The People's Chorus

Greetings from a prodigal blogger!


My, how time flies.  It's the last day of April, and a perfect spring day in Colorado -- this evening's post is being typed outdoors in celebration.   


Degree work has been quite frenzied over the past two weeks, and there's been a heavy dollop of concertizing on top of that, the most recent of which was with the community chorus conducted by one of my very dearest friends.  He was short a soprano in his chamber group, so I filled in, and was thereby privy to two performances of a concert he'd entitled "The People's Chorus," a title I absolutely love...I find the concept inspiring.  Too many people believe that music-making is a rarified-air kind of activity, that people who are musicians had to grow up in a special kind of family or live a special kind of life -- that musicians are born, not made, and you either are one or you're not.  You either have a good voice or you don't.  You either read music or you can't.  How sad, especially in a world where people like Kodály have worked hard to get the message out: Music belongs to everyone.  Art is a birthright, a necessity, something everyone can make and learn about and benefit from.  Lots of people still don't believe this, and you'd think that a university town would have a greater proportion of people who do, who are courageous enough to be willing to take hold of their artistic inheritance and do something with it.  And, to its credit, this particular university town does have many enthusiasts for the arts in various forms.  However, the "rarified air" mentality is still hard to combat, maybe because it's either a cultural or a human tendency (and an extremely powerful one, either way) to choose to believe that one cannot learn/grow/change in order to fend off the guilt of not trying.  So, we tend to stay the same....we dabble and form opinions, but we never really get down and dirty and comfortable with who we are so we can make a proper start toward who we'd like to be.  Just think what would be possible if this were not the case!

One of the more magical parts of these concerts was a piece composed by another friend of mine on a text attributed to F.G. Lorca:

"The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink - and in drinking understand themselves."


To my knowledge, Kodály and Lorca never interacted, but it definitely sounds like they were on the same page, doesn't it?  However, perhaps Lorca reveals something of the Catch-22 involved here: by engaging with art, people come to understand themselves.  But, without a pre-existing connection to their truest selves, how will they come to art to begin with?  How will they recognize the solution to their thirst if they haven't acknowledged the thirst?  This is the crux, and perhaps the hardest part of the musician's task.  Obviously, the solution of teaching the very young to value art is the best one for our future, and it's usually a pretty short reach to get kids to be and express their true selves.  But, what about the grownups?  How can we reach out to them?  Classical musicians can't out-spend Mark Zuckerberg or ABC, so how do we pry the public away from Facebook and "Dancing with the Stars" and get them out to a concert hall or a rehearsal or a class or a private lesson?  


It strikes me that the answer may be "one at a time," but I think there might be something even closer to us that we must consider.  In order to be compelling, in order to make art and teach lessons that are worth experiencing, we ourselves must be in touch with what compels us.  In order to change the world, we need to lead by example.  Heavy, I know, but necessary and beautiful....and maybe even sometimes fun.  As mentioned above, kids are almost always rarin' to go on the authenticity-honest-self front, and they don't ever like to not have a good time.  


So, despite the fact that you poor darlings haven't had a "real" assignment in weeks, I'm going to go with this as your task for the week:


All Levels


Spend time this week feeding your inner artist.  For more specific advice, look here.


Spend time this week thinking about how you'd like to impact your community through music-making and teaching.  Dream wildly.  Imagine that money is no object.  Be extravagant.


Feel free to email or call me up with your ideas -- 'tis the season for big dreams and brainstorming.


Also, get ready next week for the start of pre-AKI Solfa Boot Camp (my new idea for May and June).  I'll be taking requests for specific areas you'd like to address, so again, feel free to email!

The Red Sea

Happy Easter!  Happy Passover!  Happy Spring!

Predictably, it's been a crazy week -- not only was it Holy Week (meaning that I have spent large portions of the last seven days here, working with some of the best people I know.  It's been exhausting, but also wonderful -- Holy Week in high church mode has always felt so full of magic to me, so rich with imagery and drama, and it never really fails to capture my imagination.), but....

I passed my final DMA orals this past Tuesday, which means that my five committee members have agreed that I will be graduating on Thursday, May 10....and they officially gave me leave to start calling myself "Doctor".  !!!!!

So, now I have many loose ends to tie up (revisions, finishing up editing projects, etc.), but my trajectory towards graduation has been confirmed.  This, in turn, means that I need to figure out what's next -- I need to find a job, figure out what to do with my living situation, and generally prepare myself for life after my terminal degree.  GULP.

To be honest, I guess I started thinking of the completion of my DMA like my own personal Red Sea somewhere along the line.  I got so wrapped up in the student life I've known for many years now that I guess I never quite expected it to end -- I mean, I did, but I convinced myself it'd happen to a me that would be much wiser and more prepared than the me I am currently feels.  This theoretical person would be ready for all that post-student life demands and offers, and she would step proudly across the graduation stage and listen as her advisor announced her extremely well-conceived future plans to the people in the auditorium, and smile serenely, knowing that all was as it should be.  The reality is that for me, everything is still very much up in the air.  It's early yet, and I made the conscious decision to focus first on finishing, and second on finding a job for next year, which is all very logical -- one has to be certain one will have a doctorate before one applies to positions that require one to have a doctorate.  But now, the Red Sea is parting....the miracle of graduation is about to occur, and I have no idea what awaits me on the other shore (not to mention the chariots who are giving chase....in my case, they're not people, but student loans and my perceptions of others' expectations of me).  It's time for me to walk through, and I don't know what's going to happen, and sometimes this makes me extremely anxious.

So, Holy Week came along in the middle of my misgivings, accompanied by a flare of an old back injury that slowed me down enough to remind me to be careful and make me think.  Holy Week, with all of its stories and rituals -- all of which I've heard and seen before, but part of the Red Sea story really sucker-punched me this time around.  In the story, the Israelites have made their escape from slavery, and they're up against the Red Sea, and now all of a sudden, they're being pursued by their former captors.  They do what we all sometimes do: they freak out.  They start talking crazy.  They start saying they wished they never tried to leave.  Then, in comes a message: RELAX.  They get that call that I really wish would come in for me -- they get told that all they have to do is keep still, and that their battle will be fought for them.

I don't really expect that someone else is going to find me a job or pay off my student debt or any of that (although if anyone out there would like to make either or both of those things happen for me, I will not say you nay!).  However, the story still rings true, and it's true for everyone.  If you're in a situation that you know to be unsustainable, and you make a choice to change it, it's true that it might be really difficult for awhile.  It is also true that unsustainable is unsustainable, and when it's time to go, it's time to go.  There's no getting around it, and no point in trying to beat yourself up for not being willing to stay where you don't belong.  I have no doubt that now is the time for me to graduate and move on with my life.  The fact that I'm not sure exactly what that looks like does freak me out, but the fear doesn't change my certainty that I'm doing what I have to do.  I wish I could do more to ensure my future, but for now, this is it.  I'm doing the work to go to someplace unknown, even though it's unknown and scary, and I have to trust that I wouldn't be so certain if something wasn't going to come meet me halfway.

Ok, so now for the big solfa tie-in...why do we sometimes stagnate in our musicianship studies?  Well, I think sometimes it's because we're afraid of what we could do if we didn't have the obstacles we've come to rely upon as compass points.  We've convinced ourselves that we need limitations, we need to be afraid of harmonic dictation or Roman numeral analysis or sight-singing or using the keyboard, because those limitations tell us who we are.  And, these kinds of limitations are self-fulfilling prophecies -- if you tell yourself you can't play the piano, you're right, you probably can't.  However, if you were willing to start chipping away at the thing you believe you can't do, if you started making friends with your abilities as they are right now and doing careful, thoughtful, compassionate work in order to build upon them, you would grow.  You would become someone new.  You might not even recognize yourself....and believe it or not, that could be ok, because you would recognize yourself again in time.  You could re-draw your own borders, and make a whole new map of what you can do.

All Levels:


Spend your first 15-minute practice session doing a little soul-searching.  What is it that you think you can't do in the world of musicianship?  Write it down.  I challenge you to be vulnerable and honest in your diagnosis -- no one has to know but you.  If you can't get your head around it the first day, sleep on it, and come back to it.

Once you know what you'd like to work on, look back on some old posts:

http://49weeksofsolfa.blogspot.com/2011/09/body-remembers.html

http://49weeksofsolfa.blogspot.com/2011/09/like-cures-like.html

(etc.)

 to find some concrete suggestions for activities, or feel free to design your own course of study.

In even just a week's time, I bet you'll find you were able to make some headway.  Give it more time, though.  Don't be afraid.  The you you never thought you could be (the you who does flawless sing-and-plays or lightning-quick analysis or crackerjack sight-singing) is waiting on the other shore.

Beginner's Mind...and Deeper Magic

Greetings, solfa sojourners!

I apologize for the lateness of this post....it was quite the week in my little world.

First, I am now officially (drumroll....)......A.B.D. (all but dissertation)!  This means that the comprehensive exam process is now completely behind me, and there's just a collection of projects and papers standing between me and a shiny new set of letters to follow my name: DMA.  I'm currently curled up on my couch with a glass of Spanish wine and a variegated collection of dark chocolate (courtesy of a much-loved colleague), but The Josquin Companion is glaring at me a little from my bookshelf, and I well know that I'll have to get cracking if I really want to get 'er done in time for a May 2012 graduation.

However, the four concerts and two church services I sang this weekend have earned me an evening of moderate slovenliness (and a breakfast tomorrow morning of these...), and also a moment of reflection -- courtesy of, in part, the aforementioned church services.

The orals portion of the comps process is more than a little nerve-wracking, although I was incredibly fortunate to have an extremely gracious and supportive committee of professors who I believe to be truly invested in my success.  Still, though, the prospect of two hours in a room with five extremely smart people tasked with finding out what you know is pretty sobering.  I definitely felt the pinch (especially over the "game" one professor decided to play: he told me to study choral music from 1000 CE to 2010, and he had planned to pick four years at random from that millennial span, whereupon it was my job to talk about what happened in those years.  In the actual exam, he picked 1190, 1757, and 1910...if you're looking for something musicological to do, do a little digging on these years and see what you come up with...).  Interestingly, however, there was a moment in the middle of the exam when I was feeling at a loss for one thing or another, and this thought occurred to me:

"Thank goodness for having more questions to ask."

Not that I'd started to wonder whether or not I know everything....I harbor no delusions on that front.  However, there's an unavoidable jadedness that comes with all these years of post-graduate education and the rigors of study and practice and working too hard.  Familiarity just breeds contempt, no matter what one does.  So, this is analogous to what the preacher on Sunday called "Deep Magic" (in the Narnian sense)...sowing and reaping, the inevitability of a pattern based on natural law.  But there is, as Aslan said, a magic deeper still.  Sometimes, through the grace of something unforseeable, we are shaken out of the pattern, and we see something new.  It isn't the pattern that has changed, as it turns out.  It's us.  We look at something well-worn and well-known and our perspective is reborn.  We are able to be present in a different way, and we are beginners again.  A well-known Zen teacher spoke about this phenomenon, too -- he calls it "beginner's mind," and he claims it is always with us.  This kind of shift (a move towards enlightenment, if you will) is always about to happen.

So, in this spirit:

Rising Level 2's


See if you can find these in your handouts from Level I:

Canon 109
Canon 106
Canon 75

Sing through each one, remembering the twists and turns of each.  Are the things that tripped you up once still troublesome, or have they changed?  Do you perceive the phrase structures the same way you once did?  Do you hear or see anything new?  Sing through one of the other canons on the same xeroxed page and compare the experience of singing something familiar (if distantly so!) with singing something new.  How has your musicianship evolved?  How has your approach changed, if at all?

Rising Level 3's


Break out your Classical Canons book and track these down:

Canon 115
Canon 117
Canon 179

Follow the same instructions as the rising 2's.

Rising Level 4's


Track down your Kodaly 15 2-part Exercises, please....

Look at exercise number 12 and sing through both lines.

How well do you remember them?  Which parts are the easiest to remember?  What makes them memorable?  How has your experience of this piece changed since July?  Now look at number 15 (which I think we looked at only in passing, if at all).  How will you approach it?  How does it differ from number 12, both in terms of difficulty and in terms of its construction?  Does the appearance of accidentals elicit a different intellectual/vocal response from you now than it did in July?  How have you changed since then?

It is my hope that you'll be pleasantly surprised by what you discover through these activities -- and even if you're not, my money's on the fact that you've all grown and changed and improved since I saw you last, even if it doesn't seem obvious at the moment.  The hard part of this musical journey we're all taking is that we don't always get to enjoy our own progress.  However, it's still there.  The moment of revelation is always at hand.  The deeper magic is never not at work.

Let It Go

Welcome, my dear solfeggists!


I think I've blogged about this general topic before, but I tend to have troubles with hanging onto stuff that doesn't help me.  Sometimes it's tangible stuff (why are there paystubs from a job I had in 2006 living in the trunk of my car?  Because.), maybe more often it's emotional stuff.  Sometimes I blame it on having a weirdly accurate memory about some things, but the truth is that my mind enjoys (???) reliving situations that it can't reconcile to its own satisfaction.  It grabs on like gangbustas, refuses all distractions, and really concentrates on being upset.  Yeah, I know...healthy, right?  I bet I'm not alone...


This afternoon, I had a conversation with a professor who affirmed something related I've begun to suspect about listening to post-tonal music in general.  In order to enjoy it, I personally have to consciously choose to let go, be less judgy, and let myself not know exactly what's going on or what's coming next.  I have to give up, and in order to do so, I have to on-purpose go find the white flag and run it up the pole.  This is tricky -- unraveling a well-established, intentionally-honed skill set and replacing it with calm awareness is definitely not a simple task.  I'm starting to see that hyper-analysis musically is very much related to my habit of hyper-analysis of situations, people, etc., and that both have a way of getting in the way of me enjoying my life.  


The long-run antidote?  I'm not sure.  I bet it has to do with both effort towards changing a mental pattern and relaxation towards (if one can relax directionally...maybe that contradicts the whole idea of relaxation) the fact that I have the pattern.  After all, I know a lot of neurotic people -- there must be some kind of genetic advantage to being that way, or there wouldn't be so many of us swimming around in the gene pool, right?  


In the short term, however, try this exercise for the week:


All Levels:


Select a piece or two from the list below (or a piece by another composer whose work you find a little difficult or intimidating):


Paul Hindemith - When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
Bela Bartók - Cantata Profana
Arnold Schoenberg - Gurre-Lieder
Gyorgy Ligeti - Lux Aeterna
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung 


(roughly in order of accessibility)


Track down a recording (you can buy them on iTunes for cheap, or your local university library or a good public library will have them) and set aside some time to listen.  Sit someplace comfortable, turn off your ringer, close your laptop.  Listen.  Exercise your non-judgy muscles.  Pay more attention to what happens to the sounds than you do to what the sounds themselves are (a tip stolen fair and square from my aforementioned professor).  If your ear needs a break, take one.  Try listening to the whole thing more than one time if you can.  Observe how your experience changes.  


It all sounds a little abstract, I know, but I think we can handle it.  Enjoy!

Our daily bread

Hello much-missed students!

....yes, it's true....I miss you all!

So, I have spent this past week house/dog-sitting and re-acclimating to life at high altitude after my long sojourn on east and west coasts, respectively. School starts up for me a week from tomorrow, and like many of you (I'm sure), I've started to get anxious about it. This is supposed to be a big year -- the year of comprehensive exams, dissertation projects, final orals and GRADUATION....and the thought of all the work standing between me and that goal (see word in all caps) is staggering, and it makes me want to freak out.

There, I said it.

Many of you had a similar reaction to reading Kodály's "Who is a Good Musician?", and I think I can safely say that this feeling of freak-out is a common human phenomenon. It happens to everyone, and I think most of us tend to think our freak-outs are some sort of secret flaw that no one else has, and that's not true.

We also tend to think that only special people will live to achieve monumental things in their lifetime, and that you have to have been born with some kind of one-in-a-million genius in order to do so. Part of that is too much TV or something...

No, seriously...

At pretty much every major milestone in my life, I've had this irresistible urge to wander the streets looking for a phone booth that contained my unitard, cape, and superpowers, all of which I clearly needed in order to check off the next item on my list....and you'll probably be as disappointed as I was to discover that there is NO phone booth.

Anyhow, I think another part of it is a refusal to acknowledge our own empowerment, our own human ability to transform ourselves through transforming our behavior. We'd rather not believe that work is just work. I'm not saying that there aren't things in life we can't do, and probably we have a much better shot at prowess in some things than others, just from our genetic predispositions.

But, the truth is this: for the most part, it's just work. The daily grind is the path to greatness. There may be some kind of miraculous transformation or unprecedented revelation waiting for you in the wings, but do you know how it'll reveal itself? Day by day, in the business of doing what needs to be done, probably with very little fanfare, and probably when no one else is watching and when you yourself have perhaps forgotten why you've bothered -- that is when the magic happens. It doesn't live in some big genius/talent storehouse. It comes to you like your daily bread, and you have to trust that each day will bring its proper allotment as you do your daily work in order to earn it. Some days you'll feel like you're going hungry. Some days you'll feel too tired or depressed to put in the time. But, if you're patient and diligent and gentle with yourself along the way, you'll discover that you can transform yourself, and that no one can take it away. That's why I'm so serious about this weekly blog business...it's an investment that cannot fail. There's no way not to make good on the time you've spent and the effort you've used.

So, this week:

Rising Level 2's

In your Ottman, sing through:

11.24, 11.25, 11.26, 11.27, & 11.28

Identify any tricky spots after your initial reading of each melody, isolate those spots and creatively problem-solve your way through them. Hint: look for arpeggiated harmonies, melodic and rhythmic patterns, and places to strategically use your audiation chops.

Once you've sung through all five, do a little phrase/form analysis of each melody. How are the melodies similar to one another? Does the national origin of each melody seem to be reflected in unique phrase structure? Are melodies from areas geographically close to one another more similar?

Finally, choose one or two of these melodies and harmonize them. Sing and play, by yourself or with a friend.

Rising Level 3's

Take a look at these Ottman examples:

13.19, 13.22, 13.25

From an initial scan, determine if you'd like to change solfa at any point -- my advice would be to change if you sense a cadence in the new key, or if you do multiple arpeggiations of a chromatic chord in the original key (i.e. something that looks like a major II, aka V/V). Did your solfa choices work for you? If not, is the solution more practice, or is it to change your approach?

Additionally, look at examples 13.20, 13.23, and 13.24.

Sing through each, and then harmonize portions of the melodies as indicated in the textbook. Do you agree with Ottman/Rogers' harmonic choices? Did you come up with an alternative you like better? What's the easiest way to figure out what a V/V in the key of D is (hint: see parenthetical statement above or look at your secondary dominant planet handout to spell in solfa, then translate into letters)? How would you harmonize the final cadence of 13.24?

Feel free to share your findings!

Rising Level 4's

DISCLAIMER: I avoid this chapter of Ottman during the summers, mostly because the question of modulation in such short passages often causes tremendous confusion or bitter arguments, while studying modulation in longer chunks or imitative contexts is usually easier and less emotionally draining. If you experience distress from the following exercise, please submit a complaint to the management.

Look at the following Ottman examples:

14.5, 14.6, 14.17, 14.19 (note that the fi in the last line isn't a modulatory fi), 14.24, and 14.30

In each case, determine where each modulation occurs in each piece, noting that you should only need to move in either the dominant direction by one fifth or the subdominant direction by one fifth (meaning that you're looking for fi and ta). Note also that some of these excerpts modulate away and some end in the new key. Devise a solfa change plan for each example before singing through it. After the initial reading, decide whether you think your initial assessment was correct or if you should strategically alter it. Try to reach a point of fluency with each example.

Enjoy, my dears, and remember...in order to gain mastery, all you have to do is put in the time to make solfa your daily bread.

A new year carol

Hello, my long-lost solfeggists!

So, we are now one week into the 49-week cycle. You will have noticed, perhaps, that I missed week 1 -- sort of intentional on my part, but mostly due to my quick jaunt to Portland, OR for the wedding of the first of my siblings, my older brother. A good time was had by all, I think....in fact, dancing with my younger brother was sort of a cultural education in itself, but I digress...

On the last day of classes, my dear Loyola students were kind enough to collaborate with me in gathering some "solfa aphorisms" -- it brought me back to my days in girls' chorus when we (being the littlest bit dorky) carried around what we called "autograph books" (a la Laura Ingalls Wilder) to collect little sayings from our friends. Don't judge....we were homeschoolers, so we didn't have yearbooks. Anyway, here are some of the sayings that we came up with just a bit over a week ago, many of which transcend solfa and the musical realm:

"Let us take our children seriously! Everything else follows from this...only the best is good enough for a child." (ZK, paraphrased)

Live a little. Music doesn't belong in a china closet.

Modes are messy.

Solfa class is just like therapy....a place to share your troubles. When you talk about your problems, they become easier to solve.

You cannot be a great teacher without giving a little of your heart to every student and in every lesson you teach.

Chromaticism is just a splash of color.

Sometimes anger is just a part of caring.

Solfa is like a workout for your brain.

Listen. It's better than making noise.

We teach people. We teach music. Remember to love both.

Teach your students as if you were teaching your own children.

You choose what you take with you.

You never know for sure what seeds you plant will wind up taking root and flourishing.

Being a good teacher to yourself is a necessary step to becoming a good teacher of others.

The British Invasion would've really taken off if they had used solfa syllables.

Your teacher knows better than you at this moment.

Drinks are better than drama.

Sometimes sitting with failure is more valuable than a thousand successes.

C, D, E.....as easy as ut-re-mi!

You have both your strengths and your weaknesses for a reason. Embrace them. Know them.

Obviously, some of these are more serious than others, some are mostly inside jokes, and some are firmly in my favorite touchy-feely realm. However, I have to say that I think it's valuable to reflect on our recent experiences in the solfa classroom in ways that are both comical and serious, both concrete and hopelessly abstract, and both practical and merely ideal. After all, solfa is a musicianship course, and we all know that our personal experiences and reflections and senses of humor are inextricable from our artistic behavior.

As we ease into this new year, and in the spirit of all of the above, I invite you:

All Levels:

Take a moment sometime this week to write down what you enjoyed about this year's solfa experience, and record the ways in which you know you've grown. Brag. Revel....just a little.

Then, take another moment and write down the things you wish we would have spent more time with in class, the gaps in your own experience that you'd like to have spackled up, and the goals you have for yourself before embarking upon the next phase of your musical training.

If you feel comfortable, please share either or both of the above lists with me. I cannot overstate how important it is to me that each of you feels that this course is supposed to be for YOU, to help YOU grow and succeed. Believe me when I say: if it lies within my power to help you, I want to do that. Also, knowing what you want to work on during the year will really help me guide my posts here on the blog -- at the moment, I sort of follow my nose and try to give you all a nice variety, but if there's something you'd like me to focus on, I'd be glad to do that.

And, just so I don't feel totally soft-core about this week's post:

All Levels:

Each day, select 2 Ottman examples to sight-sing (one in major, one in minor), using the principles we discussed this summer....most importantly, DON'T STOP! If you're wondering what chapter(s) to use, try:

Rising 2's - ch. 6, 8, or 9

Rising 3's - ch. 11, 12, or (if you're feeling frisky) 13

Rising 4's - ch. 13, 7 (if you'd like to practice alto clef), or 20

Enjoy, my friends, and please do consider sending me some feedback -- just like at Burger King, I'd like you to have it YOUR way.

The yoke is easy

Greetings, solfa-bearers!

It just occurred to me that this post is shaping up to be doubly referential...first in a punny way, because I'm going to write about yokes, and I just got done with phase two of egg-devilling...the bit where you have to peel the eggs and scoop out all the yolks....

Ahhh, fun with homonyms!

So, I'm borrowing material from my church gig again (which I sort of got permission to do...or rather, I confessed to one of the folks from whom I borrow that I've been borrowing for blog purposes, and he seemed to like the idea). Today's gospel reading would sound familiar to anyone who knows part I of Messiah....it included:

"Come unto me, all ye that labor and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart."

and

"For his yoke is easy, and his burden is light"

The sermon focused on this text, and the preacher said several things that struck me, but maybe the most striking was this: he thinks that the idea of the yoke being easy comes from our truest and most important work in life being the authentic expression of our most honest selves, and as a result, the work is not onerous -- it feels like freedom. I am inclined to say that this kind of work is frequently anything but easy in the objective terms of hours and energy. However, I have long believed that the work that is most authentically ours doesn't feel like work. Being needed for what we love to give is a profound experience -- sometimes we get lucky, and it happens almost by accident. Sometimes we spend years being discontented and can't quite figure out why until we think or talk or journal ourselves into realizing what it is we need to change in order to be in the place we need to be.

This is the last of the forty-nine weeks for my students in Baltimore. In just a few short days, it'll all begin again, and it'll be a lot of work. And, while I hope this year's solfa students take some time this week to refresh their memories on some things for the weeks to come, I also hope there is time to reflect on what it is we're about to do. We are about to take up the yoke of furthering our musical education, and the hours will be long. In these last few days before the program begins in full force, it seems exceptionally important to rekindle and recapture a sense of purpose. I understand that getting a pay raise for having a graduate degree may be motivation enough to skate through a program like the one in which we participate, but it is definitely not enough to motivate heart, hand, ear, and intelligence to come together and give our whole selves to the study of the art we love.

So, my dear students, I exhort you: don't just show up and go through the motions. Homework may feel like a bummer, and that's understandable. But as you do your work, remind yourself of what you actually have the opportunity to achieve:

-Deeper, more comprehensive musicianship

-A more conscious and richer appreciation for music

-Strong, mutually beneficial connections with like-minded colleagues

-Discovery of things you've never learned

-Shoring-up of weaknesses that have held you back

-Uncovering hidden strengths in yourself and others

-High-level music-making in a challenging environment

None of this is trivial, and in the end, all of it is about you and your personal gain. Obviously, your students stand to gain from a teacher who is more musical and more musically fulfilled, but YOU are the one who gets to be fulfilled by your work. YOU are the one who gets to grow. These are gifts that no one can ever take from you. They are also gifts that only YOU can give yourself.

So, I challenge you all: recalling your purpose and knowing the musical wealth that awaits you, resolve to enter this year's session with open minds and hearts, ready to give from the depths of yourselves, and ready to receive unthinkable riches that can belong only to you.

Take up the yoke of musicianship, because in truth....the yoke is easy, and the burden is light.

Repetition and magic

My dear friends,

It's the end of the school year for most teachers here in CO....I'm guessing you all are winding down as well. All my best wishes to you as you endure to the end!

Over the past few weeks, it has been my pleasure to take on a few new students who are interested in studying music fundamentals. We've been having a really great time, as it turns out, and I've been learning a lot.

First, I tend to get all freaked out about people getting bored, so I like to move quickly from one thing to the next. However, it seems that this is yet another opportunity for me to witness that new knowledge has a sort of germination period that is a bit different for everyone, especially when dealing with a system (like music theory) where the nomenclature is so specific and fussy (i.e., "a note" is essentially synonymous with "a tone", but "whole note" and "half note" refer to rhythm and not pitch, and "tone" and "semitone" refer to pitch, but so does "whole step" and "half step". Don't even get me started on the fact that seconds are one note apart, thirds are two notes apart, etc....that one really throws beginners). It isn't just a matter of memorizing the facts quickly and being able to recite them. It's a matter of taking on a whole new system, constructing a new paradigm in which one can interact differently with information, and building the system into one's head in order to master that interaction....all this on top of the actual vocabulary, mind you. So, patience is extremely important. This kind of rewiring is delicate and difficult work, and it takes both time and repetition.

Conversely, the moment when it clicks....is magic! And, the privilege of watching someone's face when s/he first independently aligns information with an understanding of the system at work is astonishing. Whether the person having this experience is young or old, male or female...it seems not to matter. In that moment, s/he makes a discovery that is newly and miraculously his/her property forever. No one can take it away. It is the best kind of empowerment. However, the stage must be set. Understanding of the system has to be there as a foundation, and the encounter with new information needs to be timed just right.

All Levels:

This week, your challenge is to take on something that puzzles you, something you've looked at before and couldn't quite get your head around. Maybe it's secondary dominants (use section 2 of chapter 13 from the Ottman, or chapter 17 from Benjamin/Horvit/Nelson), maybe it's modes (check out "Modes Made Easy" and use chapter 20 in the Ottman), maybe it's spotting modulations (check out the rising 4's assignment from last week...listening with the score really, really helps your ear grasp the concept, and your eye will get quicker with repetition...the later Kodály 15 2-parts have good imitative examples, too). It could be anything, and you likely know best what your own weak spot is. Make this week an exercise in exploring it. Take time to look at the problem from a variety of perspectives. Use music you like, or music that you've performed earlier in your life on your primary instrument...take steps to make it fun!

One-trick ponies

Hello, solfa specialists!

It's good to be back to my home turf....

I've just spent several wonderful, incredibly stressful, highly enlightening days under the thrall of "The Tudors Conference" in my capacity as the grad assistant for the Center for British and Irish Studies. The conference, by all accounts, was a big success -- things were smooth, people showed up, and I felt like I'd gotten really lucky. Our keynote speaker, Michael Hirst, was not only a joy to work and interact with, he proved to be an incredibly engaging and thoughtful speaker. I was also especially impressed with the CU humanities faculty and our collaborators from the Denver Art Museum and the University of Wyoming -- they were so gracious and they, too, treated their presentations as we musicians treat a performance. They brought their A-game. They made it their business to say something relevant and exciting, and to truly communicate with their listeners. I feel extremely grateful to have been a part of the fine group of people who made this conference happen.

In the face of all the multifaceted knowledge and the extremely smart people I spent the last few days with, I definitely started to feel like a dumb musician. These folks not only knew a lot about their own field of expertise, they knew a lot about one another's....and a fair amount about mine, for that matter. Without the comforts of my own people reminding me of everything I know and know how to do, it was easy to begin to feel that I don't really know anything, that I'm not doing everything I can, that I haven't put time into being a cultured and well-informed person. And, to be sure, there are so very many, many things I want to know more about. I want to be a person who can talk intelligently about art, who knows why people compare Hitchcock to Bach, and who has read all the important books that smart people are supposed to have read. It seems like I'll need a lifetime to come close to hitting those marks.

But, now and today, I realize I am just one person. I've chosen a path that is almost bizarre in its specificity, and I am telling the truth when I say I love it with all of my heart. So, while part of me recognizes that I've sacrificed a lot of breadth for the sake of depth and feels sorry not to be able to say I have both, I am also grateful that there is time and opportunity to stretch out and grow more, and to benefit from the knowledge and experience of people whose depth lies in a different place than my own. Though I feel a little stung by humility in saying it, I am forced to believe my own sermonizing: the path from the known to the unknown is respectable in its own right when one chooses to travel on it, regardless of their specific trajectory.

That being said, I'm making this week's assignment a little different -- in loving tribute to this past weekend's subject matter.

All levels:

Find a copy of the 1998 film "Elizabeth" and watch it...it's worth your while and a little bit of cash, I promise. You can rent it on iTunes or Amazon for $2.99.

In the final scenes of the movie, there are two very famous pieces of music that are played -- neither of which are contemporary to the time of the movie itself, but both of which are incredibly evocative and probably readily recognizable to you:

Nimrod from Enigma Variations by Edward Elgar

Introit from Requiem by W.A. Mozart

After listening, proceed to the linked scores and spend a little time each day this week reading through the various voice parts of the Mozart and the familiar melody of the Elgar (note that when the G-sharps start showing up in the Elgar, it's probably a smart idea to use A-do, and when they are canceled out, to switch back to D-do). After spending some time with the scores, spend a little time reflecting on their function in the film. Do the scores alone evoke the same kinds of emotion when you're dealing with them on their own terms as they do when you consider them in the context of the film? Have these pieces changed for you after both studying them and hearing them in this context? Would you have chosen different pieces of music for these parts of the film? If so, which ones?

Enjoy, my friends!