(no subject)
Nightingale
wondering how they did the courses for music history, especially tests.
I'm in my second course, which according to the description I printed
off the website is supposed to be a continuation of the wonderful Musics
& Cultures course I took last year and I was really looking forward to
it all summer, but it is so different & I'm wondering which way of doing
things, if either, is typical. It seems like this year the emphasis is
just on memorizing a bunch of stuff and not really understanding
anything - for example, a large numbers of marks (I think about 10%) on
the final last year was for birth & death dates of a list of composers.
We have the first test shortly & it's going to be a listening test, but
not like what we did last year: we've been given a list of 18 pieces,
and how the test will work is that we will be played a random bit from
somewhere in the piece and we are to write down, exactly as it is on our
list, the composer, genre, and title (I hope the TAs will not be too
fussy if I do something like forget that the list says "Pange lingua
Mass" and write "Missa Pange Lingua", which is what the scores at church
say). The professor even suggested to study for the test by copying out
the list many times to help memorizing it. What is the point of that -
it seems pretty silly to me. Are they teaching us anything about the
music or just training parrots? :-(
Also, the test will be in the tutorial, which right after the lecture,
and the list includes up to Purcell, but we will only have started
Baroque that day. (The example of Purcell they chose for the CDs that
came with our book is horrible! Actually, the chorus is not that bad,
but the recit & aria are ruined by an operatic mezzo with *way* too much
vibrato, really unclear diction & not much clue about early music. The
recordings of Des Prez and Palestrina are perfect though - Tallis Scholars.)
--
The better the voyce is, the meeter it is to honour and
serve God there-with: and the voyce of man is chiefely
to be imployed to that ende.
Omnis spiritus laudet Dominum.
-William Byrd
Jerry Kohl
> Question for some of you that have completed music degrees already - I'm
> wondering how they did the courses for music history, especially tests.
> I'm in my second course, which according to the description I printed
> off the website is supposed to be a continuation of the wonderful Musics
> & Cultures course I took last year and I was really looking forward to
> it all summer, but it is so different & I'm wondering which way of doing
> things, if either, is typical. It seems like this year the emphasis is
> just on memorizing a bunch of stuff and not really understanding
> anything - for example, a large numbers of marks (I think about 10%) on
> the final last year was for birth & death dates of a list of composers.
Oh, my giddy aunt! I thought they would have done away with this long
since! Yes, we had the same thing in Freshman year. Identify the last
movement of the Third Brandenburg Concerto. Yup, easy, it's the one
with the scratch on the record. To quote Marvin, the paranoid android:
"Sounds awful." On the bright side, it will be a no-brainer. On the dark
side, it will be a no-brainer.
When I took the Art History survey course in Modern Art, the second
semester final exam consisted of just this sort of thing: "You will be
shown 100 slides, and you are to identify the style, artist, exact date
of composition, what the artist ate for breakfast that morning, and the
time in minutes before he barfed it back up."
I would have failed that test, if it were not for the fact that the only
slide I did *not* recognize had the artist's signature in the upper-
left-hand corner. (I remember still that it was Duphly.) The slide
was, of course, upside-down, but the signature was legible all the
same (except, presumably, to the professor), so I aced the test with
a perfect 100%. Next-best score was some smart-arse art major
with 73%.
There is something to be said for having skill in the art of test-
taking :-(
--
Jerry Kohl <jerom...@comcast.net>
"Légpárnás hajóm tele van angolnákkal."
Alan Archer (bloke)
avoid it - and its graduates!
especially seem to need to avoid a certain professor!
"Nightingale" <si...@music.ca> wrote in message
news:2spau5F...@uni-berlin.de...
Owain Sutton
They clearly do NOT know what the hell they're doing. Nobody should be
concerned about memorising dates and names. There's so much to talk
about, and to learn, that is so much more relevant and interesting.
My favourite question from any exam I took was "Explain who do you
consider to be the most overrated symphonist of the 20th century".
That's the kind of question that makes you think about music in a fresh
way, and that also enable you to demonstrate a *real* knowledge of music.
Matthew Fields
>Question for some of you that have completed music degrees already - I'm
>wondering how they did the courses for music history, especially tests.
There ARE certain dates you want to know. Who all were born in 1685?
Who died in 1750, and who in 1791? What was all the ruckus about in
1913, and why didn't that ruckus continue in 1914? What happened in
the 1590s that forever changed the way people think about music, and
who got in on it 1605-1610 with what impact?*
These dates will serve as signposts helping you to keep things straight
so, e.g., when you find the dates of Rachmanninov, you can understand
his unusual role in stylistic evolution.
*Handel and Bach among others, Bach among others, Mozart among others;
riots at the premiere of Rite of Spring, World War; Camerata di Bardi
produced Peri's sung drama Orfeo; Monteverdi came out with his own
Orfeo.
--
Matthew H. Fields http://personal.www.umich.edu/~fields
Music: Splendor in Sound
To be great, do things better and better. Don't wait for talent: no such thing.
Brights have a naturalistic world-view. http://www.the-brights.net/
Peter T. Daniels
go to Columbia for that in those days.
The history survey courses were for non-majors -- I've talked about
"Monteverdi to Mozart" (Zaslaw), "The Nineteenth Century" (Samuel), and
"Schoenberg, Bartok, and Stravinsky" (Austin). The first and last had
term papers (I did Haydn's Seven Last Words, comparing the four
versions, and Bernstein's Mass respectively), and I don't remember what
the finals were; the 19th-century class did do that "drop the needle"
identification thing, and the time I met Don Randel was when I went to
the chairman to complain.
Majors and grad students could take more intensive surveys of the
earlier and later periods (we didn't really have anyone specializing in
the romantics). Grout's classes were interesting -- the year he retired,
he had his graduate seminar Monday mornings, and the topic was Handel:
operas one semester, oratorios the other, and each week a pair of
students had to prepare a performance/discussion of one of them. Monday
evenings, second semester, was "The Music of J. S. Bach"; each week we
analyzed a P&F from the WTC, and he presented a genre. (He wouldn't
reschedule the night the Ithaca College commencement concert was
Beethoven's Ninth, so quite a few of us missed the class on MO and KdF.)
Was it unusual that all the musicologists were also performers, and
regularly gave concerts, and also led the sections in the student
orchestra?
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
Matthew Fields
Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>Was it unusual that all the musicologists were also performers, and
>regularly gave concerts, and also led the sections in the student
>orchestra?
>--
>Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
In my experience this IS unusual. Musicologists tend to avoid
"biasing" themselves with the "subjective" business of actually making
music, and thereby tend to come up with hypotheses which drift further
and further from the actual activity. While there may be some merit in
capturing the historical and anthropological perspective of a
"non-native", a countercurrent among musicologists asserts that such
an approach is far more incomplete and dryly inapplicable than that of
a musician.
Owain Sutton
> In article <2spau5F...@uni-berlin.de>, Nightingale <si...@music.ca> wrote:
>
>>Question for some of you that have completed music degrees already - I'm
>>wondering how they did the courses for music history, especially tests.
>
>
> There ARE certain dates you want to know. Who all were born in 1685?
> Who died in 1750, and who in 1791? What was all the ruckus about in
> 1913, and why didn't that ruckus continue in 1914? What happened in
> the 1590s that forever changed the way people think about music, and
> who got in on it 1605-1610 with what impact?*
>
Thirty seconds with Google and you'll have all that information. It's a
waste of time to memorise things that are so easily available.
> These dates will serve as signposts helping you to keep things straight
> so, e.g., when you find the dates of Rachmanninov, you can understand
> his unusual role in stylistic evolution.
>
>
Rachmaninov's dates by themselves do little to explain his musical
development. That he was contemporary with e.g. Ravel and Ives shows
that chronology alone is meaningless.
Nightingale
> Nightingale wrote:
>
>
>>Question for some of you that have completed music degrees already - I'm
>>wondering how they did the courses for music history, especially tests.
>>I'm in my second course, which according to the description I printed
>>off the website is supposed to be a continuation of the wonderful Musics
>>& Cultures course I took last year and I was really looking forward to
>>it all summer, but it is so different & I'm wondering which way of doing
>>things, if either, is typical. It seems like this year the emphasis is
>>just on memorizing a bunch of stuff and not really understanding
>>anything - for example, a large numbers of marks (I think about 10%) on
>>the final last year was for birth & death dates of a list of composers.
>
>
> Oh, my giddy aunt! I thought they would have done away with this long
> since! Yes, we had the same thing in Freshman year.
Freshman? Is that first year?
Our first year course was nothing like this. We had listening tests,
which sometimes were from the CDs that came with our book, sometimes
other things we listened to in class, and a few were new material. We
were asked questions about the music, not just to identify composer,
title and genre.
> Identify the last
> movement of the Third Brandenburg Concerto. Yup, easy, it's the one
> with the scratch on the record.
My CD actually has some skips in the middle of the Palestrina :-( What
I can hear of it is beautiful though, and I think I will try to find a
CD of the whole mass. (We just have part of the Gloria on our course CDs).
> To quote Marvin, the paranoid android:
> "Sounds awful." On the bright side, it will be a no-brainer. On the dark
> side, it will be a no-brainer.
>
LOL! So far it's not a great course :-( and I don't think I'll do as
well as last year, because I am really bad at memorizing.
> When I took the Art History survey course in Modern Art, the second
> semester final exam consisted of just this sort of thing: "You will be
> shown 100 slides, and you are to identify the style, artist, exact date
> of composition, what the artist ate for breakfast that morning, and the
> time in minutes before he barfed it back up."
And how did the colour of his breakfast influence the outcome of his
day's work?
>
> I would have failed that test, if it were not for the fact that the only
> slide I did *not* recognize had the artist's signature in the upper-
> left-hand corner. (I remember still that it was Duphly.) The slide
> was, of course, upside-down, but the signature was legible all the
> same (except, presumably, to the professor), so I aced the test with
> a perfect 100%. Next-best score was some smart-arse art major
> with 73%.
LOL!
>
> There is something to be said for having skill in the art of test-
> taking :-(
>
I'm not interested in the art of test-taking. I just want to learn more
about music.
--
Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire:
Translated Daughter, come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire.
Nightingale
> seems like you have a "sh*t" university to me mate. Where is it so I can
> avoid it - and its graduates!
> especially seem to need to avoid a certain professor!
>
Agree about the professor, not the university. Last year the courses
were great & I had wonderful teachers. It's just this one course that
is horrible this year. Unfortunately it's a full year course, and it's
one of my required courses.
Matthew Fields
>
>My CD actually has some skips in the middle of the Palestrina :-(
I've had pretty good experience with the Data Dr [tm] system.
Matthew Fields
In other words, you completely miss the point of understanding his
dates, which is to note that he was one of the most prominent figures
in a separate branch of musical evolution.
Nightingale
> Another vote for 'shit university', I'm afraid...
>
> They clearly do NOT know what the hell they're doing. Nobody should be
> concerned about memorising dates and names. There's so much to talk
> about, and to learn, that is so much more relevant and interesting.
>
That's how I feel about it - I've got my internet connection & reference
books in case I ever need to know some detail like Christian Gottlob
Neefe's birthday (same as mine, but many years earlier).
> My favourite question from any exam I took was "Explain who do you
> consider to be the most overrated symphonist of the 20th century".
> That's the kind of question that makes you think about music in a fresh
> way, and that also enable you to demonstrate a *real* knowledge of music.
My favourite questions from last year were 2 of the listening questions
- both hearing a piece that we had not listened to in class and
answering questions about the music - and a question about the influence
of technology in music. I gave a bit of space to the obvious one of
development of instruments (we had spent a fair bit of class time
talking about pianos) but most of my answer was talking about learning
music, giving notation & sound recording as my examples of technology
that had changed the landscape. If Matt had a checklist of facts that
should be covered, I think I hit very few of them - my answers often
went off in a different direction from what others in the class wrote -
but demostrating the ability to memorize & parrot back things was not
the priority of that class.
Nightingale
> In article <2sqccmF...@uni-berlin.de>, Nightingale <si...@music.ca> wrote:
>
>>My CD actually has some skips in the middle of the Palestrina :-(
>
>
> I've had pretty good experience with the Data Dr [tm] system.
>
Never heard of it - can you tell me a bit more?
Nightingale
> Ethnomusicology wasn't even an option at Cornell around 1970; you could
> go to Columbia for that in those days.
>
> The history survey courses were for non-majors -- I've talked about
> "Monteverdi to Mozart" (Zaslaw), "The Nineteenth Century" (Samuel), and
> "Schoenberg, Bartok, and Stravinsky" (Austin). The first and last had
> term papers (I did Haydn's Seven Last Words, comparing the four
> versions, and Bernstein's Mass respectively),
We've got papers to write this year. Our first one is due at the start
of November - she's given us a list of 7 topics, to pick one & write a 7
or 8 page essay. That's going to be challenging for me, because I'm not
great at writing, I've never written anything longer than a couple of
pages before & I'm not sure where to start or how to organize things.
(There are a lot of things that I don't like about the course, but
that's not one of them - it's just unfortunate that I ended up at crappy
highschools & never did much writing.)
> and I don't remember what
> the finals were; the 19th-century class did do that "drop the needle"
> identification thing, and the time I met Don Randel was when I went to
> the chairman to complain.
Apparently people complained about this prof. last year, but it didn't
do any good.
>
> Majors and grad students could take more intensive surveys of the
> earlier and later periods (we didn't really have anyone specializing in
> the romantics). Grout's classes were interesting -- the year he retired,
> he had his graduate seminar Monday mornings, and the topic was Handel:
> operas one semester, oratorios the other, and each week a pair of
> students had to prepare a performance/discussion of one of them. Monday
> evenings, second semester, was "The Music of J. S. Bach"; each week we
> analyzed a P&F from the WTC, and he presented a genre.
Lucky you - that sounds like it was fun. Is that the same Grout that
wrote "A History of Western Music"? I've decided that our assigned text
doesn't cover anything in enough detail - we're actually using the same
book in our course as they are using in the course for non-majors - and
bought the Grout book this week.
>(He wouldn't
> reschedule the night the Ithaca College commencement concert was
> Beethoven's Ninth, so quite a few of us missed the class on MO and KdF.)
>
> Was it unusual that all the musicologists were also performers, and
> regularly gave concerts, and also led the sections in the student
> orchestra?
--
Owain Sutton
> In article <ck8q1p$cru$2...@hercules.btinternet.com>,
> Owain Sutton <owain....@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
>>Matthew Fields wrote:
>>
>>
>>>In article <2spau5F...@uni-berlin.de>, Nightingale <si...@music.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Question for some of you that have completed music degrees already - I'm
>>>>wondering how they did the courses for music history, especially tests.
>>>
>>>
>>>There ARE certain dates you want to know. Who all were born in 1685?
>>>Who died in 1750, and who in 1791? What was all the ruckus about in
>>>1913, and why didn't that ruckus continue in 1914? What happened in
>>>the 1590s that forever changed the way people think about music, and
>>>who got in on it 1605-1610 with what impact?*
>>>
>>
>>Thirty seconds with Google and you'll have all that information. It's a
>>waste of time to memorise things that are so easily available.
>>
>>
>>
>>>These dates will serve as signposts helping you to keep things straight
>>>so, e.g., when you find the dates of Rachmanninov, you can understand
>>>his unusual role in stylistic evolution.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Rachmaninov's dates by themselves do little to explain his musical
>>development. That he was contemporary with e.g. Ravel and Ives shows
>>that chronology alone is meaningless.
>>
>
>
> In other words, you completely miss the point of understanding his
> dates, which is to note that he was one of the most prominent figures
> in a separate branch of musical evolution.
>
And you miss MY point, which is that knowing the dates doesn't tell you
that.
Owain Sutton
> Owain Sutton wrote:
>
>> Another vote for 'shit university', I'm afraid...
>>
>> They clearly do NOT know what the hell they're doing. Nobody should
>> be concerned about memorising dates and names. There's so much to
>> talk about, and to learn, that is so much more relevant and interesting.
>>
>
> That's how I feel about it - I've got my internet connection & reference
> books in case I ever need to know some detail like Christian Gottlob
> Neefe's birthday (same as mine, but many years earlier).
>
Be grateful for small mercies. I share mine with Paul McCartney :-S
Jerry Kohl
Charles Koechlin, in my case :-)
Jerry Kohl
> Jerry Kohl wrote:
>
> > Nightingale wrote:
> >
> >>Question for some of you that have completed music degrees already - I'm
> >>wondering how they did the courses for music history, especially tests.
[snip]
> It seems like this year the emphasis is
> >>just on memorizing a bunch of stuff and not really understanding
> >>anything - for example, a large numbers of marks (I think about 10%) on
> >>the final last year was for birth & death dates of a list of composers.
> >
> >
> > Oh, my giddy aunt! I thought they would have done away with this long
> > since! Yes, we had the same thing in Freshman year.
>
> Freshman? Is that first year?
Yes.
> Our first year course was nothing like this. We had listening tests,
> which sometimes were from the CDs that came with our book, sometimes
> other things we listened to in class, and a few were new material. We
> were asked questions about the music, not just to identify composer,
> title and genre.
Well, part of the purpose of the listening-identification tests was to make
sure that all of the first-year students had at least heard some of the
standard-repertoire literature from three historical periods. A very high
percentage could reel off two hundred of the world's top polkas, or
sing by heart the entire Elvis canon backwards, but had never heard a
single note of Bach, Schubert, or Brahms. The three tests were of
standardized lists (I think it was just ten pieces per test, and everyone
was given the list of pieces well in advance, and there were recordings
on reserve in the listening centre), and the music was scarcely obscure.
The business about the scratch in the record of the Brandenburg
concerto had to do with the fact that this hint was deliberately put
about by the professor who, for the exam itself, used different
recordings, so that the scratch would show up on, say, the Liszt
Sonata in B Minor. Any student fool enough to identify a piano
sonata as Bach's Brandenburg Concerto deserved the grade he got.
> > When I took the Art History survey course in Modern Art, the second
> > semester final exam consisted of just this sort of thing: "You will be
> > shown 100 slides, and you are to identify the style, artist, exact date
> > of composition, what the artist ate for breakfast that morning, and the
> > time in minutes before he barfed it back up."
>
> And how did the colour of his breakfast influence the outcome of his
> day's work?
So, you took that course too? ;-)
> > There is something to be said for having skill in the art of test-
> > taking :-(
>
> I'm not interested in the art of test-taking. I just want to learn more
> about music.
Well, test-taking is a knack. You've either got it, or you haven't. ;-)
I think it was my junior year (that's the third year, in case you don't
know) that a like-minded friend and I put together a "listening test"
for a dozen or so of our fellow students in an honors seminar. It
consisted of 30 excerpts from the most god-awful warhorses, but
chosen from parts that would be familiar, while avoiding the most
easily recognized bits. For example, there was "the" Tchaikovsky
Piano Concerto, but it was the beginning of the second movement;
there was Reznicek's Donna Diana Overture, but we stopped before
reaching the second theme ("Sgt. Preston of the Yukon" theme);
and so on. It was in effect an exercise in humiliation, because
everyone was saying "Oh, lord, I *know* that piece, but what
the heck is it?" The average score was 2 out of 30, but one guy
actually got 28 right (the second-highest score was about 6),
which astounded everyone. It turned out he'd been collecting
records since he was about 8 years old, and listened to them
constantly (probably to drive his parents crazy).
La Donna Mobile
"Owain Sutton" <owain....@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:ck9alq$cru$4...@hercules.btinternet.com...
So, at least you don't have Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Tarbuck.
I was actually due on Jussi Bjoerling's birthday but I arrived a day late...
Peter T. Daniels
>
> In article <4167DD...@worldnet.att.net>,
> Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >
> >Was it unusual that all the musicologists were also performers, and
> >regularly gave concerts, and also led the sections in the student
> >orchestra?
> In my experience this IS unusual. Musicologists tend to avoid
> "biasing" themselves with the "subjective" business of actually making
> music, and thereby tend to come up with hypotheses which drift further
> and further from the actual activity. While there may be some merit in
> capturing the historical and anthropological perspective of a
> "non-native", a countercurrent among musicologists asserts that such
> an approach is far more incomplete and dryly inapplicable than that of
> a musician.
This is of course thiry+ years on ...
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > Ethnomusicology wasn't even an option at Cornell around 1970; you could
> > go to Columbia for that in those days.
> >
> > The history survey courses were for non-majors -- I've talked about
> > "Monteverdi to Mozart" (Zaslaw), "The Nineteenth Century" (Samuel), and
> > "Schoenberg, Bartok, and Stravinsky" (Austin). The first and last had
> > term papers (I did Haydn's Seven Last Words, comparing the four
> > versions, and Bernstein's Mass respectively),
>
> We've got papers to write this year. Our first one is due at the start
> of November - she's given us a list of 7 topics, to pick one & write a 7
> or 8 page essay. That's going to be challenging for me, because I'm not
> great at writing, I've never written anything longer than a couple of
You certainly do well enough here!
> pages before & I'm not sure where to start or how to organize things.
> (There are a lot of things that I don't like about the course, but
> that's not one of them - it's just unfortunate that I ended up at crappy
> highschools & never did much writing.)
Check the google archives ...
> > and I don't remember what
> > the finals were; the 19th-century class did do that "drop the needle"
> > identification thing, and the time I met Don Randel was when I went to
> > the chairman to complain.
>
> Apparently people complained about this prof. last year, but it didn't
> do any good.
>
> >
> > Majors and grad students could take more intensive surveys of the
> > earlier and later periods (we didn't really have anyone specializing in
> > the romantics). Grout's classes were interesting -- the year he retired,
> > he had his graduate seminar Monday mornings, and the topic was Handel:
> > operas one semester, oratorios the other, and each week a pair of
> > students had to prepare a performance/discussion of one of them. Monday
> > evenings, second semester, was "The Music of J. S. Bach"; each week we
> > analyzed a P&F from the WTC, and he presented a genre.
>
> Lucky you - that sounds like it was fun. Is that the same Grout that
> wrote "A History of Western Music"? I've decided that our assigned text
> doesn't cover anything in enough detail - we're actually using the same
> book in our course as they are using in the course for non-majors - and
> bought the Grout book this week.
Of course! I have the first and second editions but never felt a need to
get the Palisca reworkings. Not long ago I came across H. Wiley
Hitchcock's copy of the first edition at Strand, but there were no
annotations whatsoever, so no reason to acquire it just for the
autograph.
The grad students' qualifying exam was said to consist of pointing to
entries at random in Grout's index and discuss.
And he had an immense collection of 17th- and 18th-century opera scores;
they were willed to the Cornell library but had already been
incorporated into the collection -- his office (which he only occupied
on Mondays) was adjacent to and communicated with the stacks, so that
items could be fetched by a page with a key. The Grout Collection was
bound in bright blue buckram and didn't circulate.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Owain Sutton wrote:
>
> > Another vote for 'shit university', I'm afraid...
> >
> > They clearly do NOT know what the hell they're doing. Nobody should be
> > concerned about memorising dates and names. There's so much to talk
> > about, and to learn, that is so much more relevant and interesting.
> >
>
> That's how I feel about it - I've got my internet connection & reference
> books in case I ever need to know some detail like Christian Gottlob
> Neefe's birthday (same as mine, but many years earlier).
Oh, goody, birthdays again! I recently learned that mine is shared by
not only Hector Berlioz and Eliot Carter, but also the next president of
the United States. He's exactly eight years older than me.
Nightingale
When is the election?
Nightingale
>>
>>We've got papers to write this year. Our first one is due at the start
>>of November - she's given us a list of 7 topics, to pick one & write a 7
>>or 8 page essay. That's going to be challenging for me, because I'm not
>>great at writing, I've never written anything longer than a couple of
>
>
> You certainly do well enough here!
>
Newsgroup posts are a bit different than an 8 page essay.
>>
>>Lucky you - that sounds like it was fun. Is that the same Grout that
>>wrote "A History of Western Music"? I've decided that our assigned text
>>doesn't cover anything in enough detail - we're actually using the same
>>book in our course as they are using in the course for non-majors - and
>>bought the Grout book this week.
>
>
> Of course! I have the first and second editions but never felt a need to
> get the Palisca reworkings. Not long ago I came across H. Wiley
> Hitchcock's copy of the first edition at Strand, but there were no
> annotations whatsoever, so no reason to acquire it just for the
> autograph.
I've got the newest edition, which I wanted because it is
cross-referenced to the CDs & scores I bought last year. There's also a
website, which I haven't checked out yet. I don't think I will bother
with the official text - reading the first 6 chapters was a waste of
time, and this book is so much better.
>
> The grad students' qualifying exam was said to consist of pointing to
> entries at random in Grout's index and discuss.
Interesting way to do an exam.
Nightingale
>
> Well, part of the purpose of the listening-identification tests was to make
> sure that all of the first-year students had at least heard some of the
> standard-repertoire literature from three historical periods.
Which periods?
> A very high
> percentage could reel off two hundred of the world's top polkas, or
> sing by heart the entire Elvis canon backwards, but had never heard a
> single note of Bach, Schubert, or Brahms. The three tests were of
> standardized lists (I think it was just ten pieces per test, and everyone
> was given the list of pieces well in advance, and there were recordings
> on reserve in the listening centre), and the music was scarcely obscure.
Our first of 4 tests has 18 pieces - it's most of the first CD that came
with the text.
> The business about the scratch in the record of the Brandenburg
> concerto had to do with the fact that this hint was deliberately put
> about by the professor who, for the exam itself, used different
> recordings, so that the scratch would show up on, say, the Liszt
> Sonata in B Minor. Any student fool enough to identify a piano
> sonata as Bach's Brandenburg Concerto deserved the grade he got.
>
LOL!
>>
>>And how did the colour of his breakfast influence the outcome of his
>>day's work?
>
>
> So, you took that course too? ;-)
>
No - I still have that to look forward to. I haven't done any of my
non-music courses. I need 6 credits of social science, and 12 credits
of fine arts other than music, and I haven't decided yet what courses I
will do. I tried to talk them out of making me take the social science,
but was unsucessful: economics and law are both on the list of topics
for social science, but the courses I took are not counted because I
took them through the accounting association instead of at a college or
university :-(
>
>>>There is something to be said for having skill in the art of test-
>>>taking :-(
>>
>>I'm not interested in the art of test-taking. I just want to learn more
>>about music.
>
>
> Well, test-taking is a knack. You've either got it, or you haven't. ;-)
I'm doomed :-( I guess I won't be making the honour roll this year.
> It was in effect an exercise in humiliation, because
> everyone was saying "Oh, lord, I *know* that piece, but what
> the heck is it?" The average score was 2 out of 30, but one guy
> actually got 28 right (the second-highest score was about 6),
> which astounded everyone.
LOL! You are evil.
La Donna Mobile
"Jerry Kohl" <jerom...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:41684CA9...@comcast.net...
> Nightingale wrote:
>
> > Jerry Kohl wrote:
> >
> > > Nightingale wrote:
> > >
Yes, we had the same thing in Freshman year.
> >
> > Freshman? Is that first year?
>
> Yes.
>
> know)
Totally OT, but out of curiosity, in various places, (assuming no 'gap year'
or not a mature student) what age do people generally go to University. And
how long is the course.
Where I live, England&Wales (but not Scotland, I don't think), one would go
the autumn after 18th birthday and spend generally three, or occasionally
four years, for a bachelors degree in most subjects.
Nightingale
It is not the same in all provinces here. In Quebec, high school is up
to grade 11 & then you choose either a professional program at CEGEP (2
or 3 years) or a pre-university program (2 years) then a 3 year
university degree. It has recently changed in Ontario - high school
used to be 5 years (grade 9 to grade 13), but now it is only 4 years.
Last year we had the "double cohort", which is what they called the 2
groups of kids who entered university at the same time from grade 13
under the old system and grade 12 under the new system. University
degrees are 4 years. Quebec students attending university in other
provinces usually get transfer credit for their second year CEGEP courses.
Owain Sutton
> Jerry Kohl wrote:
>
>>
>> Well, part of the purpose of the listening-identification tests was to
>> make
>> sure that all of the first-year students had at least heard some of the
>> standard-repertoire literature from three historical periods.
>
>
> Which periods?
>
From THE three historical periods. Surely it's obvious that
everything happens in threes. Honest.....
Jerry Kohl
> Jerry Kohl wrote:
> >
> > Well, part of the purpose of the listening-identification tests was to make
> > sure that all of the first-year students had at least heard some of the
> > standard-repertoire literature from three historical periods.
>
> Which periods?
Baroque, Classical, Romantic (I think I remember rightly). Like I said,
it really wasn't anything exotic, and was needed for a certain percentage
of entering music majors who came from communities beyond the
reach of a classical radio station, or who had never tuned in to one if
it was available.
> > The business about the scratch in the record of the Brandenburg
> > concerto had to do with the fact that this hint was deliberately put
> > about by the professor who, for the exam itself, used different
> > recordings, so that the scratch would show up on, say, the Liszt
> > Sonata in B Minor. Any student fool enough to identify a piano
> > sonata as Bach's Brandenburg Concerto deserved the grade he got.
>
> LOL!
Well, it is amazing the lengths some students will go to when trying
desperately to pass a test without actually studying for it.
> >>And how did the colour of his breakfast influence the outcome of his
> >>day's work?
> >
> > So, you took that course too? ;-)
>
> No - I still have that to look forward to. I haven't done any of my
> non-music courses. I need 6 credits of social science, and 12 credits
> of fine arts other than music, and I haven't decided yet what courses I
> will do. I tried to talk them out of making me take the social science,
> but was unsucessful: economics and law are both on the list of topics
> for social science, but the courses I took are not counted because I
> took them through the accounting association instead of at a college or
> university :-(
Oh, well. Several distribution courses that I took turned out to be the
most enjoyable classes I ever attended. It was with considerable
misgivings that I trusted the advisor's recommendation that I
register for Bill Bowsky's Medieval History survey course, but
I'm very glad I did.
> >>>There is something to be said for having skill in the art of test-
> >>>taking :-(
> >>
> >>I'm not interested in the art of test-taking. I just want to learn more
> >>about music.
> >
> > Well, test-taking is a knack. You've either got it, or you haven't. ;-)
>
> I'm doomed :-( I guess I won't be making the honour roll this year.
It has a lot to do with self-confidence, I find. Some types of test are
very difficult to bluff your way through, but essay tests, for example,
often have a very large component of credit for what I might call
"bravura". I think I may have mentioned before the exam where I
aced three of its four quarters that were all essays on the contents
of a book I had not even opened, but lost a few points on the other
quarter, which consisted of a dozen short-answer questions.
> > It was in effect an exercise in humiliation, because
> > everyone was saying "Oh, lord, I *know* that piece, but what
> > the heck is it?" The average score was 2 out of 30, but one guy
> > actually got 28 right (the second-highest score was about 6),
> > which astounded everyone.
>
> LOL! You are evil.
Well, I was in those days (I have mellowed). But keep in mind that
it was not a test that counted toward a grade, and it was administered
to a group of hot-shots who mostly thought of themselves as "real
pros" with extensive knowledge of the classical music literature.
Jerry Kohl
In the US the starting year is about the same, but the traditional bachelor's
degree is a four-year course. In most schools, however, a professional
music degree (by which I mean with a performance major, as opposed to
a music-education degree) cannot be managed in a "regulation" four years,
and typically takes five.
Jerry Kohl
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >>
> >>We've got papers to write this year. Our first one is due at the start
> >>of November - she's given us a list of 7 topics, to pick one & write a 7
> >>or 8 page essay. That's going to be challenging for me, because I'm not
> >>great at writing, I've never written anything longer than a couple of
> >
> > You certainly do well enough here!
>
> Newsgroup posts are a bit different than an 8 page essay.
Not really. (Unless of course the professor is actually going to
*read* the thing, instead of just count the pages, and even then . . . ;-)
Nightingale
>
> Baroque, Classical, Romantic (I think I remember rightly).
No early music & no 20th century! Actually, it looks like that's going
to be most of our course as well - next week she will finish what little
coverage renaissance is going to get, then it's on to barque. The
course outline lists some things up to the begining of the 20th century,
but last year she didn't get that far - I think they only did up to the
end of the 19th. I guess it's a good thing to know something about
Romantic music, but I would much rather spend less time on that and
cover some of the fascinating stuff that's happened more recently.
> Like I said,
> it really wasn't anything exotic, and was needed for a certain percentage
> of entering music majors who came from communities beyond the
> reach of a classical radio station, or who had never tuned in to one if
> it was available.
>
We've got many kids like that in the class - almost half of them are
studying jazz and many of the others are doing world music. Several of
them have commented to me that they don't understand why they have to do
a course like this and resent taking it & it's too bad the course is so
horrible - if it was more like the first course they might actually end
up understanding and appreciating classical music instead of complaining
about having to take the course :-( I think she's managed to convince
many of them that Machaut is complicated, difficult, and not worth the
trouble, and she's only mentioned Binchois as an important composer
without actually playing any of his music for us.
>
> Well, it is amazing the lengths some students will go to when trying
> desperately to pass a test without actually studying for it.
>
So why take the course if you don't want to study & learn?
>
> Oh, well. Several distribution courses that I took turned out to be the
Distribution courses?
> most enjoyable classes I ever attended. It was with considerable
> misgivings that I trusted the advisor's recommendation that I
> register for Bill Bowsky's Medieval History survey course, but
> I'm very glad I did.
>
I got 3 years worth of transfer credit, but none of it is music. I don't
have to take any electives, and they counted some of my CEGEP courses as
equivalent to the natural sciece and humanities general education
requirements, so I really have very few non-music course to do. It will
be extra credits that I don't need for the degree, but I will be taking
some language courses - probably German, because I think I can manage
French on my own.
>
> It has a lot to do with self-confidence, I find. Some types of test are
> very difficult to bluff your way through, but essay tests, for example,
> often have a very large component of credit for what I might call
> "bravura". I think I may have mentioned before the exam where I
> aced three of its four quarters that were all essays on the contents
> of a book I had not even opened, but lost a few points on the other
> quarter, which consisted of a dozen short-answer questions.
>
I find with essay questions, a lot depends on how it is marked.
Sometimes the teacher will go down their little checklist of facts, and
if you don't include them all, you don't get the marks, and you can end
up doing quite badly if you took an unexpected approach. Last year it
wasn't that way, and back in CEGEP I had a teacher who amazed me by
giving me almost full marks on a question I had misunderstood - he told
me that I needed to be more careful to answer what was actually asked,
but that it was a good answer to the question he hadn't asked.
>
> Well, I was in those days (I have mellowed). But keep in mind that
> it was not a test that counted toward a grade, and it was administered
> to a group of hot-shots who mostly thought of themselves as "real
> pros" with extensive knowledge of the classical music literature.
>
Deflating hot-shots can be fun :-)
Nightingale
> In the US the starting year is about the same, but the traditional bachelor's
> degree is a four-year course. In most schools, however, a professional
> music degree (by which I mean with a performance major, as opposed to
> a music-education degree) cannot be managed in a "regulation" four years,
> and typically takes five.
>
Why would it take the extra year?
Nightingale
> Nightingale wrote:
>
>
>>Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>
>>>>We've got papers to write this year. Our first one is due at the start
>>>>of November - she's given us a list of 7 topics, to pick one & write a 7
>>>>or 8 page essay. That's going to be challenging for me, because I'm not
>>>>great at writing, I've never written anything longer than a couple of
>>>
>>>You certainly do well enough here!
>>
>>Newsgroup posts are a bit different than an 8 page essay.
>
>
> Not really. (Unless of course the professor is actually going to
> *read* the thing, instead of just count the pages, and even then . . . ;-)
>
With my luck, I'll find out that the tutors are the type to count the
spelling errors and typos & take off points for each one.
Jerry Kohl
> Jerry Kohl wrote:
> >
> > Baroque, Classical, Romantic (I think I remember rightly).
>
> No early music & no 20th century!
Well, no, not for a repertory survey for an introductory theory
course we did, as it happened, get a fairly big dose of 20th
century as well, but not on those "drop the needle" tests, and
the prof actually had more personal interest in music prior to
1500 than he did in music after that date. He didn't let it show
too much in that first-year course (which was, by the way,
the best-organised syllabus you could ask for--three years later,
I was teaching from it, so I should know), though we also had
a dose of modal counterpoint in the first semester.
> Actually, it looks like that's going
> to be most of our course as well - next week she will finish what little
> coverage renaissance is going to get, then it's on to barque.
Arf, arf! (When you get to the 20th c., it will be Orff, Orff, I expect ;-)
> The
> course outline lists some things up to the begining of the 20th century,
> but last year she didn't get that far - I think they only did up to the
> end of the 19th. I guess it's a good thing to know something about
> Romantic music, but I would much rather spend less time on that and
> cover some of the fascinating stuff that's happened more recently.
>
> > Like I said,
> > it really wasn't anything exotic, and was needed for a certain percentage
> > of entering music majors who came from communities beyond the
> > reach of a classical radio station, or who had never tuned in to one if
> > it was available.
> >
>
> We've got many kids like that in the class - almost half of them are
> studying jazz and many of the others are doing world music. Several of
> them have commented to me that they don't understand why they have to do
> a course like this and resent taking it & it's too bad the course is so
> horrible - if it was more like the first course they might actually end
> up understanding and appreciating classical music instead of complaining
> about having to take the course :-( I think she's managed to convince
> many of them that Machaut is complicated, difficult, and not worth the
> trouble,
Well, two out of three isn't bad ;-) Machaut *is* complicated, and sometimes
difficult, but if he was not, only then would he not be worth the trouble!
> and she's only mentioned Binchois as an important composer
> without actually playing any of his music for us.
Possibly she hasn't heard any of his music, herself.
> > Well, it is amazing the lengths some students will go to when trying
> > desperately to pass a test without actually studying for it.
>
> So why take the course if you don't want to study & learn?
To obtain a degree, for which the course is required?
> > Oh, well. Several distribution courses that I took turned out to be the
>
> Distribution courses?
Courses from outside of your major. There is normally a certain
number of such courses required in any degree program, and
it is generally specified that they must be in several different
subject areas (such as natural sciences, history, language studies,
etc.), hence the term "distribution".
> I got 3 years worth of transfer credit, but none of it is music. I don't
> have to take any electives,
Ah. "Elective" is sometimes used as a synonym of "distribution",
but there can be a small difference, in that "elective" may also cover
courses that you take "for fun", but cannot be counted toward your
degree. (At least, that is the way the term was used at shools I
attended.)
> and they counted some of my CEGEP courses as
> equivalent to the natural sciece and humanities general education
> requirements,
Sounds like this could be yet another way of referring to
"distribution" courses.
> so I really have very few non-music course to do. It will
> be extra credits that I don't need for the degree, but I will be taking
> some language courses - probably German, because I think I can manage
> French on my own.
> >
> > It has a lot to do with self-confidence, I find. Some types of test are
> > very difficult to bluff your way through, but essay tests, for example,
> > often have a very large component of credit for what I might call
> > "bravura". I think I may have mentioned before the exam where I
> > aced three of its four quarters that were all essays on the contents
> > of a book I had not even opened, but lost a few points on the other
> > quarter, which consisted of a dozen short-answer questions.
> >
>
> I find with essay questions, a lot depends on how it is marked.
> Sometimes the teacher will go down their little checklist of facts, and
> if you don't include them all, you don't get the marks, and you can end
> up doing quite badly if you took an unexpected approach.
I tend to grade essay questions that way, myself.
> Last year it
> wasn't that way, and back in CEGEP I had a teacher who amazed me by
> giving me almost full marks on a question I had misunderstood - he told
> me that I needed to be more careful to answer what was actually asked,
> but that it was a good answer to the question he hadn't asked.
You were fortunate, I think!
> > Well, I was in those days (I have mellowed). But keep in mind that
> > it was not a test that counted toward a grade, and it was administered
> > to a group of hot-shots who mostly thought of themselves as "real
> > pros" with extensive knowledge of the classical music literature.
>
> Deflating hot-shots can be fun :-)
Yes, though in that case we upset a couple of people who didn't really
need deflating, as well. The experience was one of the things that
caused me to mellow.
Jerry Kohl
> Jerry Kohl wrote:
> > In the US the starting year is about the same, but the traditional bachelor's
> > degree is a four-year course. In most schools, however, a professional
> > music degree (by which I mean with a performance major, as opposed to
> > a music-education degree) cannot be managed in a "regulation" four years,
> > and typically takes five.
> >
>
> Why would it take the extra year?
In part because of a heavier total course-load requirement, but mainly because
the performance majors are required to do a full-tilt, heavy-duty senior recital,
whereas music-ed majors usually are only required to do a half-recital, or one
of a lower standard. The performance majors normally also do a junior recital
the year before, and these two recitals take a great deal of preparation time,
which prevents taking the heavy class load during those last two years that
would be needed to complete the curriculum in just four years.
Jerry Kohl
> Jerry Kohl wrote:
>
> > Nightingale wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >>
> >>>>We've got papers to write this year. Our first one is due at the start
> >>>>of November - she's given us a list of 7 topics, to pick one & write a 7
> >>>>or 8 page essay. That's going to be challenging for me, because I'm not
> >>>>great at writing, I've never written anything longer than a couple of
> >>>
> >>>You certainly do well enough here!
> >>
> >>Newsgroup posts are a bit different than an 8 page essay.
> >
> >
> > Not really. (Unless of course the professor is actually going to
> > *read* the thing, instead of just count the pages, and even then . . . ;-)
> >
>
> With my luck, I'll find out that the tutors are the type to count the
> spelling errors and typos & take off points for each one.
And if you're *very* lucky, they might read you some of their poetry
first ;-)
La Donna Mobile
"Nightingale" <si...@music.ca> wrote in message
news:2sredvF...@uni-berlin.de...
> Jerry Kohl wrote:
>
> > Nightingale wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >>
> >>>>We've got papers to write this year. Our first one is due at the
start
> >>>>of November - she's given us a list of 7 topics, to pick one & write a
7
> >>>>or 8 page essay. That's going to be challenging for me, because I'm
not
> >>>>great at writing, I've never written anything longer than a couple of
> >>>
> >>>You certainly do well enough here!
> >>
> >>Newsgroup posts are a bit different than an 8 page essay.
> >
> >
> > Not really. (Unless of course the professor is actually going to
> > *read* the thing, instead of just count the pages, and even then . . .
;-)
> >
>
> With my luck, I'll find out that the tutors are the type to count the
> spelling errors and typos & take off points for each one.
Well, then, you find yourself a friend who's good at spotting such things
and ask them help you.
It's also good to walk away and return with fresh eyes - I was looking
through a large number of my blog entries the other day and found hundreds
of examples of non-capitalised sentences, or misplaced spaces - 'th enoun'
for example. They leapt off the screen at me; pity they didn't when I
originally published.
Essay writing - say what you're going to say; say it; say what you've said.
And WPing has to be an advantage - I'd left University before I really had
access to WP. I'm not sure I could write an essay without one now
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > Nightingale wrote:
> >
> >>Owain Sutton wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Another vote for 'shit university', I'm afraid...
> >>>
> >>>They clearly do NOT know what the hell they're doing. Nobody should be
> >>>concerned about memorising dates and names. There's so much to talk
> >>>about, and to learn, that is so much more relevant and interesting.
> >>>
> >>
> >>That's how I feel about it - I've got my internet connection & reference
> >>books in case I ever need to know some detail like Christian Gottlob
> >>Neefe's birthday (same as mine, but many years earlier).
> >
> >
> > Oh, goody, birthdays again! I recently learned that mine is shared by
> > not only Hector Berlioz and Eliot Carter, but also the next president of
> > the United States. He's exactly eight years older than me.
>
> When is the election?
The first Tuesday ater the first Monday in November. This year it's the
earliest possible date.
Peter T. Daniels
> No - I still have that to look forward to. I haven't done any of my
> non-music courses. I need 6 credits of social science, and 12 credits
> of fine arts other than music, and I haven't decided yet what courses I
> will do. I tried to talk them out of making me take the social science,
> but was unsucessful: economics and law are both on the list of topics
> for social science, but the courses I took are not counted because I
> took them through the accounting association instead of at a college or
> university :-(
So take linguistics! There's at least one internationally known linguist
at York, Sheila Embleton, which suggests the department might have a
worthwhile introductory class.
Matthew Fields
>>
>>>My CD actually has some skips in the middle of the Palestrina :-(
>>
>>
>> I've had pretty good experience with the Data Dr [tm] system.
>>
>
>Never heard of it - can you tell me a bit more?
>
It's the hand-powered version of the motorized Skip Dr system from
Digital Innovations corp http://www.digitalinnovations.com/ and
basically it's a fairly precise way of sanding the CD in a radial
pattern to get the tracking lasers to stop being distracted by
concentric scratches. I got it on clearance half-off at an office
supply store, but it goes for about US$35 retail, and web vendors
carry it too. At
http://www.digitalinnovations.com/skipdr/DataDR_manual.html you can
see what the hand-powered version looks like. It features some very
clever gears for very slowly rotating the CD during the sanding
process (including a clever reverse switch), a mechanism with a
compressable sanding wheel to sand the CD in a continuous line from
rim to center, special cleaning fluid, a CD-safe cleaning cloth, and a
little patch of felt to buff the CD after you process it. Using this
thing, I've been able to get a totally non-playing Philips CD of
Arrau playing 3 Beethoven sonatas back into working order.
--
Matthew H. Fields http://personal.www.umich.edu/~fields
Music: Splendor in Sound
To be great, do things better and better. Don't wait for talent: no such thing.
Brights have a naturalistic world-view. http://www.the-brights.net/
Matthew Fields
Owain Sutton <owain....@btinternet.com> wrote:
>Nightingale wrote:
>
>> Owain Sutton wrote:
>>
>>> Another vote for 'shit university', I'm afraid...
>>>
>>> They clearly do NOT know what the hell they're doing. Nobody should
>>> be concerned about memorising dates and names. There's so much to
>>> talk about, and to learn, that is so much more relevant and interesting.
>>>
>>
>> That's how I feel about it - I've got my internet connection & reference
>> books in case I ever need to know some detail like Christian Gottlob
>> Neefe's birthday (same as mine, but many years earlier).
>>
>
And I share mine with Matthew Fields. Oy!
Wait a minute...
Oh. Never mind.
Matthew Fields
Jerry Kohl <jerom...@comcast.net> wrote:
>Nightingale wrote:
>> Actually, it looks like that's going
>> to be most of our course as well - next week she will finish what little
>> coverage renaissance is going to get, then it's on to barque.
>
>Arf, arf! (When you get to the 20th c., it will be Orff, Orff, I expect ;-)
Giving up the brig, then? Quite sloopy thinking, and I can see it has you
all in a skiff over that gaff. Or perhaps you're just jibing? That'd be
your usual tack.
Matthew Fields
Matthew Fields
><si...@music.ca> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Question for some of you that have completed music degrees already - I'm
>>>>>wondering how they did the courses for music history, especially tests.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>There ARE certain dates you want to know. Who all were born in 1685?
>>>>Who died in 1750, and who in 1791? What was all the ruckus about in
>>>>1913, and why didn't that ruckus continue in 1914? What happened in
>>>>the 1590s that forever changed the way people think about music, and
>>>>who got in on it 1605-1610 with what impact?*
>>>>
>>>
>>>Thirty seconds with Google and you'll have all that information. It's a
>>>waste of time to memorise things that are so easily available.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>These dates will serve as signposts helping you to keep things straight
>>>>so, e.g., when you find the dates of Rachmanninov, you can understand
>>>>his unusual role in stylistic evolution.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>Rachmaninov's dates by themselves do little to explain his musical
>>>development. That he was contemporary with e.g. Ravel and Ives shows
>>>that chronology alone is meaningless.
>>>
>>
>>
>> In other words, you completely miss the point of understanding his
>> dates, which is to note that he was one of the most prominent figures
>> in a separate branch of musical evolution.
>>
>
>And you miss MY point, which is that knowing the dates doesn't tell you
>that.
Neither does knowing the music without knowing the dates. But see what
we can do when we put things together!
Nightingale
Matthew Fields wrote:
> In article <ck9alq$cru$4...@hercules.btinternet.com>,
> Owain Sutton <owain....@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
>>Nightingale wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Owain Sutton wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Another vote for 'shit university', I'm afraid...
>>>>
>>>>They clearly do NOT know what the hell they're doing. Nobody should
>>>>be concerned about memorising dates and names. There's so much to
>>>>talk about, and to learn, that is so much more relevant and interesting.
>>>>
>>>
>>>That's how I feel about it - I've got my internet connection & reference
>>>books in case I ever need to know some detail like Christian Gottlob
>>>Neefe's birthday (same as mine, but many years earlier).
>>>
>>
>>Be grateful for small mercies. I share mine with Paul McCartney :-S
>
>
> And I share mine with Matthew Fields. Oy!
Which one?
>
> Wait a minute...
> Oh. Never mind.
>
LOL!
--
The better the voyce is, the meeter it is to honour and
serve God there-with: and the voyce of man is chiefely
to be imployed to that ende.
Omnis spiritus laudet Dominum.
-William Byrd
Nightingale
Matthew Fields wrote:
>
> It's the hand-powered version of the motorized Skip Dr system from
> Digital Innovations corp http://www.digitalinnovations.com/ and
> basically it's a fairly precise way of sanding the CD in a radial
> pattern to get the tracking lasers to stop being distracted by
> concentric scratches.
Sounds like a useful gadget to have - thanks!
Nightingale
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
Unfortunately they count linguistics as a humanities course. According
to the most recent department handbook, my choices are anthropology,
economics, geography, political science, psychology, social science, or
sociology. The only thing on the list that is at all interesting to me
is economics, but I've already taken my intro courses through the
accounting association and don't want to do it over again. I to take
something within my first 60 credits, so I've got a while yet before I
have to worry about it.
Nightingale
La Donna Mobile wrote:
> It's also good to walk away and return with fresh eyes - I was looking
> through a large number of my blog entries the other day and found hundreds
> of examples of non-capitalised sentences, or misplaced spaces - 'th enoun'
> for example. They leapt off the screen at me; pity they didn't when I
> originally published.
LOL! I've had similar experiences with stuff I've written as well. My
university application package had many typos (and they took me anyway!)
that I didn't see when I was proofreading before sending it out, but
noticed later.
>
> Essay writing - say what you're going to say; say it; say what you've said.
>
> And WPing has to be an advantage - I'd left University before I really had
> access to WP. I'm not sure I could write an essay without one now
>
I did very badly in my English courses in high school & college when I
was doing everything by hand, and actually had one teacher who failed
most of my assignments without even making a comment on the content,
because I had too many spelling errors. He and another similar teacher
are a big part of the reason why I didn't do any more than the minimum
required English and Humanities courses in college - all my others were
things like math & science, where I did not have to do any writing.
I really depend on my spell check on the computer now. It can be
dangerous though - there are a few times when I've accidentally hit
"replace" instead of "ignore" or "add to dictionary" and ended up saying
something other than what I intended.
Nightingale
Jerry Kohl wrote:
>>Actually, it looks like that's going
>>to be most of our course as well - next week she will finish what little
>>coverage renaissance is going to get, then it's on to barque.
>
>
> Arf, arf! (When you get to the 20th c., it will be Orff, Orff, I expect ;-)
>
LOL!
>>and she's only mentioned Binchois as an important composer
>>without actually playing any of his music for us.
>
>
> Possibly she hasn't heard any of his music, herself.
>
There's a Rondeau by him in the Norton Anthology. I don't know why she
didn't play it when she was explaining the form - it would have made it
clearer.
>
>>>Well, it is amazing the lengths some students will go to when trying
>>>desperately to pass a test without actually studying for it.
>>
>>So why take the course if you don't want to study & learn?
>
>
> To obtain a degree, for which the course is required?
>
So why get a degree if you don't want to study & learn?
>
>>>Oh, well. Several distribution courses that I took turned out to be the
>>
>>Distribution courses?
>
>
> Courses from outside of your major. There is normally a certain
> number of such courses required in any degree program, and
> it is generally specified that they must be in several different
> subject areas (such as natural sciences, history, language studies,
> etc.), hence the term "distribution".
>
OK. That sound like what my school calls the general education
requirement - you need 18 credits from outside of fine arts: 6 credits
in each of natural science, humanities, and social science.
>
> Ah. "Elective" is sometimes used as a synonym of "distribution",
> but there can be a small difference, in that "elective" may also cover
> courses that you take "for fun", but cannot be counted toward your
> degree. (At least, that is the way the term was used at shools I
> attended.)
>
Elective can be any course - the music courses and what you would call
"distribution" only total 87 credits, and you need 120 credits for the
degree. You can take anything you want, either music or other subjects,
for the remaining 33 credits. Some people do double majors, which might
end up being more than 120 credits to get all the required courses for
both subjects. If you do music and education, it ends up being a 5 year
program instead of 4.
>
>>and they counted some of my CEGEP courses as
>>equivalent to the natural sciece and humanities general education
>>requirements,
>
>
> Sounds like this could be yet another way of referring to
> "distribution" courses.
>
It does sound like different names for the same thing.
>>
>>I find with essay questions, a lot depends on how it is marked.
>>Sometimes the teacher will go down their little checklist of facts, and
>>if you don't include them all, you don't get the marks, and you can end
>>up doing quite badly if you took an unexpected approach.
>
>
> I tend to grade essay questions that way, myself.
>
The one time time I really objected to it was when we had a humanities
teacher who claimed to value independent thought and originality, and
then gave bad marks to anyone who didn't quote back the facts &
viewpoint presented in the lectures.
>
>> Last year it
>>wasn't that way, and back in CEGEP I had a teacher who amazed me by
>>giving me almost full marks on a question I had misunderstood - he told
>>me that I needed to be more careful to answer what was actually asked,
>>but that it was a good answer to the question he hadn't asked.
>
>
> You were fortunate, I think!
>
When we taking the test up in class, I realized that my answer was way
off base, and asked him after if he was sure he hadn't misplaced a
decimal point or something.
>
>>>Well, I was in those days (I have mellowed). But keep in mind that
>>>it was not a test that counted toward a grade, and it was administered
>>>to a group of hot-shots who mostly thought of themselves as "real
>>>pros" with extensive knowledge of the classical music literature.
>>
>>Deflating hot-shots can be fun :-)
>
>
> Yes, though in that case we upset a couple of people who didn't really
> need deflating, as well. The experience was one of the things that
> caused me to mellow.
>
Sounds like you manage to deflate yourselves a bit.
Nightingale
Matthew Fields wrote:
>
> C+. Surely you can spin that out into more than one screenful!
>
C-. You quoted the entire post, including sig, to add one line.
Jerry Kohl
> In article <4168D43E...@comcast.net>,
> Jerry Kohl <jerom...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >Nightingale wrote:
>
> >> Actually, it looks like that's going
> >> to be most of our course as well - next week she will finish what little
> >> coverage renaissance is going to get, then it's on to barque.
> >
> >Arf, arf! (When you get to the 20th c., it will be Orff, Orff, I expect ;-)
>
> Giving up the brig, then? Quite sloopy thinking, and I can see it has you
> all in a skiff over that gaff. Or perhaps you're just jibing? That'd be
> your usual tack.
Just a clew: Yawl oar going to ketch it a-boat reaching for a line like that.
Jerry Kohl
> In article <4168763C...@comcast.net>,
> Jerry Kohl <jerom...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >Nightingale wrote:
> >
> >> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >>We've got papers to write this year. Our first one is due at the start
> >> >>of November - she's given us a list of 7 topics, to pick one & write a 7
> >> >>or 8 page essay. That's going to be challenging for me, because I'm not
> >> >>great at writing, I've never written anything longer than a couple of
> >> >
> >> > You certainly do well enough here!
> >>
> >> Newsgroup posts are a bit different than an 8 page essay.
> >
> >Not really. (Unless of course the professor is actually going to
> >*read* the thing, instead of just count the pages, and even then . . . ;-)
> >
> >--
> >Jerry Kohl <jerom...@comcast.net>
> >"Légpárnás hajóm tele van angolnákkal."
> >
>
> C+. Surely you can spin that out into more than one screenful!
Heh-heh. Reminds me of a story I was told by a graduate-student friend,
about a last-year undergraduate course he took at another school. The
final paper was due the day before grades had to be turned in by the
professor, so the students in the class all conspired to write inflated
essays, any one of which would have been too long for the professor to
actually read in time to meet the grade deadline. Today, this kind of
prank would be a piece of cake, using the copy-and-paste function of
word processors, but this was the late 1960s, and so it actually involved
a lot of typing. The ploy was to start off with the required essay, and
after four or five pages to segue into rambling discussions of anything
and everything, eventually copying out newspaper articles, passages
from textbooks, and so on. In any case, my informant told me that he
had really gotten carried away, and along about page 30 typed into the
middle of one of his interminable stream-of-unconsciousness sentences
the phrase "if you are still reading this, I will buy you a case of beer",
and then continued for another twenty pages or so. The students all
made sure they didn't turn in their papers until the last possible moment,
and were there bright and early the day after grades were turned in, to
pick up their marked essays. On the front page of my friend's essay,
the professor had written simply, "make it Budweiser, please".
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > Nightingale wrote:
> >
> >
> >>No - I still have that to look forward to. I haven't done any of my
> >>non-music courses. I need 6 credits of social science, and 12 credits
> >>of fine arts other than music, and I haven't decided yet what courses I
> >>will do. I tried to talk them out of making me take the social science,
> >>but was unsucessful: economics and law are both on the list of topics
> >>for social science, but the courses I took are not counted because I
> >>took them through the accounting association instead of at a college or
> >>university :-(
> >
> >
> > So take linguistics! There's at least one internationally known linguist
> > at York, Sheila Embleton, which suggests the department might have a
> > worthwhile introductory class.
>
> Unfortunately they count linguistics as a humanities course. According
> to the most recent department handbook, my choices are anthropology,
> economics, geography, political science, psychology, social science, or
> sociology. The only thing on the list that is at all interesting to me
> is economics, but I've already taken my intro courses through the
> accounting association and don't want to do it over again. I to take
> something within my first 60 credits, so I've got a while yet before I
> have to worry about it.
Then I suggest geography. Geographers can do just about anything, so
long as there's a spatial dimension! (But Routledge published an
encyclopedia of geography with an absolutely execrable essay on
geographical linguistics, i.e. dialectology, so beware.)
Peter T. Daniels
> Heh-heh. Reminds me of a story I was told by a graduate-student friend,
> about a last-year undergraduate course he took at another school. The
> final paper was due the day before grades had to be turned in by the
> professor, so the students in the class all conspired to write inflated
> essays, any one of which would have been too long for the professor to
> actually read in time to meet the grade deadline. Today, this kind of
> prank would be a piece of cake, using the copy-and-paste function of
> word processors, but this was the late 1960s, and so it actually involved
> a lot of typing. The ploy was to start off with the required essay, and
> after four or five pages to segue into rambling discussions of anything
> and everything, eventually copying out newspaper articles, passages
> from textbooks, and so on. In any case, my informant told me that he
> had really gotten carried away, and along about page 30 typed into the
> middle of one of his interminable stream-of-unconsciousness sentences
> the phrase "if you are still reading this, I will buy you a case of beer",
> and then continued for another twenty pages or so. The students all
> made sure they didn't turn in their papers until the last possible moment,
> and were there bright and early the day after grades were turned in, to
> pick up their marked essays. On the front page of my friend's essay,
> the professor had written simply, "make it Budweiser, please".
A speed-reader with lousy taste in beer.
Peter T. Daniels
> > So take linguistics! There's at least one internationally known linguist
> > at York, Sheila Embleton, which suggests the department might have a
> > worthwhile introductory class.
>
> Unfortunately they count linguistics as a humanities course.
That's odd, because Embleton is the world's leading expert on
computational linguistics. At Chicago, it's a social science _or_ a
humanity (so is history).
Nightingale
Jerry Kohl wrote:
> The students all
> made sure they didn't turn in their papers until the last possible moment,
> and were there bright and early the day after grades were turned in, to
> pick up their marked essays. On the front page of my friend's essay,
> the professor had written simply, "make it Budweiser, please".
>
LOL!
Nightingale
Jerry Kohl wrote:
>>>>>Well, it is amazing the lengths some students will go to when trying
>>>>>desperately to pass a test without actually studying for it.
>>>>
>>>>So why take the course if you don't want to study & learn?
>>>
>>>To obtain a degree, for which the course is required?
>>
>>So why get a degree if you don't want to study & learn?
>
>
> The usual explanation as I have encountered it runs something like
> this: "I'm a pianist, for crying out loud. All I want to do is get my
> degree so I can go out and teach piano in a college. Why should
> I have to learn [insert claimed-irrelevant subject here]?"
LOL! That reminds me of my comment when putting together my application
package: "I want to study theory & musicology, for crying out loud. Why
should I have to pick an instrument and record an audition tape?"
Actually, York's audition requirement was not bad compared to what U of
T wanted.
> What this
> boils down to, of course, is "The people who designed this
> curriculum, and the professors who continue to insist on it, don't
> know as much about the field as I do, so screw'em."
>
So they should go to the conservatory and get their ARCT, or whatever
the equivalent where they are is called. They would still need to take
history & theory though, but it's probably fewer irrelevant courses than
in a university degree.
>
> Interesting. At the schools I went to, it tended to work the other way around.
> A "MusicEd" course was the four-year job (though student-teacher placement
> could throw a spanner in the works, if the course work wasn't carefully gotten
> out of the way first), and was regarded as a single major (B.S. in Music
> Education, I think--or maybe that was a B.A. in MusEd). Doing a "music"
> degree without the "education" part was a different degree altogether (a B.A.
> in Music or a B. Mus.)
>
I think you actually end up doing all the required courses for both the
Fine Arts and the Education degrees, which is more than 120 credits.
(I'd look up details, but they've redone the website & I can't find
anything.)
Matthew Fields
Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>That's odd, because Embleton is the world's leading expert on
>computational linguistics. At Chicago, it's a social science _or_ a
>humanity (so is history).
Ah, so you DO recognize computational linguistics as a branch of linguistics!
Nightingale
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> Nightingale wrote:
>
>
>>>So take linguistics! There's at least one internationally known linguist
>>>at York, Sheila Embleton, which suggests the department might have a
>>>worthwhile introductory class.
>>
>>Unfortunately they count linguistics as a humanities course.
>
>
> That's odd, because Embleton is the world's leading expert on
> computational linguistics.
What is computational linguistics?
> At Chicago, it's a social science _or_ a
> humanity (so is history).
I wish it was that way at my school, because the intro course looks
fascinating.
Matthew Fields
In the US, the shortest "Degree" for a pianist is called "performance
diploma". I don't know much about it though.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> In article <416A6C...@worldnet.att.net>,
> Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >That's odd, because Embleton is the world's leading expert on
> >computational linguistics. At Chicago, it's a social science _or_ a
> >humanity (so is history).
>
> Ah, so you DO recognize computational linguistics as a branch of linguistics!
No, a toolkit.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > Nightingale wrote:
> >
> >
> >>>So take linguistics! There's at least one internationally known linguist
> >>>at York, Sheila Embleton, which suggests the department might have a
> >>>worthwhile introductory class.
> >>
> >>Unfortunately they count linguistics as a humanities course.
> >
> >
> > That's odd, because Embleton is the world's leading expert on
> > computational linguistics.
>
> What is computational linguistics?
Mathematical and statistical approaches to linguistic problems.
> > At Chicago, it's a social science _or_ a
> > humanity (so is history).
>
> I wish it was that way at my school, because the intro course looks
> fascinating.
So take it anyway! That's what electives are for, and surely you have to
have electives befond your major and your distributions.
Matthew Fields
Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Matthew Fields wrote:
>>
>> In article <416A6C...@worldnet.att.net>,
>> Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>> >That's odd, because Embleton is the world's leading expert on
>> >computational linguistics. At Chicago, it's a social science _or_ a
>> >humanity (so is history).
>>
>> Ah, so you DO recognize computational linguistics as a branch of linguistics!
>
>No, a toolkit.
>--
>Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
Okay, so why do you bring up Embleton's expertise in this connection,
and why don't you recognize Dana Scott's contributions?
Peter T. Daniels
>
> In article <416AAD...@worldnet.att.net>,
> Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >Matthew Fields wrote:
> >>
> >> In article <416A6C...@worldnet.att.net>,
> >> Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >> >That's odd, because Embleton is the world's leading expert on
> >> >computational linguistics. At Chicago, it's a social science _or_ a
> >> >humanity (so is history).
> >>
> >> Ah, so you DO recognize computational linguistics as a branch of linguistics!
> >
> >No, a toolkit.
> >--
> >Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
>
> Okay, so why do you bring up Embleton's expertise in this connection,
> and why don't you recognize Dana Scott's contributions?
Because Sheila Embleton is the world's leading authority on
computational linguistics, and I've never heard of Dana Scott. (Oh, I
think you may have mentioned him or her a long time ago, and when you
finally coughed up some references, it turned out he or she wasn't a
linguist at all. Or was that a different unknown name?)
What's your point?
Matthew Fields
The stuff he's famous for is computational linguistics. So if
he's not a linguist, then at least he's famous for supplying
part of the toolkit.
>--
>Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
Nightingale
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>>>So take linguistics! There's at least one internationally known linguist
>>>>>at York, Sheila Embleton, which suggests the department might have a
>>>>>worthwhile introductory class.
>>>>
>>>>Unfortunately they count linguistics as a humanities course.
>>>
>>>
>>>That's odd, because Embleton is the world's leading expert on
>>>computational linguistics.
>>
>>What is computational linguistics?
>
>
> Mathematical and statistical approaches to linguistic problems.
>
>
Sounds interesting.
>>>At Chicago, it's a social science _or_ a
>>>humanity (so is history).
>>
>>I wish it was that way at my school, because the intro course looks
>>fascinating.
>
>
> So take it anyway! That's what electives are for, and surely you have to
> have electives befond your major and your distributions.
Actually, I don't need to take anything other than music & 18 credits of
distribution. I received transfer credit for 90 credits of electives
because of all the science & math I did when I was in my 20s, but I only
need 33 credits of electives for my degree. I will be doing some extra
courses, because I need to take German, but I don't want to end up
taking a lot much extra courses - I'm only doing this part time & want
to graduate before I'm too old. There are far more interesting courses
than I have time to take.
Peter T. Daniels
In which universe is he famous?
Jerry Kohl
> Jerry Kohl wrote:
> >>>>>Well, it is amazing the lengths some students will go to when trying
> >>>>>desperately to pass a test without actually studying for it.
> >>>>
> >>>>So why take the course if you don't want to study & learn?
> >>>
> >>>To obtain a degree, for which the course is required?
> >>
> >>So why get a degree if you don't want to study & learn?
> >
> >
> > The usual explanation as I have encountered it runs something like
> > this: "I'm a pianist, for crying out loud. All I want to do is get my
> > degree so I can go out and teach piano in a college. Why should
> > I have to learn [insert claimed-irrelevant subject here]?"
>
> LOL! That reminds me of my comment when putting together my application
> package: "I want to study theory & musicology, for crying out loud. Why
> should I have to pick an instrument and record an audition tape?"
> Actually, York's audition requirement was not bad compared to what U of
> T wanted.
>
> > What this
> > boils down to, of course, is "The people who designed this
> > curriculum, and the professors who continue to insist on it, don't
> > know as much about the field as I do, so screw'em."
> >
>
> So they should go to the conservatory and get their ARCT, or whatever
> the equivalent where they are is called. They would still need to take
> history & theory though, but it's probably fewer irrelevant courses than
> in a university degree.
The logical extreme tactic in this direction is to book Carnegie Hall, wow
the critics, obtain a dynamite contract from a major record company and
become the Big Star that you obviously deserve to be. Then the
conservatories, colleges, and universities will fall all over themselves
trying to get you on their faculties as a celebrity to draw students. Of
course, you will be too busy pursuing that performing career to ever
actually teach any students, and you will be raking in such huge fees
that you won't need the income from that faculty position anyway.
And of course this route is so much easier than studying for that
music history exam you regard as totally irrelevant ... ;-)
Jerry Kohl
Exactly. Or maybe he was just considerate enough to consider the
budgetary restrictions faced by an impoverished undergraduate.
Matthew Fields
Nightingale
Jerry Kohl wrote:
> And of course this route is so much easier than studying for that
> music history exam you regard as totally irrelevant ... ;-)
>
LOL!
Jerry Kohl
> Jerry Kohl wrote:
> > And of course this route is so much easier than studying for that
> > music history exam you regard as totally irrelevant ... ;-)
> >
>
> LOL!
Hmm. Did I remember to mark that statement with an "irony"
emoticon? Oh, good, I see that I did. (I wouldn't want to be
leading any foolish young students astray ;-)
Matthew Fields
Why do you claim he's an icecream cone?
He's famous in the field of computabble linguistics, which is what
I said all along.
John Harrington
> I don't know what that is, even if it were spelled right.
Do you know what computational linguistics is?
J
Nightingale
He already answered that. Do try to keep up, John.
--
Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire:
Translated Daughter, come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire.
Peter T. Daniels
Yes.
Then the Good Doctor changed the topic to "computabble" linguistics.
Matthew Fields
But wait, *you're* the Good Doctor, I'm the Wicked Doctor of the Midwest!
One of these days I have to teach you how to speak computababble like
a native.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> John Harrington wrote:
>
> > "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> > <snip>
> >
> >>I don't know what that is, even if it were spelled right.
> >
> >
> > Do you know what computational linguistics is?
> >
> >
>
> He already answered that. Do try to keep up, John.
Hmm. It's quite an achievement to disturb N's equanimity! Not too many
here have succeeded. I prefer not to name them.
Can Altinbay
news:416C4D...@worldnet.att.net...
Is that related to psychobabble?
Nightingale
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> Hmm. It's quite an achievement to disturb N's equanimity!
I've just been crabby & a bit stressed out because of work & other things.
> Not too many
> here have succeeded. I prefer not to name them.
LOL! There are a couple who haven't posted in a while & I hope they
don't come back.
Nightingale
> In article <2t3l20F...@uni-berlin.de>, Nightingale <si...@music.ca> wrote:
>>They're automating everything these days.
>
>
> The vending machine even drank my diet Moutain Dew this morning.
>
LOL!
Christian Tessier
"Nightingale" <si...@music.ca> a écrit dans le message de
news:2sr843F...@uni-berlin.de...
> La Donna Mobile wrote:
>
> > "Jerry Kohl" <jerom...@comcast.net> wrote in message
> > news:41684CA9...@comcast.net...
> >
> >>Nightingale wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Jerry Kohl wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> > Yes, we had the same thing in Freshman year.
> >
> >>>Freshman? Is that first year?
> >>
> >>Yes.
> >>
> >>I think it was my junior year (that's the third year, in case you don't
> >>know)
> >
> >
> > Totally OT, but out of curiosity, in various places, (assuming no 'gap
year'
> > or not a mature student) what age do people generally go to University.
And
> > how long is the course.
> >
> > Where I live, England&Wales (but not Scotland, I don't think), one would
go
> > the autumn after 18th birthday and spend generally three, or
occasionally
> > four years, for a bachelors degree in most subjects.
> >
>
> It is not the same in all provinces here. In Quebec, high school is up
> to grade 11 & then you choose either a professional program at CEGEP (2
> or 3 years) or a pre-university program (2 years) then a 3 year
> university degree. It has recently changed in Ontario - high school
> used to be 5 years (grade 9 to grade 13), but now it is only 4 years.
> Last year we had the "double cohort", which is what they called the 2
> groups of kids who entered university at the same time from grade 13
> under the old system and grade 12 under the new system. University
> degrees are 4 years. Quebec students attending university in other
> provinces usually get transfer credit for their second year CEGEP courses.
>
Not all university undergraduate degrees are 3 years, some are 4 years, like
Engineering and Law (3 years for the B.LL. + 1 year for the Bar) and even 5
years, like Medicine (if you count pre-med, and you add 1 or 2 more years if
you go for surgery, the CM after MD).
Christian
Alan Watkinsuk
changed, it is a personal opinion you are being asked to express in a personal
way. None of us can do better than that.
I am reminded of several lectures I attended as a student given by visiting
professor Edmund Rubbra (special subject: Tudor composers).who remarked at the
end of one lecture: "That is, of course, how I see it. You may hear it
differently."
I hope you should just be yourself as, on here, you appear to be. If there is
now a formula, it is regrettable.
Kind regards,
Alan M. Watkins
Nightingale
> Your writing seems okay to me and, so far as I know and unless things have
> changed, it is a personal opinion you are being asked to express in a personal
> way. None of us can do better than that.
In previous courses that required any writing, I have either got by with
C's, or struggled to pass, apparently depending more on the teacher than
on any difference in the work I handed in. I was so amazed to get my
first assignment back last year, because Matt was the first teacher I
ever had who said that anything I turned in was well written - he gave
everything very good grades, but the one that was marked by the
professor did not get nearly as good a grade even though I'm sure it was
as well done as the others.
I'll just have to do what I can & see what they say - I hope any poor
marks will come with enough feedback that I will know how to fix things
for the next time. I talked to the tutors today. One said I would be
fine & not to worry, which isn't really that helpful although I know he
meant well, and the other suggested a couple of books that will be
useful & I will try to find in the library on Saturday.
>
> I am reminded of several lectures I attended as a student given by visiting
> professor Edmund Rubbra (special subject: Tudor composers).who remarked at the
> end of one lecture: "That is, of course, how I see it. You may hear it
> differently."
>
Interesting! That reminds me of the approach taken by the teacher I had
for intro to law. I recognize the name because I've sung some of his
music, but I did not know that he was a professor.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Alan Watkinsuk wrote:
>
> > Your writing seems okay to me and, so far as I know and unless things have
> > changed, it is a personal opinion you are being asked to express in a personal
> > way. None of us can do better than that.
>
> In previous courses that required any writing, I have either got by with
> C's, or struggled to pass, apparently depending more on the teacher than
> on any difference in the work I handed in. I was so amazed to get my
> first assignment back last year, because Matt was the first teacher I
> ever had who said that anything I turned in was well written - he gave
> everything very good grades, but the one that was marked by the
> professor did not get nearly as good a grade even though I'm sure it was
> as well done as the others.
>
> I'll just have to do what I can & see what they say - I hope any poor
> marks will come with enough feedback that I will know how to fix things
> for the next time. I talked to the tutors today. One said I would be
> fine & not to worry, which isn't really that helpful although I know he
> meant well, and the other suggested a couple of books that will be
> useful & I will try to find in the library on Saturday.
Was one of them *The Elements of Style*, by Strunk & White? You really
don't need any more than that, plus someone who'll read a short essay or
two and see if you have any awkward habits (of which, I repeat, there is
no evidence in your voluminous r.m.c. postings).
Alan Watkinsuk
he left school at the age of 14 and became a "lamp boy" (filling railway lamps
with oil) for the Great Western Railway at Didcot,Berkshire, England before
going to evening classes with the Workers Educational Society to study music
And to think such an improper person could have been Head of Music at Oxford
University or written such a fifth symphony or a second string quartet is, of
course, quite incomprehensible. Least of all that he he could have discoursed
upon Byrd, Tallis, Shepherd et in such a riveting manner.
Blimey, he began life filling the level crossing lamps with oil. Important at
the time, of course, but less so as his life went on.
Nightingale
>
> Was one of them *The Elements of Style*, by Strunk & White?
No, but I remember somebody meantioning that a while ago & bought a copy.
> You really
> don't need any more than that, plus someone who'll read a short essay or
> two and see if you have any awkward habits (of which, I repeat, there is
> no evidence in your voluminous r.m.c. postings).
My biggest problem, aside from total incompetance in spelling and
proofreading, is know where to start & how to organize something long.
One of the guys was talking about 20 & 30 page papers he'd written, so I
guess 8 pages doesn't seem long to him. One thing that suprised me is
they both thought that being asked for 250 or 500 words on a topic was
brutal, and I actually didn't have too much trouble with that, although
my 250 words on the Byrd motete ended up being more like 350 words.
Writing short things is usually OK - managing to keep our choir profile
to only 175 words was brutal though.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > Was one of them *The Elements of Style*, by Strunk & White?
>
> No, but I remember somebody meantioning that a while ago & bought a copy.
>
> > You really
> > don't need any more than that, plus someone who'll read a short essay or
> > two and see if you have any awkward habits (of which, I repeat, there is
> > no evidence in your voluminous r.m.c. postings).
>
> My biggest problem, aside from total incompetance in spelling and
> proofreading, is know where to start & how to organize something long.
> One of the guys was talking about 20 & 30 page papers he'd written, so I
> guess 8 pages doesn't seem long to him. One thing that suprised me is
> they both thought that being asked for 250 or 500 words on a topic was
> brutal, and I actually didn't have too much trouble with that, although
> my 250 words on the Byrd motete ended up being more like 350 words.
> Writing short things is usually OK - managing to keep our choir profile
> to only 175 words was brutal though.
Benjamin Franklin is one of the people to whom is attributed the note,
"Please forgive me, madam, for writing a long letter; I did not have
time to write a short one."
I was just asked for an 850-word radio script on the history of writing.
(Listen for it in the middle of next year on NPR -- it's #26 of the
year-long series observing the "Year of Languages." I also did #25 but
that hasn't come back to me edited yet.)
To organize a longer essay, think of what you want to say, write down a
bunch of topics, and rearrange them into an outline. Then see how many
paragraphs each topic needs, and write them. Then put an introduction
before them and a conclusion after them.
Nightingale
>
> Benjamin Franklin is one of the people to whom is attributed the note,
> "Please forgive me, madam, for writing a long letter; I did not have
> time to write a short one."
>
LOL!
> I was just asked for an 850-word radio script on the history of writing.
>
> (Listen for it in the middle of next year on NPR -- it's #26 of the
> year-long series observing the "Year of Languages."
Sounds interesting - can I get NPR here?
> I also did #25 but
> that hasn't come back to me edited yet.)
>
What was the topic of #25?
> To organize a longer essay, think of what you want to say, write down a
> bunch of topics, and rearrange them into an outline. Then see how many
> paragraphs each topic needs, and write them. Then put an introduction
> before them and a conclusion after them.
Sounds similar to how I do short ones, but I usually don't have an
introduction & conclusion. I used to actually write all my points on
bits of paper which I would shuffle & add notes to of what I wanted to
reference (& sometimes tear into smaller bits if I decided something was
really 2 different points) & how to link things before I sat down to
write. One of my teachers in high school required us to hand in our
outlines and rough copies, but didn't tell us until I was almost done my
work - he laughed when I added sequence numbers in the top corners &
paper-clipped all my scraps of paper together to hand in. Now I type on
the computer and use cut & paste to do my rearranging.
Nightingale
>
> Blimey, he began life filling the level crossing lamps with oil. Important at
> the time, of course, but less so as his life went on.
>
Glad things changed - his music has brightened more lives than his lamps
ever could have.
Keith Edgerley
"Nightingale" <si...@music.ca> wrote in message
news:2tb7osF...@uni-berlin.de...
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > Benjamin Franklin is one of the people to whom is attributed the note,
> > "Please forgive me, madam, for writing a long letter; I did not have
> > time to write a short one."
> >
>
> LOL!
>
> > I was just asked for an 850-word radio script on the history of writing.
> >
> > (Listen for it in the middle of next year on NPR -- it's #26 of the
> > year-long series observing the "Year of Languages."
>
> Sounds interesting - can I get NPR here?
>
> > I also did #25 but
> > that hasn't come back to me edited yet.)
> >
>
> What was the topic of #25?
>
> > To organize a longer essay, think of what you want to say, write down a
> > bunch of topics, and rearrange them into an outline. Then see how many
> > paragraphs each topic needs, and write them. Then put an introduction
> > before them and a conclusion after them.
>
> Sounds similar to how I do short ones, but I usually don't have an
> introduction & conclusion.
These are the bits that make your writing look professional. Even
As Peter sugges, you don't need to write the introduction first, and it is
perhaps better not to, unless some hook occurs to you immediately. OTOH, I
used to find it helped to have some idea of the conclusions before you
start.
One way to work out what you need to say is to ask yourself questions, as if
you were interviewing somebody. Actually write them down: you'll leave them
out later.
Your scraps-of-paper system reminds me of the way I used to write condensed
conference reports for publication. There are two approaches: chronological,
session-by-session and speaker-by-speaker, which is dead boring and lacks
shape, and the synthesis report, operating by topic or aspect, not grouped
by who said what when. I used slips of paper 15cm x 10 cm and sorted them
into plastic sleeves.
--
Keith Edgerley
Ist mir mīn leben getroumet, oder ist ez wār?
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Alan Watkinsuk wrote:
> >
> > Blimey, he began life filling the level crossing lamps with oil. Important at
> > the time, of course, but less so as his life went on.
> >
>
> Glad things changed - his music has brightened more lives than his lamps
> ever could have.
And she claims she isn't a writer??
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > Benjamin Franklin is one of the people to whom is attributed the note,
> > "Please forgive me, madam, for writing a long letter; I did not have
> > time to write a short one."
> >
>
> LOL!
>
> > I was just asked for an 850-word radio script on the history of writing.
> >
> > (Listen for it in the middle of next year on NPR -- it's #26 of the
> > year-long series observing the "Year of Languages."
>
> Sounds interesting - can I get NPR here?
You can get it on your, as Dumbya put it, internets. (Al Franken likes
to say he has three internets now, one in the office, one at home, and
one for the kids.)
> > I also did #25 but
> > that hasn't come back to me edited yet.)
> >
>
> What was the topic of #25?
"Writing Systems."
> > To organize a longer essay, think of what you want to say, write down a
> > bunch of topics, and rearrange them into an outline. Then see how many
> > paragraphs each topic needs, and write them. Then put an introduction
> > before them and a conclusion after them.
>
> Sounds similar to how I do short ones, but I usually don't have an
> introduction & conclusion. I used to actually write all my points on
> bits of paper which I would shuffle & add notes to of what I wanted to
> reference (& sometimes tear into smaller bits if I decided something was
> really 2 different points) & how to link things before I sat down to
That's the best way.
> write. One of my teachers in high school required us to hand in our
> outlines and rough copies, but didn't tell us until I was almost done my
> work - he laughed when I added sequence numbers in the top corners &
> paper-clipped all my scraps of paper together to hand in. Now I type on
> the computer and use cut & paste to do my rearranging.
It's a lot more tedious, plus you can't see more than one screen at a
time.
Actually, following up on Keith, I can't start writing until I have an
opening sentence, and then it all just flows, and the transitions are
part of the initial production process -- so I find it hard to revise
beyond refinement of diction.
Jerry Kohl
> Nightingale wrote:
> >
> > Alan Watkinsuk wrote:
> > >
> > > Blimey, he began life filling the level crossing lamps with oil. Important at
> > > the time, of course, but less so as his life went on.
> > >
> >
> > Glad things changed - his music has brightened more lives than his lamps
> > ever could have.
>
> And she claims she isn't a writer??
I am beginning to suspect that her claims may be an example of what the Italians call
"sprezzatura".
Nightingale
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>I also did #25 but
>>>that hasn't come back to me edited yet.)
>>>
>>
>>What was the topic of #25?
>
>
> "Writing Systems."
>
Another interesting topic. Do you know what dates they will be on? I
would like to hear both of them.
>
> That's the best way.
>
>
> It's a lot more tedious, plus you can't see more than one screen at a
> time.
For writing things that are only a page, which is almost all of what I
have had to do for the past few years, that has not been a problem, but
I can see that it would be for longer things. I will probably go back
to having my bits of paper spread out all over the desk - I always print
my spreadsheets when they get to be more than a couple of pages so that
I can see the whole thing at once.
>
> Actually, following up on Keith, I can't start writing until I have an
> opening sentence, and then it all just flows, and the transitions are
> part of the initial production process -- so I find it hard to revise
> beyond refinement of diction.
Interesting. I've had it happen quite a few times that I had a very
hard time with something, for example the short essay I had to write as
part of my university application, but once I figured out the first
sentence or two the rest just fell into place.
Thanks for the helpful posts - I'm saving some of these.
Nightingale
Jerry Kohl wrote:
>>>>Blimey, he began life filling the level crossing lamps with oil. Important at
>>>>the time, of course, but less so as his life went on.
>>>>
>>>
>>>Glad things changed - his music has brightened more lives than his lamps
>>>ever could have.
>>
>>And she claims she isn't a writer??
>
Well, not compared to you and Alan & some of the other brilliant ones
who post here.
>
> I am beginning to suspect that her claims may be an example of what the Italians call
> "sprezzatura".
>
Sprezzatura? I even checked my Italian dictionary, but didn't find that
word.
Jerry Kohl
> Jerry Kohl wrote:
> >>>>Blimey, he began life filling the level crossing lamps with oil. Important at
> >>>>the time, of course, but less so as his life went on.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>Glad things changed - his music has brightened more lives than his lamps
> >>>ever could have.
> >>
> >>And she claims she isn't a writer??
> >
>
> Well, not compared to you and Alan & some of the other brilliant ones
> who post here.
>
> >
> > I am beginning to suspect that her claims may be an example of what the Italians call
> > "sprezzatura".
> >
>
> Sprezzatura? I even checked my Italian dictionary, but didn't find that
> word.
Oh dear, oh dear! And there was I, thinking that you were well-versed in
the performance of 17th-century vocal music! Giulio Caccini mentions
this as being of paramount importance in the singing of his compositions
in the Nuove Musiche. The word means something like "indifference",
but more specifically refers to an attitude of assumed "carelessness" in
performing. Baldassare Castiglione, in the Libro del Cortegiano (1528)
counsels the use of sprezzatura when, for example, a gentleman is asked
to perform on the lute in company. The best effect is ensured by first
modestly protesting lack of any great skill, causing the invitation to be
made more strongly until, with a further show of relectance, you produce
yor lute, tune it up briefly, and then perform your socks off (not quite
the words Castiglione uses!). The opposite effect is produced by boasting
endlessly of your skill, and then falling flat on your face.
Peter T. Daniels
nonchalance, diffidence, modesty, ...