Voyeurs. Stalkers. Biography readers.

I do not know which hand Tchaikovsky favored for the act of self-gratification.  I doubt anyone knows.  Still, it is conceivable (if by now very unlikely) that evidence concerning Tchaikovsky’s preference in that area may one day come to light.  Say, a fortuitously discovered letter from the composer’s brother Modest to one of Modest’s lovers in which it is mentioned that Tchaikovsky was a lefty.  Supposing this were to happen tomorrow, would you expect to read about Tchaikovsky’s left-handed masturbation in the composer’s updated biographies?

Two cheers for tabloid musicology!

The experience to which Mr. Carter's music gives authoritative access is that of belonging to a self-congratulating coterie, lately beside itself with rage at its loss of power to tyrannize the classical music community.
RICHARD TARUSKIN, letter to the Editor, New York Times, 27 July 1997.*
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There is no denying that the musicologist Richard Taruskin's cantankerous, pugnacious writing style can be refreshingly entertaining in today's climate of PC Jihadism, where sharply negative criticism is readily equated with bullying.  And when such criticism is directed at the works of those who happened not to be white heterosexual gentile males, the critic may end up with the career-destroying label of enemy of diversity, inclusion, equity, sustainability, social justice, and other Stalinist linguistic contortions whose meanings are known only to delusional academics, useless bureaucrats, and self-righteous Silicon Valley nerds.