Feldman is among the featured composers at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, just beginning. Tomorrow afternoon (19 November), Chris Villars is speaking about his engagement with Feldman’s music. Coinciding with this, two articles by the composer Christopher Fox have been published: a general introduction to Feldman in The Guardian, and a review article about the book in the Musical Times (autumn 2006) – online only this way.

Reviews of The stroke have begun to appear. Gerrit Noordzij’s writings present a particular challenge to their readers. ‘Do not believe what you read’, the author seems to say. ‘What I am saying is what seems to me to be true; but you need to sort it out for yourself, with the help of my explorations, if they interest you.’ He asks for a thinking-along with him. Not so many reviewers want to put in the work of engagement. Erik Spiekermann’s review appears, in its original German, in the journal Text (no. 11, 2006), edited at the Institut für Textkritik, and published in Frankfurt a.M. by Stroemfeld Verlag. For permission to publish this translation, thanks to the editors and publishers of Text, and Erik Spiekermann.

An appreciation of the book by Jacques André is published in La Lettre Gutenberg (number 29), with some lamentations about how such a work could not possibly be published in France. He concludes: ‘Ce qui est très rare sur ce sujet et qui sera donc la référence désormais. Livre indispensable donc …’ André expresses a wish for Burnhill’s research to be extended. In fact this is happening just now in Leipzig, where Fred Smeijers is, with his students, testing the theory of a unified system of measurement. We hope to publish the results in due course.

A long review of the book is published in the current (number 309) issue of Idea magazine. This piece, extending over 16 pages, is written by Taro Yamamoto, who manages the Japanese typography section of Adobe Systems. Yamamoto suggests that ‘by revising his original edition and publishing a second edition, he [Kinross] has demonstrated that he has continued to think critically’: a pleasing remark about a book that was always intended to be a prompt to reflection and action, rather than some definitive text.

In an unusually perceptive appreciation of the book in his ‘Schrift & Charakter’ column (Institut für Textkritik), Roland Reuß defends Burnhill against the charge of over-interpretation (‘the usual objection when someone has thoroughly reflected on something and the public is ashamed’), and even suggests that our book can bear comparison, in its production, with its Aldine subjects. But some hundreds of the public have gone so far as to buy this item; a reprint is being planned.

Unjustified texts is available in Europe now. In North America, copies will be in bookshops at the end of January. In his ‘Schrift & Charakter’ column (Institut für Textkritikhttp), Roland Reuß discusses the book, together with another Hyphen work: Christopher Burke’s Paul Renner.