Thursday, January 8, 2015

Daily Log: January 7, 2015

-- I translated the Dedication of Göthe's Faust yesterday.  It took a lot longer than I expected; the language is very flowery and metaphorical.  However, I learned a few words and made a few deductive leaps that were pretty accurate.  With time and practice, I'm sure I'll get better.
Words I absolutely will not forget: Wahn, Leid, jeder, Harfe, Tränen

-- I SHMRFed (more about SHMRF later) Wilhelm Friedemann Bach's Sonata for Keyboard Number 9 (Falck 6a), first movement, first part.  It also took longer than expected, mainly because I wanted to break down each measure harmonically and do a detailed phrase analysis.  But in that process, I learned that sometimes it's okay to summarize.  It doesn't matter as much HOW he goes from G major to A minor.  All that matters is that he gets there.  It was not wasted time, though.  We will be discussing this piece in depth in 604 on Friday.
-- I also read the Preface to the Second Edition of Jan LaRue's Guidelines for Style Analysis.  That's where SHMRF comes from.  I'll dedicate an entire post to LaRue's style analysis in a later post; it's a very important and useful method for objectively analyzing music.

-- I read the Introduction to Heidi von Gunden's The Music of Pauline Oliveros.  I'm thinking I'm going to do something about her for my thesis; this is VERY preliminary research.  Just learning some basic facts about her and some of her big-name pieces.  It's hard, because it's like you can't decide what to write about until you've done a TON of research... but then, after you've picked your angle, you have to do even MORE research.  But what if you decide you have nothing more to add to the subject?  All that research would then be a waste of time.  It's a risky part of the process.

-- We discussed James Tenney in 20th-Century Counterpoint today.  I think I should look into his Postal Pieces.

-- We discussed All the President's Men and its ties to research in 604, as well as the "historiographical black hole" that appears between Handel/Bach and Haydn/Mozart as far as stylistic progress.  Bach's sons and Italian opera provide a very important link in this chain, but were neglected in 19th-Century historiography.  We also did some impromptu formal analysis of Bach's French Suite V, Allemande.  I don't do well with analysis on the fly.

Paper Progress Report:  I identified 6 books to look for in the library tomorrow that have to do with Haydn and The Creation.  I hope to finish my bibliography fairly early this semester.  I only need 20 sources.

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