I don't know why I am even blogging about this, since it will likely end up in a fruitless ramble and totally uninteresting. It just rolls around in my head all the time. I'm always thinking about "when I get back into research/into a PhD program". I'm not working on anything now. Not a thing. Quiet moments I steal for sewing. It feels more productive, and it has instant gratification status. Something research doesn't have. I don't feel gratified about my thesis and the stupid thing is signed, sealed, and delivered. In fact, as I was dusting this morning, I had the thought again, "was it even any good?" Obviously I passed. And my committee members aren't the type of people who would "just be nice" and let it pass. So it couldn't have entirely stunk. But still, it's not the taste that I want left in my mouth on this hiatus from brain work. Whatever. It is what it is.

Anyway, the thesis aside, it is done after all--I do think about other things. I think that I ought to be keeping up my chops in some areas, medieval/Ren notation, Latin, languages. I should read those books that I never got to. Linger over passages I never had time for. It's more than just an "i ought to". I do want to. I miss the ol' repertoire I was starting to get familiar with, starting to make a home in. I've missed it for awhile, since it wasn't anywhere near my thesis topic. I feel like if I sit down with it, it will start coming back to me, like riding a bike. I have a very solid foundation in reading mensural notation. And I love it!

In the Christmas season, I went to hear Anonymous 4. I should've blogged about it, because it was a fantastic concert experience. Partly due to the fact that I simply cannot remember that last time I had gone to a concert. The time is measured in years, for sure. It may have been when I went to hear the Emerson Quartet in spring 2004. I'm really pathetic. But anyway, back to Anon. 4, they sang a medieval mass the parts of which they had assembled. It had a little something of everything, early polyphony, chant, tropes of varying sorts, songs. A nice showcase of 13th/14th century liturgical music. It felt really good to listen to it--and thrilling to be hearing it live--partly because I knew what was going on. Even after this break in even thinking about it, I really understood the different parts musically as I listened to them. (And I kind of felt like giving a music appreciation class to everyone around me, but I managed to restrain myself.)

Sometimes I feel annoyed. Why do I know all this stupid, esoteric stuff? What was the purpose of slaving away in grad school for 5 years? All that work is hardly making a difference in my life now. That's not to say that it won't possibly someday. It just feels annoying now.

Other than reading a little and possibly working through my facsimile, which has a great variety of 14th/15th c repertoire, I'm not sure what else I could be doing right now. There's no way I could work on an article. I do have a couple of ideas, but they would take a major investment of time and energy that I'm not prepared to give. If I do ever reapply to PhD programs, though, I don't want to have a big fat blank in these intervening years. I guess if I ever got to the point of writing a personal statement, I would've figured some of this out anyway. You can't just apply in an aimless sort of way. You have to be someone worth investing in. Whatever. I'm just not that person at this phase in my life. Especially since I'm having another baby in a few months. Yes, can you believe it!? I'm still pregnant!!

I don't want to sound dissatisfied with where I am right now, because I'm really happy to be doing what I'm doing, raising my babies. I want the freedom I have to spend hours playing cars with E. And it's hard to think of splitting my precious mental energy. It's just that, well, I am the sum of my past, I suppose. I can't just break off that bit of me I invested so much and totally shelve it. But it's there on the shelf. And sometimes I think I could be happy just leaving it there forever. I don't know. *shrug*

Posted by at 9:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

as seen at in process

Posted by at 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Is to go this exhibit at the Met in NY: Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797!!!

Ever since I read Edward Muir's Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, I've been inspired as an historian and enthralled by La Serenissima.

In 2004, I had a day to blow in Venice, and not enough money to check my huge suitcase at the airport much less ride public transportation, so I walked along the alleyways, along canals, heaving my suitcase over bridges, picturing dead bodies floating down the water (thanks, Edward Muir). I had been to Venice once before in college, so I didn't HAVE to go see San Marco. I could just sit there and watch hot Italian construction guys work on the canal (just kidding! I was watching hte boats go by!).

The thing that Muir really gave to me was the picture of Venice as Not East, Not West, but a passageway between. And walking through the passages of that amazing city, the phenomenon of East Meets West creeps up everywhere: like window frames...

Posted by at 9:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Why is it that whenever you have to print something really important, like a draft, your printer breaks? or runs out of ink? or jams at every page?

Or, let's say it's almost 10 pm and you need to give your committee a copy of your thesis tomorrow when you realize that you need to use the scanner. Let's say there are two operational scanners in your household, one for you and one for your husband. Your scanner currently has cords missing from it, because husband just got his and stole them. Furthermore, you can't use his, because he runs Linux and thus scans by means of a command line, which you have no idea how to do. So what do you do?
a) Steal the cords back (which means finding the right ones in the huge mass of his home computer network)
b) wait until morning and get him to scan (oh wait, you're going to be gone all morning, and he's going to be gone all afternoon)
c) write blog posts lamenting your dependence on technology to make papers that have really cool layout, because, of course, said technology will always be dependable when all you have to do is write stupid blog posts, but not when you have to do something resembling importance.

Sigh. I think I'll try to choose A.

In other news, I've been having way too much fun on the Chicago Manual of Style website. Non-subscription options include a Citation Quick Guide (which, to tell you the truth, is more extensive than my undergrad copy of Kate. It even tells you how to cite blogs.), Chicago Style Q&A (which is almost as entertaining as informative, and updated every month), and a variety of tools such as sample forms and letters targeted towards preparing and submitting your work for publication.

And you can sign up for a free 30 day trial of the actual Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed. online. It was super easy to sign up. I love being to browse and search volumes like this electronically. (Like I was doing earlier today with the Oxford Companion to the Year, which is SUCH an invaluable resource.) For fun, I looked up the section on American Sign Language. It was so great!!! It taught me more about ASL grammar than a lot of other places I've looked. A wonderful place to start for ASL.

Anyway, so I'm down to formatting and layout. I have lots of diagrams, tables, and images. Not fun.

My fingers just automatically hit Apple-S, the short cut for "File: Save". That's what they do every time I pause in writing. But it only works in Word.

Posted by at 9:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm bad at numbers. Doesn't matter what context they're in. I'm bad at Arabic numerals, Roman numerals, ASL counting on one hand. So it's really bad when I'm looking at an early printed book with the date printed in Roman numerals. Blah.

But, hey, I just found this handy Roman numeral converter! Yay!!

Posted by at 6:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Check this out!

While researching what exactly to call the style of et-sign my scribe used, I came acrossTypoWiki: "a user-created encyclopedia of all things type and design-related!"

Rock on!

Posted by at 5:58 PM | Permalink

(this is just some kind of personal personal brain barf. don't feel the need the read or respond.)

So my thesis is about a late 17th c Italian manuscript. Yea, the book. The material artifact. I thought I was going to make an edition of a treatise in the book, which is why I jumped on the project to begin with. I thought it would be a good exercise, and I had a seminar on edition making (it's a musicology thing [and I believe in the activity of edition-making as a necessary step along the path {the controversy of the endeavor; it's a musicology thing, too}]), so I felt like I had tools to approach it. But I'm not making an edition; I'm analysing the book. I don't have tools for ms analysis, book history, or understanding the computus, but, hey, I'm figuring out as I go along.

I'm trying to make some final leaps in the figuring this thing out, and I'm wondering more and more if I need to leave the comfort of the materiality of the book and to start to draw the connections back to the compiler of the manuscript. This is scary, because I don't know who he is. He's a nobody, and it's not a significant ms. Just some random compilation. It's a little freaky to start drawing conclusions about a person who barely has a historical existence.

But I think I can say some things about him:
* he has really good handwriting. this book has been super easy to read. Which is a little boring, because don't we all love a little paleographical challenge? But I'm not complaining. I could be eating my words a year later on a different project.
* he makes mistakes. There is no original material in this ms. I've been able to trace sources for a good bit of it, but not all. The stuff I haven't found sources for, though, is basic stuff like calendars and reciting tones. There are some really bad mistakes in the music section. Like, he doesn't get the solmization syllables in the right order. The plainchant example is utter musical nonsense.
* I'm 99% sure the compiler is a "he". There's a title page (a notable feature unto itself) with the name BLASIUS BELLUNENSIS where the author's name goes. No leads on any Blasius's or (Italian) Biagio's having any connection to Belluno in the 17th c.
* I'm pretty sure he's an ecclesiastic. (There is a seminary in Belluno by this time.) The sum total of the contents wouldn't make sense for anyone else. There's the music part that contains information for singing the liturgy, the computus for calculating the date of Easter (very confusing liturgical calendar stuff--thank heavens for the Oxford Companion to the Year), orthographical treatises on Italian and Latin, and alphabets--Hebrew (after Aldo) and Greek, and then a bunch of ancient and Eastern alphabets. Those latter alphabets are kind of interesting, because they seemed to pop up in some 16th c mss, where people would translate prayers and offices into these ancient alphabets. It's kind of weird and fascinating, because you wonder, who the heck cares about 'salve regina' in ancient Chaldee? It may be something I would be interested in pursuing after this thesis.
* but then the speculation begins. Yes, the compiler put together this book whose content reflects some about who he is, but even more, its physical features reflect his relationship to the book as a book, namely as an author. A relationship that couldn't have existed a couple hundred years earlier. So, breaking it down: we can say something about his identity based on the contents--likely an ecclesiastic. Is he young? a student? those mistakes were bad; mistakes you allow from someone whose education is incomplete, so either a student or a dropout or even maybe self-educated? I like the student theory, because there was a rise in creating seminaries for clerical education in the 17th c., including one in Belluno.
* but what about his identity in relation to the book? I would argue that he places himself in a position of authorship. Namely because of the title page. Manuscripts just don't have title pages...not like this one, at any rate. This is a title page that looks just like a printed title page. Manuscripts don't have authors. Printed books do. (Okay, huge over-generalization there, but it's big picture time.) This ms provides a picture in microcosm of a particular point in book history, a time beginning to be dominated by print culture, but also a time that still valued manuscript culture. There are many aspects in which the compiler created the ms to look like the printed book. At the beginning of the age of printing, printers made books look like mansucripts, because that's what they knew. By the late 17th c, it's very easily the other way around. The compiler wanted his book to look printed because that was cooler, more authoritative.
*so, bringing it back to the compiler--as it's very easy to start writing the biography of the book at this point--the physical features of the ms give us insight into how the compiler may have viewed the literary culture around him and how he placed himself within that culture. (Why do I feel so over my head?) Is that crazy? can I talk about the compiler's point of view like that? It just seems so invasive.

To close I will quote this line I read out of a monograph when I was a history major undergrad (loosely remembered). "Listening from the distance of centuries--across the death chasms and howling kingdoms of decay--it is not easy to catch everything."

Posted by at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A conversation earlier with a friend prompted me to do a quick search, and this book caught my eye. To come back to--

Music and Technology in the Twentieth Century Hans-Joachim Braun, ed. (Johns Hopkins Press, 2002)

Anyone read it? Or could suggest other books of similar ilk?

UPDATE: Did anyone catch that weird comment spam left here? I've deleted it now. It was probably the most interesting comment spam I've ever gotten (except for a couple silly poems once). About Artificial Intelligence and religion and computers. Hmm. Didn't realize the book above was so controversial. Ha.

Posted by at 5:15 PM | Permalink

...but does it ever feel like half of your research is just sheer luck? (not that I believe in luck, of course)

I swear, I just happen to be flipping through some random book, and voila! exactly a source I needed. Or I just happen to show the right page to the right librarian, who happened to catalogue such and such manuscript that happens to be exactly the one I need. I mean, how is someone supposed to plan this?!

Weird.

Speaking of more weird coincidences. This morning I was at the library, I was really tired (still am) and feeling a little grumpy and wanting to get home to write. When I checked the schedule, I realized that I had just missed a train and would have to wait another hour. So I decided to walk to 30th St. Station and catch the regional rail there; it was only 7 blocks. I never catch the regional rail there. I think that was the first time ever.

So I'm standing on the platform waiting for my train, which pulls up. Then I'm waiting for all the people to get off, so that I can get on. And guess who walks off? Michelle's parents! Who I haven't seen since college and who don't even live in Philadelphia (as far as I know)!

Posted by at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Dude! I know Google is like a major corporation and everything, so everything left and academic and humanities in me wants to be embarrassed for loving it. But it's time to just admit (like I haven't been) I LOVE GOOGLE!!!!

First there was the Google search engine, wh. has been my engine of choice forever.
Then Google Images.
Then Google Maps. (High five!)
Then Google Reader. (I love you!)
Then Google Video. (*kisses*)
And now Google Scholar! Does it get any better?! Seriously!!! This is like waaaaay better than WorldCat, which, I'm sorry, annoys me. You can browse through BOOKS. ONLINE. They have them scanned. You don't have to be all fiddly with search terms...just throw stuff out there and reap the benefits. my day is totally rocking!

Posted by at 7:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Glagolitic

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is the distinctive epithet of the ancient Slavonic alphabet (called also ‘Hieronymian’, ‘Illyrian’, and ‘Slovenish’) still retained in the service-books of the Roman Catholics of the Slavonic rite in Dalmatia, etc.

It's also an immensely helpful bit of information for my thesis.

And surely, a triple word score winner. I'll give anyone a prize who can use "Glagolitic" totally naturally in an everyday conversation.

Posted by at 11:09 PM | Permalink

Filling a much-needed space in acadeblogosphere is an actual musicology blog. (Not 'what great concerts and cool people I hobnobbed with' like Alex Ross's not cool blog). This is about the 'm' word...Musicology!!! *open background music* dun, dun, duuuuuuun.....*close background music*

Go check out: Dial "M" for musicology

(Boo. For some reason it's not loading into my Google Reader...)

Posted by at 8:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The fuzzy lines between print and manuscript culture in the seventeenth century.

This is very interesting, and I haven't found much literature on it--though a few important books. Could be my "bad researching skills" (see post few months back).

Posted by at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm so glad this seminar is happening again:

V Seminario Internazionale Estivo Jacopo da Bologna - 5th International Summer Seminar Jacopo da Bologna - Cambridge 2006

I went two years ago when it was on Machaut and in Italy.

IMO, this way this seminar is set up is the way graduate education should be. A concentrated topic with an assortment of experts teaching, each representing a different facet. The class is small and the setting friendly and intimate, with lengthy shared meal times to solidify relationships. (Food always makes life better.) As each faculty member presents his/her facet the picture begins to take shape. They interact together, inviting the students to join in. It's like what you get read an article and read the footnotes with it. Except it's in real life and for the benefit of the students who are encouraged to share their ideas in the conversation.

The graduate students just soak it in. There's not the pressure to become "mini-me" professors. If you have an idea, you're encouraged to bring it up and we all talk about it. It's a safe place to not know things, because everyone is there to learn, including the professors.

The European setting made it an exciting experience for me. As languages were flying around the room during class and across the table, you got the sense that the world of scholarship was so much bigger. The different questions and perspectives made it such a wonderful experience.

It's just too bad it's only a week. ....and so far away.

Posted by at 12:04 PM | Permalink

As can be expected, the Times article on student's emailing professors has generated some commentage in acadeblogosphere. (Read here, here, and here)
The point of the article can be summed up in this paragraph:

At colleges and universities nationwide, e-mail has made professors much more approachable. But many say it has made them too accessible, erasing boundaries that traditionally kept students at a healthy distance.

Students can just buzz off emails to the prof with excuses, demands, and, according to the Times, stupid questions, like, "Should I buy a binder or a subject notebook? Since I'm a freshman, I'm not sure how to shop for school supplies. Would you let me know your recommendations? Thank you!" (which I thought was kind of a sweet email, complete with thank you).

Perusing some of the comments and the article itself, I'm kind of wondering who at the Times thought this was a good idea for a story? Seriously, email? This is how people communicate these days. A university is not some place full of aliens, its not a different people group to be studied and objectified. Hmmm, let's examine how this culture uses...email. It's a wonder this article even exists. And, frustratingly, only reinforces the stereotypes (as this blog states) and general cluelessness the rest of the world has about the university. How preposterous would it be to read a Times article about how CEO's and their employees send emails back and forth to one another? I don't really see a huge difference here. You may have the occasional professor here and there (in increasing rarity) who doesn't use something to tech-y as email, but it's becoming more likely to have an emeritus pull out his pda to get your email address. It hardly warrants a Times piece.

Technology has changed faced the world all over, including academia. I was just reflecting that without email, I wouldn't be able to have the kind of interaction with my advisor over my thesis. I can send a paragraph or a table here and there. I can send pictures of pages of the manuscript that I've taken with my digital camera. He can send me citations, comments, suggestions as he thinks of them. Sure, we could've done some of this by phone, but it's greatly facilitated by email. And more and more I'm reading about innovations in online teaching.

It's exciting to think of how technology will alter our teaching in the future, something I already pondered some last spring, as my computer became a multi-media center, projecting powerpoints full of sounds and images.

Posted by at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Two fragments of Beethoven's skull are now in California for study.

I'm telling you, this musicology thing is exciting stuff! Next thing you know, they'll have a CSI: Musicology.

Posted by at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Just getting ahold of who these guys are.......

From Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, Matthew Bunson

Saint Peter Damien (1007-1072)
Doctor of the church and important reformer, joining the Benedictine order at Fonte Avellana in 1035. Named cardinal of Ostia in 1057, Peter became widely known and respected for his tireless efforts in opposing corruption, simony, concubinage and other clerical abuses. He was a vigorous opponent of the antipopes and served as a diplomat to Germany and France for the papacy. The author of sermons and letters he also wrote treatises and attacks on corruption, including Liber gratissimus, opposing the legitimacy of simoniac ordinations, and the well-known Liber gomorrhianus, an attack on clerical marriage.

No bibliography. Not in Dictionary of Middle Ages.

Posted by at 10:57 AM | Permalink

Revisiting and expanding this project for the summer.

Books to hang on to:
Gregory the Great and His World by R. A. Markus (Cambridge 1997)

The late Latin vocabulary of the Moralia of Saint Gregory the Great: A morphological and semasiological study (Catholic University of America. Studies in medieval and renaissance Latin) by Rose Marie Hauber (1938)

Source Book of Self-Discipline: A Synthesis of Moralia in Job by Gregory the Great : A Translation of Peter of Waltham's Remediarium Conversorum by Joseph Gildea (Peter Lang Publishing, 1991)

The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God by Robert Wilken (Yale, 2003)

Does anyone have any suggestions for books that like an introduction to/overview of early medieval theology...like Gregory and the following couple of centuries? or of an English translation of his Moralia in Job?

Posted by at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Another thing that is different from being the professor rather than being the student:

You know that incomparable, exhilirating feeling of walking out of a final exam you've just taken? The feeling that says, "it's final! I'm done!!"
Well, you don't get that feeling when you're the teacher. Rather it's like "how fast can I get these things graded and out of my hair?"
I just finished graded and tallying up final grades, and thanks to learning how to use a spreadsheet, it went a lot faster. Folks, the grades are posted!!! Now it's final! I'm done!!

I really think they ought to offer "Math for Grading," though, because every semester I spend forever wracking my brain on percentages and averages until I finally figure out the little formula, usually by a series of trials and errors. For instance, if the student's average comes out to 3852, I know I'm wrong. And then I have to go do something stupid like weight things more than others. The spreadsheet has helped a lot.

This semester was the second class I've taught solo. I'm still trying to figure out a good balance between easy and challenging. I want the class to be challenging, but not overwhelming, so how much do I pull back or push? I want them to have a fair chance at a good grade. It is a core class after all, and I remember being annoyed at core classes that pulled my GPA down. Anyway. I think I did better this semester than last, and hopefully as I continue teaching, I'll figure it out more.

I did offer an extra credit assignment at the end, though. Most people who did it didn't need to, but a few were especially helped. A friend of mine passed the assignment on to me, and I thought it was a good idea, but I just couldn't go assigning it out of the blue in the last weeks of classes, so I offered it as extra credit. The assignment was to keep a rough account of all the music around you for about three days--e.g. what's playing in the grocery store, on your car radio, on tv shows or movies, etc.--and then choose a couple of these examples and talk about them--the purpose of its being played, what was the music like (using musical terms learned in class)?, did student's awareness of that context become enhanced by actually paying attention to the background music? I got some interesting responses, including a long analysis of why the car mechanic chose a particular music for the "on-hold" background music. And this one kid is now all into finding Wagnerian leitmotifs in movies--how musical themes develop and explain characters and their developments in actions. If I ever teach Music Appreciation again, I'm definitely going to use this assignment.

Okay, now I have to put on my student cap and finish an essay.

Posted by at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

To say hello. I'm getting some good work done. And making a special effort to get adequate numbers of hours of sleep, which makes or breaks my day like never before. I need quantity to make up for quality, which isn't that great at the moment what with my watermelon obsession (leading to bathroom trips) (n.b. watermelon is not a pregnancy obsession...it's a whole life obsession; I go crazy for it every summer.) and leg cramps. :-P

Anyway. Some things that I thought about writing about, but won't right now, and maybe not ever, but maybe sometime:

* How much I love my facsimile! Musical notation of the 14th/15th centuries has held a fascination for me since it was first put under my nose for scrutiny 3 years ago...my first graduate seminar. I love how it is at the same time, so completely "other", yet so much "not other". I love how it divides time. I love perfections. Why can't I love the notes, relishing their appearance on the page, the page itself even, the meager bits of meaning I can see just from their place on the page...like a poet can love the appearance of words?

* Recently someone asked me what my opinion was about the use of contemporary musical styles in worship. I haven't thought about this for a long time, mostly because I find it to be a frustrating topic that usually ends up in fruitless, nonconstructive conversations that conflate so many topics at once (and are so rarely musically informed), that I'm just annoyed. Part of me just really doesn't care, there are more constructive things to think about. But the context was ripe the other day, and when the conversation came up, probably the first time in years, I surprised myself. Maybe I'll blog more about it later...

* Funke has some interesting observations on John Cage's 4'33". (Her archives aren't working, so I'll just link her page and not the entry, dated 12 April 2005).

Posted by at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Today I got my catalogue with new stuff from the University of Chicago Press. It's one of my favorite ones that I get. Few things caught my eye of varying degrees of interest.

First, this was one amused me: We'll Always Have Paris: American Tourists in France since 1930 by Harvey Levenstein. Chicago's website blurb: "For much of the twentieth century, Americans had a love/hate relationship with France. While many admired its beauty, culture, refinement, and famed joie de vivre, others thought of it as a dilapidated country populated by foul-smelling, mean-spirited anti-Americans driven by a keen desire to part tourists from their money. We'll Always Have Paris explores how both images came to flourish in the United States, often in the minds of the same people."
It also seems to be a good opportunity to display the funny card that Erica got me for my bday. It totally cracked me up.

Couple on memory and history, a topic that has interest to me as it pertains to a particular project I hope to revisit after the dissertation:
Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past by Eviatar Zerubavel. And I guess I'll have to deal with Memory, History, Forgetting by Paul Ricoeur (trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer) at some point, but then maybe afterwards I'll read On the Future of History: The Postmodernist Challenge and Its Aftermath by Ernst Breisach, which looks to be a handy overview on the topic.

And I would like to read Nietzsche and Music by Georges Liebert (trans. David Pellauer and Graham Parkes) sometime as it may pertain to another project I hope to return to after my dissertation...along with Metaphor and Musical Thought by Michael Spitzer.

(At this rate I'll have a whole shelf-full of post-diss projects. Right now I have at least four. aack. And I haven't even started the diss!)

Oh. and this one just looked interesting, since I'm a Said fan. Edward Said: Continuing the Conversation, ed. Homi K. Bhabha and W. J. T. Mitchell.
Oh, this one looked cool, too, since I hadn't realized Foucault had traveled to Iran and the Iranian Revolution has always intrigued me, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism by Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson.
Oh wow! And there's a new edition of Verlaine's poems! He's one of my fave poets: One Hundred and One Poems by Paul Verlaine, trans. Norman R Shapiro. Ok, on that note, I'm off to prepare a lecture on Debussy. woohoo.

Posted by at 5:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

For my medieval ponderings of the day:

My somewhat boring, Italy-centric Renaissance class occasionally has discussion days on primary source books. Today it was Machiavelli's The Prince. First, Machiavelli's prose style is excellent in its efficiency and lucidity, which I find lacking in many of his medieval counterparts, and perhaps this is a quality that situates him easily in the 16th c or maybe it's just Machiavelli. (I really do need to read more.) This particular work gets billed as shocking and revealing. People tread around it like its some kind of revolutionary, avant-garde kind of work. However, I find a text that is none of the above. Indeed, far removed from avant-garde. Perhaps the most daring thing he did was codify in written format what every had known for centuries.

Secondly, it would be an interesting exercise to trace the personification of Fortune from the classical writers to the "renaissance" writers (just can't bear to use the word--even if it does sound cool in British). Perhaps this has already been done. I'm not as familiar with the classical understanding of Fortune, except, perhaps, as given through Boethius. But I would venture that Machiavelli's perception of Fortune is from classical thought, yes, but also bears the medieval trappings of Dame Fortune so prevalent in the courtly love poetry of the 14th century and earlier. (I would also to clarify that Dame Fortune is an entirely different person than a My Lady on the Pedestal of the courtly lit.).

My third thought is more of a philosophical question that has been teasing me for a while. For Machiavelli's prince, can we make the distinction between the appearance of piety and actually being pious (or substitute whatever virtue)? Is the state of being pious in fact the motions of appearing pious?

As a sort of post scriptum to illustrate what inspired this pondering:
I offer this question because I have made the argument about Philip the Good of Burgundy. In 1454 he had made a solemn vow to crusade against the Turks. The pope issued three bulls affirming and supporting this vow. But a crusade was never actually launched. Sure a couple of times some troops were mustered, but no one ever got further than Marseilles in their crusade attempts. What struck me was the absence of anything concerning the fact that the promised crusade never made it. You'd think after a solemn vow and three papal bulls that if someone didn't do what they said they were going to do would be problematic. Yet nothing. (I'd be happy to be shown otherwise!!!) So my observation about the situation was that perhaps it wasn't actually the crusade that was the pious act, rather the making of the vow that was the pious act. The appearance of piety was indeed piety itself.

I consider Burgundy to be a fairly typical example of a European political scenario at this time (and earlier!), and since these are the kinds of governments that Machiavelli is writing about, why should this not be the case? In any case, I do think that it is an interesting political question.

Posted by at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So I'm endeavoring to become a scholar of the 14th/15th centuries European cultural history. I have a history minor, and to fulfill that I'm taking a Renaissance survey. It's 4000-level so full of undergrads yet will still count for grad credit. It's kind of boring, because it's an intro to the Ren, and a little too general and reviewish to be really stimulating, but it's filling in a few political history gaps here and there, which is why I'm taking it in the first place.

This the thing, though:
It's all about Italy!
And come to think about it, my Ren survey as an undergrad was, too!

I know the Italian Renaissance is a huge factor to consider. No one can deny the high cultural interest of the Italians in things classical. But for the past five or so years (basically since I wrote my SIP), I've had a picture of European politics that goes beyond Italy.

Am I just biased (or perspectived, to make up a word) because I'm a musicologist? But I thought the most significant cultural, political, and economic force in Europe in the first half of the 15th century was Burgundy!!! During that time their court was flourishing, they had a ton of money (trade, commerce, industry; and my personal view is that they were the only ones who really could afford to announce a crusade against the Turks in the mid-century, since they were the only ones who did), and they had considerable influence with other large political powers of Europe.

So where do they get gapped in a survey of the Renaissance??
I also think that the patronage, the ceremonial, and the display at the Burgundian court provided a model for the cultural flowering of the courts in the Italian city-states. The idea that a ruler used the results of his patronage to create an image of himself as strong and virtuous is such a central part of Burgundy.

Do I have a warped view of Europe? Am I making a bigger deal of Burgundy than reality reflects? But then again, what is historical reality anyway, but what we make of it? In a sense, I guess, there's no real reason why my picture of 15th Europe needs to be the same as the one the History Department gives to its undergrads. At the same time, though, I do feel a little betrayed. And then simultaneously frustrated by the shallowness of the betrayal...betrayed by subjectivity?

It's moments like these that remind me how small my corner of the world really is. Maybe I get too emotionally involved in my studies, but when I spend so much time with it, it's hard not to think of places like Burgundy as "my places". (At the same, though, I do believe in the healthy dose of visceral engagement with one's work...it is a little bit like falling in love.) When we grow up and realize that the world is bigger than home, it's sort of scary. Home gets reinterpreted. Maybe I don't want that to happen to "my places." Maybe it has nothing to do with "my places." Maybe I should allow myself to become numb and process monographs and finish the degree with mechanical effeciency.

Posted by at 12:14 PM | Permalink

At the library...trying to activate the lump that is my brain:
Wow! Amazon is SUCH a helpful research tool. I never thought of it before. But you get suggestions for other books when you search for one. You can search through books the book cites and books that cite the book. You can actually read the page that citations are on. Amazon rocks!!

BT26 .O2 1963
The harvest of medieval theology; Gabriel Biel and late medieval nominalism
Oberman, Heiko Augustinus.

ND615 .B32 1974 1974
Painting and experience in fifteenth century Italy. A primer in the social history of pictorial style
Baxandall, Michael.

Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912)
by Emile Durkheim

CB151 .H813 1949
Homo ludens; a study of the play-element in culture
Huizinga, Johan, 1872-1945.

How Societies Remember

Ritual in Early Modern Europe (New Approaches to European History)
by Edward Muir, William Beik (Series Editor), T. C. W. Blanning (Series Editor)

Posted by at 12:18 PM | Permalink

Sorry. This is a sort of "me" entry. Not really a post. I'm on a library computer doing some searches, and I want to save some things in a fashion that I don't have to sort through or take the time to write down. I'll come back later. For now, the blog is just my notepad.

Continue reading "Notepad" »

Posted by at 12:30 PM | Permalink

Musicologist Claude V. Palisca wrote the following about the era of music history we call the Baroque (roughly 1600-1750):

Behind the traits that mark music as baroque, then, are their reaon for being: the passions, or as they were more often called then, the affections. Affections are not the same as emotions. A 16th c poetic critic, Lorenzo Giacomini, defined an affection as “a spiritual movement or operation of the mind in which it is attracted or repelled by an object it has come to know.” He described it as a result of an imbalance in the animal spirits and vapors that flow continually throughout the body. An abundance of thin and agile spirits disposes a person to joyous affections, while torpid and impure vapors prepare the way for sorrow and fear. External and internal sensations stimulate the bodily mechanism to alter the state of the spirits. This activity is felt as a ‘movement of the affections,’ and the resulting state of imbalance is the affection. Once this state is reached, the body and mind tend to remain in the same affection until some new stimulus produces an alteration of the combination of vapors. Affection and passion are two terms for the same process, the former describing it from the point of view of the body, the latter from the standpoint of the mind. The alteration of the blood and spirits affects the body, while the mind passively suffers the disturbance. (In Baroque Music, 2d ed., Prentice-Hall, 1981)

In the late 16th/early 17th c. certain musicians, poets, scholars, and generally interested people were reading treatises by and about the Greeks concerning music. What struck them was how much power the Greeks said music had. Plato, in The Republic said that when educating the future citizens of the republic, they shouldn't listen to certain kinds of music, because it would make them bad people (or conversely, listening to good music would make them good people).

How these 17th c Italians saw this was more than just how we pose the problem concerning "today's youth" and listening to violent lyrics. If we are to read Paliscia's explanation properly, it's clear that they saw a real, physical process, as powerful as listening to the right music could actually make a sick person well. Music: the social panacea!

It became their task to recreate the music of the Greeks so that they could recreate the power they saw that the Greeks had. In their studies they saw that most of the music consisted of a single vocal line with instrumental accompaniment. So they started writing music that way. They also observed that the Greek plays were actually sung. Hence, the birth of opera in 1600-07, with the story of Orpheus, the god who used the power of music to enter Hades.

This past Thursday evening, this is the story I told my class. I'm astounded every time I go over the birth of opera how much faith this group of Florentines had in the power of music--how thoroughly it could affect an actual physical change and how much they wanted to recreate this power.

What the Greeks did, we'll never know fully. I do know that the past lives in the past, and what of the past lives in the present is necessarily reinvented by those who live in the present.

Posted by at 1:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today I discovered in our university library computer labs scanners attached to Adobe Photoshop 7. It's making handouts for my class an easy, feasible reality.
So, in case you're wondering what Hildegard von Bingen's music looked like, I present to you "O virtus sapientie".

Posted by at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Writing Resources...big time! grammar, style, etc.

Posted by at 8:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A whole website on Roman de la Rose!!

Posted by at 1:49 PM | Permalink

what I wrote for my Schenker class presentation

“At all times there have been false doctrines, promulgated by theoreticians who were the captives of their own errors. And at all times, alas! they have found followers who would translate their false theories into practice.” Harmony, 59.

INTRODUCTION

At the beginning of the semester we read Allen Forte’s article “Schenker’s Conception of Musical Structure.” One of the points for thought he brought up at the end of the article was the implications of Schenker’s theory for present day pedagogical purposes in codifying an efficient method to teach the basic common practic repertory. Dr. Smyth has brought up several times in class the impact Schenkerian analysis has now and has had on the discipline of music theory in the United States. Whether implicit or explicit, Schenker is always with us. All theorists must deal with Schenker’s theory whether it just be part of their graduate school experience or it be an acquired tool in their toolboxes. Some of these theorists will eventually turn their attention to the analysis of early music and Schenker’s theory will, unwittingly or not, be part of their baggage, part of the building blocks that have shaped their conceptual framework for approaching theory.

My task today is not to ascertain the legitimacy of the anachronistic application of Schenkerian analysis, a theory grounded in the basic principles of tonality, to early music, a body of music existing before common practice tonality. Rather I will try to briefly summarize the life Schenker’s theory has had in the analysis of early music by examining three points: Schenker’s disparaging opinion of early music, why his analysis got used anyway, and some implications for us today.

Continue reading "Schenker, Analysis, and Early Music" »

Posted by at 1:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The thing about doing research in Hildegard is that a lot of the stuff out there is plain corny. They find in Hildegard's vision something personally spiritually satisfying, which is fine for them, but I wish they would keep it out of their scholarship. She is a mystic, championed by feminists, championed by neo-hippies; her disappearance from history until the 19th century is wept over; the ruins of her convent visited so that one can just feel the environment that produced her visions.

Give me a break.

I think there is a lot about Hildegard's life that is very interesting. One thing: we know her dates exactly. That's pretty cool for someone in the 12th c. And there is a lot of really good scholarship that I can consult. It's just that strand of freaky lovers of Hildegard that gets on my nerves.

Posted by at 10:24 AM | Permalink

I'm on Spring Break this week and some of what I have been doing in addition to working on a certain paper is reading current discussions about scholarship and academia. It's give me perspective that I don't always get when I'm at the daily grind, and it lets me know that other people out there are crazy, too.

An essay I read at the beginning of the week is one of the most refreshing polemics on scholarship that I have read in a very long time...if ever: "Historical Musicology: Is It Still Possible?" by Rob Wegman in The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction, edited by Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert, and Richard Middleton (Routledge: NY and London, 2003): 136-145.

In this essay, Wegman begins by briefly summarizing the progression of historical scholarship from the 19th century ideal of obectivity, as in the goal of studying history is to see it "as it really was", to the early 20th century crisis of that ideal, realizing that our encounter with history can only be a subjective one, to the the late 20th century realization that there really is no object, such as the past, to study.

Wegman then brings in the myth of Narcissus as a poignant metaphor to the state of historical research.

Like Narcissus, or so critics remind us, we have gazed into a fountain, and have become enamored of the image reflected in its surface. The fountain, one might say, is the totality of the available historical evidence, and the image it returns is the product of our historical vision. We have wanted that image to be real, objective, autonomou, authentic, other. Like Narcissus, however, we have been frustrated in our attempts to capture the image--that is, to demonstrate its objective reality. Sooner or later we were bound to make a painful discovery. "Oh, I am he!" Narcissus cried, "now I know for sure the image is my own; it's for myself I burn with love; I fan the flames I feel." That was the moment of truth. Historical evidence, by itself, may be as real and tangible as the water in the fountain. Yet the past, as we read it into that evidence, has no objective reality, no independent existence, no autonomy, no otherness. Rather, it is always and necessarily the reflection of the viewing subject, the product of our historical imagination. That is why the Narcissus myth is of enduring relevance: it epitomizes the Western discovery of subjectivity. (pp139-40)

Wegman outlines possible reactions to this discovery: pain over the lost past, indignation over the past that failed us, the feeling of incrimination by our subjectivity, all like Narcissus upon his own self-discovery. And in a vicious cycle, critics, he says, will attempt to escape the prison of subjectivity by trying objectify other things than the past, e.g. other cultures, or by trying criticize to death musicological endeavor by exposing it for what it really is, hegemonic, positivist, modernist, etc. But what they end up with are not new things, but the same old self staring out them from the fountain.

Rather than leaving us in the depressing situation he has set up, though, Wegman finishes with a very refreshing conclusion:

Continue reading "a breath of fresh air" »

Posted by at 12:06 PM | Permalink

“The Use of Viriditas in the Works of Hildegard von Bingen and Gregory the Great”

The last significant work of Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) was her Liber divinorum operum, written around 1170. A recent edition of this work (Brepols 1996) prepared by A. Derolez and P. Dronke includes an extensive source apparatus linking references in Hildegard’s works to other authors, which she herself did not cite. A particularly intriguing instance of this is the linking of the word viriditas, a word the figures prominently in her works though with some ambiguity in meaning, to Gregory the Great as one of the only previous authors to make extensive use of such an unusual word. This paper will examine the use of the word viriditas in both Hildegard’s Liber divinorum operum and in works of Gregory the Great which Dronke has cited in effort to come to a better understanding of the meaning and the use of the word.

Hildegard von Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, ed. A. Derolez and P. Dronke. (Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, 92.) Turnhout: Brepols, 1996.

___

Now if only I could figure out what in the world Hildegard is saying!!!

Posted by at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Historian and blogger Timothy Burke, in response to grading, wrote a nice summary--Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay--of some of the basic problems and models for writing.

Being a TA, I find myself in a kind of awkward position: as grader and student. I'm still searching for models and ways to improve my writing, to hone my style, to tighten my prose, and to craft my argument. Yet have I traversed this path far enough to be able to guide those who are so close behind? At times undergrads seem so far behind, but at others they seem so close. As they sit clueless in my office trying to choose term paper topics or wondering why their senseless paper got a lower than stellar marks, I wonder to myself, 'am I serious? am I just playing some crazy role here? like I really know what I'm talking about!' Often I do feel that I can actually offer some constructive advice, but the art of writing is one that is learned over a lone period of time and with much practice. And it is definitely that...an art. An enterprise that is as subjective and individual as the person endeavoring to practice it with material that must be creatively chosen, interpreted, and expressed.

It is also an enterprise in which I must get my butt in gear and practice.

Posted by at 12:44 PM | Permalink

Yes, another post about Latin. I've given up trying to understand every nuance, every twist of grammar in every sentence of the assigned homework. It's way too stressful. I'm enjoying my class still, just not allowing it to take over my life.

These past two weeks we've been reading Abelard and Heloise. Last week Abelard's Historia calamitatum and this week Heloise's "Letter to Abelard." I've always heard of their infamous love affair, but this was the closest I've gotten to actually reading anything about it. Reading Abelard first was really eye-opening to the situation. He was a jerk. His basic account of the event was that he had heard that Heloise was one of the most educated women (more like teenager) around and he thought so highly of himself that he was going to try to seduce her. So he goes to her uncle and gets permission to live in their house, be her tutor, and punish her if he deems her negligent in her lessons. The rest is history, as they say. He does indeed seduce her, they secretly marry, she has a son, her uncle enraged has Abelard castrated, she enters a convent, and they are separated for a while, though he does help her and some nuns later. Her response in her letter? to continue to profess undying love. While reading it, it almost seems like a cruel joke that he has seduced her so thoroughly. Everyone in my class was profoundly disgusted. Not one of us saw the tragic romance of it all that seems to follow the story of Abelard and Heloise.

We were having a discussion today about how she could have continued to love him when he as much as told her that he was primarily interested in seeing if he could get her to bed and never expressed any sentiments of true affection. Later, upon considering the context of their relationship--that Abelard was nearly 20 years than she, and that he was her teacher, and that they both valued learning very highly--, I began thinking about how intensely personal the teacher-student relationship really is. It is not unheard of for professors to marry their students. There is a body of literature and movies that reinforces this picture. The teacher gives so much, enlivens parts of the mind that were previously unknown. The eager student is susceptible to these awakenings and depends on the teacher for them. The student craves the teacher's approval, and the recipe is set for the exchange to become even more personal, to gain erotic qualities.

So the picture must have gone for Abelard and Heloise. Heloise was well-educated and very sharp. Abelard's avant-garde scholasticism must have been quite appealing, and when he left the door open for her to come closer, she must have entered willingly.

Another couple in literature that probably strikes us less sharply is Edmund and Fanny in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. They are first cousins, her family poor, his rich. His father invites Fanny to join their family when she is still a child to give her some advantage. When she arrives she is very shy and cringes not knowing how to behave in her new circumstances. Kind-hearted Edmund takes her under his wing, instructs her in all that is good, moral, and discreet in a very Jane Austen-y kind of way. Her gives her books to read and literally shapes her complying mind. She very much depends on him. After growing up and a tumultuous time of ill-fated suitors, they find each other. Or rather, he finds her. She's been waiting for him. And they live happily ever after. I recently listened to Mansfield Park on tape, and even though the whole of the book finds conclusion in the happy union of Edmund and Fanny, I was a little weirded out by his marrying what was basically his creation, not to mention the fact that they were first-cousins, but that point didn't seem to bother people back then.

On the other hand, is there a couple who finds true love and meeting of the minds without the intensely personal sharing and giving of learning? When I reflect on Chris's and my marriage, I know this is true. Our first conversation had nothing to do with each other. We were talking about art, economics, and philosophy. We admired each other's ideas, and as we shared these very personal aspects of our lives, it naturally turned into a profoundly personal connection.

Perhaps there is always a sense of creation between two people in a couple. The "Pygmalion" syndrome? Where you give of yourself into the other so much that you help "create" the other, and that is when you fall in love with the other: when the other has part of you in it, and the other becomes your creation. And then you fall in love with your creation. Perhaps my class was a bit too harsh on Abelard.

On a completely different note, though Latin has been a rather stressful aspect of my life this semester, I'm coming back for more. I think I shall audit another Latin class. My really fab Latin prof from last sem is teaching an all Cicero class, and she is quite amenable to my being a spectator (I can't go through the stress and time of preparing translations for each day). I'm feeling excited because first, I love this prof; second, it's Cicero, and I just wouldn't feel properly educated without some exposure to Cicero, esp. when he had such an impact on Renaissance thinkers (and that is my area of specialization, if I can ever get past all this course work).

Posted by at 6:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Part of the events of the Forum on Music and Christian Scholarship conference at Covenant this weekend was a panel discussion. I was the token graduate student on the panel whose theme was "Musical and Christian Scholarship as Calling: Obstacles and Opportunities". (They had to throw the calling thing in so they could get some funding from the Kaleo Center at Cov.) Not all of us dealt specifically with music scholarship, and I think there were some interesting things said for scholars who are Christians in general. So I give my prepared comments (somewhat underdeveloped due to the time constraints I had) for further discussion in blogosphere:

Musical scholarship as a Christian calling---

When thinking about each aspect of—“music” and “scholarship” and “calling” and “Christian”—it has been observed in communications during the preparations for this panel that there are tensions regarding these terms in relation to each other in their various combinations. In some ways it can be boiled to the “faith and life integration” pot, and in that respect, I have been challenged to think about these things all of my life. Having been brought up as a covenant child in a Protestant Reformed household, the sovereignty of God in all aspects of life from doing the dishes to studying my math facts was especially emphasized. This understanding of sovereignty carried over into academics in a particular way when I got to Covenant College. The overwhelming question that permeated all of our classes was ‘how does the sovereignty of God particularly effect my work in x discipline as a scholar?’ So I have not really experienced, to a great extent, skepticism on the part of my particular Christian circle as to the legitimacy of my pursuit of scholarship. But after all my time at Covenant I still do not really know how Christian scholarship is different or what it is supposed to look like.

Two particular premises about Christian scholarship that I have received from my Covenant education are first, that a Christian’s scholarly work will not necessarily and essentially look different from a non-Christian’s scholarship, though it may be tempered by our unique knowledge base, for instance, intimate knowledge of the Bible and liturgy if awfully handy when studying the music of the church, and second, that with rise of postmodernism in academia Christians can claim their place at the table along with the feminists, etc. (I call this the “Marsden thesis”.)

These two premises have led me to begin to question recently how we use the qualifier “Christian”. If our scholarship does not have particular gospel content and if we are in the same way hindered as the non-Christian by what evidence is available to arrive at historical conclusions, why bother calling it Christian? I am becoming less and less comfortable using the term “Christian scholarship.” I am also becoming less comfortable with the Marsden thesis for which I am not really sure, but I think it has to do with the fact that I do not think there is such thing as “Christian scholarship.” Thus, to think of it as an advocacy position that requires a place at the table along with the Marxists and the feminists does not make much sense.

To add the notion of vocation to me as a Christian doing scholarship adds a new shade of complexity to the discussion. “Calling” is a word used often in Christian circles, perhaps it is a word used too much. We think of it in one way as referring to the calling of elders or deacons to an office, but people often use the word “calling” in a much broader way as anything having to do with any occupation they take up. Sometimes it is easy for people to inadvertently justify their own actions or to gain approval for their decisions by saying they were “called” to do it. Who can argue? God has spoken. It is also easy to think that if you were called to a particular occupation, such as scholarship, in our case, you have to become a scholar and become defined by this vocation. Perhaps, though, it may be more appropriate to think of calling in a more general way. Not so much as ‘I am called to be a scholar’ as ‘I am called to be obedient to Christ.’ It is difficult to discern clearly what God’s will is for my life, but I think when we seek Him with a desire to be obedient he will show us and lead us in the direction He will have us go. So for now, the Lord has provided me with the skills, the desire, and the opportunities to pursue scholarship. But I think of my following this path not so much as a path of calling as a path of obedience. If the doors of academia were to close for me, my calling would remain the same. This is also tremendously freeing for me, because I do not have to worry if I am called to this or that, I just have to focus on obeying Christ. Maybe in the end that does not look different from those who say they are called to be scholars, but this is a helpful way for me to look at it.

There are also some practical considerations about being a Christian in academia, which probably are just essentially the problems of being a Christian in the world. A particular tension, which actually comes more from the church than the world, has to do with the fact that I am a woman. I am married, and the traditional picture, at least that I have received, is that I stay at home, have some kids, possibly homeschool them, and follow my husband supporting whatever career he may have. Many women I know view the sum total of their “calling” as being a wife and a mother. This inherently is not a bad picture, but I am clearly on path that does not fit with this picture, if I expect to actually use the Ph.D. I am currently working towards. My husband and I desire to be obedient with regards to the two of us as a family and to our future covenant children, if we are blessed with them, so it means creating a completely new picture for us if I am supposed to throw “scholar” on the pile of things I am “called” to do, which may partly be why I am attracted to simplify the notion of “calling.” Becoming a scholar, especially, as a woman also means that I am asserting independent ideas from my husband and other men, which make some in the church bristle.

Other tensions that are probably more relevant to my daily life right now do not really come from the university as much from the way I think I should live an obedient life. In my experience, I do not really get a lot of “negative energy” because I am a Christian. The people in my department know that I am serious about my faith and respect it as my personal belief. Maybe we can call this the “post-Marsden” phase. The tensions I face are those any Christian in the workplace does—for instance, keeping the Sabbath or deciding to commute daily 85 miles each way to school in order to remain active in the life of the fledgling church we are members of.

Posted by at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Well, my lack of posts is not because I am away (as was the case last time), rather I am so busy. But it's a good busy. I think I'm getting closer to a paper topic, so I've been reading a lot, in addition to regular class preparation. I'm trying to narrow down a pursuable topic dealing with some of the glosses to Boethius's De institutione musica, so getting into Boethius's works and their interrelatedeness, as well as medieval interpretations of his some of theoretical and aesthetics views on music is all very interesting. The Latin in De...musica is quite manageable, too, which is nice for me, since we all know that medieval Latin is my most recent bane.

Also recently brought in my medieval music survey was something that I had not known and find absolutely fascinating. Some writers in the Middle Ages employed a technique in their prose writing called the cursus, which basically is the ending of a sentence or clause. Only used in highly stylistic contexts the cursus is a way of ending the sentence in a metrically regular way (like poetry, only it's prose). Different kinds of cursi(?) would have different arrangements of patterns of accents. For instance, one might choose to end the last six syllables of the sentence: strong (or accented), weak, weak, strong, weak, weak. Wow! talk about having to choose your words carefully! And where is the line between poetry and prose?

Posted by at 6:46 PM | Permalink