Reading notes

Still reading "Magic Mountain"
by Mann. Also a review copy
of Rick Moody's forthcoming
book, "The Diviners." Moody
is very funny. So is Mann for
that matter.

That was last night.

This morning after perusing
the first section of the
Sunday New York Times, I
looked over 13th century
polyphony in the music
history book I am reading in
preparation for teaching in
the fall. (Grout/Palisca
fourth edition)

I was able to make some
new sense out of ancient Greek
music this time (Chapter 1).

Palisca's take on Gregorian
Chant in this edition is pretty
creaky. He uses Solesmes (early 20th century)
notation saying that this
is what the student is most likely
to run into and then bounces
around 9 centuries of music
history (4th to 12th) talk about various
aspects of the history of chant.
Also for good measure he throws in
the Tridentine Mass. Kind of a
mishmash. One the one hand his
chant section is too fragmented to be
of help in understanding concepts
and too sketchy to provide a
understandable overview. Maybe he
did better in the next edition.

Reading the section on early
polyphony makes me wish I had
the accompanying recordings to
the musical anthology. I was
happy that I happen to have the
first volume of the musical
anthology sitting in my library.
This has helped. But hearing
the known beginnings to harmony
performed.

I'm not planning to use much
of this information in my teaching.

The syllabus I developed in
the first term touched briefly
on chant and then skipped to
late baroque. I was thinking
of revisiting this decision but
Palisca is not convincing me
I can help non music majors
make sense of this music.