Welcome to RJStove.net

I live in Melbourne, Australia.

Articles of mine regularly appear in the pages of The American Conservative (where I'm a Contributing Editor ), The New Criterion, Chronicles Magazine, Modern Age, The University Bookman, The New American, The Musical Times, Musicology Australia, Spectator Australia, Annals Australasia, and other periodicals.

In December 2011, Scarecrow Press (Maryland) released my biography César Franck: His Life and Times. Reviews have been unfailingly courteous to date, with the exception of The Musical Times' slightly catty piece (but even that piece is gratifyingly long and detailed). Here are some instances:

•  "Fixing Franck" (The Musical Times, Autumn 2012) by Andrew Thomson
• "Review [untitled]" (Choice, August 2012) by S. C. Pelkey
• "Review [untitled]" (American Record Guide, July-August 2012) by William J. Gatens
• "Review [untitled]" (Choir & Organ, July-August 2012) by Stephen Farr
• "Blameless Yet Talented" (Quadrant, July-August, 2012) by Philippa Martyr
• "An Australian Biographer Reassesses César Franck" (Limelight, July, 2012) by Tony Way
• "César Franck: His Life and Times by RJ Stove" (Organ Australia, June, 2012) by Chris Dench
• "A Mysterious Composer" (Salisbury Review, Summer, 2012) by Robert Hugill
• "Europe’s Composer" (The American Conservative, May, 2012) by Paul Gottfried
• Australian Books: "Hail César" (Spectator Australia, March, 2012) by Neil Clark

The very generous speech given at the book's Sydney launch (February, 2012) by the splendid pianist Stephanie McCallum can be read here.

My music is published by Wirripang, Wollongong, New South Wales. Three compositions by me are now on a CD from this firm, called Simply Songs (2004).

A short choral work of mine, O Salutaris Hostia, received its première on May 29, 2005, in San Francisco, performed by the Schola Cantorum of the National Shrine of St Francis of Assisi. On the following August 21, Tantum Ergo (a companion piece to O Salutaris Hostia) received its première, with the St Mary's Singers, in Sydney's St Mary's Cathedral. On August 2, 2009, a little chamber piece by me (for violin, viola, and piano) received its first performance in Sydney: Valse Oubliée. The Scots' Church, in central Melbourne, was the venue on October 16, 2011 for the première of my short motet Ave Verum Corpus.

From July 2011 to June 2013 I was editor of the quarterly Organ Australia.

"A poem is never finished, it is only abandoned."
—Paul Valéry, in words equally applicable to a website