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

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

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

----

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

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

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

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

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


------


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

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

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

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

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

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

Look at him there, all smug:



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

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

Awesome pictures of my choir, Pro Arte

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

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



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



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

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



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

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

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

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

Fathers out there should feel free to respond.

I guess I'm a glutton for punishment--four different concerts this week (singing on two composition recitals and in the Voces Novae concert, and playing in my piano studio Liszt concert), and then I just set up 12 appointments with students between today and the test next Tuesday. So, maybe no more bloggings this weekend.

One project done: I'm about to turn in my take-home test for Teaching of Music Theory. Now to focus on the other, much less practical current big project: a paper on possible functional thinking applied to solmization in the 14th century.

My baggage finally made it, about 9:30 last night. Just one more funny story from the trip. I was staying in Pittsburgh with my college roommate and good friend Andy, and he was extremely generous to drive me around everywhere I needed to go even if it meant he had to sit around and read while I was doing stuff. So anyway, after attending the rehearsal on Saturday (and running up and down the nearby Cathedral of Learning and writing graffiti on the blackboards on floor 23) he drove me to the director's house for dinner, where the misunderstanding took place as we were being introduced by the director's wife to some of the musicians:

Director's wife. This is Tim, who made the edition of the Benda cantata. And this is his partner, Andy.
Tim. ...in crime!

Andy thought I handled the situation well, but it was awkward for at least a moment. I made sure to call him "honey" a few times over the weekend though.

Finally, my break was nice, but boy am I jealous of Nate.

Rachmaninoff had big hands.

I just got home from a rather eventful flight! I know this happens to people sometimes, but man, it's frustrating! I'll try to keep myself from belaboring too many points here:

Act 1: Pittsburgh
After the concert, Andy got me to the airport almost 2 hours early for my flight, and I had no problem getting through check-in and security. They didn't bother to tell me at that point, but it turned out my flight was delayed. It was coming from New York, so it made sense, with all the weather problems. The people at the desk kept me on the same connection from Cincinnati (my layover) since there was a chance it would be delayed too, but booked me also on a flight the next day. I asked if I could get my luggage in Cincinnati to work on my handouts for class on Monday, and they said yes, no problem, just ask there.

Act 2: Cincinnati
I got to Cincinnati about 2 hours late, and about 1.5 hours late for my flight to Indianapolis. The people at the desk told me that I was actually only on standby for the flight the next morning, and it was completely booked, though I should try anyway. They also told me I couldn't get my luggage because that would be "too hard." However, they gave me a free t-shirt, and put me up in a hotel. Also, apparently not realizing that I had already gotten a meal voucher, they gave me another. Since I'd already eaten, I used the voucher to grab a couple of beers at the hotel restaurant. (It was going to be just one, but the waitress convinced me: "You sure? Your voucher's for seven dollars." "Yes, I'm just heading to bed." "Well, I can get the maid to bring one to your room." "Well, okay.")
Beer and exhaustion put me pretty well out until 6 AM, when I rushed out to the airport to find an unfriendly attendant telling me that my chances of getting on the flight weren't exactly "looking wonderful, just so you know." I had a rather disgusting breakfast (McDonalds would have been better), and then waited. The flight was delayed of course, and finally about an hour after it was supposed to leave and after everyone had boarded, the unfriendly attendant came up to me with a ticket. I got hopeful for a moment, but she just said, "I booked you on the next one. Because you're not getting on this one."
Okay, this act is long enough, so I'll just say the flight was delayed, and then delayed, and then also delayed, for scheduling and then mechanical reasons ("the flight in was bumpy and the bathroom water spilled all over the floor"). The 10:48 flight ended up leaving around 1.

Finale: Indianapolis
My bag didn't show up, apparently because although there had been plenty of time for it to get on one of those flights I was supposed to be on, they weren't entered into the computer.

Well, on the plus side, it's a good story! I'm tired, but I'll get back into the swing of things no problem in the next few days I'm sure. It was unfortunate, still, that I had to miss teaching in Pedagogy class and my choir's recording session.

I had thought Iowa was going to be a fair bit cooler than Southern Indiana. It's probably true, but I certainly didn't mind so much today when I looked at the thermometer and it read 63. I went on a really nice long walk and took off my sweater within minutes.
I'm increasingly struck by Grinnell every time I return. Most of my friends complain about how tiny Bloomington is, but then they've never been to small-town Iowa. I was walking for close to an hour in the early afternoon, and I could almost count on two hands the number of moving vehicles I passed, which made it wonderfully quiet. I really enjoy that, though not so much that I miss it when I'm in Bloomington.
I do miss the look of Iowa sometimes, though. Southern Indiana is beautiful, there's no question, but somehow Iowa's beauty seems more profound. Maybe it's the flatness and thus the sense of largeness: you can see why it was once considered an ocean of grass, in which one might drown. I think it also has to do with the population density and the level of build-up along the roads. I can't think of anything in Iowa analogous to SR 37, leading from Bloomington to Indianapolis, with its packed traffic, ugly intersections (admittedly interspersed with some pretty woods), and progressive build-up. Things just feel more spread-out here, more self-sufficient.
It's a particularly striking landscape now, with snow left in all the shadows, and with the results of the recent "[ice] storm of the century" (to quote Alliant Energy) still all around. Some of the blocks that have been less attended to by clean-up crews have mid-sized hedges of stacked fallen branches lining the length of the road, and the evergreens lining the back of our yard are bent over and pointing every which-way.
I wish I could post pictures, but I left my camera in Bloomington, and mom and dad's is in the shop. Oh well.

I'm remembering, as I often do, that blogs are not a good place for subtle thinking--the kind of extemporaneous writing they facilitate doesn't lend itself to subtlety and I realize my earlier post about the place of religion is no exception. Ah well. Interestingly enough, that doesn't mean it can't work, and I've really enjoyed reading some of the posts linked to here today.

I actually took a nap today. It was surprising--I almost always have such trouble getting to sleep, and I probably haven't really napped in years. But somewhere in the middle of "Chromatic Alteration and Extrahexachordal Intervals in Fourteenth Century Polyphonic Repertoires" my eyes started glazing over, so I put the book aside and fell asleep on the couch. I only slept 20 minutes, but I'll have to be careful--it's a slippery slope, and if I don't watch it, I may end up like Claire or, worse, Maple!

Finally, a preview of the image I prepared for Thursday to convince my classes (especially the 10:10 one) to sit in the first couple of rows, something I do to facilitate a positive atmosphere in class:

A student asked me today if I was her ear training teacher. I was ashamed that I was unable to answer either way, though less ashamed considering she had to ask. (Turns out the answer is yes.)

On the plus side, I've gotten a lot of compliments on my appearance today, largely due to my awesome blue shirt, a birthday present from some awesome parents.

I've been thinking some recently about the role of religion in our society and our lives. It's interesting to just observe what goes on at a church service. If I takes the perspective that religion is an entirely human-made phenomenon, I can see why it could seem creepy: the ritual, the "blood," the communal speech, and the kneeling all smack of the spooky cults one sees on television and in movies (or even stories for that matter--the Da Vinci Kod?). But there's a beauty in it too, even if we've made it all up. Ritual has a bad rap in our society, but the conception of a higher meaning is wonderful, as is the idea that one's duty is not to one's self, but to others.

Still, it's clear that many--perhaps most--of the people I know in the academic world view Western religion as a somewhat toxic phenomenon. The simple word "church" has a negative connotation, and any advertisement or attempt at evangelism is derided and viewed with utter suspicion. Now, I don't know what my opinion on the whole evangelism thing is, and I tend to think that people in other religious faiths probably have about as much Truth as I do in mine, but I don't see why conversion would seem like an automatically bad thing. (The use of force is of course entirely different.) I'd never go so far as many and say that Christians are persecuted in our society, or that evil "secularists" are trying to undermine our morals: I think that's ridiculous. But the view of religion as a poisonous influence seems just as dangerous.

I really think the worst problem is lack of education. I think most people don't even know the Moslem concept of "People of the Book" (wikipedia it if you don't know)--so many people think of Moslems and Christians as natural mortal enemies. This concept, though, puts the divisions between sects of Christianity into perspective, at least for me! If we are in important ways similar to our Moslem neighbors (though there are complications in this line of thinking), how can we seriously tell each other we're so different? And I think many people don't approach the texts of religion as texts, but as preconceptions. In reading the Bible, the history of Western religion seemed utterly fantastic to me (fantastic in the sense of "strange"). A way of living and understanding the world for a single homogenous society turned into a powerful kingdom, then was scattered, and defined itself in opposition to the ruling culture. Then Jesus preached a way of living within that culture. A number of his disciples thought he would return right away, and started religious communities that lived as if the end of the world were indeed right around the corner--and then had to deal with reality, and how they could continue to survive, administratively, dogmatically, and intellectually. Now we mash all that together and think we can define it in any simple way??

I apologize that this post is so rambling, but there's so much that's interesting to me here. Our lack of experience with other religious cultures and lack of religious education, stereotyping the "other," the strange history of Western ideas of religion, the compelling nature of religion. And then, the exoticism of the unknown "other"--it's funny to see how compelling Buddhism and Hinduism were in the West when they were first seen as viable religions and even today, as well as to see the initial successes of missionaries in China (though not so much more recently, obviously) and Japan, but then to see how disfigured these new manifestations of these religions are from their origins. And, then, to think about how different the Christianity of today is--predominating in the Americas, Africa, and to some extent in Europe--from its first communities in modern-day Syria, Israel, and Egypt. There are fascinating parallels to Buddhism, which must have undergone massive transformation from its origins in India (where it is a very distinct minority religion today) to China and Japan and other Eastern Asian countries.

Okay, that's enough seemingly random, unconnected thoughts for today. They sounded more coherent in my head, but I think they're interesting enough issues that I'm leaving them for now. They're so important--we avoid religious discussion today to the extent that simply calling one's self a "Christian" or posting a passage from the Bible (as I did!) in one's blog can feel distinctly uncomfortable, even though, if done sensitively, it should harm no-one.

I was listening to WFIU this morning, and they were reporting on local news. The story was about IU's moves toward starting a program in Public Health, and one of the benefits was apparently the possibility of collaborations with Purdue. My favorite quote:

"Collaborations with Purdue University would be particularly beneficial in studying the connections between the effects of disease on humans and animals."

I felt kind of depressed after the first test I gave this semester - nobody seemed all that happy about it and it was just a downer in general. So when I gave the Unit 2 test this morning I tried to be helpful - at least to people who pay attention in class - by playing possible resolutions of sonorities, an occasional extra hearing, and reminding them of common patterns. But the best part was when I got to play real music. This was for the meter identification exercise, so I had a lot of flexibility with what I could play. I ended up playing Robot Parade by They Might Be Giants first, which I think was appreciated by the students. The lyrics are as follows, in a bizarre electronic voice:

In a future time
Children will work together
To build a giant cyborg

Robot Parade
Robot Parade
Wave the flags that the robots made
Robot Parade
Robot Parade
Robots obey what the children say

There's electric cars
There's electric trains
Here comes a robot with electric brains

Robot Parade
Robot Parade
Wave the flags that the robots made
Robot Parade
Robot Parade
Robots obey what the children say

The minute the voice started singing, the whole class (especially at 10) burst out into laughter. The second example was Subterranean Homesick Alien by Radiohead (I guess I was really into sci-fi stuff last night when I picked these) - a perfect example of a rare "pop/rock" song in compound meter (though I have yet to find one in triple meter). Finally, I ended with CPE Bach's gorgeous motet "Bitten." I've already had two students send me emails wanting to know what the music was - one had been so excited by the CPE Bach that he'd gone online and ordered it already! Anyway, those moments are always really great.

On a completely different note, in keeping with the spirit of Lent, it's amazing where a contrite heart will get you. The second class's test technically ended at 11, but, as usual, a couple of people stayed about 10 minutes past that time. At 11:10, a performer burst into the hall and stated angrily, "I have this hall at 11!" (To be fair, someone had mentioned she was waiting, but in dealing with student questions, I had forgotten.) I was immediately apologetic, and she seemed somewhat placated - I told the students to finish up because we needed to get out of the hall, and went back and humbly apologized again. the performer, somewhat embarrassed, said, "oh. It's okay, it's only like 11:10."

Now if my students who don't follow course policies, miss their exams and hearings, and forget their homework, could only muster up a little of that contrite spirit, they might actually get somewhere...

Amazon.com's "recommendations," supposedly tailored to your tastes, make for a lot of amusement. For example, I was searching on there today, and got the following under "Get yourself a little something" and next to an advertisement for "Casino Royale":



I was searching for something else later, and got similar recommendations, mixed in with a CD by The Shins (thanks, obviously, to my purchase of the new Decembrists' album for Claire at Christmas)

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.