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