new mus(ings)ic

Something of a catch-all here, since I’ve been avoiding blogging for a little while (to be discussed at some later point).
First, the semester ended a week and a half ago, bringing to an end my first year of doctoral work. It’s been a good year, and I very much enjoyed teaching (students are fun, grading [...]

Rehearsals have been underway for the past week and a half, and De Profundis is starting to sound like an actual piece of music (!) — encouraging. I have received several comments about the impressiveness of having actually corralled fifteen people into one room in order to make it happen, but better yet I’ve gotten [...]

Tomorrow begins the second week of classes for spring semester. “Spring.” That’s what they call it, at least. When it’s not wet and cold out there, it’s generally dry and cold (rain or snow being generally ubiquitous lately). No matter, such is January back here in the midwest. Ah, how distance makes life out west [...]

One semester, that is.
Exam week is officially and finally over! The last bits were an exam for Psychology of Music on Thursday evening and a counterpoint project and analysis due last night. That project was a four-voice fugue, which I wrote for wind quartet, and on which I actually started over mid-week after a while [...]

I just read (two days late) that composer Karlheinz Stockhausen died on Wednesday. I’m not about to get all “Ye sacred Muses” here or anything, but he was an important (if controversial) composer. I remember being distinctly weirded out by his vocal works as an undergrad, along with the peculiar mystico-universalist sort of spiritual leanings [...]

Be soothed, gentle reader. I have not abandoned you, but merely sought to deepen our bond in silent fellowship. And look! Now I speak again!
First snow today! Sort of. It snowed over Thanksgiving in Michigan when we were at my mom’s house, and I even got to drive a little in that–first snow driving since [...]