Here is a compilation of selected papers, essays, letters, and other prose compositions from throughout my life.
(For most of the following documents, the sizes of their associated HTML files are shown for comparison purposes.)

Letter to Daddy (1962 - age 6) (1 KB)

My Trip to New York (1966 - 4th grade) (9 KB)

Phi — The Ubiquitous Golden Ratio (1970 - 8th grade) (13 KB)

An analysis of Juliet's character (satire) (1971 - 9th grade) (2 KB)

Bioluminescence (1971 - 9th grade) (16 KB)

Robert Frost's Poetry or How to Win Four Pulitzer Prizes Without Really Trying (1972 - 10th grade) (32 KB)

A Philharmonic Farce (1973 - 11th grade) (3 KB)

Controversy over "The Star-Spangled Banner" as America's National Anthem (1973 - 11th grade) (16 KB)

An autobiography (1973 - 11th grade) (3 KB)

A Familiar Experience (1973 - 12th grade) (5 KB)

The United States Constitution: Amendment XXIV (1973 - 12th grade) (12 KB)

The Development of the Bow, for the MIT course "The Orchestra from Monteverdi to Stravinsky" (1975) (12 KB)

Magnet Schools, for the University of Houston course "Educational Foundations for Teaching" (1977) (30 KB)

Olivier Messiaen: Quatuor pour la fin du temps: An Analysis, for the University of Houston course "Analysis" (1978) (29 KB)     [N.B.: Most of the musical examples are omitted.]

Musical Style in the Symphonies of Alexander Borodin, with Introductory Biographical Notes, for the University of Houston course "Chromatic Harmony" (1978) (25 KB)

The Violin to 1800, for the University of Houston course "Introduction to Musicology" (1978) (18 KB)

A discussion of the arts and society in turn-of the-century Vienna, from an exam essay question for the University of Houston course "Music in Vienna, 1880–1910" (1979) (7 KB)

Hugo Wolf: "Die Geister am Mummelsee": An Analysis, for the University of Houston course "Music in Vienna, 1880–1910" (1979) (7 KB)

An Analysis of Josquin des Prez's Missa Pange lingua, Agnus Dei I and II, According to the Writings of Pietro Aron, for the University of Houston course "History of Music Theory" (1979) (11 KB)

Mahler: Symphony No. 3 in D minor, for the University of Houston course "Music in Vienna, 1880–1910" (1979) (61 KB)

A Brief Comparison of J. Strauss II's Die Fledermaus and Franz Lehár's Merry Widow, for the University of Houston course "Music in Vienna, 1880–1910" (1979) (6 KB)

Applications of Numerical Methods to an Optimization Problem in Data Communications, for the University of Texas at San Antonio course "Numerical Analysis" (1995) (16 KB)

Social Murder in the New Industrial World, for the University of Texas at San Antonio course "World Civilization Since the Fifteenth Century" (1996) (13 KB)

The "Big Four" at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, for the University of Texas at San Antonio course "World Civilization Since the Fifteenth Century" (1996) (17 KB)

Biology and Misconceptions: Assessing Student Attitudes and Beliefs Regarding Evolution and Creationism, for the University of Texas at San Antonio course "Science and Humanity" (1997) (10 KB)

An exploration of the number of steps required to return home from random walks in n dimensions, a "Math Chat" challenge from the Mathematical Association of America website (1999) (32 KB)

An autobiography written for my webpage (2002, with minor subsequent updates) (20 KB)

A letter to a San Antonio Express-News columnist in response to her column expressing contempt for J. R. R. Tolkien and his work (2003) (10 KB)

A letter to a San Antonio Express-News columnist in response to his column blaming the San Antonio Symphony's financial woes on the musicians and on poor programming (2003) (13 KB)

Vegetarianism is viable: a letter to a Daily Cougar (U. of Houston newspaper) columnist in response to his column asserting that vegetarianism, if it were practiced by humans on a larger scale, would be ecologically and environmentally disastrous (2006) (7 KB)

My Lipogram (2009) (2 KB)

Thoughts on Being a Texan, addressing the hostility directed towards Texans by many of my fellow liberals (2010) (12 KB)

A letter to the editor of the San Jose Mercury News, in response to a column ridiculing Texans (2010) (3 KB)

Reminiscences of Sam, on learning of the death of my best childhood friend (2010) (27 KB)

A biography of my father, Henry Brahinsky (2011, adapted and expanded from a biography I wrote in 2002)

An obituary for my brother Martin Brahinsky (2011) (2 KB)

My remarks in response to letters, published in a newspaper, that expressed opinions on the legitimacy or status of evolutionary theory (2012) (4 KB)

Why University of Houston football fans get so defensive (2012) (58 KB) . . . and their basketball fans, too! (2018) (5 KB)

An obituary for my mother, Muriel Silberman Brahinsky (2013) (3 KB)

Is the Gender Wage Gap in the United States Due to Sexual Discrimination?, my response to a former friend's demand for documentation corroborating my position on the issue (2014) (36 KB)

The time I didn't hear the San Antonio Symphony, and realized how great they sound (2017) (3 KB)

Making a Quiet Impact, my response to a Facebook friend's post in which he questioned the wisdom of others who preferred eschewing political posts (2018) (4 KB)

Christine Ford, a message to a (since reinstated) Facebook friend whom I had unfriended after they reposted a meme reading "LIAR CHRISTINE FORD" (2019) (7 KB)


I created quite a few articles for Wikipedia between 2007 and 2009 and have added significantly to several others. The following are among those articles for which I provided the majority of the present text; those in bold were originally created by me:

Aureliano Urrutia, Carl Venth, Elena Nikolaidi, Ernst Hoffmann, Frank Huang, Frank St. Leger, Fredell Lack, Hal Robinson, Hans Kreissig, Jack Glatzer, John Henry Brown, Julien Paul Blitz, Leonard Hilton, Moores School of Music, Paul van Katwijk, Ralph Kirshbaum, Roger Wright, Sam Forse Collins, Samuel Adler, San Antonio Symphony, Sharon Robinson, Skyline High School (I wrote the "History" section), Sylvia McNair, Tosca Kramer, Uriel Nespoli, Walter Fried


Here are the titles of some papers I have written that for various reasons I have chosen not to include in the present compilation:

Tapirs (1961?)   *   White Rock Lake (1967)   *   Rockets — Their History and Their Future (1968)   *    Sub-Atomic Physics (1969)   *    Comparison: "The Man He Killed", a poem by Thomas Hardy, and "Dempsey and Firpo", a painting by George Bellows (1970)   *    "Is It the Author's Purpose in Portrait of Jennie to Show How Few Facts We Actually Know About Life or Love or Time or Space?" (1970)   *    The Formulae of DISRUPT (1971)   *    Symbolism in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1972)   *    1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley: A Comparison (1972)   *    Gustav Mahler's Orchestration (1975)   *    Analysis of Haydn: String Quartet in D, Op. 64, #5 ("The Lark"), Mvmt. III (1976)   *    Applicability of Rosen's "The Coherence of the Musical Language" to Mozart: Symphony #39 in Eb, Mvmt. 4 (1976)   *    Schubert: String Quintet in C, Op. 163, 4th Movement: Allegretto—più allegro—più presto: What Makes It Enjoyable (1976)   *    Literary Devices in Racine's Phaedra (1976)   *    Analysis Project: Brahms: Intermezzo in A Major, Op. 118, #2 (1976)   *    The Character of Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust (1976)   *    Analysis Project: Mozart: Piano Concerto #24 in C minor, K. 491, 1st movement (1976)   *    An Analysis of Prelude #4 in e minor, Op. 28, #4, by Frédéric Chopin (1978)   *    A Critical Review of The Unheavenly City Revisited by Edward C. Banfield (1978)   *    The Violin Concertos of Antonio Vivaldi: An Annotated Bibliography (1978)   *    A Comparison of Three Editions of the Sonata #3 in D minor for Piano and Violin, Op. 108, by Johannes Brahms (1978)   *    The Violin Concertos of Bartók and Prokofiev (1978)   *    "Compare and contrast the musical style of the Brahms 4th and Bruckner 7th symphonies." (1979)   *    The Ottoman Empire at Its Height (1996)