Oct 25: Finally, a Paper Topic! (Plus Choir)

I gave a short presentation today for one of my musicology courses (Music, Religion, and Consciousness). It was pretty easy – give your background, explain a topic you’ve previously researched that would be relevant to the class, and suggest a topic that you’d like to focus on for the term paper. Talking about a previous topic wouldn’t be too hard, because last term I had done lots of research on Kepler and his concept of harmony within the universe (he calculated that the mathematical ratios of the planetary orbits actually corresponded to the mathematical ratios of certain musical intervals…pretty amazing). But I was having a terrible time in coming up with a new topic for this course’s term paper. Then, as I was trying to get out the door for class this morning, I actually came up with a new idea! If a musician and a non-musician listened to the same piece of music, how would they perceive it differently? What parts of the brain would be used in both cases? Would the musician be able to separate themselves from the performer’s perspective if this is a piece they’ve played a lot?

(Of course, I’ll have to be very careful to define what a “musician” and a “non-musician” is, and I’ll have to narrow it down further, but I think it gives lots of options. But when I’ve gone to a concert and talked to a few different people, I sometimes hear very different reactions to a performance. Some non-musicians think it was wonderful, and then I talk to some musicians and all they can talk about is how distracting the performer’s technique was (or something similar). How easily can performers get out of an analytical mindset?)

As for the rest of the day, I came home, had some delicious gummi bears we bought on the weekend. There’s a designated gummi bear store in the downtown area, and we went in with E & P when we were in the vicinity…J

In the evening, I went to the first university choir rehearsal! We’re singing something called “Christvespers” which seems like it’s a compilation of traditional Christmas songs as well as at least one Bach piece (there’s a beautiful Chorale in there). It was a lot of fun and I met some wonderful people. Lots of German practice…although a whole bunch of the director’s instructions went RIGHT over my head. As long as I got the right bar number, I was ok…;-)