This is our opening hymn Sunday and I couldn’t resist. Unfortunately it’s about 10 minutes long and will require some rehearsal. But Stanford (though Irish) is thought of by Americans as an Anglican treasure so it’s sort of an Episcopalian thing to schedule him.

Calvin Hampton has written a piece on this tune as well. I own it, but couldn’t lay my hands on it yesterday. Probably just as well. It’s likely to be even more involved than Stanford’s setting. (Incidentally, this piece is available online: link)

I chose a postlude based on the closing hymn, “Praise the Lord, rise up rejoicing.” It’s a David Cherwien arrangement.

Cheriwen sort of took up the mantle of  Paul Manz organ composition.

Academic organists love to look down on these guys.  But their music is accessible and hymn based. I schedule them, learn them and perform them.

Both of their compositions for organ are largely improvisational like. They tend to be a bit flashy at times and this setting is like that.

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How The American University was Killed, in Five Easy Steps | The Homeless Adjunct

I’m not sure this writer really has a handle on the history of the University in the USA. But it’s interesting reading.

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Don’t Confuse Technology With Teaching – Commentary – The Chronicle of Higher Education

The comments on this article are worth reading and thinking about as well as the article itself.

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Morsi Makes His Move | Foreign Affairs

This has some good synoptic history of the leadership in Egypt in the last fifty years or so.

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Larry McMurtry’s Book Auction in Texas – NYTimes.com

Booksellers gathered. I love these guys. Finally an article that explains that McMurtry is not shutting down his store entirely, only reducing it from four buildings to one.

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The Right Completes Its Hostile Takeover of Romney – 2012 Decoded

I think this is a conservative web site.

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Why Goldman Sachs, Other Wall Street Titans Are Not Being Prosecuted – The Daily Beast

In a word, cronyism.

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Sunday Dialogue – Daring to Tell the Truth – NYTimes.com

I’m always interested in the discussion of public honesty and dishonesty. Lots of cynicism in the reactions here.

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Thank you to Sarah for pointing to this video. It’s a good quick synopsis of the artistic critique of the concept of intellectual property.

He has made a four part more in depth series on the same subject. It’s available (I think) at his website: Everything is a Remix

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I have joked that if I lost my ballet accompaniment job I would try to get a menial job at Hope College just so I could continue to consult the OED and look up and read scholarly articles.

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LITTLE ESSAY ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND HYMNODY

I have always found it amusing when people apply some sort of literary purity standard to the use of hymns. The history tells us that hymns are always at the service of the community that sings them. They are constantly reworked to fit the group that is using them. Phrases are altered or omitted. Entire stanzas dropped due to being unfit for a particular theology.

All is forgiven when the little abbreviation “alt.” (altered)  is appended to the citation.

But this morning reading about the hymns of Charles Wesley I was struck by the absurdity of the modern notion of sole authorship and ownership of created texts. Wesley seems to have been an astute editor and transformer of what he absorbed from his own reading. He then used it in his hymns in a startling patchwork manner.

When I looked up his hymn, “O thou, who camest from above,” in the Hymnal 1982 Companion, there was at least one Biblical citation sometimes two for each one of the sixteen lines of the hymn.

Wesley like Bob Dylan took his world and rewrote it using the phrases and ideas that made up his intellectual world. There would be no Wesley without Milton, Pope, and the King James Bible as there would be no Dylan without folk music and newspaper articles.

Looked at like this much of the controversy about intellectual property seems pretty lame and self defeating to me.  How can someone insist on their sole ownership of a creation made up of the materials they have been given or stumbled across in their lives?

This is not to say that there is no such thing as creativity or authorship. Just that creativity relies on community and history not some sort of impossible magical alchemic process where something springs from nothing and has never been seen or thought of before.

Jes sayin’

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SPIEGEL Cover Story on Pussy Riot Trial and Putin – SPIEGEL ONLINE

Put this up on Facebook.  German coverage on Russian stuff. In English.

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Chess – Feller, Hauchard and Marzolo Are Suspended – NYTimes.com

Caught cheating. Good grief. I wonder if they have thought of a life of public service as an elected official.

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Naples Library’s Plunder Highlights Entrenched Dealings – NYTimes.com

More on this long evolving story of theft of books.

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David Rakoff, Award-Winning Humorist, Dies at 47 – NYTimes.com

Once again a death inspires me to read an author. I admire this guy quite a bit but have only heard him on “This American Life.” Maybe I’ll read him too.

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To provide that Members of Congress may not receive pay after October 1 of any fiscal year in which Congress has not approved a concurrent resolution on the budget and passed the regular appropriations bills. (H.R. 3643) – GovTrack.us

According to this site, this bill has a one per cent chance of passing. Sooprise.

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