This was the second email I got today from a Catholic University of America student, and by far the funnier of the two:

Hello Dr.Chenette
I'm a DMA student of Catolic University of America in Washington D.C. who taking Pedagogy of Theory.
I need some information for my final project that comparison between CUA's and IU's curricular of undergraduate core courses. I reserched but I could not know the following information.
Please help me.
Give me the following information:

1. contet of course packet
2. Instructors and textbooks: T231-Musical Skills II, T331-Musical Skills IV

Please let me know ASAP. The due is soon.

I appreciate that.

[name removed]

There was a schedule conflict between what I was supposed to teach this summer (T351, Music Theory and Literature V) and what I was supposed to take (Intro to German). The department tried to shuffle assistantships around a little bit, but it was clear that people's schedules wouldn't really work together. And as our department head helpfully pointed out by email:

"If it makes a difference, we hadn’t worked out how to decide who to “unappoint,” but if we went strictly on seniority, because you are two years behind the others (who are all entering or finishing their third years of doctoral study), you would be the lucky one."

So rather than learn to sound evil and take German, I'm going to learn to be stodgy and academic and take Latin.

I don't even know when it was, but quite a while back I was told that auditions for the IU Early Music Institute's production of Orfeo (to go up during the Bloomington Early Music Festival, in late May) were short on tenors. So at the urging of my friend Craig, who's actually playing Orfeo, I went to callbacks unprepared, and sight-read something. They said they'd like to hear me prepared, and they'd be back in touch next week. Two weeks later I heard back from them that they were holding more callbacks and to sign up. So I prepared the first Pastore aria from the opera and went in and sang it. Almost two weeks later I asked a student who'd also auditioned if she'd heard back--she said she hadn't, so she'd emailed, and they told her if you haven't heard, you're not in. That seemed unlikely to me, since I knew they were short on tenors, so I emailed, but the response was, "Oh yes, sorry, I've been in Europe for a while. But we've already cast that role." Within the week, an email went out that they were short a tenor. I ignored it, thinking if they wanted me, they knew I was interested, and they could contact me personally.
Several weeks later, a tenor friend asked if I'd be interested in participating because there weren't enough tenors and he'd suggested my name to the people in charge. I said sure. I saw him the next week, and clearly no one had really acted on his recommendation.
Two weeks later, another tenor friend emailed:

Hi Tim,
I don't know why I'm the one doing this, but it seems that no one in the administration of Orfeo can actually take the time to get in touch with you. In their infinite wisdom they didn't hire enough tenors...and it took them this long to figure it out! Anyway, if you're still interested in doing chorus for Orfeo, we'd love to have you. It'll be a crunch to learn the stuff, but the choruses are pretty easy...
I've also attached the schedule as it stands now (it changes daily).
-B

I've heard (and experienced!) so much about how disorganized the musical director is, but this friend does say he's having fun, and the director and other people in charge are apparently good. I feel like I might sign up. We'll see.

----

I got my paper back from Dr. Mathiesen today. I don't think I've ever had a paper this ripped apart before. But he's a demanding and extremely intimidating person: in class, Tim B asked him about two pieces of ancient Greek music printed in treatises by Vincenzo Galilei and Gioseffo Zarlino ("The Big Z"). Dr. Mathiesen went on about these obscure manuscripts (The Hymns of Mesomedes and the koine hormasia--to give you some idea, googling "koine hormasia," even without quotes, returns ONE hit, in a jstor article by Dr. Mathiesen) for at least five minutes about the notation, how they appear in different manuscript traditions and in these two treatises, their potential purposes, different editions in which they've been published (with editor's and publishers' names and years of publication), and potential avenues of future inquiry.

I'm feeling better and better about the class I teach (T132). Today there was excellent attendance because there was a quiz. And the students were responding--usually it seems like you tell them things over and over and you assume they know it all, and then you ask an easy question and they have no idea what you're talking about. But we talked through Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and it seemed like, at least for the most vocal ones, of course the melody elaborates a descending scale, or of course I would have no problem remembering ten chords because they just make sense harmonically! It was a good feeling.

I feel like the class has really succeeded this semester in a few ways in particular:
1. Facilitating a relaxed class atmosphere where students feel they can and should contribute, even in the large class.
2. Introducing different kinds of music (today was Gangster's Paradise by Coolio compared to a violin sonata by Bach, and then Somewhere Over the Rainbow as performed on the ukulele by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole), without sacrificing the principles I'm trying to teach (harmonic progression, root motion, good voice-leading, intelligent thinking about music).
3. Helping students to understand the reasons they would want to learn aural skills and the reasons we use the systems we use.

I feel like things could have gone better in other ways:
1. Attendance is always a problem, especially in the 8 o'clock class. I don't really know what else I could have done about this, though.
2. My preparation for class was sometimes later than it should have been, and I'd schedule activities we'd already done.
3. Encouraging or requiring individual student responsibility.
4. I'm not particularly good at being strict with course policies.

But overall I feel the semester's been a success. (No, it's not over, but next week is a practice exam, then the make-up/final exam.)


------


On an entirely different note, I found Respect Wordsworth, a tourism advertisement for England's Lake District, pretty hilarious.

As the more picky musicians may have noticed, I was thinking in the last post of alto clef, not tenor clef--so there's one confusion cleared up. My general objections still stand!

I've been working on my piano hearing materials for Teaching of Music Theory for the past half hour. I'm leaving aside the fact that the assignment seems silly--essentially, testing whether we can do what we teach, which ideally our grades should tell future employers anyway. I can at least understand that. But for someone who's taught pedagogy as long as our professor has, and who won the lifetime achievement award in music theory pedagogy in the past year, this is the most ridiculously pedagogically bad assignment I think I've had to do in my whole time here. Essentially, there are a set of things we have to do at the keyboard, and we have all these instructions in advance. But not just one set of instructions. First there's "Please be able to do the following," followed by number 1, which instructs us to choose two of the following activities, labeled a-c. Number 2 is one exercise, number 3 has component parts 1-4, etc. through number 5. Each of these exercises references pages with music on them, some of which are immediately following in the hearing packet, and some of which inexplicably are at the back of the packet after lots of irrelevant material. Okay, so far so good, I said to myself, I can handle this. Then, immediately below, are "PROCEDURES FOR THE ABOVE EXERCISES." Letter A has additional instructions for number 1, B has more for nos. 2-3, C for nos. 2-5, D for everything in general. Letter E has instructions referring to yet another set of musical examples in the packet which one is supposed to put together "to make item No. 2" (it took me about 2 minutes to realize this meant the number 2 referenced above). Then there's letter F, which further elaborates letter E.

As if this weren't complicated enough, the instructions included are like, "See page S28 No. 2. Be able to play the two-voice sightsinging exercise No. 2 as it would sound if this were written for, and played by, two clarinets in Bb. Also be able to play the bottom line, first system (only) as if it were written in tenor clef with the same accidentals. Play from the music." So wait--if the bottom line, first system (only!) had a tenor clef instead of a treble clef, but was in the same key, the pattern of intervals would be all different, not to mention bizarre: G-F-F flat (!)-E natural-E flat-D flat-C natural-D flat instead of F-E-Eb-D-Db-C-B-C. Not to mention the fact that to read all the instructions for number 2, one has to read the unnumbered text right above it, number 2 itself, and letters B, C, E and F.
Wow. Now I'm even more confused.

This was too good to pass up--Dad pointed out that my picture of Nate in the previous post happened to be at the "pitch-space" of the Iowa State Fair. How can I work this into my paper?

In the admissions/financial aid office the other day, they told me I have the "sweetest" deal in the school of music (not just me personally, but you know, I'm in this category), and Nate's starting earnings at Georgia Tech are twice what mine will be next year. Well, I suppose someone's going to have to bankroll me when I'm unemployed in three years!
(Claire, I don't know if he can handle us both, so you'll need to go into a long extra degree program too.)

Look at him there, all smug:



(The "Quick Fuel" is, of course, a symbol of his coming wealth.)
But of course the siblings Chenettezov will still stick together:

I honestly believe fresh, home-baked bread is one of the awesomest things in this world.

Awesome pictures of my choir, Pro Arte

I find this paper really hard to jump into, when it's just sitting there, open, on my computer screen, ready to be worked on, 24/7. However, once I do make the plunge, just like high school swimming, it's generally fairly easy to keep going. In fact, sometimes it's even really fun. I just finished a relatively large section where I basically talked about how several major scholars were completely wrong. It's always a satisfying feeling to debunk another person's theory, especially when the other person is a big name like Margaret Bent, Andrew Hughes, or Gaston Allaire. (Ah, the petty joys of academia.)

In the meantime, here's Sara on our recent hike in Morgan-Monroe State Forest (the same trail I took with Mom and Dad when they were here):



It had rained all morning, but was completely dry while we were hiking. The clouds didn't make for the beautifullest day, but we still had some nice views.



There were also some gorgeous waterfalls, one of which I climbed up, but none of my pictures of them turned out very well.

I'm sure this is old hat to anyone west of here (and soon to those east as well), but this is now:



It started basically in the space of about 5 minutes and was pouring sheets virtually right away--pretty impressive.

In the meantime, I'm still working on this paper ("Hexachords and Pitch-space in the 14th Century: How Awesome is That"). It's really hard to work on a long project in all your free time, and I'm definitely not succeeding at that.

On my most recent trip to the grocery store, I noticed they had rhubarb.

For those who don't know, my favorite food in the universe is rhubarb pie, made according to family recipe (or, at least the recipe used by my family). So I'm extremely tempted. But I'm also conflicted. Will it taste as good with Kroger rhubarb as with home rhubarb? More importantly, how will I know that I've grabbed enough stems to make 6 cups of 1-inch cubes? And finally, how will I wait out Holy Week without succumbing to the dessert temptation? Rhubarb freezes fine, right?

Fathers out there should feel free to respond.