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

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

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


And here's the wonderful family:


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

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

The conference hotel in the background:


The view across the harbor:


The first monument ever erected to George Washington:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I can't believe what the next couple of weeks look like. This week might be the worst, but I'm not sure. Last weekend I had two gigs, a composition recital that I got pulled into at the last minute and my school choir's important concert; this weekend I also had two, one a church gig in Columbus (IN), the other my local choir's important concert. Next weekend I'm going to a retreat at a monastery Friday-Saturday (I think I'll need it), then the weekend after is my school choir's second important concert and possibly another composition recital, then the next weekend is the Society for Music Theory conference in Baltimore, where I'm participating in a graduate student workshop in analysis of early music, then the weekend after that is Thanksgiving! Thank goodness. In the meantime, I've got lots of work to do. The only work I'm nervous about getting done on time is for the workshop--I'm supposed to have insights by Friday. We'll see if that happens...

Earlier this year, on my visit to Southern California, Nate and I hiked up Santiago Peak. It was a nice, long trail. We had been told about the "communications towers" at the top. But we were still impressed when we got there: it looked like a Siberian missile installation you'd see in a James Bond movie:


Still, there were some really nice views into the valley and beyond:




Well, it turns out the fires in the area are very near this mountain. We're hoping they aren't going to destroy such a beautiful (and cool) place!

Just had a great concert! Pro Arte sang Bach's Missa Brevis in A major (very brevis, actually, text-wise: no credo, sanctus, or agnus; but not so brevis movement-wise) and Schütz's Deutsches Magnificat. I had a little solo in the Bach, and it went quite well. My voice cracked almost right away, but after that I was fine, and the high notes felt glorious. My first IU conductor, Carmen Tellez, came up to me afterward and said in her Venezuelan accent, "Definitely a singer now, eh?" I don't know about that, but it was definitely working today.

Ah, to be here again.

Wow. Once you're on "the list," you never get off. I just received Invitations Nos. 7 and 8 to sing in various choirs, and that's just in this semester (in addition to the two permanent choirs I'm in). Most were for choirs to sing in composition recitals, but the most recent one was to sing in a professional choir with Raymond Leppard in Indianapolis for money. But I'll have you know that I turned that down, just to attend Claire's recital! That's the kind of brother I am. In the meantime, I've signed up for far too many of the others, considering I've got classwork and teaching to attend to, and I'm trying to prepare as well as possible for the graduate workshop in early music analysis for the Society for Music Theory conference in mid-November. It's fun--but sometimes, you (that is, I) just have to say no.

Cape Air has to be the weirdest airline ever. Flights are within four distinct areas:

1. The northeast (VT, CT, RI, MA)
2. The Caribbean (Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands)
3. Florida
4. ...Indiana...?

I've felt a bit like this and this lately, but fortunately a lot less than last fall. It's just a tough class to keep interested, when many of them have failed the class at least once (and sometimes twice) before, and it's at 8 AM.

Institutions should offer degrees in Psychology of Undergraduate Students. I think it'd be a fascinating field. I've even got a case study. I cancelled class on Tuesday and said that instead I expected to meet with all of my students one-on-one, and that I'd still take attendance. So thinking rationally, wouldn't you rather meet with a teacher one-on-one--for a shorter and at a later time--than in a class of 15 at 8 AM? But students have their own psychology: if we have class, they feel like they are required to be there; if class is "cancelled," meetings (even though the consequences of not attending are the same) are clearly optional.

Yesterday I made a fancy meal:

Appetizer: Baked brie in individual puff pastries

Main course: Roasted asparagus, Beef in a balsamic vinegar reduction with carmelized onions

Dessert: Chocolate oblivion with strawberries

I really think I need to set up a restaurant, not go into music theory...

I realized I never posted any pictures of the caving expedition Sara and I went on several weeks ago through IU Outdoor Adventures.

Our somewhat unprofessional guides suggested at the beginning that it might actually be illegal to go into this cave, and though they quickly took it back, it inspired several people to drop out from the trip. We ended up going with only one other person from IU, though several other people met us at the cave, and then yet more met us in the cave. Anyway, the entrance to the cave didn't enhance the impression of the legality of what we were doing:



Even though the entrance was a torn-open drainage grate, the cave was pretty cool. We were walking (and sometimes crawling or slithering) through (and sometimes deep within) water for most of the trip:



As well as narrow passages between cool walls (and, apparently, making bizarre facial expressions):



And climbing under or over little bridges:



Here is the skinniest, scariest part of the cave. That tiny tunnel was maybe ten feet long, and there was the space of about a foot where there was even a ledge coming down from above. Slithering along in shallow water, getting very wet, coming upon that one really skinny part, was pretty scary: it really didn't look like we'd fit through! Fortunately, we all did, and made it out this small opening into a larger room:



It was a really fun trip. And though it never felt that dangerous (just a little claustrophobic sometimes...), if we had gotten in trouble at some point, it turns out we would have been fine, because there was a church nearby with a bus apparently bound to a rather attractive destination:

I really shouldn't be surprised, but boy, do chocolate chips and heavy whipping cream taste good boiled together.

In the meantime, it occurred to me yesterday that a thousand years ago, Guido of Arezzo was alive. It also occurred to me that in 2033, it'll be the thousandth anniversary of his death. (Okay, the date after which we're sure he died.) I mentioned this to Sara, and she seemed unimpressed:

Sara: Where will you be?
Tim: At one of the celebrations, I imagine.
S: Like I said, where will you be?
T: Well, I'm sure I'll have to choose one of the many.
S: Uh huh.

Still unimpressed, I guess. But seriously, without Guido, The Sound of Music wouldn't have been possible. (One of my colleagues has suggested an alteration to the famous song to more directly draw on Guido: "Ut, the sound a French owl makes; re, a drop of golden sun;" etc.) He was the founder of modern Aural Skills, and that solfege system that everyone knows today is amazingly similar to his, considering it's had 1,000 years to develop. And seriously, staff notation? That was pretty brilliant, and revolutionary.

In 2033, I'll be holding a celebration no matter what anyone else thinks. There'll be read-throughs of "Ut queant laxis," giant hands on sale, and even maybe an imaginative reenactment of whatever it was he did that made the other monks so mad at him. So who's going to celebrate with me?

When we were in Aspen, Mom asked me if IU was like that: lots of conservative music programming to satisfy the (generally) older, rich people who seemed to be in control of everything. I told her no, or just a little bit, but I think I'm revising my opinion. Certainly the New Music Ensemble is much more visible here, as is the Early Music Institute, but that's partially a product of our size. I was at a concert last night of the IU Philharmonic Orchestra (holy cow are they good), headlined by two of our "big names" (Sylvia McNair and Leonard Slatkin) doing pretty conservative music (some light piece by an unknown French guy, Elgar, and Barber), and the "upcoming orchestral events" revealed a lot of not-so-adventurous names: Berlioz, Vaughan-Williams, Berlioz again, Dukas, Verdi, Sibelius, Beethoven, Grieg, Rossini, Brahms, Wagner, Schubert, more Verdi and Beethoven, more Sibeluis, Smetana, Dvorak. I've skipped a few names, to be fair: Joan Tower is on there, as are Shostakovich and Stravinsky, and a few names I don't know (who I assume are living composers). However, all of the pieces by these people (who themselves are not exactly avant-garde) are pretty short or "accepted" pieces: Tower's Silver Ladders, Stravinsky's Fireworks, Shostakovich's Festival Overture, etc. Even Mahler would be welcome to me (though they did a lot of his symphonies over the summer), but I'd love to see some Bartok, Schoenberg, more Stravinsky or more Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Berg, Adams, I don't know, anybody... To top it off, Sara and I were sitting right in front of about 20 seats reserved for "guests of [IU] President McRobbie" as well as guests of Music School Dean Richards and whoever the Provost is. These guests were a bunch of elderly, rich people. As you might expect, nobody else gets reserved seats.

On the plus side, Pro Arte's listed on there with some Bach. Our concerts are Oct. 21, where I'll sing the tenor solo in the Bach Mass in A major, BWV 234 (it's a very short solo, don't worry) and Dec. 2, when we'll sing Bach's Cantata 10 and a Magnificat for Baroque orchestra and choir by IU composer and all-around extremely strange man Sven-David Sandstrom. (He looks exactly like that picture.)

I'm pretty sure this is my favorite blog, and posts like this one as well as incredible analyses are the main reasons.

It's a beautiful weekend! Just what I needed after a stressful week. Kyle, Sara, Sara's friend Adriana, and I went out on a hike in Brown County State Park yesterday, and it was gorgeous. I really like the cool weather, even when it's too cold: at least for now, the cold is made bearable (and even refreshing) by the knowledge that later in the day it's going to get warm again.

Crazy story--this morning in church, I got there late and sat in a side pew: someone else got there even later and moved in with me. At a lull in the service he leaned over and said:
"You have a really nice voice. Are you a music major?"
"Thanks! Yes."
"We need to talk."
After the service and the postlude he introduced himself as Vance George, the Emmy and Grammy winning former conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. (I couldn't quite hear, so I asked, "Vince?" "Vance--past tense.") Pretty cool! He went up to see who had built the church's organ and I left, but then when he saw me sitting outside with the student group after the service, he come over and invited me to his presentation for a conducting class tomorrow. I'm definitely planning to go.

Slight disaster recently--somehow I got to talking to Sara about the Beatles (or, really, more blathering/rambling on and on--as I tend to do when talking about something I like). I decided my favorite album was Abbey Road. So when I got home I wanted to listen to it. To my horror, my CD case was empty! I searched for it on my computer to burn a new copy, but it wasn't there either! It didn't occur to me at the moment, but once when I was visiting Sara I thought to check our university's streaming audio system. It was there! But in the middle of the third track, it started breaking up, and nothing I could do could fix it. So I tried on my own computer when I got home, and the system denied me access! Turns out there's a four-hour period each week when they do maintenance to it, and that just happened to be that period. Clearly, I am not meant to listen to this album ever again. But in defiance of all odds, I am finally listening happily to Polythene Pam....

Finally, Nate, you're right that our respective Nerd Scores clear up who's the superior brother. I invite you to simply look at the statistic at the bottom of the chart. In the meantime, I'm waiting for Claire to take the test and, even more intriguing, Mom and Dad...

I originally had a post here about how frustrated I was about certain courses I'm taking. Upon rereading it, it was a bit harsh and sounded more frustrated than I really was (which was enough anyway). Anyway, suffice it to say that it's frustrating when professors seem to need to take your pedagogy courses more than you do. (Or, for that matter, when they pretend they're more expert in their field than they really are.)