Last spring, my course was so popular (okay, so it's required, but still) that the department had to raise the enrollment limit for each lecture section to 90; I think my final enrollments were around 84 and 87. I just checked my enrollment for next semester for the first time because I got an email from a student asking if I could let her into the class. The 8 AM lecture is already at 64, which is pretty decent, but then I checked the 10:10 lecture, and indeed--it's already hit 90! Holy cow.

It's the most stressful time of the year, as the song goes. I've got six pages of Latin descriptions of 4th-century syncopation that I want to translate, papers to write, a course to plan, etc. I've been feeling really stressed the past two days or so, and my chest is even feeling a bit constricted, though that might be due to the sickness I brought home with me after break. It's a little worrying, but in two weeks or so it will all be done! That's actually probably too much time, because I feel like I need to be done soon: I don't actually think I'll have any trouble getting things done on time.

Anyway, break was really nice. Thanksgiving itself was spent up in West Lafayette, at my Aunt Nancy's new house. She has a beautiful backyard, especially for a scientist of her bent:


And here's the wonderful family:


Unfortunately, I didn't have the presence of mind to take any pictures of the Kern family that we spent Saturday with, but it was all a lot of fun, and I did a nice job of not thinking about work almost the whole time.

The Society for Music Theory conference was also really nice. Baltimore turned out to be a very interesting place to be, and if it didn't feel inherently safe even in the nice area of town, there were certainly tons of police out.

The conference hotel in the background:


The view across the harbor:


The first monument ever erected to George Washington:

This makes me think also of the music theorist's plight. When someone on a plane asks you what you do, if you feel like talking, you say, "musician," and if you feel like shutting down the conversation right away, you say "music theorist."

Thanksgiving break starts tomorrow, and I'm thrilled for some time off and with the family!

Holy cow. This school's opera program is ridiculous. But heck, I'm definitely checking out the production, if only for the set!

In the meantime, I just got back from St. Meinrad Archabbey, one of only two archabbeys in the US and eleven in the world (via Wikipedia). It's a very beautiful building (the picture on the website doesn't even do it justice, especially on the most beautiful weekend in fall in southern Indiana). The Trinity Episcopal Church (Bloomington)'s student group took a less-than-24-hour retreat there, and it was pretty nice. For better or for worse, we live in a very secular society, especially historically speaking (the fact that the "far right" has some clout in politics doesn't really change this a lot), and it's been on my list of things to do for a long time to see what it would be like to live in an almost purely religious society. I imagined going to prayers upwards of eight times a day, silence, and contemplation, all of which sounds pretty cool. Well, it turns out they only pray four times a day, and we weren't there for two of the services. But I got up to go to the 5:30 service as well as mass (it helped that they're one of the crazy Indiana counties on Central Time--for the whole completely insane story, check this out). It was less awesome than I imagined, but it was definitely interesting. There was a lot of chanting, and we even got a mode 4 (that's Hypophrygian for those of you who like to use ethnic names...) chant, which was pretty far out. It was an incredibly echoey acoustic, and the monks (who by several times outnumbered the congregation even at the 7:30 mass, much less at 5:30's Vigils/Lauds) spoke in very deep, very soft voices. I have a hard time reading anything--much less biblical texts--without at least some degree of meaning and feeling, and I have a higher voice, and I was participating where appropriate (there were very few indications, but fortunately a fellow student seemed to know when we could recite along). The monk who kept the congregation in line by holding up chant numbers and appropriate books walked over to my side of the congregation and sat in the row behind me. Between prayers, he reached over and tapped me on the back, and said, "You're a bit louder than everyone else. You're also a little bit ahead. So be a little quieter." Then between prayers he walked back to his seat on the other side of the room. Well, that's the last time I get rowdy at Vigils/Lauds. For the rest of the service I went into full mumbling-conformity-Catholic mode.

All in all it was nice, though. I did a fair amount of walking around the beautiful grounds and surrounding forest, played ping-pong with some friends, and visited the book store (on the back of the casket shop...) with its rows of cloying "Inspirational" volumes and book on John Ashcroft (I bought some tasty-looking jam). It was a nice sort-of-break, but it's also nice to be back in Bloomington. And back to the grindstone. Thanksgiving is looking mighty nice from here...

Unless you like misspellings, misreadings, and downright wrong-ness, please, don't ever read this book. Some highlights from that advertisement/summary:

...the best way to end up a melody is the chaining dominant seventh chord and tonic perfect chord....

...the book explains the building of the musical scale by means of the Circle of Fifths (sketch on cover). This concept has been the platform of all musics throughout the world for 5 millenna. Designed in Mesopotamia, it spread into the antique Persia, then towards the indian sub-continent. Phytagoras brought it in the 6th century B.C. in Greece whose tetrachord scale had only 4 degrees (the 4 strings of their lyra often seen on ancient paintings)....

...The first turning point in Western Europe occured around 1000 A.D. It was the beginning of Polyphony; De Arezzo achieved the definitive form of music writing, and by the same occasion ruled out the quarter-tone of the greec heritage....

...The big Turning Point occured at the Renaissance, due to some theorists who tried to impose scales containing only consonant intervals, very difficult to put into practice. This confusion caused the death of the ancient 7 medieval modes and set the major-minor dichotomy in Western Europe. Only one has been remained in the 16th century : the major (ionian)....

...The Russian and the Orthodox Church have kept on using the ancient medieval modes. The Coptic Church of Egypt, in addition to major and minor, has a great variety of modes (non-western, ancient, often with quarter-tones, etc). So, the western music is all but universal, and has strong cultural features....

...in order to comply with Just Intonation, some scientists (C. Huygens and J. Sauveur) tried to provide the scale with consonant intervals (such as the harmonic seventh, slightly lower than the minor seventh)...