Last Wednesday I performed Stravinsky's Requiem Canticles. Last Friday I went to a concert of "the scariest organ music ever written" in a concert called Pipes Spooktacular. Last Sunday I heard Tombeau de Couperin at a student conducting recital. Yesterday I went to an orchestra concert and heard excerpts from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. This weekend I'm going to the New Music Ensemble concert. I go to about two concerts a week. This is my favorite part of life in grad school. My least favorite parts include, but are not limited to, grading stacks of music theory homework, paying what feels like a bazillion bills, and reading boring musicology articles about 15th century motets.
Aubrey sent me this link. When I first read it I was in the library so I had to suppress my laughter, but it was tough. #10 is my favorite. I love the idea of Hello Kitty with a raspy sailor's voice.
A few weeks ago I went to a friends' house for a fall music theory/musicology grad student get-together. There was food, music, mulled wine, and pumpkin carving. The above pumpkin was Mitch's. I like the literal "boo" coming out of his mouth.
My pumpkin is the winking anime guy second from the left. I tried to make him look like Stinkoman.
For those NWC alums who knew some of the great conductors there, you are certainly familiar with the sort of metaphors and similies I wrote about in a recent post. I am so happy to discover that conductors everywhere make similar comparisons in a misguided attempt to help the performers. To wit:
"Cut the sound like you are cutting... a tube... of cheesecake."
It was clear that my conductor was desperately searching for the right words. In the end, she couldn't find them, and the singers got a good chuckle.
My friend Erin and I were in a convenience store some weeks back when we saw a display selling a new kind of 3 Musketeers Bar:Being a mint/chocolate lover myself, I was quite excited about the possibility of a 3 Musketeers Bar (which is already pretty awesome) being infused with mint (supposedly making it even better). I don't often buy full-size candy bars, and since I bought this one at a convenience store it was a hefty $1.69. I was expecting big things from this candy bar.
I was let down.
It was basically an oblong York Peppermint Pattie. With fluffy, toothpaste-flavored filling. That tasted like a diet snack. Let this be a lesson to y'all. Don't be fooled by the tantalizing addition of mint to an already-tasty chocolate treat. That worked fine for Oreos, but that doesn't mean it will work for everything.
I spend all of my academic time on music. All of it. When I'm not listening to a mozart piano sonata or a motet by Guillaume DuFay, I'm analyzing a Brahms intermezzo or correcting music theory homework. Granted, I'm studying very diverse aspects of music at the same time (analysis of music from the Classical/Romantic era, pre-Baroque motets, and analysis of post-tonal music after 1900). However, I'm not studying English literature. I'm not studying math. I'm not learning a language. I'm not in a science class. I am exclusively in the music department. I don't even know where other departments are on campus. All my friends are music majors.
Since lately I've been spending so much time learning a lot of stuff about one subject, I've been feeling a bit... pigeonholed. Even within the music department I feel pigeonholed. I want to learn about anatomy and Japanese and American history and British literature and anthropology, but my degree doesn't allow for that sort of diversification. I only have room for music theory classes, with the exception of two classes in an "outside field," and usually people just choose another area of music. What if I want to be a Jane-of-all-trades? What if I don't want to end up an expert in music theory but no nothing about choral conducting or jazz or French poetry?
I know I can't know everything, but is it wrong to want to know a little about a lot of things?
Name: Ruthie Home: Japan About Me: I want to know who God is and what his truth is. I love getting lost in beautiful music and cloudless star-filled skies, especially in the fall. I hate being bored. I like big cities. I want to travel the world. read more
Name: Ruthie