Nerdy day!

Today in 20th Century Music I learned:

That Dr. Survilla is not the exiled princess of Belarus. Which is kind of disappointing... However she did have a point, that if she WERE hiding from the government of Belarus, teaching music history at a college in Iowa is not where she would hide.... Especially since you can easily find her through an internet search. However, her MOTHER is the current president in exile. And she told us some espionage stories that happened to her mother. So that's pretty cool at least.

Then I learned about Javanese Gamelan music.

The other thing I learned is that Stephen Sondheim TOTALLY stole from Claude Debussy!!! Listen to Nocturnes: No. 1, Nuages, which is a symphonic poem about clouds crossing the sky at night. The first eight seconds are TOTALLY used in Sweeney Todd! ("Swing your razor high, Sweeney, hold it to the sky....") Sorry I couldn't find a better recording. (There is also some debate whether it sounds like like Beauty and the Beast... In that case, Alan Menken is guilty of stealing from Debussy too...) In class we were all like "Woooo! Musical borrowing! Bach did it, so it's okay!" (I promise, it's not just me that is uber-dorky... It's the rest of my music history class too!)

Then today at lunch we made up a rap/beatbox-type song using phrases said by all the Wartburg music professors. It's really catchy and very hilarious! :-) What's even more funny is right before we started thinking up this song, we were talking abut how dorky our professors where when they were in grad school. :-)

Then in band, we got two new pieces of music, and one is absolutely gorgeous! It's called "Love and Piece, A Father's Wish" and I absolutely love it. I was getting chills while we sight-read through it.... It will sound so amazing after we polish it up! :-) *warm fuzzies*