earlymusicnerd

[earlymusicnerd]

devil says goodnight

Jean Mansel, La fleur des histoires, Flanders ca. 1480

Bibliothèque de Genève, Ms. fr. 64, fol. 297r

[earlymusicnerd]

When the accordion Muzak segues from "Frosty the Snowman" to "The Little Drummer Boy" to..."God, Bless America"...🤔

[earlymusicnerd]

[earlymusicnerd]

When you ask a bunch of wind players to sing their parts

[earlymusicnerd]

Music moment of the day

Teaching the African grey to sing “La vie en rose” in the voice of Édith Piaf: check.

[earlymusicnerd]

Back from AMS/SMT 2016 in Vancouver. Congrats to all my fellow tweeting musicologists!

[earlymusicnerd]

Déjà-Vu, After 15 Years

First period World History. Ninth grade. A hot, muggy Tuesday morning, as Miami mornings tend to be. No rain or clouds in the sky, though; just bright sun illuminating the classrooms and outside corridors. We had been assigned classwork, though nobody particularly cared much, and everyone was busy chatting about their week. Our teacher was preoccupied with something on his desk, not bothering to quell the din. The phone rings, he answers, then announces over the hubbub, "The World Trade Center has been bombed." (That was the first version of the story we got.)

What I remember most about that morning was the instant silence in that room; you could hear a pin drop. Students silently opening their laptops and connecting to every news outlet possible. Most of the class trekking next door to the English teacher's classroom that had a TV on. (No hope of actual school from thenceforth.) As the details became clear—an airplane being flown into the first tower, then another, then the Pentagon, then rumors of more planes possibly being hijacked—our concern turned to horror. About seven months prior, many of my classmates had visited New York and Washington, DC, and seen both monuments on a class trip (I had been unable to join them). Memories of my own, growing up in New York and seeing the Twin Towers regularly, came flooding back, much as memories tend to behave upon the loss of a friend or a loved one.

Fast forward fourteen years. Friday the 13th of November, 2015. Friday the Thirteenth is uncommon enough that I take note of it when it happens. Still, I had tickets to a football match that night, so I promised myself a good time. I was living in Belgium then; I had a postdoc at the University of Leuven, and it seemed like a good time to leave American soil for a bit. The world had changed. The Bush administration, though long gone, had left an indelible mark on the face of the world. The Middle East was unrecognizable anymore, and that region and the US had become entangled in an involuntary dance, impossible to talk about one without raising the specter of the other. A certain billionaire had announced his candidacy for president and by then was running on a platform that welcomed feelings that America had worked hard for fifty years to rid itself of yet were now being given a microphone. Tensions were high, pitting family against family, friend against friend. Yes, it was a good time to get away for a bit.

That Friday night, a friend and I were at Roi Baudouin Stadium in Brussels, watching the Belgian Red Devils play Italy. A few minutes in, a swarm of orange-vested security personnel suddenly entered the stadium from multiple entrances. Some of us raised our eyebrows, but Italy had scored early, and given the history of Italian fans in that stadium (cf. 1985 Heysel Disaster), we assumed that the security personnel were there for extra crowd control, just in case. The majority of the crowd continued to root for the home team, pleading for the likes of Kevin de Bruyne and Jan Vertonghen to score (they did), eventually cheering Belgium’s victory. What we did not know was that suicide bombers had just attacked the Stade de France—not 90 minutes away by train—during a France-Germany friendly. It was not until we boarded the train home that news of the scale of the ISIS coordinated attack in Paris unfolded from our mobile devices.

That night was the first time I felt a strange sense of déjà-vu. I remembered the feelings that arose after 9/11: confusion, horror, anger, and hate, in that order. I remembered the stories that arose the week after the attacks: people being targeted for looking like “the culprits”. An administration preying on the anger and the pain of a people who just took a scourging, answering violence with violence. Our sense of human trust violated so completely that it will be a long time in returning, if it ever should.

But perhaps most of all, I could not shake the feeling that I was being targeted personally because I, along with my own people, embody a culture and values that another culture finds so offensive that they have declared war on it. It is nothing new: just look at history. But 9/11 was the first time that I, perhaps unwillingly, felt part of a bigger nation, a bigger sum, as someone responsible for my own values. I had the right to be happy and the responsibility to just be—and it was this responsibility that made another culture hate me for it. We were hated because we could, in fact, just be, no baggage allowed.

I remember encountering many of the same feelings from people around me in Europe after the Paris attacks. The déjà-vu grew stronger after Brussels went on lockdown, and especially after the city itself became the target of an ISIS attack four months later. Many other European cities have fallen prey since. This time, though, the feeling has lingered. The unity that was there after 9/11 hasn’t really prevailed. Maybe that’s why the feelings had not returned before: the solidarity we had in the days after New York and Washington was a balm, numbing the pain. It helped us forget, forget that it could happen again. We don’t have that luxury anymore. Now, whenever I see or hear of another hate-filled attack on a fellow human, however small, the déjà-vu strikes again because it’s nothing new, because it’s the same as that September morning fifteen years ago: I no longer have the luxury of ignoring the humanity lost. It is up to us to change that.

Let us kiss the déjà-vu goodbye. Let's celebrate our humanity and stop hating others for theirs. We became more human after 9/11, or at least we were reminded of it. Somehow we lost it along the way. Let's not forget that humanity gained. It’s not up to politics: it starts with the little things. Choices. When we encounter someone who is so different from us that we can’t comprehend it, we have a choice of how to respond. Choose wisely: you never know how many lives you can save with a simple “Hello” and “Thank you”.

#neverforget #911

[earlymusicnerd]

Polyphony day today. #polyphony #Leuven #Belgium #uitinleuven #heverlee #abdijvantpark #parkcollegium (bij Abdij Van Het Park)

[earlymusicnerd]

She was a Baroque violinist. One of ours.

Not even we early musicians are immune to terrorism. It’s a weird world out there...

[earlymusicnerd]

(via G.F. Händel: Water Music - Akademie für alte Musik Berlin - Live concert HD - YouTube)

Here’s a beautiful new video of Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin performing Handel’s “Water Music”!

The recording is out now on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2079VzU iTunes: http://apple.co/1VVnjpL

[earlymusicnerd]

[Fan Submission]

Submitted by Joseph Tomasso (University of Cincinnati) Submissions may be sent to musictheoryaugmented@gmail.com.

[earlymusicnerd]

Restaurant Self-Portrait in the Italian Chiaroscurist Style. #selfie #arthistorynerd #chiaroscuro (bij Morandi Restaurant)

[earlymusicnerd]

La Chimera and the Pamplona Chamber Choir doing the Misa Criolla. No words. #lachimera #misacriolla #choir #choralmusic #folkmusic #argentina #earlymusic (bij Concertgebouw Brugge)

[earlymusicnerd]

Me today.

When the ligatures in your transcription line up. For you @amphilo-mus and @musictheoryaugmented

EDIT: This time the GIF works.

[earlymusicnerd]

AMS Louisville recap.

(AKA Shit Overheard at AMS)

First off, we just want to tip our hats to any and all presenters who gave hilariously dramatic readings of already melodramatic song texts. We salute you.

“…the unconscionably thorny F-sharp major.“–presenter

(upon the entrance of the vocal part in a midi rendition of a Baroque cantata) "Too much vibrato."–audience member

”…and forgive my finger in this picture. *sigh* It looks so young though.“–(middle-aged) presenter

"I think French was quite commonly used [throughout Europe] as the common language…(giggling) the lingua franca."–presenter (during Q&A)

“A quote from Adorno may seem an odd place to begin a presentation on opera buffa, but, nevertheless, that’s where we will begin.”–presenter

"I view this paper as sort of a suitcase aria, given all the suitcases adorning the walls of the room."–final presenter of the Sunday paper session

[earlymusicnerd]

Proud owner. Judge away, #idgaf. #enya #teamenya @official_enya

[earlymusicnerd]

Unexpectedly meeting Taruskin when you’re drunk at AMS