7/8 of a college degree: looking back on the major(s)

College has been somewhat of a playground for me, though without the typical drinking and party scene. Academically, I have felt encouraged and ambitious enough to attempt a double major, and complete 2 minors.
My major in music had been a sure thing since no earlier than January of 2008, a month or so before auditioning, and before that, I had expected to major in something basic like Spanish. The music major I chose was a broad specialization – Liberal Studies, the former Undifferentiated option, and designed to revitalize interest at UNH in music history and create opportunities for more custom focuses, like ethnomusicology. The curriculum appealed to me, and the focus of the major seemed less performance-oriented – a plus for a self-taught amateur enthusiast. Once at UNH, I participated in both a lesson studio, and the Liberal Studies symposium group. Both were experiences of great value, and seeing the work of my peers in the history field is always sweetly humbling for me. I may know them from classes and UNH life, but I am always amazed to see the breadth of knowledge, different experience, and devotion they bring to their studies! The Liberal Studies experience– classes, professors, and peers – has seen me through 3 years now of UNH music, and in the last year, has inspired me to look towards graduate study in musicology as the next step in my academic career.
The very first class I attended at UNH (and, unless drivers’ ed counts, my very first classroom experience ever after 12 years of homeschool education) was elementary Italian, with Amy Boylan. My operatic vocabulary, functional but creaky, served me well as I found that already I understood Italian at a high level for this intro class. Professor Boylan suggested I enter Mayder Dravasa’s class the following semester and essentially skip a year’s classes – taking the beginning of 1st year and the end of 2nd year back to back. After this much Italian, I was ready for the UNH in Italy at Ascoli Piceno semester abroad, along with 17 other UNH students and piano professors Chris and Arlene Kies. Combining the classes at UNH with an independent study and my Ascoli classes, I had completed a minor with hardly any effort. My only regret was not paying more attention in Amy’s class when we learned about Italian menus and restaurants. I figured this would never come in handy, not expecting to be in Italy a year later..it would have been very useful!
Spring of 2010 brought me very close to declaring a second major in Linguistics. The subject matter fascinates me and the detailed work of surveys, syntax, and morphology scratched some serious academic itches. To understand accents, dialects, and why words look and sound like they do – the ultimate geek experience! I ultimately decided against the major due to the tiny size of the linguistics department – the music community, though small, is about 10 times the size of linguistics and allows for a little bit more cross-fertilization of ideas. I occasionally fantasize about a graduate degree or second B.A. in linguistics, and applying myself to the study of Italian dialects.
My farthest digression from music started around the same time as my classes in Historical and Comparative Linguistics. I took a class on Earth History with the chair of the Geology department, and again, scratched academic itch. Here was the grand panorama of evolution, plate tectonics, and the solar system. I was hooked. Over summer 2010, I made countless spreadsheets of major requirements, trying to configure a plan which allowed me to graduate on time and still hit the high points of two extremely divergent  disciplines. In the end, class options limited the viability of said plan (and I do feel more competent in the humanities/arts than in sciences – if only I had had this discussion in high school!) and I will graduate with geology as my second minor. Geology, Italian, and linguistics are three fields dear to my heart which I still enjoy keeping up with – and hope to revisit over the years if I succeed in creating an academic career. UNH served me well in offering all these options. I would indeed “major in UNH studies” if there were such an option!

Opera Spotlight: L'Italiana in Algeri, La Boheme, and Handel's Hercules

NPR World of Opera features Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri, with Lawrence Brownlee.

WETA is playing the Castleton Festival's La Bohème

July 9, 2011, 1:00 pm conducted by Lorin Maazel

And Chicago Lyric's broadcast of Hercules (Handel) is on WFMT at 12pm CT (1pm ET).

Mozart's influence: statistical procrastination

I recently completed an online course in Statistics (through UNH's Sociology department). It was, in many ways, the "easiest" class I have ever had, because there was no attendance and I took no notes. There were readings, homework assignments, and quizzes, which did keep me sporadically on my toes, but overall the concept of the class stayed rather remote from my mind. Or so I thought.
Here I am a week later, contemplating the use of statistical methods (some of which, such as regression, I am aware that I never even read about for this class, but may be useful) to assess the influence of Haydn and Mozart on later composers (Beethoven, Schubert perhaps). My plan involves collecting data from piano sonata slow movements (excluding theme-and-variations) such as relative key, melodic contour of the opening phrase,  length, and tempo marking to compare "apples to apples" from Mozart's work to Beethoven's.
Perhaps this is the kind of academic minutia which real scholars dismiss as bean-counting, and I might be better off writing a paper or a piece of my own. I certainly do not know enough about statistics yet to use multi-variate analysis or any of the techniques I have read about recently in books on politics (Why Iowa?: How Caucuses and Sequential Elections Improve the Presidential Nominating Process) or broad social science (Natural Experiments of History - excellent book!). But down the road, my little database might provide me with an interesting sandbox for experiments!

Opera Spotlight: Il Trittico, Lohengrin, and Semele

WETA is featuring Puccini's Triptych this Saturday at 1pm. Listen on the livestream to this performance from last July, conducted by Lorin Maazel. IMSLP has the scores:
http://imslp.org/wiki/Suor_Angelica_(Puccini,_Giacomo)
http://imslp.org/wiki/Il_tabarro_(Puccini,_Giacomo)
http://imslp.org/wiki/Gianni_Schicchi_(Puccini,_Giacomo)
and the libretti are at Operaglass:
http://opera.stanford.edu/Puccini/IlTabarro/libretto.html
http://opera.stanford.edu/Puccini/SuorAngelica/libretto.html
http://opera.stanford.edu/Puccini/GianniSchicchi/libretto.html

Lohengrin is this week's Chicago Lyric broadcast, with Sir Andrew Davis conducting a great cast headed up by Johan Botha and Emily Magee. WFMT also runs a live stream - Lohengrin plays at 12:00pm Central Time (1pm Eastern). Here's the score, from IMSLP, and the libretto.

NPR World of Opera will be featuring Handel's Semele from the Champs-Elysees Theatre. Here's the libretto and the score at IMSLP.

7/8 finished with my college degree: looking back on the gen ed experience

I will miss college classes.  UNH's 40 credit general education curriculum does only require 1 class of all students (English 401), as pointed out to me by the friend who gave me the unofficial campus tour, and the other 36 credits are yours to explore new areas. The ability to dive headfirst into a new discipline (albeit occasionally taking that dive into the shallow end with unexpected results) has been a mainstay of my education thus far. If I could, I would have taken more of these forays into the rest of campus life, and reforms to broaden gen ed lists have crossed my mind several times.
People of my mother's generation, and farther back, Teddy Roosevelt's, have seen gen eds as an arbitrary component of a college education, and a forced sidetrack from the majors in which they are concentrating. I wish future generations could experience a more unified curriculum, where classes drawn from different areas of study demonstrate just how many different ways science and art are "done" at a university. Gen eds should produce wonder, and perhaps some ambition for further pursuit of these disciplines - not a rote presentation for the sake of both instructor and student's "required" participation.
Wouldn't it be great if during a semester, every student became acquainted with several branches of science which are as interdependent as they are independent, such as biology, chemistry, and physics! The 40 credits of gen eds could be re-distributed into several semester-length in depth looks at various areas of study at UNH, divided by broad themes. Already these required classes are distributed by category, and draw from different colleges within the university; interdisciplinary classes are a natural extension of these and the Inquiry courses. Students could spend their classroom time with professors who love their work. Instead of  cramming for midterms, students could learn about the methods, achievements, and principles which unite disciplines - and even learn about the contributions of science to art and vice versa.
There is so much information to encounter in the disciplines at UNH which make up the gen ed pool, and I do not believe that real proficiency is expected as the goal of the general education requirement. Instead of a goal of "mastery" of basic chemistry, or linguistics, or American history, why not allow students to encounter these concepts in a presentation by enthusiastic professors, emphasizing the vast range of work and beauty their subjects embrace?

Countertenor Nicholas Spanos

In search of countertenor versions of the late 19th century French chanson repertoire, I encountered the gorgeous voice of Nicholas Spanos. His repertoire embraces all the usual standbys of modern countertenors - Baroque and older opera, with a good showing of French chanson, some Handel oratorio in English, Spanish folk songs, and Schubert lied. As well as possessing a beautiful timbre and well-chosen vibrato, Spanos is also a very handsome fellow (a necessary trait for fame in this media age, I am sorry to say), with the properly "exotic" tall-dark-handsome look of a leading tenor heartthrob. In short, I hope to see much more of this young singer in the future!  Check out plavos's channel on Youtube for the extensive collection of his repertoire.
Now if only I could hear him sing "Lascia ch'io pianga"......

"Nixon in China" and video game practice

In John Adams' description of the creation process for Nixon in China (recently reposted here), one description which stuck out to me addressed the technical demands of Adams' music. 

At the end of an act the expressions on some players’ faces resemble someone who’s just survived an A-level Japanese video game.

The relationship between video game proficiency and musical proficiency is a striking simile, and one that (at a very low level of interaction) I enjoy. Sometimes I enjoy practicing piano with the same low-level ambition with which I enjoy a good game of Frogger 3D: similar pitfalls, new places, new sounds, eye-hand coordination. Perhaps if I was more ambitious at video games, I'd practice the piano more!
Funny.