tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99095862024-03-14T00:11:47.214-05:00Musically Miscellaneous MayhemMusicological Musings with a smattering of MiscellaneaRebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.comBlogger142125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-88266163129717305382022-10-01T20:12:00.000-05:002022-10-01T20:12:53.050-05:00The Thirty Day Facebook Fast<p> It has been a looooooooong while, but I figured this was as good a place as any to record my thoughts. Last month (September), I decided to take the advice of <a href="https://www.calnewport.com/books/deep-work/" target="_blank">Cal Newport</a> and do a 30-day Facebook fast. I have my own struggles with his book <i>Deep Work</i> as I narrated <a href="https://readingrantsandraves.blogspot.com/2022/07/2022-11-deep-work-newport.html">here</a>, but I thought it would be interesting to not only leave Facebook for a month, but to be intentional about tracking my experience in doing so. On Newport's recommendation, I didn't announce I was taking a hiatus, but I did write to a select few who might a) actually notice I was gone and b) who might be alarmed if I didn't note their birthdays or other important occasions/posts with a Facebook response. </p><p>The responses I received to that email were the first part of my lesson. I was rewarded with actual responses of support and a desire to know how it went (so, this post is for all y'all!). So, I've decided to do a little run down of my most cogent observations and how the experience changed as the month went on, as well as the startling experience of today, my first day back.</p><p>I did have one "cheat" day---I posted and looked on a local forum when my entire neighborhood smelled of smoke. Turned out there was a subway car (thankfully in a yard) on fire. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjwJjB68TY77gU0bV7qfBAk6CfPdsQqnISHINpBSXrkSNdZiNXesoD8qFrI6KJoKd-6VDrkiKtBPr-XZQvp-Bd2ZXnWcZLI2nYmyWprB06bhUBB-uZV9sdsd5eACxrDXDlq5HyAh9Etzm6H8_oG1O7VFES-JArMEi-5gMrCzmRtjWeNEUovLJA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="985" data-original-width="1152" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjwJjB68TY77gU0bV7qfBAk6CfPdsQqnISHINpBSXrkSNdZiNXesoD8qFrI6KJoKd-6VDrkiKtBPr-XZQvp-Bd2ZXnWcZLI2nYmyWprB06bhUBB-uZV9sdsd5eACxrDXDlq5HyAh9Etzm6H8_oG1O7VFES-JArMEi-5gMrCzmRtjWeNEUovLJA" width="281" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Day 1 (don't worry---I won't record all thirty days) insights</span></b></p><p>PROS:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>spousal narration of what's on Facebook more interesting when I haven't already seen it</li><li>less inclined to check other social media in general (transferred guilt), although I did check Instagram</li><li>much more conscious of my need to vent! Even though I've thwarted my venting on Facebook, it is often after I delete what I've written. This is forcing me to figure out other (healthier?) routes.</li><li>FOUND TIME. Amazing how many 2-5 minute work tasks you can find when Facebook isn't the go to. It wasn't so much about the time, but the consciousness of those five minutes here and there. They took on greater value.</li><li>Feeling WAY less burdened by EVERYONE's hot take on EVERYTHING.</li><li>Increased mindfulness in general</li></ul>CONS<p></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Slight FOMO, but not missing hot takes, sanctimony, or rants</li><li>Felt a little...lonely. That's worth looking into.</li><li>THREE times on the first day, I MINDLESSLY clicked on a different app on my phone because the icon is where the Facebook icon was. That was a bit unsettling, although I consider it a PRO that I noticed it at all!</li></ul><div><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Over the next 30 days my biggest takeaways:</span></b></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Not being able to vent on Facebook necessitated other ways of processing (or processing in general, which is not the same as venting). That's probably a big win from this experiment.</li></ul><br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>I took note of when I felt the urge to share. Much of the time it was the minutiae that seems insignificant for an actual conversation (did you notice the MFA changed it's logo?). I found that most of the time I wanted to post, it was humorous or lighthearted. I gave up on using Facebook as a platform for meaningful discussion awhile back. My focus on activism has been more solitary or directed through my work with <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ETUDEatBerklee" target="_blank">ETUDE</a> or <a href="https://communitycooks.org/" target="_blank">Community Cooks</a>. </li></ul><div><br /></div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li> I caught myself on the Instagram reel vortex, as I like to call it. I had already decided Instagram was still allowed, partially because I use it for ETUDE, but I was only supposed to check it occasionally and post less frequently. I hopped on Foursquare, so clearly I had some sort of craving for some kind of social media engagement...but what? Just procrastination? Was it connected to anxiety about the semester starting?</li></ul><div>From my Evernote journal about this experiment:</div></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj2CKaEKnmNVpKdMwvw0Upr1CYg4v6uCbD4TdUZlNnleS-QB9NpN3GX6sByxWGGlBNCS74eBQXUvAYIn3Dzg6yy_0fPM3B6_aVTTuaueyAqKh2wLOpOUUv3aOKilRWtwZCP7gJgI3FOyRH6YcM1-WzNtXbQMgjy_wNmAtA5yOYVnphWUaMkWhs" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="314" data-original-width="1138" height="88" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj2CKaEKnmNVpKdMwvw0Upr1CYg4v6uCbD4TdUZlNnleS-QB9NpN3GX6sByxWGGlBNCS74eBQXUvAYIn3Dzg6yy_0fPM3B6_aVTTuaueyAqKh2wLOpOUUv3aOKilRWtwZCP7gJgI3FOyRH6YcM1-WzNtXbQMgjy_wNmAtA5yOYVnphWUaMkWhs" width="320" /></a></div><br />If you know me well, you know I loathe the phone. That hasn't changed, but not being on Facebook made me a tad more conscious about events/celebrations on my radar screen without the assistance of Facebook, so I called two dear friends whose wedding I officiated many moons ago. It was a surprise to all of us that my voice was on the line, I think.</div><div><br /></div><div>On the busiest weeks, it actually came to feel like a RELIEF not to be on Facebook. I also found myself more grateful for the friends who knew of my fast and who sent me the occasional cute picture or meme via text. I was grateful that these friends wrote to me and communicated outside of Facebook. That solidified what I already suspected about the people I hold closest to me in my life. Facebook or no, they are there.</div><div><br /></div><div>But it was today, October 1, when I broke my fast, that I had the most jarring experience. I was on FB for the first time, and my home church's page popped up with an alert that they were going live. Now, I have occasionally watched the services on Sundays, but the time difference with California makes it a bit difficult because it breaks up my day. But I was surprised to see a notification about it on a Saturday.</div><div><br /></div><div>It turns out it was a streamed memorial service for someone who meant a lot to me. Someone who died on September 2. Two days in to my "fast." This was how I found out she died. I wept and shared the news with my spouse who had also not been on FB for quite some time. We both watched the service. This was a woman who had met me when I was 18. This was a woman who was at my wedding. And as I watched I felt grateful for whatever coincidence or grace made it happen that I should be able to see the service on FB. It was healing in its own way.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>So...what now?</b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div>Even at the start of this experience there was a part of me that felt selfish. Like I was abandoning people. And I suppose I'm slightly resentful that in truth, I was. I didn't have expectations that people should reach out to me otherwise (although some did), but there were things that happened that I only could have known through Facebook and that's the part I don't like. But that's too difficult to fix. It's a reality of how social media works.</div><div><br /></div><div>But I also know that I can change my relationship to social media. My current plan is to check in once a week (I haven't decided what day yet). I don't need to share every thought and frustration. I need to think about reinvesting in things like cards and phone calls. That won't be easy (especially the phone calls), but I'll work on it. I'm pleased that a month away afforded me the time to really reflect on my relationship to social media (and I think that's essential...it wasn't just about "not doing Facebook" for a month). I can't promise I won't miss things. I may be less timely in responding. But the me who responds is someone who is probably healthier than I was before--a bit more measured and balanced. I value most of the connections I have there and I am fine with that (sorry, Mr. Newport). In the long run, I think a more intentional and mindful use of Facebook will be beneficial for me, as well as the people with whom I interact. </div><div><br /></div><div>If you feel a bit sucked into Facebook, I recommend trying this experiment. The important element is to keep a journal or some other method of recording how you FEEL. You may surprised by what you learn. </div><div><br /></div><p></p>Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-84194177174142497072020-07-06T19:36:00.001-05:002020-07-06T19:38:33.468-05:00Review: Tutoring Second Language Writers (eds. Bruce/Rafoth)<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25759573-tutoring-second-language-writers" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Tutoring Second Language Writers" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1562465846l/25759573._SX98_.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25759573-tutoring-second-language-writers">Tutoring Second Language Writers</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/295337.Shanti_Bruce">Shanti Bruce</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2041102638">4 of 5 stars</a><br />
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This anthology, edited by the same team as <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6996007.ESL_Writers_A_Guide_for_Writing_Center_Tutors" rel="nofollow" title="ESL Writers A Guide for Writing Center Tutors by Ben Rafoth">ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors</a> is an excellent collection of essays--all of which have use for anyone who teaches L2 learners. There is a strong leaning toward incorporation of diversity, equity, and inclusion principles in various essays that consider the complexity of "competency", multiple frameworks, and "accommodationist" principles (Carol Severino, 2006). Some of the offerings are short, but potent, such as Jose L. Reyes Medina's "Some Things I Did to Help Myself Learn to Write." Others, like Rebecca Babcock's "Examining Practice: Designing a Research Study" and case studies in Puerto Rico, as well as working with specific identities (such as Jocelyn Amevuvor's "Building A Cultural Bridge Between Ghana and the United States in the Writing Center") have more striking relevance in the writing center context. Those who are new to the concept of multi-faceted identity and how that informs a student's experience will appreciate Ben Rafoth's "Second Language Writers, Writing Centers, and Reflection," which, taking its cue from Harris and Silva (1993), recognizes the "diversity of concerns" of the L2 student. Likewise, Michelle Cox outlines the different facets of identity: those which we are born with, those we inherit, those we create, and those constructed for us as key to understanding how to address the multiple challenges of teaching a non-monolithic group of students who are nevertheless categorized as "ESL" (see her essay "Identity Construction, Second Language Writers, and the Writing Center."<br />
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As a teacher, the set of the essays that make up the fourth part ("Academic Expectations") was most useful. Valerie Balester reinforces the idea that understanding multiple identities is key to providing an equitable and inclusive experience for L2 students: "In truth, no single approach works, and applying a single approach to all L2 writers/speakers regardless of their needs, desires, or learning preferences, simply because we assume learning English grammar means learning English rhetoric, would constitute Othering." (200-- See Balester, "Tutoring Against Othering: Reading and Writing Critically"). Beyond philosophical considerations, Balester also provides helpful and concrete ways to use meaning to discuss local (lower-order) concerns in a student's writing. While Jennifer Craig's essay "Unfamiliar Territory: Tutors Working with Second Language Writers on Disciplinary Writing" addresses working with students outside one's own discipline, it is very helpful in understanding the challenges of building a general language proficiency and a disciplinary lexicon at the same time--not to mention writing conventions, tone, and style. Primyupa W. Praphan and Guiboke Seong's "Helping Second Language Writers Become Self-Editors" reconsiders "error correction" and its role in the tutoring experience. The authors also help clarify distinctions such as pragmatic errors vs. grammatical errors and recommend a set of strategies for before, during, and after a tutoring session. These principles are easily applied (and should be) to anyone who is assessing/reading L2 learners' writing. This last essay is particularly important as there are several alarming examples (throughout the book) of instructor/professor commentary on student papers that is ego-maniacal, counter-productive, and glaringly unhelpful in its Othering or complete cultural incompetency. In the context of the book the authors see the Writing Center as a place that mitigates this ignorance/bias on the part of the instructors, but teachers would do well to curb these practices at the outset.<br />
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Cross-posted at <a href="https://readingrantsandraves.blogspot.com/2020/07/2020-8-tutoring-second-language-writers.html" target="_blank">Rebecca's Reading Rants and Raves</a><br />
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Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-85268102097290709342019-05-03T09:04:00.000-05:002019-05-03T09:04:37.279-05:00Pepita the Fox (in memoriam Alejandro Enrique Planchart, 1935 - 2019)<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Last Saturday, I was in Maryland celebrating my grandfather’s
90<sup>th</sup> birthday, while Alejandro, my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doktorvater</i>, was on the other side of the country lying in a
hospital bed. It was one of those days where you become hyperaware of LIFE and
how it seems to be in charge, despite our best efforts and possibly, our worst
ills. The party for my grandfather had dwindled down, and it was dusk, which is
often a wonderful time to see deer, so I stepped outside and took a short walk
in the retirement community. I had only gone about 100 feet or so, and I saw
this.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xSXbre9xXHY/XMxH2xpj4zI/AAAAAAAAC7s/6cU3ULB6MgkdTJoBRAxcz0t4TYcG_w51wCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_9364.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xSXbre9xXHY/XMxH2xpj4zI/AAAAAAAAC7s/6cU3ULB6MgkdTJoBRAxcz0t4TYcG_w51wCLcBGAs/s320/IMG_9364.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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A fox.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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I’ve never seen a fox before (in the “wild”), and while I
was very excited to check something off on my “wildlife sighting” bucket list,
something also tugged at my heart.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Pepita.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Alejandro had many, many stories, and while it should be
hard to pick a favorite, for me, it is not. I must have heard the story of
Pepita the fox at least fifty or sixty times. Pepita was, as many people know,
a fox that came to Alejandro’s mother in need of help, and she looked after it.
Alejandro counted it among two pets that he had in his life. What I loved about
this story is that it wasn’t just about Pepita—it was about Alejandro’s mother.
It was about a little boy learning that his mother was giving and loving. But
the best part of the story was when Alejandro would relate how Pepita used to
curl up, wrapping her luxurious tail around herself so that all you could see
would be her eyes. To explain this, he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">always</i>
demonstrated, raising his forearm in front of his face, fluttering his eyes,
masking some of his face, but not his smile. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I remember my very first day of my very first graduate
seminar. I was the only musicology student admitted that year, so I was the “newbie.”
It was Alejandro’s seminar on motets (largely centered upon origins of and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>relationships to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flos filius eius</i>—the “flower children” as Alejandro referred to it).
I sat there feeling rather overwhelmed and entirely out of my league. And then
this.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Eh….Rebecca…..You speak Latin. Translate this for us.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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He pushed some source across the seminar table at me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I panicked. I spoke Latin? That was the first I had heard of
it. My friend Ben came to the rescue:<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Oh, Alejandro! She doesn’t speak Latin!!”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Alejandro kept looking at me. “Try,” he said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Try to read it.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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So, I did. I sat there at the mercy/patience of my
colleagues, as I worked my way through the passage, counting on every
etymological skill I had ever possessed. I don’t think it would be fair to call
it a “translation”—but when I got to the end, and tentatively pushed the source
back toward Alejandro, he smiled and said “Very good.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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And that was my initiation. That was twenty years ago, and I
could write a book about all that transpired between that moment and this past
Sunday, when I heard that Alejandro was going to take his last breath. There
were the classes—including the seminar in choral music that he developed as a
gift to me, he said, to ensure that I had the chance to dig into things other
than just “cream puffs.” There were the countless dinners and conversations
over a cup of “caffeine”—pronounced with three syllables: ca-fay-EEN.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then there was Cappella Cordina
(alongside Musica Antiqua and Polyhymnia).<o:p></o:p></div>
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Alejandro and I fought about Cappella quite a lot—so I was
all the more surprised when he made me assistant director. I think he figured
it would give me an outlet for my frustration with the singers who were
underprepared, talked through rehearsal, etc. I suppose it did, in some way,
but it also helped refocus my attention to where it needed to be. Just as a
small sample: chant (of various types), Praetorius, Marenzio, Monteverdi, Michael
Haydn, Corteccia, Schütz, Ciconia, Ockeghem, Du Fay, Cristobal de Morales…and
eventually the title role in a concertized version of Cesti’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Orontea</i>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Alejandro was the first person to tell me I was musical. Don’t
get me wrong—I had a wonderfully nurturing undergrad experience and was
supported in every way, but no one had ever stopped a rehearsal (conducted with
a pencil, of course), to say, “You know, you are so @$%@# musical!” It had
never occurred to me that I was, if I’m honest. I saw music-making as something
I could do reasonably well and that I worked hard at. But Alejandro saw in me
what some might describe as a “gift”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That moment changed my relationship to music and musicology. I started
investing in it for myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That carried
me through the rest of my tumultuous degree program, as well as my unorthodox
paths in academia. I think it still does. For Alejandro, it was always about
the music—it didn’t matter if it was Machaut or Brahms or Stephen Hartke. Whenever
I feel that I am aimless and lost, as I have this week upon learning of
Alejandro’s death, I anchor myself in the music, and in learning. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In shared grief, it has been comforting to remember
Alejandro, assisted by the wonderful Facebook community set up by Bob Eschbach
in his memory. I’ve smiled to see the same stories passed down from generation
to generation. We’ve learned of several iterations of the same nicknames across
these generations (I was “Porcupine”—see above note regarding Cappella).
Alejandro’s legacy is so immense and multidimensional—we are a family of musicians,
of scholars, of friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maestro, I can
only hope that you are among all the musicians and composers you loved so well
(and maybe even those you didn’t—I can imagine the conversations!).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I move forward, as you would expect me to,
remembering that I am indeed “@$%@# musical” and knowing that you, more than
almost anyone, showed me what that meant.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-u175qM4ckC4/XMxIBPsoqjI/AAAAAAAAC7w/WfJYs9NeC2UDBjPjL6E3EN3KMyrYXKoMACLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_7048.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-u175qM4ckC4/XMxIBPsoqjI/AAAAAAAAC7w/WfJYs9NeC2UDBjPjL6E3EN3KMyrYXKoMACLcBGAs/s320/IMG_7048.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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<!--EndFragment--><br />Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-35380759325160380622019-01-11T15:26:00.000-05:002019-01-11T15:27:41.542-05:00Review: Jennifer Walshe: Spiel mit Identitäten (F. Kloos)<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43362786-jennifer-walshe" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Jennifer Walshe: Spiel mit Identitäten" border="0" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1545836632m/43362786.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
If you read the interview with Walshe at the end of the book, you understand that Kloos' work is basically a philosophical expansion of that interview. She engages with primary sources, but the "name-dropping" of philosophers without citation was aggravating on occasion. The opening chapter is valuable in terms of framing the discussion--Kloos provides Erik Erikson, Stuart Hall, and Judith Butler as lenses through which we might understand identity. Chapter 2 wanders a bit more, investigating Walshe's place in the avant-garde and new music. She summarizes the biographies of the alter egos of Walshe's Grúpat and briefly muses upon the reconciling of these individual identities with group identity. There is some redundancy across chapters, but this is unsurprising as one of Kloos' main points is that Walshe's music doesn't fit traditional categories or modes of analysis. <br />
<br />
Kloos gives Chapter 4 over to analysis--and this is where the book is weakest for me. Kloos has insightful observations, but her methodologies vary so greatly that some readings of pieces come up short. We don't know what to expect since there is no systematic approach to analysis. It may very well be that this is due to the content of the works themselves (as well as varied access to materials), but then I would have preferred that the analysis be integrated into the prose of the other chapters. Kloos' "listening journal" approach to Walshe's "As mo cheann" addresses the difference between listening with and without a score, but for readers who are looking to engage with the piece academically, this might prove frustrating. Still, in that Kloos includes gesture, breath sounds, and performativity in her discussions, she provides a good example of what solid analyses of contemporary music might look like.<br />
<br />
I've always bemoaned the lack of discourse with the work of living composers--but I get it. It is much easier to use a critical eye (and ear) toward music when the composer is dead. Kloos posits, however, that Walshe's music authorizes listeners to be co-creators, in effect--a glimpse at a democratic idea that "those who listen, have a say" (107). In her final statements, Kloos remarks that Jennifer Walshe invalidates the biographical relationship between work and author, but it is her work with the alter egos of Grúpat that allow her to do so without metaphorically "killing" the author ( a la Barthes).<br />
<br />
This is an important book and I would love to see it come out in an English translation. It is a good primer on the New Discipline and provides bibliographic value as well (Kloos curates a helpful list of Internet sources).
<br />
<br />
(Cross-posted at <a href="https://readingrantsandraves.blogspot.com/2019/01/2009-2-jennifer-walshe-spiel-mit.html" target="_blank">Rebecca's Reading Rants and Raves</a>)Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-90068685721420313542018-08-30T08:15:00.000-05:002018-08-30T08:15:08.447-05:00Review: Sound and Score (de Assis/Brooks/Coessens, eds.)Cross-posted at <a href="http://readingrantsandraves.blogspot.com/2018/08/2018-5-sound-and-score.html">Rebecca's Reading Rants and Raves</a>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18856234-sound-score" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Sound & Score: Essays on Sound, Score and Notation" border="0" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1391386689m/18856234.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
As with any anthology of essays, a particular reader will find some contributions more useful than others. Admittedly there were essays that I skimmed, as I was looking for specific writings that would interact with discussions for my graphic notation seminar. I appreciate the multitude of perspectives and styles, although I found the essays that were well-grounded in theory to be more useful. Both Virginia Anderson's "The Beginning of Happiness: Approaching Scores in Graphic and Text Notation" as well as Jeremy Cox's "What I Say and What I Do: The Role of Composers' own performances of their scores..." were particularly enlightening in their examination of score/performance relationships. Cox adapts Krenek's 1966 theory of process of musical thought to reveal a composer's performances as a "triangulation tool" (p. 21) between the score and Gestalt/musical thought. The only real quarrel I have with his investigation of Stravinsky's tempi in two different recordings (1946 and 1961) of the Symphony in Three Movements is that it is predicated on an assumption of "logic" when it comes to tempo choices--an assumption that isn't clearly delineated by the author.<br />
<br />
Anne Douglas's "Drawing and the Score" is one of the strongest essays as she offers a succinct summary of the relationships that can be established when "an artist transposes concepts of drawing and notation across the borders of art forms" (p. 207). In just under ten pages, Douglas convincingly concludes that the tension between musical score and drawing is essential to all stages of the musical work, and in effect "loops" the components of a performed musical work "between author/audience." (p. 215).<br />
<br />
The editing is good, for the most part, although there is a significant error in the captioning of Fig. 4 of Cox's essay (p. 24) and certain essays could have used a stronger editorial hand in order to keep expositional consistency. The book's division into four parts seemed somewhat unnecessary, particularly given the holistic interpretation that underscores the entire book. That said, the parts (I: Score and Idea; II: Mapping the Interface; III: Extending the Boundaries; IV: Choreographies of Sound) do provide interesting inroads to the larger discussion.<br />
<br />
This is a very worthwhile collection and has readings that are provocative and useful for a whole host of different types of research and teaching, especially in contemporary music. Some essays are more accessible than others, but it is a valuable compendium for anyone who teaches composition, contemporary music performance, and/or music history.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-86010398929926701242018-08-22T16:28:00.000-05:002018-08-22T16:28:51.347-05:00People over Publications: A mini-manifesto <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VE053TUDpWM/W33UidWQQvI/AAAAAAAACYw/8Wk9lePxTWwK1jvz93nWSd7rdqaVQgwBQCLcBGAs/s1600/Burgess_Meredith_Twilight_Zone_1960.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="997" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VE053TUDpWM/W33UidWQQvI/AAAAAAAACYw/8Wk9lePxTWwK1jvz93nWSd7rdqaVQgwBQCLcBGAs/s320/Burgess_Meredith_Twilight_Zone_1960.jpg" width="256" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Burgess Meredith as Henry Bemis in "Time Enough At Last" (Public Domain)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Well, a three year hiatus is a long time...even for me. It isn't that I haven't had anything to say, but I've been taking a step back to monitor my field for awhile. There's a lot of good stuff happening--some of it online, some of it in print, and some of it in the classroom.<br />
<br />
Something I've noticed lately is the privileging of print (publication) over other types of work. I'm not talking about tenure and promotion. I don't mean in regard to the job market. I'm talking about every day musicologists (ha!) and how they measure each other's expertise.<br />
<br />
Much of my own research has not been published, but it has provided rich and provocative fodder for inquiry in my teaching and my graduate seminars. I really enjoy discussing these seminars with colleagues and hearing about the seminars they are teaching as well. If I find resources I think might be helpful, I share. If I know someone has previous experience with the topic, I often consult them, believing that multiple sources of input can enrich my own syllabus. To me, it matters very little how much they have published. What matters more is their willingness to share and participate in professional dialogue. I have colleagues whose publication dossiers might focus on seventeenth-century opera but would also be people I could go to for information on hip-hop or country music. I know this because we have conversations. I listen and I learn from what they know. I don't ask for their credentials. They are invested and interested in the research and that is enough for me.<br />
<br />
I feel we've lost some of that old nostalgic quality of the "life of the mind." I was lucky enough to work with a dissertation advisor who could discuss Du Fay, Brahms, and Zappa in the same half hour without ever signposting a change in direction. One of the things that makes musicology so exciting for me is what I DON'T know. And while my youthful fantasies of being a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_at_Last" target="_blank">Henry Bemis</a> have now downgraded to "I wish I had more time to read," there is much I'd rather learn from a conversation over beers than a lengthy journal article.<br />
<br />
This also means that a good chunk of conference papers I attend are for the person giving the paper. I might have little interest in the topic, but I am interested in the person's interest, and that for me is reason enough to go. I'll admit to having a rather disheartening experience recently where I gave a paper at a national conference for my "subset" of specialization and only one colleague showed up for my paper. I know there are plentiful reasons why people didn't show up, and certainly I've missed many many papers due to conflicts of my own. But when I finally pushed my pride out of the way, I realized that a 20-minute conversation with one interested person would probably be more engaging and fruitful than having two rows of uninterested people sitting at my paper thinking about where they were headed for dinner that night.<br />
<br />
So, all of this to say: I will continue to privilege people over publications. And if that keeps me on the outside looking in (to what, I'm not always sure), so be it. If you see me at a conference, sitting at the bar, come tell me what you're up to--even if I'll never read about it in <i>JAMS</i>.Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-68209481177054528592015-10-20T17:25:00.001-05:002015-10-20T17:25:57.095-05:00Experiments in Collaborative Pedagogy: Paper Proposals<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Two weeks ago, the students in my Orpheus seminar introduced
their preliminary paper proposals to the class. Last year, I had many of the same
students in Writing About Music, the first year graduate course where we walk
them through a paper proposal, outline, first draft, and final draft.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What a difference a year makes!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">These proposals are understandably more fully developed than those I receive in Writing About Music. They
include proposals to examine Rameau's cantata <i>Orphée </i>in relation
to his <i>Traité de l'harmonie, </i>to connect Orphic works by the
relationship between the first and second deaths of Eurydice, and to analyze the music in <i>Moulin Rouge</i> and Bono's "The Ground Beneath Her
Feet." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">As mentioned in this <a href="http://miscellaneousmayhem.blogspot.com/2015/09/experiments-writing-to-teach.html" target="_blank">previous post</a>,
I am writing along <i>with</i> my seminar, as part of an experiment in what I might
call collaborative pedagogy. I was not exempt from sharing my proposal with the class, and I was the last person to present. I am fortunate that my class is full of spirited
and intelligent people who readily received my own proposal and gave me honest feedback.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I won't share the entirety of my proposal
here, but I'm looking to connect Joseph Campbell's "total science of
mythology" to more holistic musicological study of Orphic operas. My
general premise is that rather than viewing these operas as
"settings" of mythical narratives, we should see them as extensions
of mythical experience, and no less culturally relevant than Ovid's or Virgil's narratives.
If anything, I am advocating for a more ethnomusicological study of Orphic
operas, and I'm hoping that the approaches used by mythologists will prove
useful for musicologists.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I read my proposal to the class, and in that
context, I was painfully aware of my reliance upon jargon. I wrote my proposal
in academese, using phrases like "epistemological quandaries."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of my students remarked that he
understood roughly 75% of it, but wanted me to paraphrase it with more clarity.
What a gift to be confronted with a group of very intelligent and invested
people who have no ulterior motives except to understand!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I realized that I have freedom here--I'm not
submitting this proposal for acceptance at a conference. I'm merely communicating
with a group of like-minded individuals about something that piqued my
curiosity!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">There is a false dichotomy between research and
teaching. The blame for this lies on both sides of the equation, but I posit
(to speak in academese) that we need not choose. My seminar has become a forum
for constructive feedback--not quite peer review, but it has its own merits. I
challenge them to critique their teacher’s work, and through this they practice
confidence in their own ideas. I may not get feedback from “experts,” but there
are plenty of avenues for that within my field. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The integrity of my project rests on nothing
more than what it contributes to the group of people who are likewise trying
to amplify what they've learned in order to reach beyond it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in; text-autospace: none;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Let's stop for a second. I'm going to repeat
that last bit:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">"The integrity of my project rests on
nothing more than what it contributes to the group of people who are likewise
trying to amplify what they've learned in order to reach beyond it."</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I think we have largely lost this sense of
wonder as part of what shapes "academic conversations." We are too
busy publishing (or perishing) to remember that at the heart of academic
inquiry there is a core belief in the value of knowledge. "Sapere aude,
" if you feel more comfortable with that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But we shouldn't need to validate this quest with Kant and Foucault in
order to understand how important it is. We all have the power to be both the
guardians and harbingers of thoughts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I'm grateful to be on this journey with my
seminar. I've already reshaped my proposal, narrowing it to a more digestible scope, whittling away at the academic pretense so that my students will benefit
from whatever the finished product happens to be. I have not started writing it
yet, but I already have the first footnote:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">1. I dedicate this paper to students in my Fall
2015 Orpheus in Music seminar, who keep me grounded in the ongoing battle
between my role as an academic and the reasons I chose this field in the first
place.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-88035739469709536292015-09-18T10:27:00.000-05:002015-09-18T10:27:03.569-05:00Medieval, Not Med-Evil
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">On many occasions, I've had to defend medieval music as a topic on which time is well spent
in music history curricula. Even beloved colleagues in performance have
questioned the necessity of learning ‘dead’ repertoire that most of their
students will never perform or interact with in a meaningful way.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"> This is especially true of
chant, that dustiest of dusty repertoires, inhabitant of music history's
grungiest dustbins.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">These are legitimate
questions, but they ignore the value of muddling about in the monophonic, and
more importantly, in a tradition that is primarily oral—a far cry from the land
of "deified composers" and "fetishized scores" that James
Parakilas so aptly identifies in his essay, "Texts, Contexts, and
Non-Texts in Music History Pedagogy." The question of what you can say or
write about a single line of music is not inconsequential. It is hard, as my
students quickly discover. Stripping away several centuries of musical
knowledge is no easy task and requires a type of historical imagination with
which they seldom engage. It is easy enough to picture Schubert at the piano
during one of his famous soirées, making music with his friends, embodying the
spirit of Romantic community, blissfully unaware that his music will be deployed
on the battleground of style periods a century later. Somewhat less inspiring
to the typical undergraduate is the anonymous-faced monk, cloistered away in
the scriptorium, copying tunes that are but one version of a song born long
before that moment.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">But those monks are not so
far removed from the beatified Mahler symphony as one might think. The copying
down of those neumes led to various notational systems, including that of Guido
d’Arezzo, who is responsible--at least in part--for “one of the simplest but
most radical breakthroughs in the history of writing music,” as Tom Kelly reminds
us. At this juncture, notation became not just a simple mnemonic device, but
“made it possible to sing a song you have never heard before” (Kelly, 62). That
distinction is a game-changer, and hardly something to be glossed over. Moreover,
as David Hiley muses in his primer on Gregorian chant, pitch-accurate notation
likely reflects the surge in new music in the eleventh century, when “many new
melodies of non-traditional melodic character were composed” (Hiley, 200). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The real take-away here is that history
repeats itself and what is distant and dusty is also a mirror for our own
times. Without early notation might we imagine a Chopin-less world, a
Beethoven-less world…the entirety of the Western canon at whose altar we
worship having never been? Would music have ceased to exist? No, of course
not--and that is exactly the point. The graphic notation of Morton Feldman,
Earle Brown, and others, is the progeny of that new music of the eleventh
century. (For a convincing argument for the direct influence of neumatic
notation on Earle Brown’s work, see Alden, below). I don’t make claims of
evolutionary progress here, but to deny the significance of early music and
notation is akin to denying a relationship between primates and homo sapiens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Chant is usually the first repertoire to be
sent to the firing squad of curricular decision-making, ironically defended by shaky
Darwineqsque arguments of natural selection and survival of the fittest. Shall
we also remove “H. erectus” from our study of human development? After all,
anatomy and science focus on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Homo sapiens</i>.
(For that matter, does that make </span><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/09/homo-naledi-rising-star-cave-hominin/404362/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">the recent discovery of the species <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Homo naledi</i></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"> irrelevant?) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">But perhaps the historical
argument is shouting into an abyss—if one is not convinced of history’s import
in the first place, a distinction between notated v. orally transmitted music
is probably not crucial. But what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">should</i>
be crucial to performers--and here is where the argument might be more relevant
even to those who eschew history--is that much of the essence of chant as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">practice</i> is the basis for the music of
modern times.</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">There seems to be an increasing acceptance of
"improvisation" as a valued contribution from the jazz world (Yale
notwithstanding, as </span><a href="http://www.therestisnoise.com/2015/08/god-and-jazz-at-yale.html"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Alex Ross reports</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">), yet chant, which one could argue constitutes
improvisation before improvising was cool, is rarely mentioned in the same
context. Improvisation isn’t a new idea—it was there first before the systems and
the rules. How much less daunting might it be to understand that fact before
dropping students into Lydian chromatic theory, chord structures, or a Schenkerian
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ursatz</i>? If we subscribe to a
chronological approach to teaching music history (as most departments still
do), why not get students saturated in the ability to understand that modern
performance—a composite of artistic expression, deportment, and polish—grew out
of an innate expression of human culture? In this way, chant is of</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">cosmogonic
importance in understanding music that was not conceived or learned originally by
score. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why not steep ourselves in
repertoire that was improvised, not “performed,” and that was “composed,” but
not fixed?</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">In my medieval music course
(and I am fortunate to teach at a place with a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">five-</i>semester undergraduate music history sequence), I ask my students
to listen to a monophonic Alleluia, and then ask the intentionally vague
question, "what can you tell me about this?" The initial response is
"not much," but when pressed, out come timid comments about contour,
key v. mode, speech-rhythms, melismas, text, and plentiful other observations
and contextual hypotheses that seem to rise out of the anxiety of having
nowhere to run. When faced with the absence of dense polyphony, augmented
chords to identify, and instrumentation to critique, there is an invitation to
investigate context, to understand that chant is part of a family of musical
traditions--most of them popular--where authorship is ambiguous at best, and
there are blurred lines between intertextuality, plagiarism, and musical
borrowing. As Parakilas observes, one need look no further than a radio station
to see this legacy play out in our urban soundscapes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">I’d like to return briefly to
my embedded quip above about recent events at Yale and decisions about jazz in
the curriculum. While I don’t wish to focus upon the place of jazz in music
curricula, conductor Michael Lewanski’s thoughts on the matter are relevant to
this discussion. He offered the following in a </span><a href="http://www.michaellewanski.com/blog/2015/8/30/education-jazz-canons"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">profoundly good essay</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">: </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Baskerville; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">“</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The notion of “training people in
the Western canon and in new music” is flawed, first of all, because it assumes
that the Western canon is a fixed, reified thing that doesn’t change, and,
secondly, that new music is separate from it (whatever “it” is).” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Like jazz, medieval music is also increasingly getting short
shrift despite its inarguable connection to the so-called “canon.” In fact,
Lewanski’s entire article about jazz and new music parallels the argument that
I am making. He continues: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“To pretend that these [canonical]
pieces are deserving of being played </span><em><span style="font-family: Baskerville; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">because there is something
inherently, unquestionably cool about them</span></em><span style="font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> is
the problem. The reason they are important is the opposite: it is because
they have a reception history, a tradition of people thinking about, feeling,
playing, interrogating, fighting, reacting against them; and we are among those
people.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">[Incidentally, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.michaellewanski.com/blog/2015/9/7/education-jazz-canons-a-theoretical-and-practical-postscript">Lewanski’s
postscript addressing canons and performing musicians</a> is also a worthwhile
read. ]</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Curricular priorities are based on a lot of
assumptions, some of which are so deeply embedded in institutional tradition
that all the backhoes of practical evidence to the contrary can’t dislodge
them. That said, it is time for a different discussion about “relevance” when
it comes to history. And here I deliberately leave off “music” because this is
ultimately not a discussion about chant and its importance. Instead, it is a
plea for understanding and internalizing a truth that “old” and “new” are no
longer terms to mark relative moments in time, but instead qualitative and
often dismissive words that do art a terrible injustice. If we can recapture
the newness of what is “old,” and the timelessness of what is “new,” I think
that makes us better students, better educators, and dare I say it—better <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">homo sapiens</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB">WORKS CITED</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Alden,
Jane. “From Neume to <i>Folio</i>: Medieval
Influences on Earle Brown’s Graphic Notation.” <i>Contemporary Music Review</i> 26:3 (2007): 315-332.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Hiley,
David. <i>Gregorian Chant</i>. Cambridge
Introductions to Music. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Kelly,
Thomas Forrest. <i>Capturing Music: The
Story of Notation</i>.<span> </span>New York: W.W.
Norton,<span> </span>2015.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Lewanski,
Michael. “Education, Jazz, Canons.” August 30, 2015.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.michaellewanski.com/blog/2015/8/30/education-jazz-canons"><span lang="EN-GB">http://www.michaellewanski.com/blog/2015/8/30/education-jazz-canons</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"> (Accessed August 31, 2015)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Lewanski,
Michael. “Education, Jazz, Canons: A Theoretical and Practical Postscript.”
September 7, 2015.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.michaellewanski.com/blog/2015/9/7/education-jazz-canons-a-theoretical-and-practical-postscript"><span lang="EN-GB">http://www.michaellewanski.com/blog/2015/9/7/education-jazz-canons-a-theoretical-and-practical-postscript</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"> (Accessed Sept 13, 2015)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Parakilas, James.<span>
</span>“Texts, Contexts, and Non-Texts in Music History Pedagogy.” In <i>Vitalizing Music History Teaching</i>,
45-58. Edited by James R. Briscoe.<span>
</span>Monographs and Bibliographies in American Music, No. 20. New York:
Pendragon Press, 2010.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Ross, Alex. “God and Jazz at Yale.”<span> </span>August 29, 2015. <a href="http://www.therestisnoise.com/2015/08/god-and-jazz-at-yale.html">http://www.therestisnoise.com/2015/08/god-and-jazz-at-yale.html</a>
(Accessed August 31, 2015)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB">"Statue of Guido of
Arezzo". Licensed under Public Domain via Commons -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Statue_of_Guido_of_Arezzo.jpg#/media/File:Statue_of_Guido_of_Arezzo.jpg
</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Yong, Ed. “6 Tiny Cavers, 15 Odd Skeletons, and 1 Amazing
New Species of Ancient Human” <i>The Atlantic</i>.
Sept 10, 2015. <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/09/homo-naledi-rising-star-cave-hominin/404362/"><span lang="EN-GB">http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/09/homo-naledi-rising-star-cave-hominin/404362/</span></a><span lang="EN-GB"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span> </span></span>(Accessed
Sept 13, 2015)</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">With many thanks to those who read this post in draft form! </span></div>
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Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-84607292015777025852015-09-05T11:16:00.000-05:002015-09-05T12:42:28.663-05:00Experiments: Writing to Teach<style>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The title of this post tips its hat to the late William Zinsser's
influential book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Writing-To-Learn-William-Zinsser/dp/0062720406" target="_blank"><i>Writing to Learn</i></a>, a tome that helped
instill of a love of writing and learning in me at an impressionable age.
Along with the work of Peter Elbow and the wonderful experiences I had at the
<a href="http://writingandthinking.org/" target="_blank">Bard Institute of Writing and Thinking</a> in 2012, Zinsser's ideas have changed
the way I approach my writing--or, to be more honest--<i>try</i> to approach.
Freewriting, too, has become central to most of my teaching, and I hope to
recharge this blog with posts about writing in the music history classroom,
among other topics.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As anyone who works with freewriting knows, one of the core
dictums is that the professor should always write with the class. I admit that
I sometimes forget to do this, my mind otherwise preoccupied with the best way
to manage the ensuing discussion. I always feel guilty when I
forget to write with my students because then it feels like I've assigned a chore, rather than an activity. That's not to say I have to participate in
every in-class activity, but I think cooperative engagement is generally the
best pedagogical model for my classes.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I've re-conceptualized my seminars over the years, and I'm
particularly excited about my upcoming <b>Orpheus and Music</b> seminar this term. It
is an expansion of a seven-week course that I have taught both at the
conservatory and as a community programs course. While having fourteen
weeks does allow us the chance to cover more repertoire, I've decided to keep
the core repertoire from the shorter version of the course and to spend the
extra time creating a hybrid teacherless writing class instead.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Peter Elbow's<i> <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/writing-without-teachers-9780195120165?cc=us&lang=en&" target="_blank">Writing without Teachers</a> </i>presents a
model that, in its purest form, is not logistically possible within the
confines of most curricula—an ideal teacherless writing group of eight people
requires 2 to 2 ½ hours per week (Elbow, 84). Short class periods and
departmental expectations hamper the instructor’s ability to devote hours to
peer responding, particularly when integrated into a subject matter that is not
strictly Composition/Rhetoric. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
said, it does provide a worthwhile philosophical approach that can easily
be applied to courses in a variety of ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I've decided to integrate more peer-responding—as opposed to
"peer-editing”--into my graduate seminars. Students will have several
opportunities to freewrite and discuss in-class the different stages of their
term papers. I've found, as I'm sure many professors do, that "choosing the
topic" can be the most laborious aspect of a term paper. I do not give
exacting prompts for graduate seminars because I want them to be intellectually
curious enough to pick a topic that actually interests them. For many students,
however, being confronted with an übertopic like "Orpheus and Music"
and then being asked to come up with a research proposal in a few weeks time is
a daunting task. This is absolutely understandable. So I've decided to bring in
"teacherless" peer writing groups from the initial stages of the
project--starting with determining a topic all the way through to the final
draft stages.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is all an extension of peer-review/peer-responding
activities I have integrated into my courses throughout my teaching career. But
this year brings a new twist: <b>I'm going to write a seminar paper <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">with </i>my students.</b> Essentially, I'm going
to join their "teacherless" writing groups. I have a head start on my
proposal, but I'll present it to them for their feedback, bring in my drafts,
etc. The obvious advantage of this is that I will get some writing done. I
hadn't planned on doing any professional work with "Orpheus and music,"
but if I'm going to spend hours upon hours prepping the material for the
seminar, why not turn it into a paper? I realize this is not a revolutionary
idea, but it is certainly the first time I've decided to work <i>with</i> my
seminar in this way. My hope is that it will reinforce writing and research as
process—a means, not just an end. The students will receive a grade for the
proposal, annotated bibliography, and the final paper, but are also responsible
for two separate "draft sessions" wherein they bring in a two-page
portion (first session) and then a five-page portion (second session) to share
in their peer-responding groups. I will be there too, sitting anxiously among
them--sharing, reading, writing, learning, and teaching. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Stay tuned!</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">SOURCES:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Elbow, Peter. <i>Writing Without Teachers</i>. Second edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Zinsser, William. <i>Writing to Learn</i>. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993. </span></div>
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Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-21268958225346084352015-03-17T17:08:00.003-05:002015-03-17T17:08:59.586-05:00Indeterminacy in the Classroom<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wux1_x03ycU/VQijRrD-1zI/AAAAAAAABag/dvyDpNaqMe4/s1600/JCI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wux1_x03ycU/VQijRrD-1zI/AAAAAAAABag/dvyDpNaqMe4/s1600/JCI.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
As much as I might like to post about indeterminate processes in pedagogy, this piece is quite literally about John Cage's <i>Indeterminacy</i> in the classroom. I find that this is a wonderful opportunity to explore Cage's indeterminate methods in a very hands-on way. We took liberties, certainly, but liberties that align with Cage's own thinking (at least that is my hope).<br />
<br />
For this year's Cage seminar, we used the Peters performance edition of the work, and selected the cards to be used by chance procedures (outlined below). We "rehearsed" once, and established a better flow the second time through. While some might argue that rehearsal nullifies the spontaneity of the piece via chance procedures, I would say that it honors the integrity of the work as a performance piece. Rather than compromise the work, using 12 people instead of one--all of whom are reading someone else's story--renders an "arrangement" of the piece that I think is most effective.<br />
<br />
We chose 12 cards (from the "score")--partially due to time constraints--so that we could focus on the process rather than the content. The 90 score cards were kept in order per the instructions/suggestions of the score. The first student used score card #1, and then picked an additional card from a deck of cards. The number on the playing card determined how many score cards would be skipped in order to select one for the next student. That student then picked a playing card, and the process continued until we had 12 cards.<br />
<br />
We opted for accompaniment in the form of two to three iPhones on shuffle. Each student had an iPhone or other smart phone with a stop watch function to monitor the time. Only one of the selected score cards was a so-called "<i>attacca" </i>card (meaning its story was a continuation from another card), so Carolyn chose to adjust her card's opening text for clarification by changing "we" to "David Tudor and I". Other performance aspects were followed as closely as possible, most notably trying to keep each card to a minute and to interpret brackets as ten seconds worth of text. Cage's own pronunciation keys proved useful (e.g. "Gnostic" with a hard g).<br />
<br />
While we did videotape the realization, the audio by itself is much more effective. Many thanks go to my student Ryan Fossier for extracting the audio and putting it on Soundcloud. We were not able to provide amplification, but strove to "avoid audible strain." I've included the link below for your enjoyment.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://soundcloud.com/ryan-fossier/indeterminacy" target="_blank">MU 552: John Cage Seminar at The Boston Conservatory performs John Cage's <i>Indeterminacy </i></a><br />
<br />
Many thanks to the students of my Spring 2015 Cage seminar at The Boston Conservatory for their fine work on this project: Michael Bennett, Christina Cheon, Daniel DeSimone, Ryan Fossier, Eri Isomura, Carolyn McCrone, Aaron Newell, Lucian Nicolescu, David Vess, NianShee Yon, Lin Zhang, and Hanhan Zhu.<br />
<br />
<br />Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-59889587884709927722015-03-07T08:20:00.001-05:002015-03-07T08:21:34.271-05:00Professional Musicians and Social NetworkingLast week, my "Communicating About Music" class discussed the ways performers might use social media to promote themselves and build relationships. I surveyed both sections of the class and discovered a few trends in how these graduate students use and understand the major social networking platforms.<br />
<br />
1. Dedicated professional Facebook pages are less popular among students this year than last year.<br />
2. most of the students seemed unaware of how to use " targeted lists" on Facebook<br />
3. Many of the students saw Twitter as irrelevant or redundant with Facebook, although felt that hashtags were better implemented on Twitter.<br />
4. Instagram is useful for facets of performing that are better expressed visually.<br />
<br />
Very few of them mentioned blogging, yet most of them included it as part of their social networking plan in their mock grant proposals two weeks ago. I will not address blogging in this particular post. We also discussed LinkedIn, and various crowdfunding sites, all of which I may address in a future post.<br />
<br />
I'm not pointing at the social networking sky and predicting its fall based upon two classes, but I do wonder if we have hit a saturation point--at least as far as professional networking is concerned. I'd like to take each of the observations above and muse upon them briefly.<br />
<br />
1. <b>Dedicated Professional Facebook pages</b><br />
<br />
Most of the students seemed to feel that unless one is an established performer or ensemble, dedicated Facebook pages seemed overly pretentious. One drawback is that friends and family may feel obligated to "like" and "follow," so your number of "likes" isn't really an indication of your potential audience. The benefits of having a page are rather obvious, but the biggest deterrent seemed to be the "self-promotion" aspect. That's rather interesting, but not uncommon among students--many of whom make their livings gigging and performing, but don't yet see themselves as career professionals. I expressed a preference for professional pages when it comes to ensembles as I do not like to receive "friend requests" from entities (as opposed to individuals). As an alternative, we discussed:<br />
<br />
2. <b>Facebook audience lists</b><br />
<br />
Recognizing that one's Facebook audience is not monolithic and that everyone is there for different reasons, the use of targeted lists is (to my mind, at least), one of the best and most helpful features of Facebook. I have about 10-15 lists, 5 of which I use most often. It was surprising to me how few of them post updates to select audiences. One real benefit of using a targeted list for professional activities is that the responses/comments are likely to be more relevant. It narrows the network in beneficial ways. Likewise, it can simultaneously foster more intimacy with audiences and professional distance. Beth Kanter and Allison Fine cite fear of showing one's "human side" as a fear that stops non-profits from using social media. (1) And I think that's the part that is scary--the "social" aspect. How do you create a relationship with unknowns (and not simply broadcast information)? This is a mode of communication that is distinctive to our Internet culture. Representing yourself online is not only a skill, it is a challenge. But it can (and should) force us to prioritize what is important in a piece of communication. There are two questions with every post:<br />
1) Have I effectively communicated information? 2) What does this post "say" about me and how does it contribute to the composite image of me formed by my audience?<br />
<br />
3. <b>Twitter vs. Facebook</b><br />
<br />
Twitter's value does lie in its brevity. Many of my students felt that Twitter was an effective supplement to a social networking arsenal because it could be used for event reminders and other announcements that did not require a lot of information. For me, I find this is true. I follow 1,974 people--I'm much less likely to respond to clickbait from my Twitter feed than I am on Facebook. I see Twitter as a stream of tiny hooks, all targeted toward specific fish. The difference is that you have less an idea of what's available to catch than you do on Facebook. But as a early-career performer, effective use of Twitter requires reciprocity and consistency. If it is used just to post upcoming concerts and the like, the full value of the platform is not being realized. Hashtags can be an effective way to enlarge the conversation and to "meet" those who share your interests--this is why carefully chosen hashtags (and the promotion thereof) are important. Mentioning (@_____) can be gratuitous (as can hashtags), but it is an important way to form alliances and associations as well. Kanter and Fine stress authenticity as a key element in using social networks.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XYh5ZIlgkJ4/VPr6MkMhWqI/AAAAAAAABZ0/NZa4PFm1jpc/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2015-03-07%2Bat%2B8.08.10%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XYh5ZIlgkJ4/VPr6MkMhWqI/AAAAAAAABZ0/NZa4PFm1jpc/s1600/Screen%2Bshot%2B2015-03-07%2Bat%2B8.08.10%2BAM.png" height="71" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
4. <b>Instagram</b><br />
<br />
I was surprised at how many of my students seem to use Instagram (not specifically for professional reasons, but in general). I don't use Instagram on a professional level (mostly pictures of my cat and my food preparations), but that's largely because my fascinating musicological discoveries tend not to be of great visual interest, even with the "Ludwig" filter. But Instagram is a great place to post rehearsal shots or "in-process" shots for those involved in music. Early music performers can use it as a platform to demystify the instruments they play and to give audiences a "closer look." This is possible on Facebook and Twitter, but Instagram is arguably a more effective platform as it speak almost exclusively in pictures.<br />
<br />
So, in the end, I think that social networking has become so much a part of daily life for a great many of us, that we begin to take it for granted. Performers may choose not to use networking platforms, but if they do, it is important to cultivate ways to use them that are differentiated from how we use them for personal means. On Facebook, this means lists or a dedicated page. On Twitter, this means hashtags and mentions. But as with "real life" relationships, effective professional social networking takes time, skill, and perhaps most importantly, desire to engage with audiences in this way. I don't think having an obligatory Facebook page or Twitter account is a good idea if the means and desire to maintain the network are not there. In that way, I do believe we have hit the point of saturation as far as the "innovation" of social networking. That said, just as with public speaking and writing, there are nuances and skills that performers who wish to engage with these platforms would do well to cultivate.<br />
<br />
<br />
I must thank and acknowledge Ed Justen (@edjusten on Twitter) for inspiring me to write this post.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">(1) Beth Kanter and Allison Fine, <i>The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change </i>(San Francisco: Wiley, 2010).</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">**Opinions expressed on this blog are solely my own and do not represent The Boston Conservatory***</span>Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-79589150884231868202013-02-23T08:47:00.001-05:002013-02-23T08:47:21.149-05:00CONCERT PICKS: Blue Heron- March 2, 2013MMM's new feature "MUSICAL PICKS" will occasionally highlight upcoming concerts in the Boston area, particularly those connected to musicological conferences and activities.<br />
<br />
This should be splendid! And please note that Blue Heron will also be performing on March 1st at BU as part of the conference<a href="http://www.bu.edu/medieval/voice/" target="_blank"><i> Voice and Voicelessness in Medieval Europe and Beyond</i></a>.<br />
<br />
Press Release:<br />
<br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>BLUE
HERON PRESENTS </b></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Divine
Songs</b></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Connections
and exchanges between secular song and sacred music, featuring the
music of Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1420-1497)</span></span></span></div>
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</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Johannes
Ockeghem, one of the greatest composers of all time, is completely
unknown to many listeners today. His endlessly fascinating sacred
music has been characterized as mystical; his songs, each one a gem
of invention, can be funny, heart wrenching, or profound. The program
includes French songs and sacred music based on them.</span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_290"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_287"></a>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_2871"></a>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Free
pre-concert talk at 7:15 by Sean Gallagher (Boston University)</span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_284"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_277"></a>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_2771"></a>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Blue
Heron</span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_2772"></a>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Scott
Metcalfe, director, harp & medieval fiddle</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_274"></a>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Pamela
Dellal, Paul Guttry, David McFerrin, Owen McIntosh, Jason McStoots,
Martin Near, Mark Sprinkle and Sumner Thompson, voices</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_271"></a>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Laura
Jeppesen, rebec & medieval fiddle</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_263"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_260"></a>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_2601"></a>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">DATE:
Saturday, March 2, 2013</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_257"></a>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">TIME:
8:00 pm</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">VENUE: </span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_2542"></a>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">First
Church in Cambridge, Congregational</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_251"></a>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">11
Garden St</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_248"></a>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Cambridge,
MA 02138</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_245"></a>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Tickets:
$50 - Section A and $40 - Section B (reserved seating), $30 - Section
C (general seating)</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_240"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_237"></a>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: transparent;">Discounts:
Seniors $25, Students/Low Income $10, Under 18 FREE</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
vocal ensemble Blue Heron, directed by Scott Metcalfe, has been
acclaimed by The Boston Globe as "one of the Boston music
community's indispensables" and hailed by Alex Ross in The New
Yorker for the "expressive intensity" of its
interpretations; the Boston Musical Intelligencer calls Blue Heron "a
fantastic model for the fully-realized potential of early music
performance in the 21st century." Combining a commitment to
vivid live performance with the study of original source materials
and historical performance practices, Blue Heron ranges over a wide
and fascinating repertoire.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Blue
Heron's first CD, featuring music by Guillaume Du Fay, was released
in 2007; its second, of music from the Peterhouse partbooks by Hugh
Aston, Robert Jones, and John Mason, followed in 2010. Both discs
have received international critical acclaim and the Peterhouse CD
made the Billboard charts. The second volume of Blue Heron's 5-CD
series Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, featuring music of
Nicholas Ludford and Richard Pygott, was released in April 2012. The
third in the series is due this Fall.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Founded
in 1999, Blue Heron presents subscription series in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and in New York City. The ensemble has appeared at the
Boston Early Music Festival, New York's 92nd Street Y, The Cloisters,
and Music Before 1800, Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., the
Pittsburgh Renaissance and Baroque Society, and Monadnock Music in
New Hampshire, and with the wind band Piffaro and the viol consort
Parthenia in Philadelphia. Blue Heron made its West Coast debut at
Festival Mozaic in San Luis Obispo, California, and returned to
California in 2012 for a debut at the Berkeley Early Music Festival.</span></span></span></div>
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FOR BLUE HERON:</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">"Passionate
expression and dramatic attention to text...nuanced dynamic shadings
and emotive conviction"</span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_212"></a>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Vivien
Schweitzer, The New York Times | June, 2012</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">"Sumptuously
beautiful...sung with bravura and grace"</span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9909586" name="13cfeedc209b1851_yui_3_7_2_86_1361312926325_216"></a>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Joshua
Kosman, The San Francisco Chronicle | June, 2012</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">"a
revelation - fresh, dynamic and vibrant...urgent and wondrous
music-making of the highest order"</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Damian
Fowler, Gramophone | November, 2012</span></span></span></div>
Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-66286756240884694072013-01-20T11:29:00.001-05:002013-01-20T11:52:29.954-05:00Reflections on Beyond Notation: An Earle Brown SymposiumI'm glad to say it was teaching that kept me from attending the first day of <a href="http://www.music.neu.edu/earlebrown/" target="_blank">Beyond Notation: An Earle Brown Symposium</a> at Northeastern University, rather than some less noble excuse. I did attend many of the events on Saturday, however, and the day concluded with an extraordinary concert by the <a href="http://www.callithumpian.org/" target="_blank">Callithumpian Consort</a>. I offer a few reflections here, but this is by no means an exhaustive report on all events of the symposium, nor even all the events I attended.<br />
<br />
Richard Toop's keynote offerings (introduced via an audio recording of Toop and then read by Rebecca Kim) on lyricism in Brown's "Centering" (1973) gave me a deep appreciation for Ethan Wood's stunning performance with the Callithumpian later that night. Volker Straebel's paper, "Interdependence of Composition and Technology in Earle Brown's Tape Compositions Octet I/II (1953/54) highlighted some important distinctions between Cage's thoughts about sound versus Brown's view of sound <i>durations</i>--particularly Cage's more contrapuntal approach and Brown's "sound events that may or may not overlap." Brown's remark regarding the "kaleidoscopic abstraction of the library of sounds" invites me to spend more time incorpating Brown in my Feldman seminar. One of the biggest treats of the day was hearing Straebel's realization of Octet II, as the work was never realized in Brown's lifetime. I was struck by the sonic effect of looping the source material, as opposed to Octet I. As a musical work, the looping really did provide glue, particularly for a multi-channel piece. The lack of decay, as well, made Octet II a far different listening experience than Octet I. A question from the audience remarked on the irony of Brown's skepticism toward <i>musique</i> <i>concrète</i>, but the point was made (and I think rightly so) that the goals of <i>musique</i> <i>concrète</i> were more narrative, and that the use of chance operations negotiate Brown's issues with the art form.<br />
<br />
Another highlight of yesterday's sessions was Stephen Drury, who led members of the Callithumpian Consort in a performance of John Zorn's <i>Cobra</i>, an unpublished game piece reliant upon a series of cues, but spontaneous in its musical material. Zorn describes these works as "tying together loose strings left dangling by composers such as Earle Brown, Cornelius Cardew, John Cage and Stockhausen...".(1) Drury provided just enough explanation of how the piece worked, but then let the work speak for itself, which seems to be largely the point. The presentation questioned conventional definitions of improvisation and composition, and Drury's abstract summarized beautifully the crux of the matter: "We learn/understand by traveling backwards through history; the recent past informs the less recent past; performers ain't what they used to be." (2) Drury mused that listening to <i>Cobra </i>without watching it made the experience both better and worse, and this stemmed from a question from the audience regarding the role of personality in improvised and open form works. One audience member offered that Cage strove to remove personality & performer's ego from his music, whereas Zorn seemed to thrive on it. I'm not ready to say that Cage and Zorn represent two polarities, because I think the whole "ego-less" mantra surrounding Cage's music is easily problematized, but positing Brown's open form works as a sort of "middle-ground" was intriguing. Another valuable insight stemming from this presentation was the idea that, although these game pieces can "sound like anything," they must sound good. Perhaps therein lies the real labor in performing a piece like this. Zorn's "community of players" have an aesthetic responsibility to themselves and the audience.<br />
<br />
After this performance-demonstration, Stephen Drury conversed with Christian Wolff, which generated some interesting discussion regarding ideas of "perfection" in performance, the contemporary context for the rekindled popularity of this music, and the caveats brought about by recordings and access to previous performances of open form and improvisational works.<br />
<br />
After lunch, Louis Pine offered a workshop on "Aspects of Earle Brown's Use of the Schillinger System of Composition" with a focus on Brown's 1992 work <i>Tracking Pierrot</i>. I only caught the last fifteen minutes of the workshop, but it did seem to be a worthwhile examination of Brown's pre-compositional plans and an attempt to more fully articulate the impact of Brown's study at the Schillinger House in Boston from 1945-1950. Jason Cady, of the Earle Brown Music Foundation, followed Pine's presentation with a generally helpful overview of Brown's compositional ideas and methods. I think all specialized symposia should open with a presentation of this type, inviting those less familiar with the subject to be more engaged. Particularly since one of the goals of these events is musical advocacy, expanding the conversation toward those outside of the niche should be a consideration. <br />
<br />
It was Frederick Gifford's paper, "Imagining an Ever-Changing Entity: Compositional Process in Earle Brown's <i>Cross Sections and Color Fields</i>," that I found most engaging from the perspective of sketch and manuscript studies. In a beautifully organized presentation, drawn from an exhaustive examination of the sketches, Gifford proposed a five-step compositional process that perhaps most importantly put Brown's thoughts about open form as a later step, if not the last.<br />
<br />
I did not attend the last session, but returned for the fantastic concert by the Callithumpian Consort, which beautifully contextualized Brown's "Corroboree" (1964), "Centering" (1973), "Available Forms I" (1961) and "Sign Sounds" (1972), in reference to two works not by Brown: Boulez's "Constellation-Miroir" (1957) and Zorn's "For Your Eyes Only" (1989). Steffen Schleiermacher was the guest soloist for the Boulez, and beautifully rendered the composer's materials. In his program note on the work, Richard Toop remarked on the irony in performing this work as part of this symposium: "Sure, it represents Boulez's work at precisely the point where he started to advocate Brown's music. Yet in other respects it seems to represent the opposite of Brown's pragmatism. In Cage's Notations, Brown writes: 'Good notation is what works.' But apropos Constellation-Miroir, Boulez might rather have written: 'Good notation is what mythologises'." (3) All the performances of the night were inspired and visionary, but Ethan Wood's performance in "Centering" was particularly profound, embodying the "otherworldly" aspect that ends the piece with a quotation of Maderna's first oboe concerto.<br />
<br />
Bravo to the organizers and participants for such a wonderful symposium.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
(1) John Zorn, "The Game Pieces" in <i>Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music</i>, eds. Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner (New York: Continuum, 2009), 196.<br />
<br />
(2) <i>Beyond Notation: An Earle Brown Symposium</i>, program, 18.<br />
(3) <i>Beyond Notation: An Earle Brown Symposium</i>, program, 27.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
(Cross-posted at the <a href="http://ams-ne.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">AMS-NE Blog</a>)Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-20961601406973803962012-09-30T16:42:00.002-05:002012-09-30T16:42:59.853-05:00PowerPoint Presentations: Proceed with CautionThere may seem like no drier topic than writing about PowerPoint, but I think it is an issue worthy of conversation, particularly in how it is used in academic settings. I've seen PP presentations improve over the last few years, but occasionally I still encounter the PP presentation that tries to compete with a Broadway show (rather than support the speaker), or falls flat out of some sense that PP slides are an obligation. <br />
<br />
I heard many wonderful papers at the <a href="http://ams-ne.blogspot.com/2012/09/chapter-meeting-college-of-holy-cross.html" target="_blank">Fall meeting</a> of the New England Chapter of the American Musicological Society yesterday.* I was particularly struck, however, by Dan DiCenso's paper, "More Roman than "Gregorian," More Frankish than "Old Roman": What a Newly Rediscovered Italian Source Reveals about the Roman and Frankish Character of Chant Transmission in the Mid-Ninth Century." The presentation was not only full of intriguing content, but was an exemplary use of PowerPoint. Dan's presentation was also a good model for engaging a mixed audience on a topic that may be relatively foreign to a large group within the audience. He included comparative tables which clearly illustrated the various relationships between the Monza manuscript and the Sárospatak fragment, as well as other Old Roman sources. There was no need to be well-versed in medieval manuscripts, as Dan presented his information as clearly-defined visual data. Thoughtful use of circles and arrows highlighted particular elements of a slide as he spoke.<br />
<br />
I used to teach at a place that had fully wired classrooms, so I made use of the technology and encouraged the students to do so as well. When a group engaged PowerPoint slides for their projects, this was a learning experience for all parties involved. There are two major errors I see in PP presentations: The Gratuitous PowerPoint and The Overwrought PowerPoint. I will define each, and indicate the pitfalls of both types.<br />
<br />
<b>The Gratuitous PowerPoint</b>: This is the PP presentation filled with photographs, special fonts, fancy formatting, and all sorts of bells and whistles that offer little more than entertainment value. This is often motivated by a lack of substance in the actual presentation.<br />
<br />
PITFALLS:<br />
<ul>
<li>Visual input can detract from aural input (for more on this, I recommend reading Rich Mayer's ideas regarding cognitive loads in <a href="http://amzn.com/0521735351" target="_blank">Multi-Media Learning</a>)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li> The opportunity for students to grasp the outline form of a presentation might be impeded by various kinds of visual miscellanea</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Forced PowerPoint presentations can lead to sloppy work (I remember well a presentation on <i>composer</i> Roger Sessions which began with a slide of <i>software architect</i> Roger Sessions, simply because he was the first result in a Google Image search).</li>
</ul>
<br />
<b>The Overwrought PowerPoint</b>: Similar to the Gratuitous PP (but often stemming from different motivation) this is the PP that tries too hard and probably includes too much information.<br />
<br />
PITFALLS:<br />
<ul>
<li>There is so much information included on the slide, that the viewer is either distracted by the presenter, or the two cancel each other out. Students often feel it necessary to copy everything down off the slides.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Highlighting everything can corrupt the structure of a presentation, as well as allowing viewers to hone in on the emphatic points of the presentation.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Often there is little else left to be said, so the slides become a transcript of the presentation.</li>
</ul>
<br />
There are certainly more pitfalls, but I'd rather focus on what I like to see in a PP presentation, and how I do think they can be beneficial--both in terms of the process of making a presentation and in terms of the impact on an audience.<br />
<br />
BENEFITS OF HAVING STUDENTS DEVELOP POWER POINT PRESENTATIONS:<br />
<ul>
<li>The student is forced to draw out the cogent and important main points from their topic</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The student can decide what needs visual illustration and what does not</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The student gets experience giving a presentation accompanied by visual media</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Helps engage the student with different modes of learning</li>
</ul>
BENEFITS OF POWER POINT PRESENTATIONS FOR MUSIC-RELATED TOPICS<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>opportunities to put faces to names (particularly helpful in the classroom)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>musical examples (CAVEAT: full pages of score with tiny annotations are better viewed on a handout--especially in a large conference setting).</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>simple animations to highlight events in score examples</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li> in-slide audio examples</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>can help reinforce reading of lengthier quotations (as long as they are read aloud with the presentation of the slide).</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>using charts, tables, and graphs to represent comparisons, historical trends, etc. Again, this can engage multiple modes of learning by re-framing something with non-traditional illustrations. For example, a melody might be expressed as a graph of pitches (y-axis) in time (x-axis) to effectively demonstrate the concept of "melodic contour" in a music appreciation course. </li>
</ul>
<br />
So, PowerPoint presentations can become a crutch if used incorrectly. The general rule I give my students is: PowerPoint should enhance your presentation, but if the technology fails, your presentation should still be engaging and informative. This encourages both backups (CDs of musical examples) and a sense of responsibility regarding what is presented off-slide.<br />
<br />
What are your PowerPoint tips? Pet peeves?<br />
<br />
------------------------------------ <br />
<br />
*All the slide presentations at this meeting were fine to great, according to the criteria I propose here.Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-43688164319617698972012-07-09T06:28:00.002-05:002012-07-09T16:05:25.913-05:00"Writing to Learn" Seminar at Bard's Institute for Writing and Thinking: Day 1"Quaker reading"... "focused free write"..."framing our inquiry..."big brain discussion". These are some of the terms that floated around the room last night at the first workshop of the <a href="http://www.writingandthinking.org/" target="_blank">Writing to Learn</a> Session here at The Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College. We began with a five minute private free write, and then a focused private free write in response to a quote by Jeanette Winterson. I am not new to the ideas of free writing, but it was nice to sit around a seminar table and engage in it again as a student. Unsurprisingly, I surprised myself. ;-) I sense that there is going to be a lot of writing involved, which pleases me greatly. I did bring my laptop, but I prefer to write by hand in the workshops (Bard has provided us with special wide-margined notebooks for this purpose). I find that it forces me to be slower and, in some ways, less of a perfectionist. This might even be because I don't like seeing strikeouts and other "messy" things on a page, so maybe the perfectionism issue is still there. Most of this blog post is actually a free write (part of my morning pages at <a href="http://750words.com/">750words.com</a>), so I apologize to any readers I might have.<br />
<br />
I guess that was my disclaimer. We were told last night, by our excellent workshop leader Maureen Burgess, that we were allowed one disclaimer when we shared our writing. I thought, "Ha! She knows me!" Leaving off the editorializing preamble was more difficult than I thought--I managed to do it, but I had to squash the desire. I was actually quite surprised by my own reaction to the prompt: "Tell the story when a piece of writing moved you." I was moved by the act of telling that story. I finished with this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I loved being a puzzle piece that never quite fit, but could fake it if pushed hard enough." </blockquote>
I have no idea where that came from, except that I remembered I wrote a poem in junior high about the world as a jigsaw puzzle. I don't remember the words of the poem, except that I focused on the image of the cardboard stubs that sometimes make it difficult to fit the pieces together. I guess that image has traveled with me in my subconscious.<br />
<br />
Before we checked in to the Institute, my colleague and I attended a wonderful dance performance by Compagnie Fêtes galantes (at Bard's Fisher Center). Set to music by Bach (2nd, 3rd and 6th Brandenburgs; "Wir eilen mit schwachen..." from Cantata 78), the company presented roughly an hour of some of the most interesting choreography I've ever witnessed. Based heavily on Baroque dance, Béatrice Massin's choreography incorporates all sorts of modern gestures, and even flamenco. The entire work, entitled <i>Que ma joie demeure</i>/Let my joy remain, featured "unmusical" interludes--dancing that had no musical accompaniment save for the sound of the dancers' feet. These interludes were fascinating as Bach's counterpoint seemed to remain in the room by proxy--you could see it in the dancer's moves and the patterns created on stage. It was captivating and the whole troupe gave new life to Baroque gesture and dance as a platform for creative expansion.<br />
<br />
I don't know if I will blog every day of this seminar, and I don't want to reveal too many details. But even after Day 1, I get a very strong sense of writing to learn. It has always been part of my own writing experience in some sense...that is why I love to write. We finished our workshop last night with one of Paul Auster's essays in the <i>New Yorker</i>, "Why Write?" It is an amazingly powerful piece, especially when read collectively by a group of strangers. Auster says, "If nothing else, the years have taught me this: if there's a pencil in your pocket, there's a good chance that one day you'll feel tempted to start using it."Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-45742350547638538502012-06-25T17:05:00.001-05:002012-06-25T17:06:52.798-05:00750 Words: How to Write the Words you Love, While Maintaining Professor's Fatigue(Insert apologetic paragraph about my absence from this blog).<br />
<br />
I'm here now.<br />
One of the biggest revelations of teaching is how much time it takes away from writing. Actually, it would be more accurate to say how much <i>energy</i> it takes away from writing. I never thought I'd miss the days of the dissertation, when it was just me and the computer for hours on end...<br />
<br />
Ok, I don't really miss <i>those</i> days. But I do worry that ideas are rotting in my head rather than fermenting, and I'm hoping to commit more of them to paper (or pixels, I suppose). To that end, I'm trying <a href="http://750words.com/">750Words.com</a>. The idea is that you write in an uninhibited and spontaneous way, every day, and the website tracks your words for you (as well as various other statistics which can be entertaining...see below). This is akin to what I call "mental barf" when helping my students through the writing process. This is the "quantity, not quality" approach, which has its use...particularly in getting over the biggest hurdle of writing: starting.<br />
<br />
What you write is private, and presumably many people use the site for a personal journal. My 755 words today about Copland and the Communists could explain why my stats say I'm feeling "upset." Words like "insidious," "posturing" and "darkness" are bound to get those algorithms computing a profile of a rather melancholy author.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UZbeMO943m8/T-jgTghvprI/AAAAAAAAAxE/pk1KVzDMnK0/s1600/750StatsEx.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UZbeMO943m8/T-jgTghvprI/AAAAAAAAAxE/pk1KVzDMnK0/s320/750StatsEx.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
So, why a website like this instead of just sitting down and opening up MS Word every day? Well, I think, as pathetic as it might sound, it helps to have a little virtual writing coach. When you hit 750 words, a sedate green pop-up informs you of your accomplishment, and you can either keep going, or stop for the day. Points are awarded for writing at all, writing 750 words, and so forth.<br />
<br />
During the school year, I seem to go on a diet which includes cutting out most writing, research and performing and depends solely on the nutritive qualities of lesson planning, grading, and teaching. This summer, in an attempt to be more musicologically healthy, I'm slowly introducing research and writing back into the diet. My hope is, with regular practice, healthy writing will become a part of my daily regimen, even during the school year.<br />
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I'd love to hear from those of you who use 750words or programs like it. What strategies do you have for consistent writing?<br />
<br />Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-81140331331099076662011-11-12T11:21:00.003-05:002011-11-12T11:55:22.602-05:00AMS San Francisco 2011 Saturday, November 12What a pleasure to attend an entire session and to enjoy all four papers! The Cage and Friends session was very engaging and I enjoyed the recollections of Gordon Mumma, who served as the session's co-chair. He requested that the questions be kept concise, that they should actually resemble questions, and that the answers should likewise be kept short. I'd love to see these rules printed on a banner and posted in every session. People observed these guidelines for the most part, and the net effect was that I rather enjoyed the Q and A portion of each paper. See my previous post for a list of the papers.<br /><br />The session also worked well because there was a fair amount of cohesion, making for a rather lovely academic symphony. The outer movements, if you will, were papers by Brett Boutwell and Phil Gentry. What I enjoyed most about these two papers is how they addressed larger issues within musicology, using Feldman and Cage as examples. Boutwell explored the genesis of Feldman's <I> Projections</I>, and how Feldman transmitted and attributed a variety of influences on his work, and his ideas for graphic notation. Phil Gentry's paper on Cage's famous book <I>Silence</I>, adressed issues of autobiography and how we may be too quick to dismiss interpretations of these works with which their original authors might have disagreed. The paper looked at the "covert values" of Indeterminacy in Cage's "narrative" and most importantly, noted the lack of focus on 4'33" within the book. What writings Cage chose to include or not include is perhaps as much a part of the autobiographical narrative as the work itself.<br /><br />The two inner movements were also very fascinating, and I appreciated the humble confession by You Nakai regarding his slight nervousness presenting in front of Gordon Mumma, who entertained with numerous yet relevant anecdotes about the creation of these pieces and Cage's life in general. Richard Brown's paper taught me much about Richard Lippold, a sculptor about whom I knew little. Most intriguing was his investigation of curatorial strategies and their impact on art, particularly the reception of the artist.Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-59147990150080146792011-11-11T10:51:00.003-05:002012-06-25T17:15:33.346-05:00AMS 2011 San Francisco Introductory postWell, it is that time of year again, when musicologists from North America and beyond converge in a city to hear papers on myriad topics, eat, drink, and generally be merry. I've always maintained that there are two best case scenarios for a conference: a boring conference in a fantastic city or a fantastic conference in a boring city. This year might be challenging because there are plenty of papers I'd like to see, but....it is San Francisco! As a California native, I have very little excuse for not knowing this city better than I do.<br />
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I missed the one paper I really wanted to see yesterday due to less-than-stellar registration/maintenance issues at the hotel. However, I did dine at Gary Danko...thought to be, by many, the best restaurant in the city. I will write a detailed post about that dinner on my cooking blog, complete with photos. Suffice to say, it was an amazing meal, but I should have trained myself to eat such a large volume of food. More on that later. I am blessed to have AMS be an extension of my birthday celebration every year, and my annual dinner with my best friend is worth the trip across the country, even without AMS.<br />
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Today, I plan on attending an entire session. This is rare..usually I jump from paper to paper. From 9 to 12 I will be at the John Cage and Friends session listening to the following papers:<br />
<br />
Brett Boutwell, "Morton Feldman's <i>Projections</i> Origins, Development, and Spin"<br />
You Nakai, "To Imitate Their Manner of Operation: John Cage's use of Technological Media as Metaphorical Models in the 1950s and 60s"<br />
Richard Brown, "Hearing Through, Seeing Through: John Cage, Richard Lippold, and Open Sculpture"<br />
And then finally a paper by my friend and fantastic fellow blogger Phil Gentry, "Writing <i>Silence</i><br />
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As I prepare my Cage seminar for next semester, I am excited to have the opportunity to hear some of the most recent research on Cage. A full report will follow.<br />
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Very happy to be here.<br />
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Apologies for the lack of italics... I'm still figuring out how to use my iPad. :)Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-84544486667042326702011-01-29T21:35:00.008-05:002011-02-02T10:51:00.059-05:00In memoriam Milton Babbitt (May 10, 1916 - January 29, 2011)The tributes and musings are many:<br /><a href="http://sohothedog.blogspot.com/2011/01/old-order-changeth.html">Matthew Guerrieri</a><br /><a href="http://listen101.blogspot.com/2011/02/on-babbitt.html">Steve Hicken</a><br /><a href="http://irontongue.blogspot.com/2011/01/milton-babbitt.html">Lisa Hirsch</a><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/arts/music/30babbitt.html?_r=1">Allan Kozinn</a><br /><a href="http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/01/two_musical_deaths.html">Norman Lebrecht</a><br /><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-30/milton-babbitt-composer-who-mixed-serial-complexity-jests-dies-aged-94.html">David Mermelstein (Bloomberg)</a><br /><a href="http://missmusicnerd.com/rip-milton-babbitt/">Miss Music Nerd</a><br /><a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2011/01/29/133332420/composer-teacher-milton-babbitt-dies-at-94">NPR</a><br /><a href="http://www.overgrownpath.com/2011/01/milton-babbitt-writing-music-for-our.html">On An Overgrown Path (Pliable)</a><br /><a href="http://www.therestisnoise.com/2011/01/for-milton-babbitt.html">Alex Ross</a><br /><a href="http://johnsonsrambler.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/milton-babbitt-a-rookies-obituary/">Tim Rutherford-Johnson (The Rambler)</a><br /><a href="http://www.sequenza21.com/2011/01/milton-babbitt-rip/">Sequenza 21 (Steve Layton)</a><br /><br />I'm not sure what to say. All I know is that there was a day back in 1997 when "20th-Century music" no longer mystified me, and I knew I wanted to focus my research on all it had to offer. Milton Babbitt's name loomed large--as a god in a pantheon not wholly formed. I was fortunate to hear many tales of "Uncle Milty" from my graduate school adviser, but will forever regret never meeting him in person.Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-57091631307307103352011-01-11T09:17:00.004-05:002011-01-12T09:17:58.243-05:00Tending our gardens<style>@font-face { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }h6 { margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 7.5pt; font-family: Times; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }span.messagebody { }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <h6><span style="font-size:130%;"><span class="messagebody"><blockquote>"This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before." ~ Leonard Bernstein</blockquote></span></span></h6> <p class="MsoNormal">In the wake of the <a href="http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/08/several-people-shot-at-arizona-store-police-official-says/?iref=obnetwork">events in Tucson</a>, several of my friends posted this quote to their Facebook profiles, and it gave me pause, mostly because I felt rather uncomfortable.<span style=""> </span>Part of me thought,<span style=""> </span>“Yes, Gabby Giffords, you are in critical condition due to a bullet through your head, so I'm going to choir practice.” Then I batted snarky, cynical Rebecca off my left shoulder (or is it my right?), and listened to the more present Rebecca who teaches too many classes and is exhausted all the time, but holds back tears every time she plays the finale of Stravinky's Firebird or Josquin’s Ave Maria for her students.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Bernstein’s statement was made after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 (and if anyone can give me the exact source I’ll be indebted), and I wouldn’t be surprised if non-musicians, entrenched in their grief, might have had a mixed reaction to the statement at the time.<span style=""> </span>But I hope that they took some time to really mull it over, as I have, because it has forced me to think a lot about what I do and my place in the world.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sometimes making music and teaching music history seems terribly self-indulgent.<span style=""> </span>Yes, I happen to think <a href="http://vidspresso.com/teachers">teaching</a> is a very “noble profession” but at the end of the day, whose life am I saving? I’m one of those people who cringe on the airplane when they ask, “Is there a doctor on board?” because I know I’m not the kind of doctor they need. Yes, I know I have an impact, and I’m not claiming that we all have to be rushing into burning buildings for a living to have our work be meaningful.<span style=""> </span>I watch my students bloom and grow over the course of a semester in ways not even remotely related to the subject matter. But sometimes it is difficult to see the value of what I do in my little flower garden, when it is such a tiny part of a global landscape that is covered in thorns.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I do believe in responding to violence with beauty, rather than hate, of course. As one of my friends noted, it isn’t a solution, certainly, but it is a response. But I think it is Bernstein’s directive to make music more “intensely” that is important here.<span style=""> </span>We’ve all heard performances that are “intense” (not “tense,” mind you)---maybe you had tears in your eyes, or found yourself at a loss for words. In a way, it is a rather vague word because “intense” can have very individualized meaning. One might even argue that the alleged gunman who claimed six lives on Saturday was “intense.” But the intensity of which Bernstein speaks is so potent precisely because it DOES have the power to be beautiful, to stand up against the violence of the world and say, “I’m still here.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">So, in the end, I think Bernstein asks us to engage with beauty in a way that reaffirms its presence in the world.<span style=""> </span>And I don’t think this is limited to music, or even the arts. Violence claims not only lives, but it plants seeds of further violence—especially when we are focused on being angry.<span style=""> </span>Anger is important, yes…but only as a means to an end. I’m terribly angry when I think about Christina Green, and how she will never grow up to live out her potential. I’m angry when I see how our political battlefield has consumed our lives to such a degree that while Gabby Giffords fights for her life, we are screaming at each other about whose rhetoric is to blame, rather than seeing how we are all responsible for rhetoric running our lives in the first place. But that anger is intensity and I have a choice of what to do with it. I have the choice to create beauty. I have the <span style="font-style: italic;">obligation</span> to create beauty as a musical professional.<span style=""> </span>I think we all have that obligation. Every day at work is an opportunity to be generous, one that we probably don’t take as often as we should. I consider myself very lucky that what I do for a living is, for me, a large part of what it means <span style="font-style: italic;">to</span> live. So, I choose to maintain a healthy perspective—no, teaching music history isn’t going to stop a very sick man armed with a gun from opening fire on a crowd of people. And I’m certainly not going to cloister myself away from my rights and responsibilities as a citizen to speak out against injustices and what I regard as irresponsible legislation. I am, however, going to value the opportunities I have to be intensely devoted to creating beauty, because, to borrow from Bernstein, that is the way to make <i>our</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> garden grow.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></p><object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ey5e7buHfls?fs=1&hl=en_US"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ey5e7buHfls?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="385" width="480"></embed></object>Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-33441975718713565942010-11-06T10:35:00.003-05:002010-11-06T18:48:20.624-05:00AMS Indianapolis 2010: Apologies, Musings, and SummariesFirst, I'd like to issue a public apology to Ryan and Drew for missing <a href="http://amusicology.wordpress.com/">amusicology</a>'s gathering on Thursday night. That tops the list of regrets I always seem to accumulate at every AMS conference, due to too many plans and not enough time.<br /><br />Secondly, I apologize AGAIN to Ryan for missing what I'm sure was an absolutely spectacular paper: "Rewriting the History of (Symphonic) Jazz: Duke Ellington's arrangements of <span style="font-style: italic;">Rhapsody in Blue</span>."<br /><br />My list of regrets is rather long this year due to several cross-schedulings that I wish had not been (Elizabeth Morgan's paper on Haydn's C Major Fantasia (Pianism session) against the Haydn and Mozart session?? It would have been nice if she had been on the second half of the Pianism session and therefore at least up against Mozart, instead of Haydn). Apologies to Elizabeth.<br /><br />And Phil's very thoughtful <a href="http://blog.pmgentry.net/2010/11/was-beethoven-black.html">post</a> on Michael Broyles paper, "Beethoven Was Black. Why Does It Matter" was MUCH appreciated since I couldn't make it to that session.<br /><br />On the flipside, I did get to hear Dean Sutcliffe talk about the "shapes of sociability" and the 'gracious riposte' in Haydn's music. This was followed by a presentation on Haydn's lesser known second opera house at Esterháza, bringing together the work of a musicologist, theater historian, and an acoustician.<br /><br />Tim Carter's paper on Kurt Weill and the Federal Theater Project was illuminating and certainly the most engaging paper in terms of delivery that I've yet to see this year. I also enjoyed YouYoung Kang's offerings on the WPA and the sort of political overtones/current state-of-affairs ushered in by the audience comments.<br /><br />Danielle Fossler-Lussier's paper, "'The right and best ambassador': Marian Anderson, Louis Armstrong, and the U.S. Reception of Cultural Diplomacy" was eye-opening in the way it demonstrated how being a cultural ambassador abroad can often be a "no-win" situation here at home, where "representation" is such a muddled mess of a concept.<br /><br />Now, I'm gearing up for the Haydn Society of North America meeting--looking forward to fruitful discussion!Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-84543361079189734672010-08-10T10:30:00.008-05:002010-08-20T05:43:52.517-05:00Critiquing the Critic: The Don Rosenberg OrdealLet us say, for the sake of argument, that we agree that music criticism (and arts criticism, in general) is, in itself, an art.<span style=""> </span>Certainly it takes a measure of creativity to mold “It stinks” into:<p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"></p><blockquote>While we are enjoying the delight of so much science and melody, and eagerly anticipating its continuance, on a sudden, like the fleeting pleasures of life, or the spirited young adventurer, who would fly from ease and comfort at home to the inhospitable shores of New Zealand or Lake Ontario, we are snatched away from such eloquent music, to crude, wild and extraneous harmonies…(Review of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in the <i>Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, London, 1825—See Nicolas Slonimsky: </span><i>Lexicon of Musical Invective</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, 44).</span></blockquote><span style="font-style: normal;"></span><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">While we might chuckle at the historic evaluation of a Beethovenian masterpiece as “crude”, there is certainly no question that the reviewer is engaging in the act of music criticism.<span style=""> </span>The critique is an expression of opinion---in the above example we learn, in addition to Beethoven’s Ninth, the writer is also not disposed toward the shores of New Zealand.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">All of this is my opening salvo to, what I hope, is a springboard for further discussion and dialogue surrounding the Donald Rosenberg case. I will offer several links in this piece to people who have been covering this conflict from the beginning, but will give a quick snapshot from the <i>New Yorker</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> for those who may not be familiar with the case:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--></p><blockquote> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p>The Cleveland <em>Plain Dealer</em> created a scandal when it demoted its staff classical-music critic, Donald Rosenberg, to general arts-reporter status because of his overwhelmingly negative reviews of the Cleveland Orchestra-specifically its conductor, Franz Welser-Möst. Now Rosenberg is suing the conductor, the <em>Plain Dealer</em>, the orchestra, and specific staff members of both organizations, detailing a conspiracy in which the orchestra put massive pressure on the newspaper.”<a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.do#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]</span></span></a></blockquote><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.do#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""></span></span></a><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.do#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p>In a nutshell, the lawsuit happened, and Mr. Rosenberg lost.<span style=""> Read Anne Midgette's (<span style="font-style: italic;">Washington Post</span>) take <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-classical-beat/2010/08/cleveland_and_its_critics.html">here</a>. </span>In an engaging and all-too-brief TweetChat last night, Peter Friedman (law professor at Case Western Reserve) commented on the frivolity of the lawsuit from a legal standpoint. The chat, conducted on the social networking site Twitter, formally featured Friedman, Tim Smith (classical music critic at <a href="http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/classicalmusic/2010/08/music_critic_loses_case_agains.html">the <i>Baltimore Sun</i></a><span style="font-style: normal;">), and Janice Harayda (novelist and editor of <a href="http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/">One-Minute Book Reviews</a>). Several other “tweeps,” including this writer, also chimed in.<span style=""> </span>The discussion can be tracked/read on Twitter using the hashtag <a href="http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23DonR">#DonR</a>. Friedman has admirably covered the legal issues, or lack thereof, and has offered his opinions on the aforementioned at his <a href="http://blogs.geniocity.com/friedman/tag/donald-rosenberg/">blog</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">While I tentatively concur, given my admitted lack of legal expertise, that Mr. Rosenberg did not have legal grounds to file suit against the Cleveland Orchestra and <i>Plain Dealer</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, I do think the larger issue bears examination by anyone interested in arts criticism, either from the reader’s perspective, the writer’s perspective, or that of a performing organization.<span style=""> </span>Mr. Rosenberg does indeed have the “right” to criticize Maestro Franz Welser-Möst’s conducting.<span style=""> </span>The Cleveland Orchestra also has the “right” not to like it. No one questions the “right” to have opinions, or at least, I hope not.<span style=""> </span>But what happens when your <u>occupation</u> is defined by your ability to give your opinion?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Let’s remove the sense of “art” from criticism and look at it as a bare bones employment issue. WANTED: Music Critic JOB DESCRIPTION: To give subjective and ‘informed’ evaluations of music and the performances thereof.<span style=""> </span>This is an over-simplification, I realize. I also don’t know what the Cleveland Plain-Dealer’s job description looked like.<span style=""> </span>But my point is this (and it has been made by others as well): Is the success of a critic based solely on giving good reviews?<span style=""> </span>Certainly, if a critic seems to have an unreasonable axe to grind with a specific performer or organization, it might then be best to divide the criticism responsibilities, as Tim Smith suggested in the TweetChat last night: “I hate to second-guess an editor, but SG [Susan Goldberg] could have gone all Solomon and divvied up Franz reviews between Don and Zack [Lewis].” Barry Johnson, who has also <a href="http://artsdispatch.blogspot.com/2010/08/in-defense-of-critics-donald-rosenberg.html">blogged</a> about the situation, offered another suggestion: “You could even [arrange] live encounters (Ali v. Frazier) and employed recordings of various versions of the music,” implying that even negative criticism can provide an opportunity to enlarge engagement with the arts.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The ramifications of this (and other similar cases) are frightening in an age where arts criticism is being cut from publications at an alarming rate. One point that did not get addressed in last night’s chat was the fact that the publisher of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer sits on the Board of the Cleveland Orchestra.<span style=""> </span>This brings us to the next wrinkle: conflict of interest.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I am “connected” to multiple organizations in Boston: two conservatories, a chorus, and a handful of others in a less-direct way. I am sensitive to the conflict-of-interest issue, and I decline opportunities to review certain concerts because of it. However, the <a href="http://www.classical-scene.org/about/">Boston-Musical Intelligencer</a>, for which I write, and which has received initial support from the Harvard Musical Association, is ostensibly far more “connected” to myriad music organizations in the greater Boston area.<span style=""> </span>I would venture less than six degrees of separation between most of the large organizations and our editor, Robert Levin. Does this mean we should avoid negative reviews of these organizations? Should we not review them at all? The Intelligencer’s goal, as stated on the website, is: “to review as many as possible, especially those deemed most important and unjustly neglected by our editors. Our reviewers are to be drawn from Boston’s most distinguished musicians and musical academics under the leadership of Robert Levin.” As with most journalistic publications, the editors make the decisions about what should be covered—no surprises there. That is the right of the publication.<span style=""> </span>But does a publication have the right to control the nature of the reviews?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Don Rosenberg was not alone in his dislike of Franz Welser-Möst’s musical leadership. Two letters to the Editor of the CPD supported Rosenberg’s general assessment of Welser-Möst, claiming “When he conducts, the performances are below dull and boring on the classical music scale of excellence” and “[Welser-Möst] gave Debussy's "Iberia" an uninteresting, perfunctory, metronomic performance. He's out of synch when conducting the music of Debussy and Ravel.”<a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.do#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[2]<!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Rosenberg’s criticism, to be sure, was unflinching in its dislike of Welser-Möst’s “non-interventionist” approach in a review of a 2007 performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony:<br /></p><blockquote>When [Welser-Möst] wasn't pressing the orchestra toward ear-shattering harshness, [he] dropped dynamics to a whisper that sapped the music of all character. Even the serenity of the second movement was compromised as the ensemble toiled to maintain rhythmic unity. The third-movement Scherzo held no terror, and it was treated so rigidly that the marvelous trumpets had little space to sing.”<a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.do#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[3]<!--[endif]--></span></span></a></blockquote> I fail to see unsubstantiated invective in this particular review, although I do admit I am not a regular reader of Mr. Rosenberg’s work.<span style=""> </span>It does lack any sugar-coating, that is for certain, but Rosenberg has also made sure to make his own expectations clear: “serenity” in the second movement and “terror” in the third. <p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Listening to music is such an extraordinary endeavor precisely because it can be such a contrasting experience for two different listeners. Music criticism, whether it is an art or a task, is not objective. If that were the case, the world would only need one über-critic to meet all our needs, and that would be that. A good review isn’t one with which you necessarily agree, but one that presents both an opinion and the subjective background for that opinion. Ostensibly, in the case of a professional music critic, the critic’s credentials testify to their own subjective background as well as their qualifications for the job. But the critic cannot give voice to the same sorts of artistic evaluation that so freely flows in letters to the editors, blog posts and comments, if he/she is going to be subject to “re-assignment” (or worse) over negative reviews. That is, in effect, impeding the ability of the critic to do his/her job.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">So, we must decide, for ourselves, and as a supposedly “cultured” society, whether or not arts criticism is a valuable endeavor and component of the arts. The over-arching problem of politicization of the arts is a topic too large for this article, but I am aware that it lurks in the background, threatening to squash all my ideological naivete. If, as I wrote in the TweetChat last night, all we expect are “pandering, fluffy reviews,” then I think we are headed to a sorry place in our cultural history, where music performance and appreciation thereof will become the work of automatons whose ears receive musical input that is merely thrust back out, bypassing the heart and soul completely.<o:p></o:p></p> <div style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><br /><hr align="left" size="1" width="33%"> <!--[endif]--> <div style="" id="ftn1"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.do#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/goingson/2008/12/cleveland-orche-1.html">http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/goingson/2008/12/cleveland-orche-1.html</a> (accessed 10 August 2010)<o:p></o:p></p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn2"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.do#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[2]<!--[endif]--></span></span></a> See letters by William Farragher and Roger Gilruth <a href="http://blog.cleveland.com/letters/2007/11/rosenberg_is_right_about_cleve.html">http://blog.cleveland.com/letters/2007/11/rosenberg_is_right_about_cleve.html</a> (accessed 10 August 2010).<o:p></o:p></p> </div> <div style="" id="ftn3"> <p class="MsoFootnoteText"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.do#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[3]<!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Donald Rosenberg, Review of Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall, October 11, 2007. (Posted 12 October 2007). <a href="http://blog.cleveland.com/reviews/2007/10/cleveland_orchestra_welsermost.html">http://blog.cleveland.com/reviews/2007/10/cleveland_orchestra_welsermost.html</a> (accessed 10 August 2010)</p><p class="MsoFootnoteText">Note: A <span style="font-style: italic;">slightly</span> revised/edited version of this post has been published at the <a href="http://classical-scene.com/2010/08/20/critiquing/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Boston Musical Intelligencer</span></a><br /><o:p></o:p></p> </div> </div> <!--EndFragment-->Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-4492730651249655662010-07-20T08:29:00.006-05:002010-07-20T08:49:40.350-05:00The Limits of Surprise<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://graphicshunt.com/images/mona_lisa-3559.htm" target="_blank"><img src="http://images.paraorkut.com/img/pics/images/m/mona_lisa-3559.bmp" alt="Mona Lisa" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://graphicshunt.com/images/mona_lisa-3559.htm" target="_blank">Credit: Mona Lisa Pictures</a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />Earlier this month, Greg Sandow reported <a href="http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2010/06/surprise.html">here</a> and <a href="http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2010/07/yes_a_surprise.html">here</a> on a new recording of Haydn’s Symphony No. 94<span style=""> </span>“Surprise”, wherein the so-called “surprise” fortissimo chord is left out of the second movement, creating a fresh “surprise” for the modern listener. As is often the case when reading Sandow’s posts, even the ones with which I don’t agree, I felt the familiar rumble of musicological mischief in the back of my mind (mischief on my part, that is). I regret that various writing assignments have kept me from blogging about this in a more timely manner, but I hope that the relevancy of the issue will outlast the month of July 2010.</div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">Sandow writes: </p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>A tired old issue: How dare we change the notes Haydn wrote? Isn't our job to realize his intentions? Even assuming that was true (and I think -- speaking as a composer myself -- that it's a very limited idea of what performance is), Haydn's most important intention here was the surprise. The notes are only his way of achieving it. So if the notes no longer can surprise us...do we really honor his intentions by stubbornly playing exactly what he wrote?</blockquote></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">I don’t think the issue is tired at all, but is at the very crux of the continuing <strike>polemic</strike> dialogue between historically-informed performance, teaching of music history, “canonical” models, etc.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->There are a few aspects here to consider.<span style=""> </span>First and foremost is the issue of audience.<span style=""> </span>It is true--I am no longer ‘surprised’ by the loud chord in the second movement, and yes, I’ve never seen a student jump out of their seat at a first hearing.<span style=""> </span>I disagree with Sandow that Haydn’s most important intention was this one chord in the Andante. He was too good a composer to rest the success of a piece on an experience that can truly only be had once.<span style=""> </span>I also don’t believe that Haydn was writing with the 2010 audience in mind, but instead was quite content to offer a surprise for his 1792 audience (as Griesinger confirms).<span style=""> </span>As a musicologist and teacher, the success of the piece for me does not ride on that moment, but instead on the fact it exists at all. It is, as Steven Paul offered in 1975, “…a masterly surprise within a surprise, a practical joke, the musical equivalent of the punchline” ( Larsen/Serwer/Webster, eds. <i>Haydn Studies</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, 452). Part of what defines Haydn is his contribution of wit to eighteenth century music.<span style=""> </span>This is a fantastic example, but just one of many.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">Sandow says of the recording:<span style=""> </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>For a while I listened with refreshed ears. But then I sank into the familiar non-expectation with which I listen to so many performances of standard repertoire. I know the music. The performance sounds fine, but it doesn't show me anything. </blockquote></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">This opens up a second can of proverbial worms.<span style=""> </span>I agree that every performance of any musical work should bring something new, but I probably disagree with Sandow about what that should be. Unlike traditional painting, for instance, music isn’t static and there is this dynamic aspect of performance that creates the work anew in some sense.<span style=""> </span>One might offer that viewing the Mona Lisa would be a truly fresh experience if the painting were placed in a different frame, a different room, or with different lighting.<span style=""> </span>But do we display the Mona Lisa upside down just to “show” something?</p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">So this brings me back to the example at hand: Haydn’s “surprise.”<span style=""> </span>I still smile knowing that Haydn is defying convention and throwing in a little laugh in the middle of a fairly trite theme and variations movement. The second movement is an entire package, not just that chord. Paul, with input from Walter Gerboth, calls the “surprise” a “gratuitous addition” and it is the gratuitousness of the chord that is the true surprise, rather than the force of <i>Paukenschlag</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> itself. Haydn’s point was just to insert a “novelty,” according to Griesinger,<span style=""> </span>and while I think Minkowski’s recording offers a witty commentary on a brief moment in the piece, I also believe we should be careful about our expectations for performance. I may know every note of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, but that does not make the impassioned C Major affirmation of the fourth movement any less relevant to the piece than is the insistent four note motive. I don’t need grace notes added to the motive or a resounding C minor arpeggiation in the last movement as a postmodern commentary on what actually happened to Beethoven. While “as the composer intended” is indeed tricky terrain through which to navigate, there are limits to what we can “change” about a piece and still have it be a performance of THAT piece. The challenge of performing classical repertoire is that we maintain the preservation obligations of a museum, but the curatorial contexts are ever-changing and invite an unending dialogue between performer and listener.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <!--EndFragment--> </div>Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-63214477788533110422010-06-29T13:24:00.005-05:002010-06-29T13:33:15.987-05:00The Joy of Critical Thinking<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_JGXpM8-OEAY/TCo7odtw8DI/AAAAAAAAAh4/m5LW3Za58SA/s1600/002.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 283px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_JGXpM8-OEAY/TCo7odtw8DI/AAAAAAAAAh4/m5LW3Za58SA/s320/002.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488264662261755954" border="0" /></a><br />Summer might seem like an odd time to blog about plagiarism, but it is a great opportunity for me to think about it, rather than react to it. At the end of the year I am inundated with plagiarized papers ranging from completely cut-and-paste jobs to citation infractions. I spend the first day of class reviewing plagiarism, how to cite, etc. and I pass out a "Guide to Citation," stressing that the attribution is more important to me than the format (at least for the classes where it is a large problem).<br /><br />Because I teach music history to performers (primarily), I try to draw parallels between the plagiarism of musicological work and the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/opinion/25iht-edutton.4712389.html">Joyce Hatto scandal</a>. Most of them find the idea of falsifying a recording fairly horrible, so I try to explain that plagiarism in their papers is no less offensive to me. The idealist in me supposes that this little speech does the trick, but then there it is again at the end of the semester: plagiarism everywhere.<br /><br />A friend posted <a href="http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/personal_essays/cheater_cheater.php">this intriguing article</a> on his Facebook page, and it made me think more carefully about plagiarism and the assumptions I make. A lot of the plagiarism I encounter comes from students whose facility with written and spoken English is minimal. These are good students otherwise, who attend class regularly, turn in their assignments on time, and generally pass quizzes. There are, however, two major issues I have encountered that rise out of the same cultural conflict. The first is questioning authority figures. The second is fear of thinking critically.<br /><br />I do not believe that students lack the ABILITY to think critically. I think, in the best cases, the ability simply hasn't been encouraged or cultivated, and in the worst cases, they have been taught to fear it. The language barrier, coupled with the cultural barrier, often means that when I say, "Is that clear?" it really isn't clear at all to them, but I'll never find out until it manifests in a plagiarized paper. A student once wrote in his/her evaluation: "Sometimes I have trouble understanding what we talk about in class, but I don't want to stop class to ask a question." Another student said she was worried about taking up my time with questions after class and felt it was disrespectful to make me read bad English.<br /><br />So now I try to impart that I'd rather read their original thoughts in terrible English, than someone else's ideas and words in perfect prose. Most of them now write and rephrase in their own words, but I'm still struggling with getting them to use their own ideas, analyses, and reactions. I don't want to rule out the use of secondary sources completely, because I think they need to know how to use those as well (and sometimes that is all that is available). But how do I not only make them believe that I WANT to read their thoughts, but that their thoughts are also valuable to THEM?<br /><br />I have various strategies (journals wherein they are graded on their own reaction to the music they hear, etc), but I'm eager to hear how the collective wisdom deals with these issues.Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9909586.post-7466304623453486442010-03-20T11:23:00.005-05:002010-03-20T12:08:38.817-05:00SAM 2010 Part II<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_JGXpM8-OEAY/S6UAFxMdhzI/AAAAAAAAAgI/3hnxBHGJiiY/s1600-h/CIMG0526.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_JGXpM8-OEAY/S6UAFxMdhzI/AAAAAAAAAgI/3hnxBHGJiiY/s320/CIMG0526.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5450763023106803506" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_JGXpM8-OEAY/S6T_-L2P_CI/AAAAAAAAAgA/hQPECsgeBOA/s1600-h/CIMG0497.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 316px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_JGXpM8-OEAY/S6T_-L2P_CI/AAAAAAAAAgA/hQPECsgeBOA/s320/CIMG0497.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5450762892822445090" border="0" /></a><br />Phil has offered some <a href="http://blog.pmgentry.net/2010/03/sam-report-part-1.html">very sane, well-phrased, and constructive criticisms</a> of Thursday's seminar, and I certainly hope TPTB will take note. Let's see...where were we? Ah, yes, Friday afternoon.<br /><br />One issue, but not necessarily problem, is that those of us blogging SAM2010 tend to go to the same sessions, but perhaps next year, we can recruit more bloggers to participate or do guest blogging spots, thereby "covering" a wider range of papers/events.<br /><br />Like <a href="http://amusicology.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/society-for-american-music-2010-day-2/">Drew</a>, I attended the Cold War Anxieties session during the late morning of Friday. Phil's paper was, as expected, fantastic, and started churning a whole lot of thoughts in my mind. Even just listening to the snippet of Bernstein's "Age of Anxiety" got me thinking about de-volution in musical codas, and how much the end of the Epilogue seems like the reverse experience of Stravinsky's <span style="font-style: italic;">Firebird</span> with its 'born from the ashes' finale. Phil talked about how it avoids "triumphalism," but I felt it used some of the same techniques inherent in "triumphant" endings, but to push it toward anxiety, rather than triumph. I can't wait to get home and spend some more time with the work. And that is what a good paper should do. We start the Cold War unit in my 'War and Music in the US' class on Tuesday, so Phil's paper and the others gave me a lot of food for thought. Jennifer Delapp-Birkett offered some revelations from the FBI files on Copland which are immediately relevant to my own research, so there is a contact I need to make. Keith Hatschek's paper on Dave Brubeck's 1958 State Dept.-sponsored tour was fascinating for interpolated questions of race, Cold War politics, and musical style. I also appreciated Leann Wood's paper on the Cold War reception of the film <span style="font-style: italic;">The Music Man</span>, and found myself amused at the questions of martiality and regimented music that can be appropriated by either side .<br /><br />My afternoon was spent at the <a href="http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/index_e.aspx?ArticleID=16451">Canadian Museum of Civilization</a>. We had a great tour, including an excellent demonstration of hoop dancing (see photo). Our guide was one of the people who was instrumental in the development of the First Peoples exhibit and so we received very good insights into the questions of curation that come up when you have to negotiate anthropology and archaeology. Rather than pigeonhole each tribe or group into their own little museum slots, the approach at the Museum is more reflective of the cultural dialogue between groups, and between the past and present. He cited intermarriage and trade culture as two reasons to approach it this way. A very impressive museum in a fascinating building.<br /><br />The evening ended at Drew and Phil's no-host blogger reception at the Armada Lounge. When we finally gained access to the Armada Lounge (which sits atop The Brig), we were pleased to welcome a large contingent from the SAM Student Dinner.<br /><br />TODAY (Saturday)<br /><br />I started my morning off with Rebecca Bennett's (Northwestern) paper, "Virgil Thomson and Theodor Adorno: An Unlikely Team Fights an "Appreciation Racket" and thought about the resonance of their criticism in today's climate (specifically the <a href="http://classical-scene.com/2010/02/16/is-classical-music-radio-a-dying-technology/">hullabaloo</a> over WGBH/WCRB in Boston--the link is to just one of many related articles from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Boston Musical Intelligencer</span>). Then I jumped over to hear David Paul's (UCSB) great paper, "Does the Cradle Still Rock? Recreating an Infamous Premiere on Film," which investigated, among other things, the political resonance of three screenplays for film versions of Blitzstein's <span style="font-style: italic;">Cradle Will Rock</span> (Lardner, Welles, and Tim Robbins). Lastly, I caught my former graduate colleague Revell Carr's (UNC Greensboro) fascinating paper on Charles Derby's California Hula Tour in 1862. I had to banish images of grass skirts and coconut shells as Rev showed a photo of hula dancers in 1862 who looked like a cross between Gibson Girls and Hawaiian aboriginals. It was amusing to see Victorian sensibilities inform something that has been popularly linked with the erotic in the modern day (however erroneously).<br /><br />I'm looking forward to this afternoon's panel on Composer-Fellowships at the American Academy in Rome, with presentations by Judith Tick, Carol Oja, and Martin Brody.Rebecca Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356712338959918065noreply@blogger.com0