The Virtuoso Parrot is now available from Black Scat Books!

Claude-Sosthène Grasset d’Orcet (1828-1900) wrote hundreds of startling articles and stories about secret societies, hidden bloodlines, and his own idiosyncratic views of history. His obsession with finding puns and rebuses, in both ancient inscriptions and modern speech, influenced generations of occultists; it was the inspiration for the “language of the birds” expounded by the enigmatic Fulcanelli.

My translation is Grasset d’Orcet’s first appearance in English. It contains five of his odd and often hilarious stories and a contemporary obituary, as well as my introduction and detailed notes on his ideas and allusions.

At last, the virtuoso parrot speaks to English readers!

Here you can see Music From Elsewhere displayed at the Inquiring Minds Bookstore in New Paltz, NY. As the sign indicates, I’ll give a reading at the Elting Library on January 29. There’s more info here.

For many years, Meg Reichardt has invited musicians to contribute a song to her annual Holiday Recording Party. Thanks to her, I’ve written more holiday songs than I would have imagined. My latest one is about that hapless trio, the Three Wise Men. You can listen to it here, and here’s the first page.

This biliteral alphabet appears in the eighth issue of TYPO.

TYPO 8 is now available from Black Scat Books! I contributed “A Biliteral Alphabet” and a translation of “The Virtuoso Parrot,” a short story by the enigmatic 19th century writer Claude-Sosthène Grasset d’Orcet.

I’m surrounded by an international crowd of poets, essayists, fictioneers, and artists: Tim Newton Anderson, Tom Barrett, Terry Bradford, Steve Carll, Peter Cherches, Norman Conquest, Lynn Crawford, Jeanne Devlin,  Jean-Christophe Duchon-Doris, Albert Ehrenstein, James Montgomery Flagg, Shawn Garrett, Edward Gauvin, Vasilisk Gnedov, Michael Gould, Allan Randolph Kausch, Amy Kurman, Julia Lillard, Emilia Loseva, George MacLennan, Zach Keali’i Murphy, Opal Louis Nations,  Bernard Quiriny, Paul Rosheim, Marcel Schneider, Lono Taggers, Mark Valentine, Renée Vivien, Tom Whalen, Paul Willems, Carla M. Wilson, Danny Winkler, and Mark Wyatt. It’s edited and designed by the hard-working Norman Conquest, and it will entertain and stimulate you as only TYPO can.

You can now listen to selections from “Music From Elsewhere” on Bandcamp. I recorded 32 brief pieces from the book, with voice, piano, electronic keyboard, psaltery, sopranino recorder, and chord zither. Brian Dewan was the engineer. Here it is!

Behold! A review of Music From Elsewhere, by Louis Pattison, in the November 2024 issue of The Wire. (Please click for magnification.)

Greetings, music lovers! I’ll give a Zoom talk/concert about my book Music From Elsewhere in Shannon Taggart’s Supernatural Mystery Symposium, through the Viktor Wynd Museum in London on October 22, at 8:00 pm. I’ll play music attributed to fairies, trolls, trows, angels, aliens, time slips, and other unlikely sources, and suggest possible explanations.

POSTSCRIPT: The selections included:

“Fairy Dance”: an Irish fairy tune reported in 1888.
3 examples of the call of the banshee, from 1888, 1843, and 1892.
“Winyadepla”: a trowie tune from the Shetland Islands in Scotland.
“Norsk Troldmusik”: music of Norse trolls, reported in 1861.
“Regina cæli lætare”: Gregorian chant ascribed to angels.
“Outer space music” reported by Philip Rodgers in the 1950s.
“Mother Ann’s Song”: a Shaker “vision song” from 1844.
“The Haunted Ground”: a song by the Fox Sisters, 1851.
“An Adventure”: music reported from a supposed time slip in 1902.
“Disappointment”: a piece Rosemary Brown claimed she channeled from Schumann.
“Fort in Solrésol”: a passage by Charles Fort in the artificial language Solrésol.
“Fuga I”: an alchemical fugue by Michael Maier, 1618.
“Port na bPucaì”: an Irish tune ascribed to either fairies or whales.
Two tunes I heard in dreams.

If you happen to be in Salem, Massachusetts, do visit the current show in the Peabody Essex Museum, “Conjuring the Spirit World.” My recording of one of the pieces from “Music From Elsewhere,” a song by those original Spiritualists the Fox Sisters, will be wafting through the air. You can find more info here.

And here’s the sign informing visitors about the music, photographed by Shannon Taggart. Thanks, Shannon!

Music From Elsewhere is now available from Strange Attractor Press!

This book collects and discusses music derived from unusual sources, including music attributed to fairies, trolls, trowies, banshees, aliens, angels, spirits, time slips, and dreams. You’ll also find chapters on speculative and cryptographic music, and on music from birds and other natural sounds. It’s 272 pages, richly illustrated in green and black (designed by the remarkable Tihana Šare), with 112 pages of historical sheet music. Also available in a limited hardback edition of 300, with a signed bookplate. Purchase includes a link to an MP3 album of Doug Skinner performing some of the music, recorded by Brian Dewan. Published by Strange Attractor Press in the UK, and distributed in the US by The MIT Press.