Sorry it's been a while, and sorry that that'll require a quick post.

I had a terrific vacation with my family to the Aspen, Colorado area, camping, hiking, enjoying beautiful music, and even taking a shower now and then. We photographed the (apparently) most-photographed peaks in North America, saw beautiful meadows, and stood on high ridges...




...and that was only the first day. (Sorry, Nate, this was the one day you and Heather were behind, so my picture is of Claire.)
[Edit: the third picture isn't showing up for me, though it's definitely in the source code. Sorry, Claire, maybe Blogger doesn't want you on my site.]
A few more nice ones:





Since then, I've proctored a lot of entrance exams. (About eight hours' worth, and that's just the one-on-one ones.) The weather has been extremely hot until today, which I took advantage of by making bagels, and managed to improvise a quite nice whole-wheat bagel recipe with the surprise of finding whole-wheat bread flour at Sahara Mart. Craig--who has moved in (and we're getting along great)--helped a bit, and even bought some sesame seeds to put on top. They turned out better than last time, and I have some pretty good ideas for making them even better next time.

Now, I can't believe that school's starting today! That's kind of awful. It doesn't have the same sense of excitement that I've had in past semesters, but maybe that'll change once I actually get into classes and, especially, once I get back into the hang of teaching. (I think my choice to hardly teach over the summer will haunt me--I felt ridiculously nervous even speaking in front of the assembled music theory graduate students the other day about my class, and feel at a loss whenever I put a lesson plan in front of me to be revised.)

A Tafelmusik concert of music inspired by Ovid has got me going back to my Ovid text and trying to translate. Boy, is it slow going, and after hours of giving tests I haven't mentally been up to it much lately, but hopefully on my light days. We'll see. Here's the great opening paragraph, with just a tiny bit of help from an English translation I found online. I've got a literal and a meaning-centered translation, both, because the rhetorical effect is *definitely* lost in the English translation: you get a sense of the appropriateness of the beginning ("In nova") and the exciting flourish of the end ("perpetuum deducite tempora carmen!") from the literal.

Latin:
In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas
corpora; di, coeptis (nam vos mutastis et illas)
adspirate meis primaque ab origine mundi
ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen!

Literal: Into new moves me my soul changed to speak of forms bodies; gods, beginnings (for you have changed also them) favor my and first from the genesis of the world to the current my epic spin out time song!

Meaning: My soul moves me to speak of forms changed into new bodies; gods, favor my beginnings (for you have changed them also) and spin out my epic song from the first genesis of the world to the current time!

You can call me cheap if you want, and you would be right, but I just really like getting free and cheap stuff. So when I went to the library's used book store today on a whim, imagine my delight when I found myself able to purchase:

-Two Brandenburg Concertos in mini-score
-Strunk's Source Readings in Music History--the complete version!! of course, also the first edition, copyright 1950, but still...
-Both volumes of The Norton Scores: An Anthology for Listening ("Gregorian Chant to Beethoven" and "Schubert to Davidovsky")
-the Norton Anthology of Western Music Volume II: Classic-Romantic-Modern
-Stefan Kostka's Materials and Techniques of Twentieth-Century Music
-and the novel Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

...all in excellent condition, for $9.
Also, the latest dumpster acquisition is a lamp. I thought it looked rather ornate and pretty, so I picked it up. When Sara was over, I hadn't even plugged it in yet, so I hadn't thought much about it, but she pointed out two things. First, that it's one of those lamps where you just touch any part of it and it turns off or on! That's awesome! Second, that it's "kinda girly." I hadn't thought about that, either, but, upon further inspection, she's right, as usual.

"While I was looking at the earth stupified, when I regained my senses, I said, "What's this sound, which fills my ears so greatly and so sweetly?" [My grandfather] said, "This is that which, separated by different intervals, but still rationally distinguished according to a fixed plan, is caused by the striking and motion of the orbits themselves and, tempering high with low causes various harmonies equally. Indeed such motion could not be effected in silence! And nature brings it about that the extremes from one part sound low, from another part high. For which reason that greatest starbearing course in the sky, whose turning is very quick, is moved by a high and loud sound, while this small lunar course sounds the lowest. For the earth, the ninth sphere, remains immobile, always fixed to one place embracing its center. Indeed, these eight courses, two of which move with the same force, create the seven sounds distinct by intervals, which number is the crux of nearly all things. Learned men imitating this sound with strings and songs open a return for themselves to this heavenly place, just like others who pursue divine studies by excellent skill during their human lives.

"The ears of men, filled with this sound, have become deaf; indeed, there is no sense that's duller in you, just as when the Nile rushes from the highest mountains to that which is called Catadupa, the tribe which dwells by that place lacks the sense of hearing because of the magnitude of the sound. This sound truly is so great in all the world because of the great swiftness of its turning that the ears of men are not able to capture it, just as you are not able to look at the sun and its rays overcome your sense of sight." I wondered at this, but nevertheless I kept turning my eyes back towards the earth repeatedly.

"Then Africanus [my grandfather] said, "I see that even now you contemplate your planet and the home of men; if it looks so small to you (as it is), always regard these heavenly things; despise those human things. For what renown can you attain among the talkings of men or of that glory which is to be sought? You see that the earth is inhabited in scattered and confined places, and where it is inhabited, as if by spots, vast solitudes are placed between, and those who inhabit it are not only scattered about so much that nothing is able to pass between them one group to another, but live partly in every other zone of each hemisphere, and from them you can certainly expect no glory."

-Mark Tully Cicero, on the music of the spheres

I don't know if what Claire refers to as "dumpster diving" actually involves throwing one's self into a trash receptacle; as you may imagine, I find that image distasteful. I certainly wouldn't want to be rummaging around within one of those smelly things. But as people are moving out of my apartment building (most leases here expire within the next 10 days) they are bringing unwanted or untransportable items down to our dumpster and leaving them, often right outside the dumpster rather than in it. When this is the case, I have no problem picking up some useful item, when it is in good condition. (I've noticed the same is true for others--I'm usually one of the first people to pass it every day, since my stairway/exit is the closest, but anything I don't claim often disappears later. And others aren't anywhere near as picky about disdaining things within the dumpster itself.)

Some of the things I've acquired from next-to-the-dumpster non-diving:
Two nice desk chairs with hydraulics (one was almost unusable but restored to excellent condition with 30 cents' worth of screws)
One nice dinner table (perfect but for some stripped screws, making it a bit wobbly--this will be replaced soon)
One very nice desk (finally, I have a desk with drawers!)
Three nice bowls
A nice cup full of pencils, pens, markers, and, hidden within, a card good for one free espresso or coffee at Panera
A scale (sadly, for humans, not cooking items)
A stack of post-it notes
A full-length mirror (not my full length, but you know what I mean--a nice long one)

Well, there was certainly one very nice reaction to our performance the other day! Peter Jacobi reviews for the Bloomington Herald-Times. He tends to write rather dry, factual reviews, rather than actually comment on the performance, so I take what little he said as high praise:

Vocal balm for the ears
By Peter Jacobi H-T Reviewer
August 2, 2007

On Tuesday morning, in preparation for next Sunday’s “Show Times” section, I took note of, with regret, the dearth of choral music during the summer season, happy then in being able to point to a partially compensating IU Chamber Choir concert this coming Monday.

So, what happened a few hours later, on Tuesday evening? As if responding to my initial regret, the Early Music Institute’s Concentus program in Auer Hall turned out to feature, among other items, three choral numbers sung by a beautifully voiced ensemble of 11.

What one heard was balm for the ears. First, the group offered Claudio Monteverdi’s “Cor mio, non mori?” (“My heart, are you not dying?”), a madrigal and delectable expression of longing for a love now moving in but a single direction. How starkly different was Carlo Gesualdo’s intense, often dissonant, setting for the Lamentations of Jeremiah, in which — under the guidance of director Timothy Chenette — the choristers delivered a carefully stitched, incantatory weave of
time-spanning chant. [We chanted a few verses of the Lamentations in between the responsories to give some context.]

Still to come at program’s end were the “Litanies de la Vierge,” by the 17th-century French composer Henry Du Mont, a churning plea for mercy from the Holy Trinity, but mostly also from the Virgin Mary, whom the text addresses with a flourishing array of praise and the music apostrophizes in accord. The Concentus singers, with William Hudson leading them, infused their reading with commendable intonation and a strong sense for meaning.



...Nothing like "commendable intonation" as a compliment. The review goes on to talk about the instrumental portions of the concert in essentially factual terms, which seems appropriate: the "beautifully voiced" (whatever that means) "ensemble of 11" performed by far the most substantial music on the concert. Still, everyone did well and it was really fun all around.

Reactions to music are funny. Since the second Concentus concert, I've talked to several audience members about it, and many have said about the Gesualdo that they "couldn't digest it" or "didn't quite get it." But to me there's not really anything to "get": when I listen to a recording, the effect on me is very immediate and direct. Even those wild chord changes seem to make sense, perhaps because so often the directed motion is so strong. If there's anything we sang that I didn't get, it was the Marenzio madrigal that has seemingly random chord changes and, to me, much stranger passages. It (the Gesualdo) could, of course, have had something to do with our performance: we all thought it was perhaps our best time through, but it's so hard that maybe that wasn't quite good enough to carry it off with conviction. (And there were of course problems: I know I for one was kind of wildly off-pitch at least twice.)

But they're such beautiful pieces, and treat the texts so wonderfully. There are tons of wonderful moments. The beginning of the second responsory (these are mini-pieces sung in between the lamentations of Jeremiah at Tenebrae on Maundy Thursday in Lent) begins with:

Tristis est anima mea usque mortem.

The words of Jesus before his betrayal, "My soul is sorrowful even unto death." Although a more literal translation would be "Sorrow is my soul even unto death." That would be an incorrect translation, of course, meaning-wise, but it's really interesting to think about. It's beautifully, delicately set, in very loosely imitative entries, with the motive of two descending steps appearing all throughout the texture. It's a ridiculously simple motive, without even an interesting rhythm, but for some reason it's all I want to listen to there, more color than melody.


sustinete hic, et vigilate mecum: nunc videbitis turbam, quae circumdabit me:

"Stay here, and watch with me: now you will see the crowd which will encircle me."

Throughout this section, the motion increases steadily, leading to a climax on:

vos fugam capietis.

"You will flee."

And finally a dramatic change of texture, moving from a D major chord to E major; a full, disjointed polyphonic texture to a thin, high, legato monophonic texture; playing around with one chord to chromatic windings:

et ego vadam immolari pro vobis.

"and I will go to be offered up for you."

My favorite moment, though, is at the end of the third responsory, the last for this set. It ends with the words:

cuius livore sanati sumus.

"By his wounds we are healed."

This is the text that Handel, in his Messiah oratorio, sets as "and with his stripes we are healed," with the dramatic, painful downward leap of a diminished seventh to "stripes." (My dictionary has "livor" as "leaden color; bluish color; black-and-blue mark," so I think Handel's translation is better than the more common one. It's related, of course, to "livid.") But here, as with "vos fugam capietis" vs. "et ego vadam," Gesualdo breaks the line up. Rather than one severe affect for the whole line, as in the Messiah, "cuius livore" is set to a twisted, chromatic ascent in limited imitation moving from D major through wild chords including an augmented chord up a step to E major, and it looks like it's going to stop there:


But Gesualdo, as always seeming to seek cleansing for his twisted conscience, seems to suggest that that isn't all: the third line down hasn't finished its word yet, and what sounded like a resolution was merely preparing a dramatic shift directly up a half step (though he cleverly avoids literal parallel fifths and octaves) to the true resolution on F major!


To me, Gesualdo shows his mastery here. It's a madrigalian characteristic to chop up lines and do specific text-painting for each part, often destroying the sense of continuity (of the piece and even the poetry) in the process. But here the technique doesn't have this effect. The twisted, chromatic "cuius livore" (that's where I was out of tune in the concert... oh well, it just sounds more painful, right? Plus, we did it three times, and only once was bad) resolves to the contrasting "sanati sumus," and the contrast shows that the whole point of the phrase, to Gesualdo, is that we are healed. And from there to the end of the piece he just continues these wild, glorious flourishes up and down the scale, reveling in the healing effect of F sort-of-lydian. Isn't that beautiful, and as immediate as music gets?