And now for some politics...

Today's Indianapolis Star had a front-page article about a Purdue University professor who blogs on conservative issues. Bert Chapman is the Government Information & Political Science Librarian and a Professor of Library Science at Purdue. The reason he made the news is for writing a post called "An Economic Case Against Homosexuality." A grad student discovered the blog post and reported Chapman to the university's Office for Institutional Equality, leading to protests in the campus newspaper and onward to the local news.

I agree with the university's decision that Prof. Chapman did not violate any rules, and therefore should not be punished. He put up a required disclaimer stating that his views do not represent those of Purdue University, and thus far there is no evidence that his political and social views have corrupted his professional behavior. I do disagree with a few of the other conservative bloggers cited in the IndyStar article who criticize the students and professors at Purdue for protesting against Chapman's homophobic views. Jonathan Katz calls the protests "bullying and an attempt at censorship." From the perspectives of students at Purdue, the majority of the protests are not attempting to get Chapman fired, or even to get him to take down his blog post. Instead the protests were a means of disputing the facts put forth by Chapman, thus continuing the debate. Sadly, many people who say controversial things get upset when other people have the temerity to disagree loudly and publicly. It would be bullying if Professor Chapman had expressed his opinions at a small dinner party, and found his remarks being protested in the newspapers and on campus afterward. But he made his viewpoints quite public through a popular conservative site (TownHall.com), so any response that attempts at equal footing must be made loudly.

As for the merits of Professor Chapman's "case," I see several problems. First, AIDS. This is not a homosexuals-only disease, nor only spread through "morally aberrant sexual behavior (including heterosexual promiscuity in Africa and elsewhere)." Blood transfusions, shared needles, these also spread HIV. And even if you could make the argument that we could wipe out AIDS by discouraging promiscuity, that is an argument FOR homosexual marriage. What is marriage but a social encouragement to be monogamous? Surely Professor Chapman doesn't think that people will simply stop having sex if they can't get married. The lack of social acceptance for homosexual relationships in the past drove gay people to casual, promiscuous relationships that did indeed help to spread AIDS. The fear of being caught prevented any attempts at long-term relationships, but the physical desires for sex could not be simply ignored. These are historical facts, along with the fact that gay couples have the same rate of breaking up as cohabiting heterosexual couples (16 and 17% respectively), while married couples have a break up rate of 4%. You want homosexual people to stop being promiscuous and thus stop spreading AIDS? Get them married! This also corresponds to Chapman's concerns about the economic costs of STDs in general.

Second, prison rape. Rape has nothing to do with gender preference, and everything to do with power. Just as heterosexual rape does not equate at all with a loving heterosexual relationship, prison rape does not equate at all with a loving homosexual relationship.

Third, health insurance. Ignoring the odd complaint of a self-avowed Christian that helping others with health insurance keeps him from getting more health insurance (Jesus would not be happy with that argument, see his views on the poor and how to get into heaven), these companies and and universities that offer domestic partner coverage are not being forced to by any government concerns, it is purely through the "invisible hand" of economics, which isn't that invisible. All market pressures are really social pressures, and these companies/universities have decided that they will either get better employees or look better socially and get more customers/better students from offering these benefits. Yes, some organizations might be driven by individual political beliefs, but if society – and thus the economy – did not support those beliefs then those organizations would fail.

Fourth, providing other services. Chapman's last full paragraph doesn't make any sense. If life insurance companies have more people to cover, the insurance pool is increased, thus reducing risk, and thus costs would decrease. In fact, insurance companies would make more money because of more potential policies to sell, and the increase in profits helps the economy. Likewise with lawyers and divorces or other legal considerations. Lawyers will have more opportunities to make money, so they won't have to create as high a profit margin, so our costs go down (or at least stay the same). And if the lawyers are making higher profits, the economy grows.

People were concerned about the economic costs of allowing women to work full-time. People were concerned about the economic costs of allowing slaves to go free. Economic costs were used to justify discrimination against Jews, Italians, Irish, Blacks, Hispanics, and any other minority group. These proposed economic costs never proved out. By expanding the number of people invited to participate in society, the society and thus the economy grows.

I hope Professor Chapman fully considers both the economic arguments against his position, and the myriad ethical and moral arguments against his stance.

Are you a Mannes or a Mouse(s)?

Tomorrow I am heading out to New York for the Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies in Music Theory. As you can see from the preparation page, I have been rather busy doing my assigned readings for the last month. I'm in two workshops, Tonal Tension with Fred Lerdahl, and Music and Embodiment with Eric Clarke. Preparing for Fred's workshop is killing me, trying to get a grasp on his Tonal Pitch Space. But it is also very invigorating, makes me feel like I'm in grad school again. In fact, I will be with many of my former grad school compatriots, like Rich Randall and Ian Quinn. And to go really old school, I will be rooming with a friend from my undergraduate days, Peter Martens. This is more of a think tank than a workshop, as the website describes it: "The 2009 Mannes Institute on Music and The Mind will be a seminal collaborative think tank for serious music cognition and perception scholars from around the world." I'm very excited, and hope to have time to blog about it each day. Oh, plus I've been rocking the house with Rock Band 2, my Father's Day present.

Tom Sawyer in Academia

I received an interesting call for papers. The idea of "the cognitive function of riffs and other music in expressing difficult ideas" seems very questionable. How is Neal Perl's drum beat communicating Ayn Rand's concept of objectivism, separate from any lyrics? Answer: it isn't. There can be text painting, but that is a far cry from the music expressing the difficult ideas themselves. Even program music needs the words of the program to help make sense of the story.

The rock band Rush resonates widely for musician-fans and others interested in structural complexity, individualism, and a range of literary and stylistic influences. The group has explored such genres as heavy metal and hard rock, progressive and synth-rock, and post-progressive "power trio," along with various secondary influences. However, the band has also wandered among such lyrical interests as relationships, fantasy-adventure, classical mythology, European and world history, science-fiction, libertarianism, atheism, science, and technology.

We are looking for short articles (of around twenty pages) to add to this proposed anthology for the series that began with "Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book about Everything and Nothing" (2000), but since 2005 has also included (see http://www.opencourtbooks.com/categories/pcp.htm) music-related books about hip hop, Bob Dylan, U2, the Beatles, the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, Radiohead, and Jimmy Buffett. Writers in philosophy, musicology, economics, and psychology have already committed to "Rush and Philosophy," and they are exploring the following areas from across Rush's career (1974- ):
-personal tragedies, self-determination, and Sartre
-the anthropic cosmological principle and atheism
-Canadianness in Anglo-American genres and in lyrics and images
-tribute projects of the band's music in death metal, trip-hop, and classical strings
-the band's combination of secular humanism and mysticism
-libertarianism and left-libertarianism, rather than "right-wing"
-the cognitive function of riffs and other music in expressing difficult ideas
-a roundtable on political economy, Ayn Rand, and Rush's "2112"

Contributions from women, minorities, and people from outside of North America are most welcome! Particular areas of interest for further articles include: balance through instrumental “songs,” humour, roundtables on music technology and rock critics, live albums as career anthologies, and recent "sightings" of the band in the mainstream media.

Deadline for one-page abstracts: July 19, 2009
Deadline for completed first-drafts: August 31, 2009

Please send to Durrell Bowman and Jim Berti: db@durrellbowman.com; koors58@yahoo.com

Why I do this

Today I was at a lunch for all of the Honor Scholars preparing their final theses, and the faculty who are on their defense committees. The faculty member in charge of the Honor Scholar program gave a wonderfully funny and passionate description of the process, reminding all of us that the defense is an opportunity for a well-informed group of people to sit and talk for 2 hours about a subject that they care about. This is what I want all my classes to be like, a conversation that helps everyone involved to learn more about subjects we love. Unfortunately enough of my students don't like the subject, or haven't prepared enough to contribute in a meaningful way, that I don't often get that rush. I suppose that is the true joy of teaching graduate students. After all, I had many deep conversations with fellow students and with my professors when I was in graduate school. We had the time to study the one discipline that we cared about. We had the broader knowledge base from our undergraduate studies to apply to the conversation. And we all loved academia. I'm looking forward to this intense conversation about creative writing as an analytic response to music, learning at least as much as I teach during the process. That is why I do this.

Can't even win a dull contest

I've been going back through my bloglines feeds, trying to catch up. In doing so, I read my colleague's post on how dull Greencastle is, officially! Looking at the list of dullest college towns in the Terre Haute article, I see that I have something to lord over Chad Orzel, who is living in #2 Schenectady. Here are the top 20 most dull campus towns, according to the Princeton Review:

Students at the Princeton Review’s “368 Best Colleges” were surveyed on the availability of things to do in the towns where their campuses are located. The lowest 20 towns made the publication’s “More To Do On Campus” list, with No. 1 being the least active. They are:

1. Tuskegee, Ala., (Tuskegee University)

2. Schenectady, N.Y. (Union College)

3. West Point, N.Y. (U.S. Military Academy)

4. Albion, Mich. (Albion College)

5. Newark, N.J. (New Jersey Institute of Technology)

6. Norton, Mass. (Wheaton College)

7. Springfield, Ohio (Wittenberg College)

8. Hempstead, N.Y. (Hofstra University)

9. New London, Conn. (U.S. Coast Guard Academy)

10. Troy, N.Y. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

11. Beloit, Wis. (Beloit College)

12. Terre Haute (Rose-Hulman)

13. Poughkeepsie, N.Y. (Vassar College)

14. Greencastle (DePauw University)

15. Worcester, Mass. (College of the Holy Cross)

16. Durham, N.C. (Duke University)

17. Socorro, N.M. (New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology)

18. Worcester, Mass. (Clark University)

19. Hartford, Conn. (Trinity College)

20. South Bend (University of Notre Dame)

So New York is the winner with five dull cities, whereas Indiana has only three. To be honest, I really like living here in Greencastle. I get to walk or bike most places. There are some good restaurants, enough for the few times I go out to eat. Some really nice parks. Arts at the campus, even during the dead summer months. And we are only 45 minutes from Indy, 30 minutes from the movie theaters in Plainfield, one hour from Bloomington, one hour from Lafayette, 45 minutes from Terre Haute, etc. So it is pretty easy to go shopping or get other entertainment. We'll see how I feel when I'm ready to start dating.

Doctor, it's terminal!

A colleague in the Theater department is working on an interesting paper about what counts as a terminal degree in the arts. In doing so, he asked for feedback on the unique situation of music departments, which have a potential of three different terminal degrees: PhD, DMA, and MM. Since our university does accept the MM as a terminal degree for studio professors, my colleague was wondering why a musician would pursue the DMA. My interpretation is that music departments/schools/conservatories are very slowly transitioning from an old model of professional experience to the newer model of academic credentials, allowing many gradations within. Wikipedia claims that the first DMA program was started by Boston University in 1955, though I have memories of Eastman's Howard Hanson being involved in the creation. And here is some confirmation.

Hanson introduced the Doctor of Musical Arts in creation or performance (previously only given for musicology). “A doctorate in piccolo playing?” sniffed a critic. “That’s right,” Hanson agreed, “but only for good piccolo players. At least we won’t make bad musicologists out of good performers which should be a boon to both musicology and performance.”

Regardless, the introduction of a new degree takes time to gain acceptance. At this point, there are still many music professors who finished schooling before DMAs became widespread. But this isn't the only reason MM's are still accepted as terminal degrees. A premium is still placed on professional experience, often gained by musicians who had no plans to become university teachers and thus did not pursue the doctorate. This "doing" expertise is echoed by the MFA for Theater, Creative Writing, and Studio Art that is also accepted as a terminal degree.

How do you feel about the differences between a college professor who has a DMA versus one with an MM as the terminal degree? And what do you think is the future of academic credentials in music performance/conducting/composing? (I'm especially looking at you, if you aren't too busy remodeling your house and planning a wedding.)

What is Music Theory?

This summer Carlos and I are revamping the four-semester music theory curriculum here at DePauw. We want the students to become independent thinkers, not relying upon a textbook to tell them how to perceive music. While we will still use a textbook as a reference source for the short term, we will also be assigning readings from scholarly articles and monographs for discussion. It will be particularly interesting when the students encounter opposing viewpoints. They will have to think about which perspective they agree with, and why (or why they disagree with both perspectives). I had some success this semester with the final analysis papers. The students had to analyze a multi-movement or multi-song Common Practice work, developing their own theses to argue. Several students looked for articles or books on their subject, but then confronted these previous analyses, arguing for or against various points. I was very pleased with the results, as well as their responses to my constant challenges to write of their personal reactions to the music, using specific musical facts to explain their reactions. They also practiced this type of analysis in their blogs, though they tended to stick to answering the questions posed in the exercises rather than using the questions as jumping points to create their own theses. The new curriculum will include compositional exercises, as part of the See it, Say it, Read it, Write it pedagogical stance. I want the students to be able to recognize musical features, and an important way for them to learn this is to compose these musical features for themselves. There are additional benefits to compositional exercises as well, but that is my main purpose for this curriculum.

I was sparked to start blogging again, and to write about my summer efforts, because of James Cook's misunderstanding of my perspective on music theory. I do like to talk about harmony, but my conception of harmony is not as a discipline that can be separated from counterpoint, form, or motive. I mash together Schenker, Riemann, Meyer/Narmour/Huron, Schoenberg, Hindemith, Helmholtz, Rameau, Weber, Koch, Riepel, Tenney, and countless others for my understanding of how notes interact horizontally and vertically. I like Schoenberg's conception of key relationships, Schenker's wisdom on hierarchical organization and harmonic prolongation through contrapuntal functions, neo-Riemannian spaces that show how strange progressions can make sense as part of a cycle*, David Huron's expansion of Meyer's and Narmour's work on expectancy, Hindemith's conception of harmonic tension and how it can be generalized to plus-triadic harmonies, Weber's and Helmholtz's very different empirical examinations of music, Tenney's exploration of consonance and dissonance, etc. I want my students to explore at least some of these theories for themselves, to develop their own conceptions of harmony, as well as rhythm, timbre, and various bigger pictures like semiotics.

As I'm thinking about this, one thing I need to include in the theory curriculum is a discussion on what music theory is for. TTU Music Theory Department explains the two basic approaches, analytical and compositional. I won't repeat Michael Berry's excellent explanation, follow the link to read it. Also follow the link to read James Cook's view on what music theory is for: to explain how music is composed, and to provide a metalanguage for describing all music. I want music theory to spark new ideas on how to perform music, to spark new ideas on how to listen to music, and to inform us more on our interactions with the arts. But again, I don't want to shove my definition down the throats of the students. I want them to wrestle with this, encountering James Cook's view as well as many others.

I welcome any suggestions of reading materials, perspectives, or topics to consider as Carlos and I work on our curriculum.

*At some point I will blog about the recent Science article, "Generalized voice-leading spaces" by Callender, Quinn, and Tymoczko. This is a recent development out of neo-Riemannian theory that is quite interesting.

Time to start

Today was DePauw's Commencement ceremony, made more poignant because it was the last for our retiring President Bottoms after 22 years of service. The student speaker pointed out that he was only six weeks old when Robert Bottoms became president. I waddled over in my post-race legs to play in the band, thus allowing me to get up and stretch during the individual names. Playing in the band did not save me from the dangers of regalia, as most performing faculty robe up. The suggestion of hiding things under robes came up today while chatting with a junior saxophone major. He wants to do something exciting when he walks across the stage next year, and I pointed out that he could hide a soprano sax in his robes and play a lick after getting his diploma. A colleague solved the handshake-grab-diploma problem with the neck-strap. I know, not an obvious solution for a saxophonist, but it still works.

Sondheim safety

Chad Orzel points to an Inside Higher Ed article on the fallout from the recent tragedy at Northern Illinois University: Arkansas Tech banned a production of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins and insisted that the one dress rehearsal allowed "so the cast could experience the play" had to be done without the prop guns (which had to be cut in half).

As one of Chad's commenter's says: "When musical theater is outlawed only outlaws will have musical theater." Methinks the college president was more concerned about presidential assassinations than the welfare of his students. Also, it is an easy "look I'm doing something" stunt that will only offend the theater crowd, a much smaller percentage of alumni than football fans. "Further frustrating faculty members, there have been reports of gun shots — and a recent shooting injury — at parties organized by Arkansas Tech students, but the students organizing those parties were reportedly football players, not thespians."

Hopefully DePauw won't cancel The Abduction of Figaro this coming week, even though the opera is invaded by a pirate who may or may not have a sword. But then, DePauw had a much more productive response to the NIU tragedy, so no pointless gestures are necessary.

Tradition and Innovation

Many of the participants of DePauw's Post-Classical Symposium have already blogged their views: Tim Munro of eighth blackbird (Part 1, Part 2), Greg Sandow (Part 1, Part 2), and Eric Edberg. What finally got me stirred enough to comment was a lecture given yesterday by the Dean of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary. He was talking about the concerns of the Episcopal Church, with declining attendance and lacks of connection between clergy and laity. Dean Hall has been exploring ways to change seminary education to train priests for today's environment. Replace church with concerts, seminaries with conservatories, and priests with musicians, and you have the discussions from the Post-Classical Symposium. In both cases, there is a tension between celebrating tradition and pushing for innovation. In classical music tradition is found in theory and history classes, ensemble repertoire, and the canon studied in lessons. Religious tradition holds to certain interpretations of Scripture, core values of morality, etc. But because not enough people are going to concerts or churches, there are moves to innovate, by altering the canon (Episcopal pun intended) or the organizations. Emphasis on chamber music and lay ministers, rock-influenced classical music and rock-influenced liturgical music, these efforts to progress and grow can also be taken as disrespect for traditional values. Listening to Greg Sandow and Joe Horowitz, it is clear that these gentlemen greatly respect the traditions of classical music while looking for ways to change it. And just as the tensions in the Episcopal Church could be alleviated by realizing the respect for tradition as well as growth, the tensions involved in "saving" classical music also need these reminders.

Corporations 5,312 - Public Interest 2

Scott Strader informed me that the International Music Score Library Project has gone down. Follow the link to find out the details of Universal Edition's Cease and Desist and the IMSLP owner's decisions. I had just pointed my students to this resource last week, so they could practice dictations while on break, away from the music library. And my students have access to a good score library for most weeks of the year. What about those musicians and music lovers who don't have academic affiliations? This is very sad and I hope some other institutions, especially groups like CMS, AMS, SMT, and MENC, do take up the mantle to provide a fully legal version.

Sex, Drugs, and Rock-n-Roll, without the first two

I just read an article about John Covach in the latest University of Rochester Review. The focus of the article was on the History of Rock and Analysis of Rock classes that Covach teaches at the U of R's River Campus. It sparked a thought that perhaps I could teach a History of Rock class for Winter Term this coming year. I had been thinking about teaching a course on Music in the Lord of the Rings. This course would include the myriad songs Tolkien includes in the books, settings of these songs by various composers, and the music of the films. It would fit nicely with the experiential focus of Winter Term courses, where we could sit around listening to music and discussing the settings, watching the films and discussing the use of music, and perhaps even having the students compose their own settings of LOTR songs. The issue would be in making it academically rigorous enough, finding articles and other sources to guide the students and myself in digging deep into the poetry and music.

John Covach has written a textbook for History of Rock classes, which has been well reviewed. And this course would still allow for experiential learning through field trips to live acts in Bloomington and Indianapolis. The problem with this course is that I am not well versed in Rock music past about 1990. I have been slowly educating myself through various blog references, but the average pop music post by Chad Orzel leaves me way in the dust.

My third choice would be to have an interactive reading of Gödel, Escher, Bach, which could possibly include meeting Hofstadter in person since he lives in Bloomington. And that book ties together all sorts of liberal artsy ideas: cognition, computer science, music, art, mathematics, philosophy. But it doesn't sound as exciting as the other two courses.

So, which course do you think I should teach, and why?

Anatomy of a Committee

Perhaps it is because I am on the faculty of a school of music, and hence surrounded by fellow musicians during committee meetings, but Charles Noble's description of an orchestra committee sounded eerily familiar. Here are two of the creatures found in both environments:

The Pompous Ass. There are also often several of these in the orchestra, though they could be split into two sub-species: the Private Pompous Ass and the Public Pompous Ass. Once this person is given the floor, you can feel the air go out of the room as they inhale in preparation for their 15 minute encyclical on all things orchestra. Sometimes these lectures have something to do with the topic at hand, but more often they have to do with themselves and how important their experiences are to the orchestra.

The Alien. This person is also known as the head scratcher. They say whatever they have to say, and then you can hear the sound of dandruff flakes hitting the floor about halfway through, most often accompanied by arched eyebrows and mouthings of “huh?” and “what?” by the other, Earth-native orchestra members. Generally, this species has come of age and experimented during the 60’s, but that’s not a rigid requirement.

I, of course, am a Alien-Smart Ass hybrid, making jokes that even I don't understand.

Academic Careers Wiki

From Phil Ford I have discovered a wiki that lists the intimate details of academic job searches. Like any publically-edited wiki the facts are not guaranteed: the music theory/composition page looks fairly accurate from various results I was already aware of, but the music librarian page is incredibly incomplete. DePauw is searching for a music librarian right now, and it isn't even listed, much less accurate about the stage of the search process. I'm still debating whether this is a good thing. In general, I think transparency will only help make the process more fair. Applicants who aren't immediately connected to big schools will have more information, and the whole process is more evident for grad students and other new applicants. However, personnel decisions can be sensitive, and efforts to scoop a result could end up exposing applicants or departments to awkward situations. I hope they stick with publically available information.