listed the nine things I cannot do without. <br> <br> Numbers 1 and 2: my essential fluids (Peet’s Mocha Sunani coffee in a French press in the morning; a Mojave-dry Bombay Sapphire martini with a twist, shaken – thank you very much – in the evening). <br> <br> Number 3: my piano (I have a very nice piano that I treat like the princess she is and which has, over time, developed a grudging if not frequently demonstrated affection for me); number 4: Passantino No. 85, 12-stave music notebooks and, number 5: Pacific Music Paper No. 1 pencils (I still compose analog: pencil on paper); number 6: my 27-inch iMac desktop, on which I am writing this post; number 7: my Varidesk, which allows me to work standing up (sitting is indeed the new smoking, and working standing up has been a revelation); number 8: my studio sound system; and number 9, the <a href="http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/page/updategmo" target="_blank">New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians</a>, without which my life as a musician and music historian would be inconceivable.<br> <br> <a href="https://d3fr1q02b1tb0i.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/13092221/George-grove-255x300.jpg"></a>Sir George Grove<br> <br> And there we are, finally! Please: a birthday greeting to the extraordinary polymath Sir George Grove – creator of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians – who was born on August 13, 1820, 198 years ago today.<br> <br> Grove was trained as a civil engineer, and it was in that capacity that he engineered lighthouses in the West Indies and bridges in England and Wales. Successful though he was as an engineer, his love for music drew him to arts administration: he moved to London in 1849, at the age of 29, where he became secretary of the Society of Arts. <br> <br> His timing was perfect. “The Great Exposition” – Britain’s world’s fair in honor of its industrialization and modernity – was in preparation. It was held in London’s Hyde Park from May 1 to October 15, 1851, during which it was attended by an incredible 6,039,722 visitors!<br> <br>
