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.