36 Years Ago

36 Years Ago, Vienna 1971—A Student Journal

Day 100: 100th Anniversary

36yearsago.com

Vienna 1971—A Student Journal
A year of music, study, travel, sightseeing & friends.


Day 100 — 100th Anniversary
10-November-1971 (Wed.)

IU La Boheme stream 01

TRANSCRIPT

Ditto for other days. Except saw
La Boheme again.


REFLECTIONS

1971. Ditto=a busy day in ’71. La Boheme.

100th Anniversary. It’s 100 days of blogging and reflecting. I’m enjoying it. Hope that you are as well.

IU La Boheme stream 02
La Boheme. Remember that yesterday, I saw an Indiana University live stream of Puccini’s La Boheme on the Internet. Almost 36 years exactly apart. Coincidence? Or fate? Enjoyable both times. It is interesting that the opera itself is not really a happy one. It’s a love story with a bad ending. (Aren’t they all?) Mimi catches a death of a cold and is sick throughout the opera. Poet Rodolfo and artist Marcello are poor, cold, and unsuccessful. As Rodolfo finds love, Mimi dies. The photos on this posting are from yesterday's Indiana Unversity live performance and streaming of La Boheme.

Still, Puccini’s music warms the heart.

IU La Boheme stream 03
Indiana University, Bloomington. If you are a music major, you may know that Indiana University is one of the premiere music schools in the country—The Jacobs School of Music. Faculty are often of international reputation and the student achievement is high. Lot’s of practicing goes on in that round music building.

IU La Boheme stream 04
Musical Arts Center. The university’s Musical Arts Center is essentially a world-class facility, capable of putting on fully-professional operas, with great staging, costumes, and performers. If you are ever in Bloomington, go see a performance.

I worked at the Musical Arts Center as a student-worker to help pay for my expenses. It was a mixture of many things, sometimes setting up mics for performances or climbing in the rafters to check on mics as well. It was a good experience.

The quality of audio and video in yesterday’s Internet feed of
La Boheme was quite remarkable. There was just a bit of background or “machine” noise somewhere in the loop. Streaming video has the ability to replace some TV watching. I enjoyed it. Ideally, you would then stream directly to Apple TV and HD widescreen TV, neither of which I have.

John at IU. I spent a year and a summer at IU. It was the only year I had to pay for school; I’ve been fortunate. The campus at Bloomington is just beautiful. I had great friends in the graduate dorm. During the summer, I had a wonderful girl friend and fellow horn player—Fleur. Hi Fleur. I played 1st horn in the third concert band and then was promoted to 2nd or 3rd horn in the 5th orchestra. I believe that IU had five orchestras and three bands. All of these ensembles were quite good.

It was a year-plus of hard work but I ended up with my Master’s degree in Music Composition. I studied composition with Professors Fox, Heiden, and others. I wrote music for a full Master’s recital and thesis. I found the recital tape a while back, maybe one day I’ll play a bit for you. Writing serious music is very difficult for me, but I enjoy what I write—though you can sometimes tell that I am at the student level. I also did some work in their electronic music lab as well.

IU story. I like to tell this story about IU. It is not easy to get into. If I remember correctly, I had to take about 10 or so tests and ended up taking two or so remedial (no credit) courses to make up my deficiencies—early music history, piano, and I’m not sure if there were a third. Well, in early music history I would go to class and take down a “million” notes. The professor never stopped talking. Facts. Facts. Facts. We also had listening tests, where we listened to repertoire in the listening library and had to aurally identify works by time period, composer, style and such. We were supposed to listen for about 4 hours a week. Well, the grading in the class was on a bell curve. And eventually, we were all in the listening library for 10-12 hours a week, perhaps (can’t remember and I may be exaggerating). Why? Well, I asked one of the guys who was always in the library. Answer—he was a musicology major, a music history major. He was taking a deficiency course in his major. He and others had to put in so much time for their major area of study, and we had to follow. Damn bell curve. Regardless, I never learned so much in a single course, and my ear became pretty well attuned to style and identification. Happy

Just a story.

John

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