Wow

I just saw Going Upriver - The Long War of John Kerry, and now I'm really excited about voting for him. His dedication and bravery, his intelligence and dignity as a soldier and a protestor completely bowled me over. I had read portions of his testimony before the Senate committee, but hearing the whole thing was incredibly powerful. So were the shots of all the vets tossing their medals over the fence. But what really got me was a photo of John Kerry sitting on the grass after tossing his medals, weeping with his wife. He cares so much for his country, knows so much, and has so much heart and bravery, we could not ever pick a better president.

The music was really good, including original scoring by Philip Glass. This weekend we watched Farenheit 9/11. It had some powerful moments, also some funny ones. The best insidious use of film music ever came with a transition to George Bush's youth (while John Kerry was in Vietnam). Just four measures of instrumental rock-n-roll accompanied the transition, no words to clue you in. The little snippet? The intro to Eric Clapton's "Cocaine."

Music Theory Researchers for Kerry

It may not roll off the tongue like "Greek Americans for Kerry" (a bumper sticker I saw yesterday, sharing truck bumper space with "Dean for President"), Republicans for Kerry, or Kerry Haters for Kerry. But it is certainly more melodious than John Kerry is a Douchebag But I'm Voting For Him Anyway.

In two posts I have written about the work of Paul von Hippel and Bret Aarden for Music Theory Online. Paul has contacted me to tell me about an article he wrote for The Gadflyer about Ralph Nader. Paul points out that Ralph created an objective measure of politicians' stances on corporate-consumer issues. According to this measure, tracked by Nader-created Congress Watch, there has been a huge difference between Democrats and Republicans. Here is a graph comparing the voting records of the recent presidential and vice-presidential candidates, those people that Ralph claimed were identical.



John Kerry, the guy that Nader is currently running against, had a perfect score in 1990, meaning that he agreed with Nader on key issues for every single vote. Only two years earlier, Dick Cheney scored a 0%, disagreeing with Nader on every issue. So why is Nader running for President?

Music Perception Experiment #2Repeat

Henkjan Honing is looking for participants to do an online listening experiment again. Go to http://www.hum.uva.nl/mmm/ and click on the message "Click here to do a listening experiment." I haven't done it yet myself, as my computer seems to think that it doesn't have Quicktime. I didn't read his call carefully enough, this is a repeat request for the same experiment I blogged about before. If you haven't taken the test yet, go ahead and do it. It is quite fun, and only 15 minutes long.

Oh yeah, this is a music blog!

I've been chairing a task force that is renovating our theory curriculum. Today we got into a discussion of the woeful lack of literacy the students have when it comes to post-tonal music. This was part of a larger discussion on what skills and knowledge we want our students to have when they complete the curriculum. We agreed that our students should be comfortable performing and discussing 20th and 21st century music. This is the only way that art music will remain a viable living art, when current and future music professionals are advocates for contemporary music. Otherwise trained musicians will become more and more conservative, until performed music is canonically static and sterile.

Our possible solutions include requiring contemporary music in senior recitals and performance juries, encouraging more student involvement in our fledgling annual Music of the 21st Century festival, and integrating post-tonal theory and aural skills with tonal theory and aural skills at the very beginning of the curriculum. The last suggestion is rather radical, especially in written theory. There are two sightsinging books that encourage this integration, but no theory books that I am aware of.

Integrated tonal and post-tonal aural skills is a very big shift in my own thinking. I have designed my four-semester sequence to ingrain tonal fluency in my students, with some post-tonal and pre-tonal literature at the end of the sequence. I always teach this last segment through tonal filters, encouraging my students to think of these new languages by comparison to the tonal language that they have absorbed. I justify this approach by the fact that almost all of Western society perceives all music by comparison to ubiquitous tonal music. Modal music is tonal music with altered scale degrees. Post-tonal musics are also warped tonalities, or rapidly shifting tonalities. However, this attitude can prejudice our future professionals into thinking that post-tonal music is a lesser form of tonal music. And this is not what I want for the future of music.

Bush vs. Bush

Yesterday I wrote a post about Thelonious Monk's birthday and my experience with the musician. Unfortunately, this post was accidentally deleted before I could publish it, and I don't have the desire to reconstruct it right now. Maybe next year for his birthday.

Instead, I want to address George Bush's attack on John Kerry's recent statements on terrorism. John Kerry wants to battle terrorism down to the point that it is no longer a focal point of our lives, but merely a nuisance. He takes the realist position that it is impossible to completely iradicate terrorism from the world. George Bush scoffed at this attitude, saying that he was going to achieve victory against instead of reducing it. The president apparently forgot what he said six weeks ago. George Bush first said that we couldn't win the war on terror, and then clarified that rather negative statement by explaining that the goal is to make terrorism undesirable as a tactic. Hmm, that sounds like the goal is to reduce terrorism without necessarily eliminating it. Perhaps another way to express Bush's thoughts is to say that terrorism no longer be an effective tool of warfare/politics, that it will be relegated to a nuisance ploy. But then that is the same thing that John Kerry said. Either Bush has flip-flopped, or he is lying merely to attack Kerry. Good show, Mr. President!

Thug in the White House

So the second presidential debate is over, and we've learned that George Bush can talk very loudly. We also found out that he still thinks he hasn't made any mistakes, and he apparently isn't aware of what is on his tax forms. I found his body language to be very thuggish, his tone alternating between whiny and freaky shouting.

But something else I heard today bothered me much more. On NPR's Morning Edition, a story about "Campaign Security Screening Crowds for Doubters" describes how George Bush's campaign staff has required loyalty oaths of anyone who wants to attend rallies, kicks out anyone who has any connections with the Kerry campaign or anti-Bush organizations, and threatens arrest for anyone who dares to consider voting for anyone other than George Bush. This is rather thuggish behavior, though of course President Bush has the right to control who attends his campaign rallies, as foolish as it may seem. Oops, it seems that our president has confused campaign stops with "official Presidential trips." According to Nina Totenberg, federal laws prohibit denying access to public presentations by elected officials on the basis of political affiliation. So our President's staff has been breaking the law, it seems to this non-lawyer blogger.

Even if these actions are legal, they go against the principles of free speech and government accountability that are the hallmarks of the United States. With the Patriot Act eroding our civil rights, habeas corpus being tossed on its ear, and this current behavior shows the lack of respect President Bush has for the trappings of democracy.

Predictions

Mathew Gross has challenged bloggers to predict the outcome of the election in both electoral votes and popular vote. My predictions are that Kerry will get 52% of the vote, Bush 47%, and Nader 1%. In the Electoral College: Kerry 289, Bush 254 249.

Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachussetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, DC, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, California, Hawaii.

Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Indiana (sigh), Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Alaska.
(via Pandagon)