Perchance, to Dream

When I sleep reasonably well, I dream.

I enjoy the good dreams and appreciate the bad dreams. Good dreams let me know what's on my mind and are usually fun. Bad dreams remind me of my fears as they leave me rolling over and wanting very much to wake up and get away from where I was moments ago.

Often, I dream something and then can't remember the next day if the dream was a memory or just a dream. Sometimes, I dream music -- I hear it in my mind, and it usually seems to be fully-formed. Invariably, it slips away when I wake up, and when I remember that I dreamt, I wish I could remember the music.

I did dream once, in high school, that I was making a short speech from a stage, and I managed to wake up and write it all down. It was kind of funny -- it made sense, mostly, but it read like I was making inside jokes with myself, linking from sentence to sentence in bizarre ways that only I would understand.

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Last night, I had two short dreams.

In the first, I had just volunteered myself to be the student conductor of a high school full orchestra during class one day. I went into the band hall, and walked up to where they were rehearsing. They were playing a piece I really liked, though I can't remember what it was called or what it sounded like. As I entered the classroom, my phone rang, so I answered it. (Bad idea.) It was one of my friends, wanting to hang out. I told her, "No, I'm in rehearsal," and hung up. The head teacher saw me hang up my phone, and seemed to give me a slight glare. When I got to the podium, though, he handed me his baton, and I started the piece from the beginning. For some reason, I was wearing those shoes with rollers in the bottom (you know, the kind where you can kick back to pop the wheels out and coast for a short while), and as I conducted, I kept sliding all over the place, rolling uncontrollably, almost falling over backwards, and then almost falling into the students. No one seemed fazed, though, and we continued on. Everyone was sitting strangely close together, and the teacher and assistant teachers hovered around the edges of the ensemble, conducting in unison with me as we played the first few phrases of the piece. One of the woodwind parts was lagging behind a bit, so I turned around to ask the director if I could stop the ensemble to correct it. He nodded, so I turned again to face the orchestra.

The next dream was a fantastic, picaresque vision. I was sitting on a school bus -- the kind you ride in high school -- on the way home one day. I had the seat to myself as we stopped to pick up a few more students. (Picking up students on the way home? I guess so!) A few kids got on the bus, and most of them sat up front, but one girl walked past me and sat down in the empty seat behind me. I quickly gathered the necessary courage and turned around to ask her if I could sit next to her. She assented, so I swung around and plopped down next to her with my backpack. She had some kind of oddly-shaped pocket dictionary or thesaurus, and was holding it open in her beautiful hands. I looked over at it, and we spent the rest of the short dream taking turns picking out long words and making up silly phrases for which the words could be acronyms. She smiled brightly, and we laughed at each other's imaginative, meaningless creations in the calm afternoon sun that was streaming through the window. I had the time of my life.

The Secret Life of the Camp Counselor

In the summers after my freshman and sophomore year of high school, I attended Baylor University's High School Summer Full Orchestra Camp. I don't remember much about my first visit, but my second week of living at Baylor was one of the best weeks, I think, of my entire life. Those camps served their hidden purpose well -- recruitment!

And now, five years later, I'm a Baylor Bear and a music student, spending time as a camp counselor for the very camp that drew my attention here. (I'm actually writing this in the hall outside a friend/counselor's door... I don't get the campus wireless in my own room, but I have signal here for some reason. It's after lights-out, and everything is quiet and still... except for the Dr. Pepper machine down the hall.) Kudos to the School of Music and all those involved for running so many awesome camps. There's also a piano camp going on, and a choir camp coming up later, then All-State workshops... wow!!

Anyway! Last week was high school camp, and this week is junior high camp. The younger kids need a little more looking after, but the great thing about them is that (as a friend/counselor said) they're not "too cool for school" yet. Most of them are very enthusiastic. Yeah, they need a little direction, but they're good kids... and they go to bed at lights-out time, and they always wake up SUPER-early and are ready to go like pros!! The other great thing about this week's camp is that lights-out is an hour earlier than it is at the high school camp... which means more sleep / free time... hence the blogging.

During a meeting, one of my campers asked, "Has anyone ever told you that you sound like Kermit the Frog?" I was surprised, though pleasantly so -- a Kermit the Frog impression is one of the few items in my bag o' tricks, along with the Gollum cough, the Tauntaun squeal, and the growls of Watto. (Hmm... maybe I should work on expanding my lineup outside of the scum of sci-fi / fantasy movies.)

One of our evening activities for both camps was an optional Guitar Hero tournament in which students and counselors / staff were welcome to participate. I managed and oversaw the tournaments, which was a fun (though somewhat demanding) job. Juggling four brackets (one for each difficulty) over four TVs with students hopping up onstage to ask you how long it is until they play (or if they can go to the bathroom) will really take it out of you!! It was definitely a blast, though.

Another evening activity is our faculty recital. This week's faculty recital is tomorrow, and I'll be playing the Rossini duet for cello and double bass with another counselor. That piece is sure a good 'un -- I'm looking forward to it!!!

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I don't have a picture for this post, but I do have something cool to leave you with...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoDTjaw-ZUA

This is from last week's talent show. We didn't announce what song we were playing before we started... hence the rock concert-esque cheering at the beginning. Enjoy!!

Medieval Music Mystery in the Armstrong Browning Library!!

The Armstrong Browning Library on the Baylor University campus is such a real treat. It's so cool, and yet so often sparsely populated, I often feel like referring to it as one of the best on-campus "secrets", even though it's not really secret. For those unfamiliar with it, the ABL is a library dedicated to the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It is also said to house the world's largest collection of secular stained glass windows. It's a beautiful building... you feel epic just walking around on the inside.

On a seemingly-unrelated note, I was in one of the School of Music's required music history courses last semester. This time, it was The History of Music from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance... or as I called it, "From Way, Way Back to Way Back". I was also in British Literature. When we got to the poetry of the Victorian era, we took a class field trip to the Armstrong Browning Library and got an official tour. The "Treasure Room" (also known as the "E.B.B. Salon") on the second floor contains a room full of Elizabeth Barrett's furniture behind a crowd control rope and hidden don't-cross-this-line sensors. I had seen the room before, so my eyes wandered as I listened to our tour guide... until something caught my eye in the back of the room, behind where we were all standing:

Is that...

...medieval chant notation?!?

I couldn't believe it!! If I hadn't been in Music History 1, I would have never noticed or recognized those strange markings across the top of the bookcase. Our tour group soon moved on, out of the room, but as soon as the tour was over, I scurried back upstairs for an unhurried examination. As I went over the music in my head, I was hit with another surprise -- I had seen and heard this music before!

So, I went home, dug out my Norton Anthology of Western Music, and flipped to the Mass for Christmas Day, and there it was:

(image source)

The full text in Latin:

Puer natus est nobis,

et filius datus est nobis:

cuius imperium

super humerum eius:

et vocabitur nomen eius,

magni consilii Angelus.

And a translation that will be very familiar:

A boy is born to us,

And a son is given to us,

upon whose shoulders authority rests,

and His name will be called

"The Angel of Great Counsel".

(Isaiah 9:6)

Where did this bookcase come from, and what was that medieval melody doing carved across its front? Well, an inscription across the bottom of the case reveals that it was a gift from the English Department. Examination of an old black-and-white photograph in the upstairs hallways shows that it might have been around for several decades -- there are several bookcases like it, though, each with different carvings, and it's hard to tell which exactly are the ones in the photograph.

It was only while working in the Crouch Fine Arts Library and looking for Charles Ives' "Robert Browning Overture" (at an hour well-past the closing time of the Armstrong Browning Library) that I realized that the cabinet might contain sheet music. Sure enough, I looked around on the Armstrong Browning Library's website (which I guess I could have done in the first place), and found a description, complete with date (c. 1930), maker (William A. French Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota), and purpose ("one of two mahogany cabinets specially built to house over 1,500 pieces of sheet music").

Well, that solved most of the mystery, but I still wonder why, if there was a specific reason at all, that that specific chant was chosen (and who chose it) to adorn the bookcase.

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As I mentioned earlier, there are other bookcases similar to this one in the ABL, most of which have interesting (if not cryptic) inscriptions on them as well. I looked around at most of them for clues on one of my visits... interested folks should check them out! Have fun exploring!!!

Merry Christmas -- and Backordered Posts!!!

Season's greetings and happy holidays to everyone!!

Though I didn't write much while sloughing through the thick of the end of the semester, I kept the Journal in mind and have notes on my desk for the things I plan to write about. Here are the writings that are in transit and scheduled for delivery in the coming weeks before school starts again:

• A look at Childrens' Concerts
  
• Brief discussion of a Bruckner symphony
  
• My first experiences in a Praise Band
  
• A preview of next semester's Opera
  
• Discussion of Christmas Concerts
  Including a brief essay: The "Melodic Fi" and Its Uses in Generally Awesome Music
• A bit about good ol' John Cage

...quite a smorgasbord of subjects! I probably won't go in exactly this order, but I'll be sure to hit all the topics.

I hope that you all had a blessed Christmas and that you have several more days to spend with your family and friends before work and school start up again.

That's all for now -- I'll be writing again soon!

A stage, beautifully set for a Christmas Concert!

A Journal's First Entry

Greetings to friends, family, fans, and fellow students of music!!

I'm Anson, a collegiate double bassist studying music education (and aiming for a math minor on the side), and this is the official outlet of all things musical that I have to share.

In the days ahead, as I record my journeys through the world of music, this will become a collection not only of writings, but of recordings and compositions as well... and I'll probably throw in a few pictures here and there.

It is my hope and goal that all of my readers -- both trained musicians and casual listeners -- will enjoy these brief excursions into music as much as I enjoy sharing them, and maybe find a fun fact or souvenir to take with them along the way.

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There are quite a few things going on in the near future that I will be able to write about, which is handy. The Baylor Symphony Orchestra is playing Bruckner's 4th Symphony (the "Romantic") on Tuesday evening, and I will soon be working on a passacaglia for a Theory V composition project. I also have plans for a few other compositions... we'll see if those ideas ever make it into Finale.

For this first entry, I would like to present a recording I made recently of Giovanni Bottesini's Elegy for double bass. This is from the Fall 2008 Baylor Bass Studio Recital, which was last week. It's an awesome piece, perfectly written for the bass -- enjoy!! (Be sure to listen to it on a speaker system with subs for maximum bassage.)

Elegy (Giovanni Bottesini), 11/12/08

[ download ]

Though the piece is an elegy, it is not fraught with despair. The song, in my mind, suggests images of an elderly man walking through a beautiful park. A close friend of this man has died, one who surely lived a long and joyful life. As he moves through the trees and small gardens, he recalls memories of the countless joys they have shared, and is saddened by the barrenness of nostalgia... but he cannot grieve for long, because as he continues to walk, children run across his path, their laughter trailing behind them to where their parents sit on a blanket between the trees -- even through the death of a friend, the beauty of life is clearly evident.

Whatever you visualized, however, is the best interpretation for you.

Okay, okay, that's all. A picture to close things up, and then I'm out.

My bass, backstage during the Childrens' Concert series.