Friday, May 1, 2009

New Listening Journals

Today is the last day of classes (hurrah!), and I finished my last lecture on Wednesday (super hurrah!). That doesn't mean I'm finished with grading (boo!), but it does mean that I have my most interesting papers to grade this weekend before the onslaught of tests next week for finals (yea!).

Many of those papers are my last round of listening journals, which were just posted this week for your reading pleasure. This is always the most interesting collection of listening journals because I give them a wide variety of music written since 1945 to explore. So I had students listen to late Schoenberg (many of them had performed Survivor from Warsaw last year and so wanted to revisit it), early Harry Partch, and even John Oswald's Plunderphonics, which he describes as "Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative." So take some time this weekend and see what my students have discovered. I think you'll find some fascinating sounds and thoughts.

No comments: