"The Gospel of Work"

from The Etude, January 1898, pg 8


“How did you ever achieve all this?” asked a listener of Mendelssohn, on hearing him play several of his compositions.  “I lived like a hermit and worked like a horse,” was the answer of this great musician, too honest to affect an excellence as costing him nothing.
Some time ago I heard a man say to a successful musician, “you are a lucky chap.”  The musician replied, “Nothing of the kind.  Years ago, when we were young together, I was employed in the same business you were.  Every evening you spent on the corner of the street with the boys, and thought you had worked enough through the day.  I had no liking for that, and went home, shut myself up in a room, and studied hard; but there is a difference in our surroundings now.  You are in the same old rut, and think it is luck with me because I got out of it.  It was nothing but hard work.  You had your good time then; I can afford to have mine now.  I am sorry for you; but it would be impossible now for you to rectify your mistake.”

--- credited to "Exchange" (not sure exact source)


Thought I'm not quite as seemingly heartless (keywords at the end: impossible, mistake), I sometimes feel that way.  All the nights spent in the practice room during my undergrad, and generally my entire lifestyle now.  I could be teaching at a public school, with somewhat free evenings.  But yet I remain.  Tied to this computer, reading 100 year old magazines.  Writing conference presentations, a thesis, and hopefully soon articles for publication.  Hopefully someday I shall see the fruits of my labor.  Hopefully someday very soon.

What is your quest?

(notice vague Monty Python quotation in title)
Unlike my return from SAM where I had this outpouring of comments upon the conference, I am left a little speechless after the recent Music and War conference at University of Texas.  Not to say that it wasn't a wonderful conference, but perhaps I'm just even more exhausted than I realized.

What this conference did make me question, though, is the exact purpose of reading a paper/giving a presentation.  Why do we do this?  To share our latest research, surely.  I witnessed at SAM additions to this general purpose: scholars who were telling how to do research, reporting on the current state of certain musical phenomenon, or just current state of their projects.  But this conference made me questions at what stage of research do we present?  At Saturday's conference, unlike at SAM, I presented research in it's "baby" phase: a term paper that easily fit the 20 minute model, but has not gone any further.

My paper seems (at least to me) to be a stark contrast of all the others.  The day was filled with dissertation research, small sub-projects of larger multi-staged research.  Many of these presentations lacked handouts, often no visual aids or audio (a generalized observation).  Afterwards, the audience, comprised mostly of graduate students, would have on average 3-4 questions.  Some papers warranting just 1 or 2, others up to 5 or 6.

This was the case for the last panel of the day, the one that included my paper last.  The first two presentations had audio/visuals, and we all had handouts.  The ladies before me presented on dissertation research and garnered a couple of questions, primarily from the moderator.  My paper (complete with audio, video, and handout- as I told my moderator, I'm all about over-stimulation) upon completion had at least 15 minutes of discussion.  Ten questions easily- I would bring up new points jumping off of what others said that prompted further responses and questions; lots of questions were somewhat unanswerable.  Persons asked "have you considered this?"  "what about this phenomenon over here?"  And more often than not, I would have to say-- I'm sorry I haven't read much on that-- but it would be interesting to look into further.  

It's a slight problem- I didn't have all the answers.  But it seemed to be a positive that at least people where making connections.  Everyone seemed receptive, there weren't any overly critical/defensive questions.  Afterward all was said and done, I was really happy with the responses.  I like to get tons of questions- to include things that didn't fit into the 20 minutes.  Later though, I began to think-- perhaps having no questions is good as well- you explained the material so thoroughly that nothing else need be said.

I guess it all comes down to the strategies of presenting- again- when do we present, and why?

My philosophy on presentations is to present material somewhat simplistically.  Very straightforward, almost repetitiously at times.  I want to be sure my central message is clear, and I most definitely haven't tried to pursue complex philosophical concepts ever, especially if they are somewhat dense-- [I think] that's what journal articles are for.  I will leave conclusions somewhat vague (especially in this latest presentation's case), leading persons to further considerations.  I think that's the way that warrants the most questions, the most engagement with the material.  I gave a very robust handout this time-- 4 pages front and back of lyrics for people to read as I was explaining the significance of each song.  I presumed that they could read lyrics, see images, listen to music and me-- all at the same time.  And really that seemed to work.  Maybe a little too much multi-tasking, but dang it, it woke people up and got them talking.

So I guess I'll send out this cosmic academic question.  What is our quest by driving 14 hours round trip to present to almost complete strangers, sitting all day listening to a myriad of topics?  What is our end goal with this format?  What kind of research do we want to give?  When do we want to do so?  Do we want a bunch of questions, or is that a sign of poor research?

SAM

It took five planes, multiple buses, a train, a taxi, a rental car, and a lot of walking, but I made it from the dusty plains to the land of maple leaves and back again.

This iteration of the Society for American Music Conference was my first, and I must say it was a wonderful experience.  I think it'll be the conference that I'll want to attend as often as I can.  Because I was given the Student Travel Award, I was recruited to be a session monitor.  And that meant meeting a lot of great people.  Instead of giving a play-by-play, here are my highlights.

--The "Dance" panel (one I monitored) overall was inspiring.  Studies into the description of Fred Astaire's musical numbers in the scripts of Hollywood films (keywords like hot and swing) opened up so many semiotic ideas for me.  After Todd Decker gave insights into Astaire's personal philosophies in dance-- I had one of those aha moments.  And then another paper- research on On Your Toes, a musical I hadn't heard of.  Dan Blim, if you happen to read this, I loved your splicing of audio clips to highlight orientalism and jazz in the ballets.  It made an incredibly convincing argument.  I've never seen it done before, and I might have to borrow your technique (5-10 second clips separated by 2ish seconds of silence-- thereby shortening length of time you have to spend playing excerpts).  This was the second panel I went to, but their methodologies and techniques gave me the most lingering new research ideas.

--The Arts of Association Seminar-- I know a lot of people were saying it didn't quite work out as they wanted.  I didn't read the papers ahead of time because as a student presenting, I never registered for the conference (thus never getting the website/password).  But I liked the idea of an open dialogue, partially because it breaks up the constant reading of papers and also it highlights my favorite part of presentations- the Q&A.  Once SAM figures out how to perfect the logistics, I think this will be really great.

--Panel on Surveillance, Violence, and Trauma-- Wow.  Such admirable work Angela Hammond is doing, even if Canadian border police don't agree.  I'd love to get back to my archive job to see if we have any white supremacy records on file that aren't logged.  Most of the philosophical talk on System of a Down went over my head, but I loved seeing very complex philosophies applied to heavy metal music.  I was tempted to bring those songs into my class to wake up my students after Spring Break.  And particularly Jenny Olivia Johnson's work on sexual abuse as portrayed in tv/film music.... Her list of musical elements representing trauma hit home because I am a child of the 80s/90s- of the hyper-vigilant culture that was afraid I would lock myself in a fridge or talk to a man who wanted to give me a sticker with drugs laced in it.

-- Modern Musicals, Modern Audiences (another panel I monitored).  This was the one I was really looking forward to, and it did not disappoint.  New research on Cradle Will Rock film settings.  I had always wondered about what the heck Tim Robbins was getting at with his film, and I'm eternally grateful David C. Paul cleared up my lingering questions.  Jessica Sternfeld's dissertation on Mega-Musicals was my first foray into musical theatre scholarship about 4 years ago, so it was awesome to hear her talk about RENT and a recent school production.  And Elizabeth Craft's work on marketing In the Heights raised questions for me about what one must do to market anything these days- youtube, twitter, facebook, discussion boards, etc.  I loved the parodies Lin-Manuel Miranda created; I must watch more of those. 


I didn't get to stay Sunday, and I'm quite sad I couldn't be in two places at once often times.  Lots of Broadway, parody, and propaganda research I had to miss out on because I was listening to other papers.  I also missed the Student Forum, a dance session Thursday night, and the GLBT discussion-- most of those because of the before preparations or aftermath exhaustion of getting my presentation over and done with.  I get so worked up about presenting my research-- so much energy and excitement (never really nerves though)- that afterwards I typically crash.


Now final preparations are being made for the Music and War Conference in Austin this weekend.  I'm crazy for booking back to back conferences on different subjects.  And in between having to progress further my class research and thesis materials.

Pictures of Ottawa to follow.  I'll provide a link here soon.
Edit: I've placed the photos on facebook.  Tried other photo hosting sites, but my images are too large for their monthly quotas.

"Where's my piano girl?!"

I'm sitting in the airport, waiting my first flight leading to Canada, where I will present on The Etude, Piano Girls, and New Women.  Life is good.  There's no real time for me to give my abbreviated history of the complicated archetype/stereotype of the Piano Girl.  But there is a bit of time for the New Woman, as embodied in Charles Dana Gibson's illustrations.

The Gibson Girl was created to depict the growing population of women who got out into the public sphere at a time when it was still the proper Victorian thing to stay at home.   These women were known as "New Women" in print; today many of us know them better for Gibson's illustrations.  Gibson portrays these women as the most beautiful creatures in the world.  And most people know his images as being those gorgeous Victorian ladies in tight corsets, hair pinned up, and giving sultry looks.  But in his more comical illustrations, Gibson draws these women more dangerously- almost forebodingly. Drawings depicted the power these women had over men.  One image is of a woman batting around her suitors.  In my presentation, I show the popular images of these women out in public: bathing, playing golf, riding bicycles.  But then I show this image:

Now, I don't have the exact provenance for this.**  It comes from Dover Clip Art, but I just love the idea of it.  The man looks greatly perturbed, as if to say the title of this post-- where's my piano girl?  She used to sit around all day and entertain me.  Why isn't she doing that now?  My argument is that for men in the 1890s and 1900s, it wasn't about what women were gaining necessarily, but more so what they were abandoning. The status quo of old was being forgotten. The stability of the home was in jeopardy.  Hence why magazines like The Etude essentially begged its women to STAY HOME!  RAISE CHILDREN!  They wanted to keep things the way they had always been.  And by 1900, the Piano Girl image was so comforting, it was quite alarming if lost completely.  I think this is one of Gibson's more comical illustrations of the problem with these New Women.

Will be boarding soon- have to stop this for now.

**If anyone knows of the book/magazine this came out of, I would be eternally grateful for the citation.  I'd love to see the original context for this- especially if it was from a book.  Dover has taken many of these Gibson images in the public domain and cropped out the background, and I'm wondering if that's what they did here.

beginnings

I have begun this blog in hopes of making a substantial resource for my rants on  popular musical/musicological topics, my current research themes, findings within the pages of my primary sources, maybe teaching stories, or additional links of fun rabbit holes.  For five years now, I have kept a personal blog- one almost diary-esque creation documenting my life.  And though it has been helpful for my introverted nature to allow others to see what is happening in my life, sometimes it feels as if it is a "let's talk about what's stressing me out today!" venue.  So I'd like to have a more historical blog.  Something that might actually contribute to society.  Lofty idealism most certainly, but hey, that's what I'm famous for!

My description of this blog gives a word/definition I've created.  I seem to like to make up words.  It began with "singingly" (playing a melodic line in a singing fashion).  I branched out into "etuding" when telling friends I was scanning/researching back issues of The Etude.  My professor even got into the act when helping create my thesis title with "archetyping."   But Etuding, and all of its derivatives/implications/symbolism has stuck with me, grown into something more.  I feel as if I am the Etudian of which the magazine wrote.  I feel like every day, I am etuding or have "etuded" (not quite as harmonious a word though).  I am studying that which was once studied.  And it's my job to teach others of these studies.

In two days, I leave for the big gathering of American musicology scholars.  I hope to perhaps pass on this website; it will create an accountability for me to continue this new endeavor-- check out my blog with updates on findings from my research.  Maybe somehow I'll have some followers by the end of this week.

This blog must begin with a singular image.  One Etude cover that I use as my profile picture (albeit cropped) at the moment.  To me, it is one of the most beautiful images of piano girl iconography I have uncovered.  I'm very passionate about this image, about what it represents and what it meant in its day.  And I hope to share some of that in the very near future here.