Busy weekend. The worst was yesterday, when I hastily uploaded some practice dictations for my class to the website before dashing off to the symposium's second day of papers at 8:30. I ducked out just before 10 to go to a Pro Arte dress rehearsal, then at 11:30 ate a packed lunch and practiced piano. At 1:15 I played through my piano minor exit exam materials for Doc Shaw, and at 2 I headed back to the symposium to attend two sessions in a row for the first, and only, time the entire two days. At 5 I ran home to grab my Monteverdi music, then ordered out to dinner with some friends since the weather was horrible. I actually relaxed at that point for about half an hour. Then the food came, and I dashed down the sandwich in ten minutes before running to the Monteverdi rehearsal. Then was the keynote address of the symposium, followed by the recital, for which one of my singers showed up about halfway through (though the performance - in fact, all of the performances - were terrific). After the recital, it was about 10, and I hung around at the reception and mingled till everyone was basically gone at 11:30. I helped clean things up, but some of the people in charge had had too much wine and things were going slowly, and nobody had any idea what to do about the dirty floor. Finally Kyle drove me home to grab my vacuum, and we vacuumed the floor, finishing about 12:45 this morning. I got home and listened to my voice mail and had a message from the choir director at church asking me to sing at a service this morning since two of their singers would be missing.

So, long day. But actually it was really fun, and this Monteverdi group looks to be perhaps a semi-permanent thing, which is terrific. The singers are amazing - one has been cast as Orfeo in the Early Music Institute's production of Orfeo, one had a role in a recent opera department production, one has his own professional early music group, 9 of the 10 singers are in either Concentus (13th-15th century music, sometimes earlier) or Pro Arte (16th-18th century, and debatably the best choir at this school), etc. The theorbo player was also terrific. Some of us had so much fun that we're talking about working our way through all of the book 5 madrigals, possibly for a concert around here or at another school, or maybe to get on next summer's Bloomington Early Music Festival. Anyway, this has been really exciting - I'm getting visions of singing in a professional group! I really think that we sound in some ways better than the "standard" recording of this repertoire.

Today Grandma and Grandpa Chenette came down for the Pro Arte concert, which was fabulous (both the concert and the fact that they were there). I teared up several times, but because it was Haydn, it was in joy, not sadness. Mostly at the syncopated "Amen, Amen!" Afterward, G+G and I played a truncated game of 3 to 13 and went out to Siam House for a delicious dinner.

And now I have to go back to real life, where academic work calls and I can't sing in amazing choirs and hear brilliant talks all day. Kind of a come-down...

Today is Ash Wednesday.

As for mortals, their days are like grass;
they flourish like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.
But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting
on those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children's children,
to those who keep his covenant
and remember to do his commandments.
-Psalm 103: 15-18

I've been awfully busy lately, but I'm taking a minute to post because I just got the news that I was readmitted to the program for doctoral work, with a pretty nice (compared to what I'm used to) financial package, and that didn't make me want to go back to boring old work.

The concert in Chicago on Saturday was terrific! The bus rides were long, but it was fun to hang around with some of my choir friends (some of the few people I know outside the theory department - one of whom actually gave me a really nice complement on my voice). The space was really great and made the orchestra's sound really warm, and, well, let's just say that I always get *really* into the music when I'm singing with a good group. The guy next to me is the same way, and we do a lot of communicating back and forth about what should be better during rehearsal. During the concert, however, we kept kind of nudging each other and whispering, "wow!" It was really great - and what amazing music.

In fact, we were so into *making* the music that we weren't always as attentive as we should have been to the sounds coming from other people. In one movement, the two of us were singing full throttle, and suddenly the music was marked "tutti." Turns out we'd sung with the solo quartet for about two pages!

Anyway, great concert. The soprano soloist especially was spine-tinglingly good.

Next weekend is the Graduate Theory Association's symposium on Music and the Written Word (Friday and all day Saturday), including a performance by my little Monteverdi choir. Then Sunday is Pro Arte's second concert (I even get a little solo...). Monday I'll be playing my exit exam for the piano minor.

A lot to do! But I'll be happy to get all this work and stress out of the way at this point in the semester, so I can focus on some other things. Top of the list: a paper on the coniuncta in hexachord theory of the thirteenth century. Sounds awesome, eh?

The snow day has given me a fair amount of extra time, and of course I don't want to do school work, so I've been working on other things. For example, I started my tax return preparation. Which is best summarized by a passage from Haggai (ch. 1, verse 9):

"You have looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away."
(NRSV)

What?? The Bloomington campus is closed today until noon! That's kind of ridiculous. I seem to remember this always happening in high school, too - yesterday was really, really ugly and walking to school in the sleet at 7:30 got me soaked and sliding all over the ground, but today it's sunny and dry and they overcompensated for yesterday by canceling school till 12. I wouldn't actually care that much, but now I have to figure out what to do about T132's drill classes (T132 is the class I teach) that didn't meet today, as opposed to the ones that did. (About 2/3 won't meet today because of this.)

I had a terrific birthday yesterday, and a really excellent lesson today. That makes me really happy!

Hooray for Nate! Now I'm going to need some help (as he gets into all of these excellent schools) convincing him that the absolute *best* place for him to go to school would be the place halfway from Grinnell to Bloomington. Any volunteers?

A lot of big things coming up. Birthday party next weekend, along with a performance with Pro Arte in Chicago; the next weekend is the IU Graduate Theory Association symposium on Music and the Written Word on Friday and Saturday (ended with a recital which includes a group singing some Monteverdi madrigals, which I'm organizing) and then a Pro Arte performance here on Sunday. It should all be really fun!
In the meantime, it's funny what my students appreciate most from the class. The knowledge? The musicality? No, but they couldn't get enough of my haiku the other day, which I had on my powerpoint slide as they entered:

I am going hoarse.
Please sit in the first six rows!
Bird flies in autumn

A lot of notable things happened yesterday. For one, I got my rejection from Michigan, which is just fine. Several awesome things happened, including the receipt of a huge package from my parents (the shirt I'm wearing today looks terrific, and I've gotten a lot of compliments on it!), and I attended a guest recital where Read Gainsford (an ex-student of Doc Shaw) played the entire Vingt Regards de l'enfant Jesus (20 Gazes/Contemplations of the Infant Jesus). I had played a movement (La premiere Communion de la Vierge, and yes I am being lazy about accents) for my senior recital in college. So it was particularly exciting to hear that in context. And what a piece it is! Two hours (!!) of ecstatic, blissful, peaceful music. I'd gladly sit through the entire thing again, although it didn't look like too many people feel the same (it was a relatively small audience, and a number of old ladies and even some students fled from the "crazy modern music" - that is, 80-year-old or whatever it is music - at intermission). Actually, I am listening to it right now, on Variations, and I really got a kick out of the IUCat entry which described the subject as "Jesus Christ-songs and music."

"Any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole State, and ought to be prohibited."
-Plato

http://www.kokogiak.com/megapenny/twentythree.asp

"But there's this to be said: if God really exists and he really has created the world, then, as we all know, he created it in accordance with the Euclidean geometry, and he created the human mind with the conception of only the three dimensions of space. And yet there have been and there still are mathematicians and philosophers, some of them indeed men of extraordinary genius, who doubt whether the whole universe, or, to put it more widely, all existence, was created only according to Euclidean geometry and they even dare to dream that two parallel lines which, according to Euclid, can never meet on earth, may meet somewhere in infinity. I, my dear chap, have come to the conclusion that if I can't understand even that, then how can I be expected to understand about God? I humbly admit that I have no abilities for settling such questions. I have a Euclidean, an earthly mind, and so how can I be expected to solve problems which are not of this world. And I advise you too, Alyosha, my friend, never to think about it, and least of all about whether there is a God or not. All these are problems which are entirely unsuitable to a mind created with the idea of only three dimensions. And so I accept God, and I accept him not only without reluctance, but, what's more, I accept his divine wisdom and his purpose - which are completely beyond our comprehension."

-The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky

I was checking some books out from the library today, and the library desk worker was a guy I'd tested out of my class. He asked me how it was going, and I said it was going well, and he said he'd heard it was fun, and though he was glad he was saving time in his schedule, he thought it sounded interesting. That made me feel good. I hear a lot about how the class is fun, and while I don't entirely know how students felt about the class before, I don't think "fun" was a word they usually used. There are some other things that make me feel good about how it's going:
1. One of my AIs said the class is much more fun than when she took it. (Of course, when she took it, she had to take tests and things, so that may have something to do with it.)
2. I have surprisingly few behavior problems with students: even the perfect pitch people, who are typically very frustrated and angry at being forced to transpose and dictate in different keys, are very understanding and even enthusiastic about learning to hear functionally. All (both) of my problems have been from students who failed last semester (and in one case the previous semester as well).
3. I have surprisingly few other problems from the students. The two written assignments they had to do so far involved streaming audio from a website. Considering there are almost 180 students, I figured there would be all sorts of problems, from technical ("the sound won't play on my computer") to the technically confused ("I didn't know I had to use a website until the day before") to the confused ("What do you mean by scale degrees?"). But I've literally had none.
4. Attendance has been decent.
I definitely really appreciate all this: after last semester, anything would have felt reassuring, and this definitely feels like confirmation that all the unfortunate parts of that class were not necessarily due to the teacher (me).

I've been restless a lot lately - it feels like I've got a lot of energy that I'd like to get rid of. Ballroom dancing has helped, as have Pro Arte (which I'm really excited about again) and, tonight, barbershop singing (!), but I really need to start getting some exercise or something. A more exciting social life would also probably help.

"In early times popularity with the masses was a sign of bad art; hence, when a certain aulos-player had received loud applause, Asopodorus of Phlius, who was himself still waiting in the wings, said 'What's this? Something awful must have happened!' The player evidently could not have won approval with the crowd otherwise... And yet the musicians of our day set as the goal of their art success with their audiences. Hence Aristoxenus in his Drinking-Miscellany says... 'In like manner we also... now that our theaters have become utterly barbarized and this prostituted music has moved on into a state of grave corruption, will get together by ourselves, few though we be, and recall what music used to be.'
...Though I might say many more things on music, I hear the buzzing of the auloi, and will therefore bring my long-winded discourse to a close, after repeating the lines from The Aulos-Lover of Philetaerus: 'Zeus, it's indeed a fine thing to die to the music of the auloi. For only to such is it permitted in Hades to revel in love affairs, whereas those whose manners are sordid, having no knowledge of music, must carry water to the leaky jar."
-Athenaeus, "Sophists at Dinner," c. 200 CE, trans. Charles Gulick/Thomas Mathiesen

New template - I've never liked how big the sidebar was, so now all that stuff is at the bottom. Hope it's not too confusing.

I just ordered The Great Dictator on DVD. It's a really amazing movie, where Charlie Chaplin plays both Adenoid Hynkel (essentially, Adolf Hitler - seen here dancing with the object of his affection and here in possibly the funniest speech I've ever seen) and a nameless Jewish barber (seen here shaving to Brahms).
I can't wait to get this.

I was observing the class of one of my fellow Assistant Instructors this morning. A guy was apparently gafFurius about some Marx he'd gotten on the quiz. It was the beginning of class, so the AI offered to talk with him afterward, but he is apparently a pretty angRiemann in general, and just said, "Zarli, no." All she could do was Schenker head and start class. Afterwards, of course, Boethius ofForte to help him, and I think the situation's all okay for now.

I felt like putting up some more pictures, so here are some from my California trip in December. Nate and I did some mountain biking, which I don't have any pictures of, but we also did some hiking. On my third day (?) there, we hiked to the top of "Mount Baldy," the 3rd-highest peak in Southern California. We drove from Claremont up to about 6,000 feet and then hiked up to just over 10,000 and an extremely windy peak with gorgeous views of mountains that looked like they were floating:



and vast stretches of mountains in the other direction, along with windblown hairstyles that are easily made fun of by uncharitable sisters:



We also did some more hiking, camping, and beach-lazing, but one can only take so many pictures of a trip before they get boring, so I'll hold off for now.

But lest I seem to favor one sibling over the other, here are some older pictures from the trip Mom, Claire, and I made through Prague:



And Vienna:



The lesson here? Clearly, when I visit my brother, we're all serious and do healthy outdoorsy stuff; when I'm with my sister, we're goofy and unhealthy. It's a good thing they both exist to preserve a sense of balance.

The theorist in me cries out in pain at some of the more harmonically awkward and less contrapuntally inventive sections, but this is still a pretty cool, cute video on how to write a fugue. (He also has that unfortunate drawing on the board at first, but I can forgive little things.)

So Pythagoras walks into a bar. He walks up to the bartender, and starts complaining, "So I've got this problem. I had a hunch that if you take two 9:8 tones away from a 4:3 fourth, you actually don't end up with half a tone. So I did all the math - took the two tones from the fourth - and added the remainder to itself to get the result, and indeed, it's not a tone. So I don't even have any idea what to call that result."
"Gee, I dunno," says the bartender, rolling his eyes mock-sympathetically. "Sounds like you've got a real di-lemma."

I've done a lot of things today. I've done laundry, been entirely confused by Cleonides' Harmonic Introduction (things I've learned in History of Music Theory thus far: "proslambanomanos" sounds funny but is not a made-up word, and Aristoxenus is or was The Man - in an awesome sense, not a paranoid big brother sense, not that big brothers are bad, as we all know), wrote a quiz, and, most importantly, I baked several loaves of bread. That's right, now that I'm single, I need to exercise my marketable skills.

Nova Scotia Brown Bread:


I have to say, I'm pretty sure this is my best "free-form" loaf ever (despite the knob on the back/top side). It was incredibly moist and delicious, and looked pretty good too if I do say so myself. Which... clearly I do.

I've realized two things: 1. I haven't posted many images to this blog recently, which makes it less fun to read and 2. Now that I have my hard drive replaced and going strong, it is much easier to post said images.

So here are some essentials from break. First, the Nautica brothers, living the luxurious life of doing puzzles in their pajamas until lunchtime:



And then Mom, Dad, and Maple studying my Schenkerian analysis of Chopin's prelude in C-sharp minor, Op. 45:



I have some more deliciously cute ones of Maple and some beautiful ones from my visit to Nate in California, but those are for another day.

I've been doing a bunch of crazy things lately. First, perhaps craziest of all, I've been having tons of fun in class (teaching, that is). That's going really well.

Then on Wednesday I went ballroom dancing for the first time in probably about 3 years. It was tons of fun. Although I'd forgotten that, even when the gender balance isn't so bad (and it wasn't), as a male you quickly become a target, and I don't mean just as a dance partner. I also met two of my students there, which was amusing, and it was fun to interact with them in a less formal setting, though I think my "I'm a sort-of-professor so I must be much older than you" facade may have been destroyed...

And finally I just auditioned for an opera. I heard about the auditions after they started, and came at the end (about an hour after I'd heard about them for the first time), ducked in, introduced myself, apologized timidly for having absolutely zero solo repertoire, and then sight-read a recitative. It was funny - I thought I sounded great, much better than usual, but my sight-reading (which I teach) was horrible, so I guess you never can predict what you'll be good at and what you won't. I know they probably just wanted to get more reliable information on me, but I was still flattered when they asked who I studied with, and then if I was at least a choral conductor or something. Anyway, I guess I intrigued them, because they took my email address and learned how to spell my last name and I'll be singing for them again next week.

It's funny how my first impressions of classes - and even impressions of classes in general - are often wrong. It seems like my 10 o'clock lecture is actually the more motivated and interested of the two after all - I even had students shushing other students today! I don't think 8 o'clock went as well, but then again I thought much of last semester didn't go so well and I got almost universally good evaluations. (But then again, what do the students know about good classes and bad classes?)

I've been busy lately - I've started to look into doing some new things, so I've been going to more Canterbury events at church, which have been great (some really nice people and, oddly enough, predominantly music and folklore graduate students); I'm going to attend ballroom dancing (!) on Wednesday, I'm going out to eat more with my friends, and I'm thinking about volunteering on a regular basis. We'll see - it might be a bit much. Certainly I'm already kind of exhausted today.

To church job or not to church job? I've been offered a church job here before, but it was in Indianapolis, which quite frankly is too much of a drive. This one's in Martinsville, about half an hour away and right next to beautiful Morgan-Monroe State Park (and the impressively ugly and annoying Martinsville/SR 37 intersections).
The pros: extra money, fun singing (and with the head of the choral conducting department no less), working with new people.
The cons: two hours of driving every week (for rehearsal and service), tireder voice, less flexibility (especially to attend the church of my own choosing...)
Hm. Writing "two hours of driving every week" may have made the decision for me. I had to write it down, though, and I'm still thinking...

Thank you to all who offered your support with regard to my last post! It really means a lot to me. And for those who are concerned, I'm really doing fine. It helped a lot to have things to jump into right away - the drive back to school, replacing my laptop's hard drive and restoring everything from backups (more fun than it sounds), preparation for much more substantial teaching responsibilities, and finally school itself. I certainly have had plenty to keep me busy, and some things are even going great! I will probably take some of you up on your offers of calls, getting together, and all that, but mainly because I'd love to see/talk to you.

The new set of musical skills students is, in a word, huge. They had to up enrollment caps to (gulp) 90 per lecture, which is a heck of a lot of people. Today was the first day of lecture, and I was pretty nervous, but I thought it went pretty well, especially at 8. I think people are more willing to deal with you as a person at 8 - by 10 they've woken up enough to have settled into their "anything a teacher says can't be funny" and "are you kidding? only losers have fun in class" attitudes. I'm exaggerating - even 10 o'clock was fine (especially the vast majority of students), but there was a little more distance, I think. Both classes got done much earlier than I'd intended - I actually added material to what I did last year on the first day, and we were done early! It certainly points out the difference in ability level between the "on" and the "off" semester - we probably have just as many people who have failed in the past or were held back by their entrance exam this semester, but now they're surrounded by 80 other students who have higher ability levels. So the percentage of people who will need out-of-class help should be much reassuringly lower (last semester it was easy to think I was failing for this reason).
I'm also indefensibly happy about the website I've made for the class. I'm particularly pleased with myself for having included a "jukebox" made with Flash so they can do homework dictations on their home computers, despite the fact that I just downloaded it from a website and just changed the code to work with my tracks. (Don't worry, it was all legal - the download was made for that purpose.)

My history of theory class is really bringing me back to my liberal-arts roots. Not because it's a different subject - obviously, I'm still studying theory - but I'm getting back into "life of the mind" sorts of issues. I love analyzing music and all, but sometimes you just have to gain some of your pleasure from scholarly inquiry, and this class will clearly satisfy that itch. Long reassuring lists of Latin and Greek names and titles, a small class of sufficiently-nerdy-looking people, and an instructor who is quite frankly the top of this field and actually translated a lot of the sources (Dr. Thomas Mathiesen - you can get some idea from all the italics on his profile; he's also in charge of this) combine to make a course that I can be genuinely excited about.

Finally, my choir (Pro Arte) is as exciting as ever. It still sounds amazing - though we're singing the Haydn mass too uniformly loudly - and we're adding yet another exciting project for the semester. In addition to our Telemann concert and our two Haydn concerts (here and in Chicago), we're going to have a recording session where we make the first recording ever of some music from colonial-period Guatemala from manuscripts located at IU's rare books library. You can only imagine how excited that makes a guy like me...

Well, I guess it had to come sometime - Sherry just broke up with me. I'm really sad about it, of course, but in some ways it's good. After all, she has always lived far away, so most of my day-to-day life is just going to be exactly the same. The most numerous changes will be positive - I won't have to worry about whether or not she's going to call, whether or not she's going to finally buy a plane ticket to see me, and that sort of thing, which had become worse and worse in the past months, and I'll save tons of money on plane tickets (maybe I can even visit some old friends who I've neglected!). Of course I feel wronged in some ways - who doesn't in such a circumstance? I'm not going to pretend that it's Sherry's fault and she's a bad person - but I stuck with her during a really hard time, when it was not easy to be with her, and she didn't have the willpower or the money to buy any tickets on her own so any non-donated tickets were bought by me, and just as she's getting better she decides that this person who's been through that and, it has to be said, forgiven some pretty serious stuff, isn't good enough. I shouldn't put it that way - I know it's not correct, it's more like "not the right person to spend the rest of her life with" - but I'm sure you all understand it feels this way and probably will necessarily for a little while.
I also am not going to pretend that this was my only hope for happiness - that'd be pretty stupid. I'm sure there are other people out there who I will be very happy with. But the life I've been living at IU has sometimes been a bit lonely (and, very seldom, more than a bit) - and it's been wonderful to have someone to talk to about anything a phone call away (when she was reachable). I hope not being in a relationship will mean I will have a bit more of a social life - but I do wonder sometimes. I'm not really a very outgoing person socially (though I think I am personally). And I will say that the dating pool (as far as I've been able to tell - admittedly I haven't really been looking) at the music school at the graduate level is pretty abysmal, especially since so many people are married. And I sure don't want to be the creepy professor going out with the student (not that there's anything wrong with that... in case certain colleagues are reading this...).
Well, what will happen will happen.

I'll blog more when I get my hard drive replaced, but for now, though it's nothing my friends and I don't complain about at least weekly (and more in certain classes), here it's particularly amusingly done.

A visit from JS Bach

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I may give up on the blog - we'll see. I do keep coming across things I want to draw to other people's attention!

This is inspiring.

Hooray!

Wow. Why didn't my high school marching band play Shostakovich and Schoenberg?

I enjoyed this:
"Rock Festival in Pyong Yang

If you are a band playing any kind of rock, including heavy metal, then you can participate 'ROCK FOR PEACE' in Pyong Yang, the capital city of North Korea. This is the very first time in history that North Korea allows western musicians in the heart of DPRK territory to play capitalist popular music. There are few restrictions and conditions on participation but any band will be considered even though you are from USA. The lyrics should not contain admirations on war, sex, violence, murder, drug, rape, non-governmental society, imperialism, colonialism, racism, anti-DPRK, and anti-socialism. The concert will be held from March 01 to March 04, 2007 under the management of Voice of Korea. We currently received requests of 35 bands from 19 countries and participations are increasing everyday. ROCK FOR PEACE will be the 2007 version of Woodstock rock festival in 1969 but in different location and in different goals, We welcome every musician as long as they are purely music based without political intentions. For inquiries, email to Jean-Baptiste Kim, the head of Voice of Korea."

Found the following on one of the many excellent music/musician blogs I've been finding recently (much to my detriment - they're far too fascinating and take far too much time), disagreeding with another writer's take on the future of Classical music:

"To cite my main qualm, I guess I feel he’s a little too comfortable with generalizations, and with the deadly Grouping Of Stereotypes Fallacy (“scholarly, detached, analytical”)... Scholarly does not have to be detached, or analytical, for instance. Analysis is not necessarily detached either. These are all free-floating "connotations." And then he equates the scholarly attitude with the detached immobile performances, claiming a causality. But often it seems to me just the opposite: the scholars are the ones getting excited about the music while the performers, who are too busy to hear from them or don’t want to hear from them or think they don’t have anything to offer, ignore them and offer up the same old same old conservatory crap."

I have to say, that last sentence really struck me as absolutely true, at least where my students are concerned. (I'm happy to say that I feel the opposite around my excellent if often brutal piano teacher, Dr. Karen Shaw.)

Lots of interesting results from the election yesterday! Democrats won in all but one of the races I was watching: Indiana's 8th (my district) and 9th districts, Iowa's gubernatorial race, Lamoyne Gaard's epic quest for county supervisor, and Grinnell's state house race, with the Iowa Secretary of Agriculture as the only (and unfortunate) exception. Democrats also handily took not only the national house (and possibly senate) but, to an even greater extent, their Iowa counterparts.


One piece of sad news - James Hill, Pirate for congress, was defeated in the Iowa 1st district. It was a heated race, though the Democrat, Bruce Braley, won in the end pretty handily (55% to the Republican's 43%). James Hill finished third. But - and I think this is probably a record for the Pirate party - he gained 1.06% of the vote (2184 votes) in that district, finishing well above the Libertarian candidate (Albert Schoeman, 1,229 votes or 0.59%).

I got a check from my health insurance company to reimburse my wrist-problem visit, and it occurred to me: I actually *make* money when I get sick. Sounds impossible, perhaps, but it works! See, my school-related insurance covers 100% of expenses at the IU medical center. But they only reimburse me after I've paid, so all I need to do is pay for my visits with my credit card, which gives me 1% cash back on all purchases. Voila, I make money! I think I have a get-rich-quick scheme on my hands. So, let's see - on this $18 visit, I made... 18¢!!
All I need now, clearly, is to get much sicker. Or, more importantly, more expensively sick.

In other news, I just received the go-ahead from the "Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz Musikabteilung mit Mendelssohn-Archiv" (full name; known affectionately as "some German library") to get my honors project (an edition of a cantata by Georg Benda, transcribed from their manuscripts) published. Now the final hard part (of about 10) starts - finding a publisher who's zealous enough about good Baroque/Classical music to publish this but not zealous enough to care that it was transcribed from only one of about five manuscripts scattered around Germany by some undergraduate at a liberal arts college.

Had a great visit from Sherry! We went to the art museum a few times, attended a concert, spent some quality time together, and went out on a hike from Griffy Lake to University Lake, the latter pictured here:



It had frozen the night before, so here I am over a waterfall festooned with icicles:



We also went to Bloomington's very own Tibetan Buddhist monastery, which looked a little out of place in front of dark, almost dull late-fall Indiana colors (especially next to a trailer park, not pictured here):



----

In the meantime, I've been thinking about grad schools recently, especially after talking with Nate about his grad school plans and mom's suggestion that I look around. By grad schools, of course, I mean other grad schools as well as this one. I was looking through some good schools for music theory, and checking out application procedures, etc., and finally just looked at how many faculty's names I know at each school:
Indiana - all, of course.
Yale - James Hepokoski (not technically theory, but still), Richard Cohn, Allen Forte (!)*
Columbia - Fred Lerdahl, Walter Frisch (again, a musicologist, but a good one), Marion Guck, Tristan Murail (composition, but cool)
Eastman - Matthew Brown (but only because his wife lives across the street from my family), Robert Gauldin, Elizabeth West Marvin (I guess they write textbooks for a living at Eastman)
U. of Chicago - Thomas Christensen (history of theory! sweet), Shulamit Ran and Easley Blackwood (composers... I wonder why I know of them...)
Florida State - Jane Piper Clendinning, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (composer)

Wow! I know more names than I thought, though of course nothing like some of my colleagues. I also realize you (even my family - a good 90% of my extremely occasional readership) probably don't care that much about this list, but it seemed as good a place as any to put it all down. I need to get some advice from someone, but I'm not really sure who to go to. We'll see. I also need to start saving money for massive application fees.

*interesting fact not having to do with Allen Forte: my starting stipend at Yale, should I get in and go, would be at minimum well over twice my starting stipend here, and would require less than half as much teaching (though the latter is not much of an advantage, from my perspective).

Got the news almost simultaneously by blog and email (I think that says something about today's digital culture...) - Leonard Slatkin just signed on at IU. Yet another in a long string of high-profile faculty hires, and the article puts it well: "He is one of a number of high-profile artist-teachers to join the IU music faculty in just the last three years. Other notables are pianists André Watts and Arnaldo Cohen, singers Sylvia McNair, Marietta Simpson and Carol Vaness, ballet master Michael Vernon, violinists Mark Kaplan, Jaime Laredo and Alexander Kerr, and cellist Sharon Robinson." Though some of these hires were made beforehand, I suspect some of this is due to the massive 40 million dollar gift we officially got last year.

And then, of course, there's the theory department, which basically got turned down two years in a row by its top choice scholars simply because we don't offer enough money to get someone to move to the middle of Indiana. (Incidentally, to see how much a theorist at IU gets paid, go to this website and run a search for "music theory." Not bad, until you remember that these are top experts in their fields.)

Okay - I've been surviving on 100% homemade (by me, that is) bread for about a year now, and yet today I didn't realize that I'd set the oven temperature 100 degrees (!) too high until the fire alarm went off. Ah well. The loaves actually came out fine, aside from the black on the bottom of the one that was on the lower shelf. In fact, more than fine: they were some of the best-looking loaves I've made, though of course that has nothing to do with the temperature.

In the meantime, oat groats, those much-made-fun-of (at least in my family) Harbingers of Health and Ridiculously Rhyming Foods, have definitely entered my cooking repertoire. They made the bread look really awesome today, and the little crunchy effect in the bread is really nice too. I also had them in a ridiculously healthy dish the other day (beans, oat groats, spinach, mushrooms), and they were kinda nice.. If they didn't take forever to cook, they might make a nicer breakfast cereal than rolled/instant oats.

And finally, from another blog:
A guy and his Saint-Bernard walk into a bar. The guy says to the bartender, "This dog knows everything about music and can answer any question you have."

The bartender says, "You're nuts!" The guy says, "Go ahead -- ask him something."

So the bartender says to the dog, "OK, who was the greatest contrapuntal composer of the 17th century?" The dog replies,"BACH." The bartender says, "Aw, c'mon he's just barking, he doesn't know anything."

The guy says, "Hey, go ahead, ask him something else." The bartender tries again. "OK, who was the greatest composer of Lieder of the late 19th century?"

The dog replies, "Wolf." The bartender says, "This is ridiculous -- he's just barking. Get lost!"

The guy says, "No he's not -- go ahead, one more time, ask him a question." Disgustedly, the bartender tries again. "Who was the greatest German composer between the two world wars?" The dog answers, "Orff."

The bartender says, "That's it!" and proceeds to physically toss the guy and his dog out of the bar onto the sidewalk on their behinds. The dog looks back at the guy and, from the street, tries once more:

"Hindemith?"

Sorry to put so much material up here lately, but some things are too terrific to resist. The last post was an example: here is another. From here, as made up by the previously-mentioned Professor Frank Samarotto, the Top-Ten Bad Dissertation Titles List. I particularly enjoy number 5. (He mentioned to me recently that the hardest part about coming up with this list was actually coming up with titles he could be 100% sure no one would ever use. I'm not sure he was successful...)

1. Uncertainty in Music: A Definitive Survey

2. The Catalan Influence on the French Augmented Sixth Chord in the Music of Engelbert Humperdinck

3. The Voicing of the Final Chord in Music of the Classical Period

4. A Syncategorematically Recursive Hedra-Lattice of Poly-PC Postponement: A Theory of Atonal Silence

5. Heinrich Schenker: Threat or Menace?

6. Prolonging the Agony: A Schenkerian Approach to Muzak in the Dentist's Office

7. “Where Are All My Favorite Notes?” A Statistical Tabulation of Every Pitch-Class in the Serial Music of Webern

8. A Violist Walked into a Barline: Rhythm and Meter in the Structure of Viola Jokes

9.Three Times a Lady: Triple Counterpoint in the Music of Britney Spears

10. The Whole Step: Our Misunderstood Friend

Now I don't usually like to support youtube, but this was just such amazingly sophisticated humor for the site that I simply had to share. So I present to you: Dudley Moore's simultaneous parody of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears

Wow. It turns out that my little adventure-evening (described below) involved an argument with none other than Douglas Hofstadter, writer of the Pulitzer Prize-winning, subversively influential Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. If I'd realized who he was fully, I probably would have been a bit more respectful! But for any who are interested, his thoughts are essentially as follows: Sounds Like Bach. (I know I described our discussion below, but only very briefly - this article gives much more of the sense of how he comes across.)
The program he refers to, EMI, is written by David Cope, and has some sample mp3s online, which can be found here.
To me, the fake-Chopin lacks dramatic direction (through a lack of structural coherence), and the fake-Bach and fake-Beethoven are nearly-prosecutable ripoffs of Bach's F-major invention and Beethoven's Sonata Quasi Una Fantasia, well known as the Moonlight Sonata. As Nate explained (he's heard a lecture by Cope), this is largely because the program takes apart and reassembles. It goes through a set of actions that could be undertaken by any human, with the end product of a piece with lots of stylistic similarities to the model. While I think the program is incredible - it certainly writes stuff a hell of a lot better than my students - I still take issue with Hofstadter's sci-fi doomsaying (Computers will render us obsolete!), Pulitzer Prize or no, and think that the incredible in "great" music may be a bit more ineffable than he thinks. (I wanted to encourage him to take a class in Schenkerian analysis with Prof. Samarotto - a man equally as weird and and perhaps more so than Hofstadter - and see what he said then, but I was afraid of sounding too pompous. I'm glad now that I refrained...)

I've resolved recently to be a better person, in a "life of the mind" sort of sense. (Isn't that one of Kenyon's slogans? "The life of the mind?" Or maybe Grinnell's? Oberlin's?) That a while ago involved starting to read some of the classics in the world of literature, starting with some Dostoyevsky and Joyce (I loved The Brothers Karamazov especially), and now continuing with Moby Dick, which I'm finding full of wisdom:
"All our arguing with him would not avail [to convert Queequeg]; let him be, I say: and Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending."
And wit:
[The landlady, when she thinks Queequeg's committed suicide]: "'He's killed himself,' she cried. 'It's unfort'nate Stiggs done over again - there goes another counterpane - God pity his poor mother! - it will be the ruin of my house... Betty, go to Snarles the Painter, and tell him to paint me a sign, with - "no suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlor;" - might as well kill both birds at once.'"
In the meantime, I've also recently gone to a poetry reading (as mentioned before), an exhibit of modern Chinese paintings at the art museum, a talk by Australian High Justice Michael Kirby about Alfred Kinsey's continuing effect on law and jurisprudence, and a play by Harold Pinter (The Birthday Party). I'm already getting excited about plans for this week, which include a panel on recent events in Lebanon, perhaps a visit to the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, perhaps a talk on Degas' "Woman with a Bandage," events from the Bioneers Annual Satellite Conference on "Visionary and Practical Solutions for Restoring Earth and People," and maybe even more. I'm really happy that I feel like I'm making up for all the wonderful opportunities I didn't take advantage of at Kenyon. It's all very exciting.

It's gonna freeze tonight!  Ack!

What a fun afternoon! I've had wrist problems lately, leading to a fair amount of free time (two hours of practicing a day suddenly taken out of the schedule makes a difference). Unfortunately, of course, I live alone (well, with an apartmentmate, but you know what I mean), and most of my friends are busy a lot and not incredibly social creatures. So I've been stuck sitting in front of the computer far oftener than I'd usually like. I checked out Moby Dick to help, but still, these things get old after a bit. So after Advanced Schenkerian Analysis today, as I was heading home, I thought to myself, "What am I going to do at home? Work more on long-term projects? Sit in front of a computer? How about instead I do something different?" So I turned around and headed to the Lily Rare Books library which I knew had a new exhibit up. The exhibit proved less exciting than I would have liked, but I noticed something going on in the next room. It turned out to be a poetry reading, and the lady at the front of the library said I could probably go in even though it was over half over.
So I headed in and settled into a huge chair at the back. It turned out to be a lecture/reading by poet/translator Bill Smith, who I guess is 88 year old (!) though I would have guessed mid-seventies. He read from translations of poems by foreign poets, largely French and Russian but also Hungarian and others, and talked about his life, which was fascinating - there was a time when he was "the" ambassador for American culture in the USSR, and it was interesting to hear about all his travels. The poetry was also wonderful. I will admit, his speech was very slow, and he paused fairly often to remember some unimportant detail, but you can excuse a lot of that in a person of his age. At the end, someone from IU's Institute for Advanced Study, which sponsored the event, explained that people should feel free to take a book of poetry. I stuck around afterwards and asked him afterwards confidentially if he had really meant that, and he said absolutely, and I should get it autographed. I did, but not after talking to the IAS guy for a while. Our conversation was a little awkward:
"So your name's Tim. Are you in translation?"
"No, actually."
"Ah, but you're in poetry?"
"Actually, not at all."
"Well, you're into literature."
"Sure, definitely."
He invited me to join "us" at Samira, a local Afghani restaurant, as a (non-paying) guest, an offer I somewhat incredulously accepted. (I guess there's a benefit to supporting the less-popular arts - there were only about 16 people in the audience, including me, and I think he was excited to have people there.) I got on his mailing list for future lectures by famous translators and had a wonderful dinner with fascinating conversation. Most of the people there were in foreign languages or translation, so there was much talk of world events from a much savvier perspective than I'm used to, and there was tons of discussion of literature, which made me slightly ashamed to realize how little I knew about the authors these people threw around like it was normal. I also explained my "connection" (rather, lack thereof) to the party to several somewhat baffled people. As it turned out, I was the only student there - whether because others hadn't been invited or what, I don't know. I even had a heated discussion with a somewhat weird faculty member about EMI, a computer program that writes new music in the style of music you feed it. He was arguing how incredible it was, and how people can't tell the difference between EMI-Mozart and real Mozart, and I was arguing that, however incredible the program, even a lot of musicians can't tell the difference between, say, Mozart and Pleyel, and there are lots of studies of music students showing that they don't tend to notice when the order of movements in a piece is mixed around, and trying to explain what that says about how people listen and how little people know about musical convention. (Incidentally, I think this perspective is from the wonderful, incredibly concrete and detailed perspective I've gained on music and how it works: I found it fascinating to compare this with the absolutely abstract terms they were all using about poetry, and, when it came up, music. It's so interesting to me that the type of powerful framework that I take for granted isn't how most people interact with art. You can't tell Mozart from Pleyel if you just listen for "pretty sounds" or "music that works." You can, though, if you listen for structure, gesture, expectation, tension, and even less specific things like drama - all of which we theorists have such wonderful language for understanding and discussing. No, it doesn't explain everything - but in fact it enhances everything.)
Anyway, a completely unique evening, and well-spent. It's probably hard to see in my account of it here, but it really felt like a bit of an adventure - following my nose to the library museum and then to the lecture and then saying "what the heck, sure" when invited out to dinner. And I even got a book of poetry out of it! So, without further ado, Clair de Lune, by Jules LaForgue, translated by William Jay Smith:

It comes with the force of a body blow
That the Moon is a place one cannot go.

The world is yours when you advance,
Moon, through magical August silence!

When you toss, majestic mastless wreck
In seas where black cloud-breakers break!

Ah, if my desolate soul could mount
The steps to your pure baptismal fount!

O blinded planet, fatal light
For the migratory Icarian flight!

Great sterile Eye of Suicide,
The disgusted have convened, preside;

Icy skull, make mockery
Of bald, incurable bureaucracy;

O pill of absolute lethargy,
Be dissolved in our cranial cavity!

Diana with overly Doric chlamys,
Take up thy quiver, do thy damage.

With thy one dart inoculate
Wingless Love that sleepeth late!

Planet flooded with powerful spray
May one chaste antifebrile ray

Descend and bathe my sheet tonight
So I may wash my hands of life!

Some of the funnier reactions I've seen to the pirate for congress website on a forum:

Yeah, but I can't shake the feeling that he's just parroting the party line.

I hear he is not very good in political debates. In fact, at times it seems... He doesn't have a leg to stand on. I understand that he leans hard starboard in his politics. If he wins, he'll be known as Representative James Hill (Aaarrrr - Iowa).

I was under the impression he worked at Home Depot. Everytime I would place an order for decking material he would Deliver me Timbers.

At least he's not repeating the standard cannon.

Some of the funnier reactions I've seen to the pirate for congress website on a forum:

Yeah, but I can't shake the feeling that he's just parroting the party line.

I hear he is not very good in political debates. In fact, at times it seems... He doesn't have a leg to stand on. I understand that he leans hard starboard in his politics. If he wins, he'll be known as Representative James Hill (Aaarrrr - Iowa).

I was under the impression he worked at Home Depot. Everytime I would place an order for decking material he would Deliver me Timbers.

At least he's not repeating the standard cannon.

I've been doing a lot of online research before filling out my absentee ballot for Iowa, the most interesting result of which is here: James Hill, Pirate for Congress. It sounds like Democrats may be in a really good position in Iowa.

In the meantime, the trip to Savannah over the weekend was great. Sherry and I did some kayaking, recumbent bike-riding, and played some tennis, as well as watched the USTA's Men's 40s championship. Hopefully I'll post a couple of pictures soon (if Sherry gets around to sending them to me...)

I was a bit alarmed today to find a pink slip in my Assistant Instructor file. However, it turned out I wasn't actually fired: this was just the start of the kickback system tied to my new position and its responsibilities. It's similar to the kickbacks system for physicians, who I'm told not only get millions of free samples of medications but also get paid vacations, taken out to meals, etc. by pharmaceutical companies looking to sell their product. Of course, there are differences: for example, I get no medications, paid vacations, or free meals. Rather, I get (well, got anyway) free textbooks, packed with a nice fake bill which explains in friendly mostly-capital letters:
"THIS COURSE MATERIAL IS SENT TO YOU COMPLIMENTS OF YOUR LOCAL REPRESENTATIVE. Erin Lizer"
Punctuation notwithstanding, I think this means that my local representative is Erin Lizer, who was kind enough to get me free textbooks in the hope that I would be sold on them. So, like physicians, but different.

I played the Barber Sonata fourth movement (Fuga) today for the first time at full speed! That was very exciting. I never thought I'd be able to pull it off. It especially feels good after butchering the Berg Sonata in masterclass on Thursday.

Sorry, by the way, for the far-too-slowness of the second linked recording. For what it's worth, I've started really liking altavista's music search, which, though full of bad results, finds an amazing amount of free recordings of music I like. In other free music news, the Philadelphia Orchestra is being pleasantly digital and has an online music store of its own, where you can actually download their recording of Beethoven's 5th (in mp3) for free (!). I think it's a very clever idea: I suspect lots of people who would like to download that recording would also like to buy other Philly Orchestra recordings. Though on the other hand, classical music lovers do tend to like liner notes and things. (Though on the other other hand, they do have pretty good notes available for download: it's just not in an obvious location and is of course a digital file, which is less fun to read.)

In the meantime, I find it interesting to think sometimes about the different perspectives people hold on life in general. One of the readings in church this morning decried people who decide that life is short and therefore should just be enjoyed - of course, largely because this leads to "persecution of the righteous." Thinking of this compared to Ecclesiastes, another old testament text but which urges simple enjoyment of life (in an extremely fatalistic way), made me think of a story passed on by my Southeast Asian Religions teacher Vernon Schubel. It's a bit long, but here's a paraphrase:

An unhappy man sets off for another country. He gets lost in a forest, and as he gets thirsty and hungry, is charged by a mad elephant and an evil demoness. He sees a high tree, but can't climb it, so jumps into a nearby well, clinging to some reeds to keep from falling to the bottom, where he sees enraged snakes. Unfortunately, two mice, one white and one black, start chewing at the reed clump he was holding, and meanwhile the enraged elephant charges into the nearby tree several times, causing a honeycomb to fall into the well, the bees stinging the man all over. By chance, a drop of honey reaches his head, and rolls down his face to his lips. Tasting the honey, the man thinks of none of the horrible things going on around and simply longs for more honey.

Prof. Shubel said he heard this story for the first time from some "hippy Sufis" (Sufism is mystical Islam) who explained that this story showed how even in the midst of misery, the human spirit and love of beauty prevails. But it turns out the story is actually from The Story of Samaraditya, a Jain source (though the story is also told by Hindus), which attempts to prove how horrible life is. The elephant is death, the demoness old age, the tree is salvation (unattainable by sensual man), the snakes are the passions, the reeds are the man's allotted lifespan, the mice are days and nights passing, the bees are diseases, a particularly large python at the bottom of the well is hell, and the drops of honey are "trivial pleasures, terrible at the last. How can a wise man want them, in the midst of such peril and hardship?"

Every once in a while, I get the urge to get back into ballroom dancing. There is both a Ballroom Dancing club and a Swing Dancing club here at IU, but unfortunately everything's designed for beginners and/or costs money (the latter more consistently than the former). Ah well.
And now my real reason for posting: some choice words from Herr Heinrich (Schenker, of course):

"As was the case in Italy with Scarlatti, so too in Poland Chopin stands isolated - a musical genius."

(Lest there be any doubt about what nationality is truly superior.)

In case anyone's interested in what I did last summer, you can see it all here: pdid.grinnell.edu. Click the "guest login" button, and then get to the CERA Insect Collection, and you will see many extremely close-up, extremely high-resolution (13 Megapixel DSLR camera) photos of tons of insects. In addition, once you've waited (a somewhat long time) for one to load, you can go to the info on the left, click on a link, and see a Quicktime Virtual Reality 360 degree view (at a lower resolution, naturally) which you can rotate at will. On the "not recommended" list are most of the grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets, in addition to all the obvious ones. (Those bigger-bodied insects smelled really, really bad.) I also contributed to the photographs in the Physics Museum collection, but I haven't seen any of mine up yet. (For what it's worth, most of the insects aren't yet either.)
Enjoy!

Disaster!
I parked illegally, and got towed. I guess it could have been worse: it could have been the car. (Though despite the extra expense, my trip to school tomorrow at 7:30 AM would have been more pleasant.) I can't believe it: the university doesn't care enough about bikes to cover any of the bike racks, let alone have enough of them (they're always crowded and bikes are always spread around a few yards in every direction), and yet it impounded my bike for parking it on a sidewalk (which I didn't realize was illegal). From the parking enforcement website, it looks like I'll get charged a $20 fine, along with perhaps a registration fee, and that's if I can find a time to meet with an officer at some point. (The irony, of course, is that I went to this concert because I might as well "because it's free.") Really, I guess I'm more annoyed about losing my mode of transportation than the fine. Well, I guess I won't be very mobile tomorrow...

J. S. Bach. Now there was a guy who could answer his phone with a tonal or a real answer, if you know what I mean (Sign #12). I just went to a performance by a local composition faculty member of the complete Book I of Das wohltemperirte Clavier ("The Wool-Tempered Clavier," of course, correcting the usual translation of "Wohl" as "Well" - try tempering your clavier with a sheep sometime, it's quite nice). On the one hand, what an achievement: that's 48 pieces, 2 hours' worth of difficult contrapuntal music. Unfortunately, on the other hand, I think the best word for the performance was "unsteady." When he'd miss a note, he'd actually start to rush, only making things worse, and his very finger-y technique meant that even when the fingers moved correctly, they didn't always get the key all the way down to speak. (It also raised the perennial questions of "updating" Bach, with occasional doubled bass lines, pedal points, and changes of tempo, but I'll leave that aside - I'm willing to accept a fair amount of Busonization if it's done well.) Still, an enjoyable concert, and it's definitely interesting to hear the works as a whole.
Another recent concert was really spectacular, by the early music group I mentioned below titled Liber Unusualis. It was another long concert, but absolutely gorgeous. Most of the repertoire was 14th century, with a lot of De Vitry and Machaut, though there was a fair amount of early Du Fay and Anonymous.
Upcoming highlights include a concert tomorrow by virtually all of the Early Music Institute faculty, a performance of Bruckner's Symphony no. 5 (now there's a contrast) on Wednesday, and then some Schoenberg (don't worry - just Verklarte Nacht) the following Wednesday.
I guess I'm pretty lucky....

I just got out of Pro Arte, and... Bliss! I think this is finally my dream choir! It breaks my heart that I have to wait until Monday to do that again...


The piece that really did it was Purcell's Hear My Prayer, O Lord. Recordings - one rather poor, and the other okay - can be found at here and here, but to get the full effect you should really find a good recording (if you have Variations2, try here) or come to our concert on Tuesday, Oct. 24.

I guess I've really been on an early music kick lately. I really got into the Renaissance music survey over the summer, and especially the late-Renaissance English stuff. Partially inspired by that, though also partially inspired by how badly rehearsals were run in the choir I was in last year, I auditioned for the early music choir (Pro Arte) and just found out today that I got in! That's very exciting, and I can't wait to start. First, it's probably going to be the best choir (talent-wise) I'll ever be in. But more than that, the repertoire is incredible: our concert plans so far are 1. music by Henry Purcell, 2. music of Mexican and Spanish composers of the Colonial period (tends toward intensity of expression), 3. the annual big oratorio (last year was Haydn's The Seasons), performed both here and in Chicago, and 4. some other piece with orchestra. So that's very cool. And I just noticed that there's an early music group giving a master class here on Sunday, and I've been having lots of fun listening to their sample recordings on their website: http://www.liberunusualis.com/cds.html. (Try listening to the Sanctus under the "Flyleaves" CD: it's pretty wild. Also, members of my family may wish to listen to Gabriel fram heven-king, because it's basically a piece we sing at St. Paul's some Christmasses.)

AT&T really knows how to rub me the wrong way. They recently bought out SBC, which had been my internet service provider. I'd had the phenomenal discounted rate of 12.99 a month on my DSL bill (which had, I guess unsurprisingly, "crept" up throughout the year to 14.99, something I was willing to accept). I called on July to renew service and see if I could keep this rate. I got an electronic voice, which misunderstood not only my voice but also my button-pressing enough times that eventually I was forwarded to a human. (The machine was very polite, too: "I'm sorry I'm having so much trouble understanding you. My fault.")
Once I got to human #1, the procedure was as follows:
1. I confirm name, phone number, and last four digits of SSN for security reasons.
2. I explain that I want to renew service
3. I am listed the options, which include simply continuing with my promotional pricing: I ask to continue with promotional pricing
4. It is pointed out that for simply X number of dollars a month, I could get another option: I turn down several such offers
5. I am offered cell phone service: I turn it down, and they get nosy as to why
6. I am asked if human # 1 has done everything possible to make my customer experience as good as possible today.
7. I am forwarded to someone who can take my order

So I get to human #2. The procedure is familiar, with only steps 2 and 3 missing:
1. I confirm name, phone number, and last four digits of SSN for security reasons.
2. I ask to continue with promotional pricing.
3. It is pointed out that for simply X number of dollars a month, I could get another option: I turn down several such offers
4. I am offered cell phone service: I turn it down, and they get nosy as to why
5. I am asked if human # 1 has done everything possible to make my customer experience as good as possible today.
6. I am forwarded to someone who can take my order

So I get to human #3, who is very talkative and chummy. However, there is a strange sense of deja vu hovering over our conversation:
1. I confirm name, phone number, and last four digits of SSN for security reasons. (I assume because by now I've been on hold enough that maybe someone's clubbed me unconscious and has seized the phone in a desperate attempt to sign me up for unwanted services)
2. I ask to continue with promotional pricing.
3. It is pointed out that for simply X number of dollars a month, I could get another option: I turn down several such offers
4. I am offered cell phone service: I turn it down, and they get nosy as to why, and offer to pay my old cell phone bills if I switch to their provider
5. I am asked if I am sure I don't want any upgrades
6. I set up my contract and confirm the price.
7. I am asked if human # 1 has done everything possible to make my customer experience as good as possible today.

Well, an hour well spent, I thought.
Fast forward to my most recent bill, and the first on my new billing cycle. I'm charged more than what I expect. So today I called AT&T, and reach human #4 (for continuity's sake):
1. I confirm name, phone number, and last four digits off SSN for security reasons.
2. I ask about my bill. Human #4 says, "just a moment." Silence for about two minutes, punctuated with the occasional, "Just a moment."
3. It turns out that they haven't upgraded me. I was just billed for slightly over a month. However, the rate has, indeed, gone up by several dollars. Three dollars is not a big deal... unless you spent a frustrating hour of your time a few weeks ago confirming a different price. I explain what I had expected to be charged.
4. Human #4 apologizes for the inconvenience and explains that my promotional pricing had expired, and that they only had the packages (which, of course, I had been offered).
5. I explain that I confirmed the promotional pricing with three different people, and that I thought I'd set up a contract to that effect.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 several times with slightly different wording. Ending with "I'm sorry, I can only offer you the new price," and "Well, is there anyone who can offer me the old price?"
7. Human #6 gets fed up, apologizes for the inconvenience, and forwards me to her manager.

Manager:
1. Manager opens with a simple, "Hello." You may be thinking, what about security concerns? My number? SSN? But clearly, by this point I am not a valued customer in need of protection but a customer simply intent on making trouble for an innocent corporation.
2. I explain the situation.
3. Manager pulls up my record. "They offered you the 14.99 price," she explains. "I don't see any record of acceptance. It's kind of hard to give you a price if you don't accept it, now isn't it?" She sounds like she's explaining something to a dummy.
4. I explain that not only did I accept it, I accepted it three times.
5. She explains that the rate (which I confirmed three times) may not have been available to me without upgraded services, and says she'll have to check on that. She explains that she'll get back to me "by Wednesday."

I feel like I should put some sort of final, exasperated statement at the end here to summarize, but I think this sequence speaks for itself. It is absolutely ludicrous. But at least it's also humorous.

A new student today asked me if I was related to Stephen Chenette. Sometimes I forget how far back the "family business" goes! (And of course it goes further than that.)

My choral audition yesterday was surprisingly fun. First, I went into the non-voice-major room and sang for a couple of people I didn't know who looked like they were willing and ready to hate everyone who came in. I had prepared nothing to sing for them, so the accompanist was like, "So, you just wanna do something like Amazing Grace or My Country Tis of Thee? Something easy?" A few measures in - slightly less than four, I think - they stopped me and sent me over to the majors room because they were behind and supposedly they couldn't place me into the choir I wanted to get into (Pro Arte, the early music group). (I suppose they let me start singing for them because they assumed my expectations were unrealistic - surely a theory major wouldn't actually have an okay voice!)
So I went over to the majors room. To my delight, of the five choral conducting majors that were helping with the auditions, I knew four of them. I'd sung for two in my summer ensemble, one of which I'd become friends with in a class, I'd sung for one in Contemporary Vocal Ensemble (CVE) and a friend's recital, and I'd sung for the other in an extremely difficult composition recital. I also knew the department head, who'd led the summer ensemble and, because I could actually sing audibly and was male (still am, don't worry), had excused several absences for dubious reasons. Anyway, it was a really good audition. My voice was feeling very free and clear, much more than usual. (Amazing what a 10-minute warm-up will do.) The guy who I think runs the choir I want to get into was looking at me with keen interest and asking a lot of questions, which I think is a good sign.
Okay, so I guess that's all not that interesting. But it's funny what sorts of experiences turn into highlights of a day when you're around a lot of people you know and performing well.
Other recent highlights include:
Making pad thai, the shopping for ingredients for which took half a day (two trips to the tiny International Market for sauces, some nice cilantro, and Chantaboon rice noodles, one to Sahara Mart for tofu, and one to Marsh for bean sprouts, shrimp, eggs and a lime).
Buying the shrimp for the pad thai, when the slightly high-voiced and very rotund man behind the counter told me in his Southern accent about the lady who comes in every Friday and buys one shrimp for her "enemy." ("I'm not sure how she pronounced it," he explained. "It's not a fish, but it's kind of..." "An anemone?" I asked. "Yeah, one of those!")
Dressing up in slacks, a belt, and a nice shirt for the exam (for people wishing to skip the course I teach - I felt very professional) I gave the other day and, on my way out, encountering one of my students for the summer: in fact, if I'm not mistaken, the one who wrote on his evaluation, "Should wear pants more often. Less t-shirts. Hair was distracting." (Incidentally, my hair has also been cut since then.) He looked moderately amused.

Well, it was really great to be home last week, and I'm already missing it. Though of course it was fun to help Dr. Hook do sight-singing exams. (By "fun," I should mention, I mean "not fun.") I think it's tougher in some ways to be on that side of the exam than to take it. Everyone who does badly seems so vulnerable, I suppose partially because they're singing and not playing and partially because it's one-on-one. It's also a bit depressing to have people come in and say something like, "Well, I'm not making any promises - I honestly haven't done this in a long time!" As if musicians didn't read music on a daily basis...
In any case, I have absolutely no obligations for today. Highlights are likely to include reading through various pieces for long periods of time (I did this last night and really had a good time), an exciting trip to one of the two international markets down the street in search of Chinese candies, and perhaps an extremely hot game of tennis.
One more picture of our trip to Otter Creek marsh in Iowa, because this is a rare picture that actually might do a particular sunset justice:

Some highlights of being home so far:
The Iowa State Fair (My lunch was fried cheese curds and a Giant Sausage on a Stick)
Canoeing on Otter Creek Marsh (see picture below)
Going through and organizing my whole hard drive
Playing games
Butchering Haydn Symphonies in four-hand arrangement with Claire
Butchering Schubert lieder to a slightly lesser extent with various members of the family, though especially Claire
Butchering choral pieces by Josquin and other Renaissance composers with the whole family


(yes, we're standing on the canoe - you can't see the water)

Sorry - I didn't realize that previously only registered members could post on this blog. I've changed that.
Anyway, I'm home and really enjoying the relaxing that I'm able to do!

Things I learned from watching The Red Violin:
1. Music history started around 1650.
2. Music history skipped the twentieth century.
3. Music from various periods within these boundaries can be played interchangeably.
4. All such music regardless of period should be played in best Romantic style.
5. Ideally, this should be accomplished through one person pretending to play while a famous graduate of Indiana University plays the actual sound.
6. If you're truly inspired, you can have sex, compose, and play the violin simultaneously.
7. The best way to initiate said activity is to say to your loved one, "I feel a composition coming on."
8. The best way to respond to said initiation is, "I do too."
9. Communist China = very, very bad.

Another excellent weekend! I worked pretty hard last week to get as much work done as possible beforehand. Sherry got in on Friday, and we went immediately from the airport to Grandma and Grandpa Chenette's house, where we had an excellent dinner, perused the handmade harpsichord, went sailing, and finally went fishing. I caught five, one of which was huge! Sherry and Grandma each caught two. Grandpa caught none. At the end of the trip, he asked us, "Have you ever seen a grown man cry?" It was a tragic sight to see. Finally, Grandpa and I played through two duets before Sherry and I headed to Bloomington for a brief party at Sarah's house and finally some much needed rest. Here's sailing:




Saturday, we went to the Lilly Rare Books Library and checked out some just incredible exhibits on books that conjure up fantasy lands, some of the world's tinest books, game books, and finally the best puzzle collection in the world. This was my favorite activity of the weekend. After a soup lunch, we went to the IU Art Museum's Horses In Classical Art and Art of Asia and the Ancient Western World exhibits. I'd have some pictures, but Blogger is being a jerk about that. That night, we went to an excellent performance of the Mikado.
On Sunday, we played an early morning game of tennis, made bread, went to the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble concert (very striking: music of James Macmillan and Gyorgy Ligeti), made dinner, and watched some Chaplin short films.
All in all, an excellent weekend! Today I gave a presentation on English music theory c. 1600 (see below for delicious example - blogger was nice about this one picture), which went really well, and found out that I don't have to stick around on Friday to grade tests. Instead, I'll do so on Saturday and email in the results. This means that I get home earlier, which is nice! In Renaissance, our professor is ready enough to go home, and, apparently, impressed enough with our work ethic as students, that she isn't going to grade the final: rather, we get 100 points for showing up the last day and simply do a collective listening exam. Not bad...
So a good final stretch after all!

My whole family (but me) is going to be home tonight, and I'm so jealous! I talked to Nate and Claire on the phone last night, and it sounds like they've had a great time in NYC and Philadelphia (even if they did go to somewhat of a freak show...), and tomorrow they'll presumably be doing puzzles, listening to Mom and Dad's CDs, and enjoying wonderful Iowa meals. Meanwhile, I will be working harder than normal to get as much as I can done before this weekend, so I don't have to be working the whole time Sherry is here.
Now, of course, the extremely positive side is that Sherry's coming this weekend. That'll be awesome: the plan right now is that we'll be spending an evening with Grandma and Grandpa Chenette, going to The Mikado and the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, as well as the Art Museum's exhibit on Horses in Classical Art and the Lilly Rare Books Library's exhibits on books about fantasy worlds and mechanical puzzles, checking out and watching The Pinker Panther (I've never seen the original!), and sharing some of a bottle of extremely Tokaji (thanks Nate!) wine. Well, okay, that's maybe a bit much for just over 2 days, but we'll see!
And then the not so positive side is that there's still a week of class, with its concomitant finals and grading. This week, I've felt that my breaks (this weekend, sort of, and the 10 days in between the summer session and next semester when I'll be home) can't come quickly enough; I can only imagine what next week will feel like.
Ah well, it's the home stretch. I'll make it.

Well, I must say I've been having a very nice time at the Underwood/Anderson wedding. (Darn those 3-syllable last names: I've mixed them up into "Underson" at least once. I'd say one or two syllables per last name is about right.) The drive was uneventful, if long and at times (read: in going through downtown Chicago) annoying. The wedding itself was also very nice, and it's great to see some Kenyon friends again. Notably, Alaina and Mike (that is, Alaina's Mike, if you know what I mean) are here, as are Rachel and Uri, Becky and her brother Ben Pogany, Robbie Ketcham, Ginger Baran and Sean Lyons, and, most surprisingly of all, Jen Underwood. There have also been some highlights, such as when I came to the church early to practice before the wedding, and a lady was staring at me as I came in:

Lady. Oh! I thought you were Orlando Bloom.
Me. Oh! Nope, I'm just a friend of Jen's from college.
Lady. Do people tell you often that you look like him?
Me. No, not very much.
Lady. Well, you look exactly like him.
Me. Well, you know, I figured I'd drop in on my old friend Jen.

I was not only mistaken for movie stars, but also for a hired professional pianist:

Other lady (to Jen). It's nice that you had the pianist at the reception. He seems to get along with your friends well.

Anyway, a very good time so far. I'll be doing some homework and going briefly to Jen's open house today before heading back to Indiana - hopefully on emptier roads! And then I'll be looking forward even more to the next two weekends!

Ugh - what a night! I was awake for significant portions of it. I think I must have been stressed out, not only on my own account, but also about how Sherry is doing right now (though her troubles didn't show up in my dreams). I got in bed shortly before midnight, having worked on an assignment until then (unusual for me). Around 1, I suddenly inexplicably remembered that leftovers from dinner were still on the stove, and, without thinking much, staggered into the kitchen, scraped it into an old yogurt container (and the floor), and put it in the fridge. Then the sort-of-sleep-defined part of the night started, but it was largely engaged with this horrible dream that I was teaching Messiaen and Boulez (that's what I'm teaching Monday) to a class of not only my current students but several others I've taught before. Unfortunately, I had to do this in a hall slightly like Philomathesian at Kenyon, except with worse acoustics, so I had to absolutely shout to be heard at all. (To make matters worse, some Korean people outside were shouting their national anthem.) I think I'd prepared pretty badly for the class, and everything was going really slowly. Finally our class took our usual scheduled break. When I came back, it turned out that the class was being observed (and I was being evaluated) by Dr. Jan Harrington of the choral department (he's currently teaching the conductors who are conducting my ensemble). This is absolutely hilarious if you know him. Meanwhile, I had just gotten to modes of limited transposition when, thank goodness, I woke up to my alarm, extremely bleary-eyed. I never got to Boulez. I'm feeling better now, but phew - it's good to be back to reality.

I'll post more, I'm sure, when I get back from Chicago. Here's hoping for safe (and expedient, though I actually have to drive right through Chicago) travels!

If you'll excuse me a minute, I'd like to briefly complain about my Renaissance class. It's not so horrible, usually (though it has its low moments...), but today there was a student presentation. This was the first non-music theorist to present. All the other presentations have been largely structural. However, this presentation - written out in paper form! - described some guy's presentation of the self-other dichotomy and how that played out in Western history, then the Cathar movement, and then suddenly, as he ran out of time, talked briefly about Susan McClary's view of this piece. Essentially what he said was this:

0. The ideas in this presentation were largely from a guy who thinks that Christianity arose out of ideological conflicts about the self-other dichotomy in Judaism.
1. Nobody had a sense of self in the Dark Ages. When anyone did, they were considered crazy or demonic and were crushed by a Da Vinci Code-ish hegemonic "Church."
2. A sense of self began to develop during the Renaissance, and this piece, like many others, are (Da Vinci Code-ish) coded ways of expressing this idea to avoid the "Church." There's no evidence for this, but it's probably true anyway.
3. Susan McClary thinks the ionian diatessaron (he asked, "is that well-known theory talk?" to which a theorist replied, "Yeah, but, uh, we usually just say perfect fourth") that starts the piece and sets off a point of imitation at the end is a symbol for the human orgasm. There's no evidence for this, but it must be true. (It's worth noting that the text unequivocally has hidden references to sex, but these are common conventions.)
4. Arcadelt (the composer) was using this hidden references to sex to refer to religious ecstasy in a way that wouldn't get him murdered by the Da Vinci Code-ish "Church." There's no evidence for this or this kind of ideology in Arcadelt, but after all, this is the period in which this kind of thing was happening.

To be accurate, he never actually referenced the Da Vinci Code. But I had to include it in my rant anyway.

Meanwhile, I'm having a bunch of theorists over to my place for dinner tonight, so I'd better get my apartment clean so we can talk ionian diatessarons and urlinie (and the Da Vinci Code?) without distractions.

Nate really hit the nail on the head about Betty and her funeral last weekend. Check out the link to his blog on the right. To what he says, I'll just add that the look on Bill's face when he saw Nate and I had made it was worth a lot more than the plane ticket's price and hassle.

I apologize for not having any pictures of anything to post up here: not a whole lot exciting is going on around here. I have a "normal" weekend this weekend (actually, at this point, sticking around for a weekend with no plans is definitely not normal). The next weekend I play for Jen's wedding, then the weekend following Sherry visits, and finally on the 11th or 12th of August I head home. Other than all that, there's very little going one (outside the ordinary). In big projects, I'm hoping to work with someone at UPenn on a performance of a cantata by Georg Benda that I edited last year, and perhaps to get that in publishable condition. (Though unfortunately that may not be possible, depending on Prof. Sanders' usage agreement about the microfilm I used.) I also really need to get the course packet for the course I'm teaching in the fall finished and ordered, and to start looking at the curriculum. Finally, I'm really looking forward to spending some time with our Rare Books Collection's copy of Thomas Morley's 1597 Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, which I'm hoping to get some insight out of.

Betty McKibben, a wonderful friend of my whole family, passed away late last week, so I went home for the funeral on Saturday. It was a wonderful service, and it was nice to see the community again. Anyway, I'll post more later, but I'm pretty tired and busy right now.

Wow! I just came from a performance of Shostakovich's 5th Symphony by the IU Festival Orchestra. It was terrific! Shostakovich is definitely rock music for classical lovers. It was one of those occasions that makes me very proud to attend this school. I was particularly proud because I saw in the orchestra four current students (violin 2, viola, trombone, and french horn - solo!), two former students (viola and bassoon), two colleague/friends (piccolo and cello), and two classmate/acquaintances (percussion and trumpet).

For what it's worth, from last semester, here's a recording of me (and some other people...) trying to sing some music in just intonation. The composer (Eric Knechtes, friend and colleague) claims that it has some "11-limit" chords in it, and that it's "cheesy and sentimental," but anyway it's really fun to listen to. We're out of tune sometimes (I mean, out of just tune... well, and out of equal temperament too, for that matter) but parts sounds great - I especially love the bass and soprano sounds (thank you Paul Pisano and Arwen Myers - the latter an aural skills student of mine, thank you very much), and there are parts where you'd think it's more than 12 singers. Anyway, enjoy.
(Oh, and sorry it's on Myspace... not my fault!)

link

I forgot to mention! Today my Renaissance class went to the IU Lilly Library of Rare Books. It was extremely cool. They have a Gutenberg Bible on permanent display there. But the presentation by the curator was even neater: he showed us not only music manuscripts and prints (the highlight was a 2.5 foot tall choirbook with illuminations) but Andreas Vesalius' anatomy book, The Courtier (I forget the exact title and author), an original printing Book of Common Prayer, and an original King James Bible, many of which I got to touch and hold. There was also a lavishly illuminated Book of Hours which he explained probably was worth about the same, adjusting for inflation, both when it was sold and today (about $150,000). All of these were of course on sheep's skin or calf's skin parchment, paper being the "cheap" alternative (which didn't survive as consistently). Which in turn was sobering: it must have taken at least 100 animals to make that choirbook! Anyway, this was very special.
Then just now I heard a great concert. It was a nice change - most of the summer concerts are Summer Festival concerts, which I'd have to pay for, and which are fewer and farther between than during the year (which, of course, isn't saying much). But I saw this doctoral piano recital advertised and noticed that she was playing Berg's Op. 1 (Sonata), which I'm trying to work up, and decided to go. It was terrific. The Berg was excellently played (though I noticed some mistakes! But somehow I don't think too many other people picked up on them...), followed by a wonderful Beethoven Variations and Fugue, and then a really neat piece Claude Baker, who's on the faculty here, that quoted Ives and Messiaen, and finally Schumann's Symphonic Etudes. (Which reminds me, I really need to get a recording of Schumann's Symphonies.) A really fun concert.

BERRY-PICKING II: REVENGE OF THE HUCKLEBERRY
I've been quite busy lately! This past weekend I went to Indianapolis to visit Grandma and Grandpa Chenette and to relax. It was great: I did very little work. I did, however, make bread, which was well-received. We went fishing and had a dinner of freshly-caught croppie and bass (especially good!). And we went swimming:


I came home on Monday for one class, which was especially excruciating because no one wanted to be there during this otherwise 4-day-weekend. (It would have been another thing altogether if this was a particularly enjoyable class.)
On the 4th, I went berry-picking. I biked out to Griffy Lake under threatening clouds and hiked along Huckleberry Ridge - only to find not one single huckleberry within sight of the trail! You can imagine my disappointment. So I biked back into town and went on with plan B: mulberries. I checked out the trees by the music school first, which were both high and relatively dried up. So finally I came back and picked two cups' worth within one block of my apartment. As I've mentioned to several people, I'm sure there's some moral here about how far one needs to go simply to realize what one already had, but I'll leave that one to the philosophers. I am not a philosopher, but I am fortunately a chef and a baker. Thus, rather than morals, I made mulberry cobbler:

Mm. I'm off to have a bit of that and enjoy the gorgeous weather.