I skipped messing with trying to get my computer to “hear” my tape player and turntable this morning. I haven’t given up, but I just wanted to have a morning for reading and studying.

After Finnegans Wake and Greek, I turned to The History of Western Music by Grout. Although this has gone into another edition, I do own the sixth. After reading a bit, I wondered about getting access to online study materials for this book. A few  minutes on the web site showed me that I needed some kind of registration to access all the online learning materials. I couldn’t find an entry through my Hope credentials.

I did however find much of the Greek music referred to in the first chapter on You Tube.

This seems to be recordings of music mentioned in the text that are available on a companion CD. I am fascinated that they think they know how this music sounded. I understood when I was in college that they were much less sure about how it sounded.

I was also amused that a Prof I knew at Notre Dame was cited about Boethius. Boethius was his specialty. His name is Calvin Bower. I remember looking for his doctoral thesis in the Notre Dame library and finding it filed under his first name. I brought it to his attention saying to him that he was so famous that they only used his first name. He was not amused.

I spent a couple hours yesterday preparing for this morning. I got a bit bogged down on the sequence hymn, “Crashing Waters at Creation.” This Sylvia Dunstan text is set to a tune by Sharon Marion Hershey. The tune is pretty good. Hershey’s harmonization, however, doesn’t seem to work very well. It is overly fussy and complicated with a bass line that is not that good. After working on her accompaniment for a while I decided to reharmonize it and make it simpler and easier to sing. I thought maybe this morning I would recopy it so I could easily read it today.

I pulled out my copy of Voices Found, the supplement in which this hymn is found. Lo and behold, I had already reharmonized it and clearly marked it in my own copy. Nice to know I’m at least consistent.

I note that my blood pressure is still doing pretty well. It was toward the end of last semester that it began to hover much higher. I can’t help but wonder if it was the combination of two jobs or that the college job was edging me over into stress territory.

At any rate, I don’t have to work at Hope this semester. And that is a relief both to my mind and apparently my body.

Sean Penn Secretly Interviewed ‘El Chapo,’ Mexican Drug Lord – The New York Time

Lead story in today’s NYT. Is this weird or what?

Cause of Crises? For Rio Governor, Life Incriminates Art – The New York Times

It surprises me that people continue to be so superstitious about how art can influence behavior. More weird shit.

Golden Mao Statue in China, Nearly Finished, Is Brought Down by Criticism – The New York Times

Amazing that so much time and money were spent and no one thought what the reaction would be…. also amazing that the people who put up the statue were so reactive and took it right down. Weird shit number three.