Speaking too Fast

I suppose I spoke too fast yesterday in announcing that Noah now knows himself. Asked this morning who he was, he responded: "Elmo!" This made Sam laugh, so Noah kept repeating that he was Elmo over and over. Who knows how long this identity crisis will last. Oh well, at least he was wearing red pajamas.

Noah Discovers Himself

After Noah's word explosion of a month ago, he's quietly cooled his language acquisition. He still picks up words every one and then, but more often than not he just repeats what people say to him that he finds funny.

In terms of names, he firmly has Joy and I down as Mama and Dada, and he calls Nana and Pop by name, but his favorite person in the world (Sam) he stills calls by sign language. Eventually he'll say "Sam," but right now he just likes to sign "eat" "Sam" when Sam's having a snack or "bath" "Sam" right before bedtime.

But finally, Noah seems to have learned his own name. Sure, he's been responding to it for a long time, but whenever you would ask him his name, he'd look at you quizically and say "Ja," which is his baby-German way of saying "yes." But today in Kindermusik, we were playing with mirrors and he was pointing to me in the mirror and saying "Dada" and when he suddenly pointed to himself and said "Nohna." Sure that double vowel is a bit tricky, but it's fun to see that he finally has a sense of self enough to use his own name for his own reflection.

More Reasons Why I Teach

I just gave a big music history test yesterday to my undergraduate students and endured the typical grousing about how the subject doesn't relate to what they do and they get tired of memorizing facts.

No matter how many times I tell students the ways in which music history can enrich their musical vocabulary and make them better performers, many refuse to see. That's why I was encouraged by the article "In Search of Lost Sounds: Why you've never really heard the "Moonlight" Sonata" that appeared on Slate.com yesterday. In it, Jan Swafford gives wonderful audio examples of the differences between the pianos Beethoven wrote for and our modern, equally-tempered and equally-voiced Steinways. The article is an ear-opening read, and I encourage you to jump over to Slate and listen. For me, it was encouragement that music history is important. As a pianist, hearing those recordings opened up new interpretive strategies in my mind and made me hear the music afresh, a goal of all performers of others' music. It is a concrete example of why music history is important. Do you have to play differently because Beethoven wrote for a different piano? No. Do we always have to try to replicate the exact circumstances and choices of pianists in Beethoven's day? No. But I would argue that our music takes on deeper resonance when we understand the choices we are making and the options open to us as musicians rather than blindly playing whatever is before us on the stand. The musicians in any realm or genre that last, that continue to impact us 10, 20, 100 years after their life and work are the ones who understand this simple rubric. History, style, ideas, do matter and matter deeply.

Questionable Musical Choices

Every other Tuesday night we go to a friend's house for fellowship and bible study with a group from our church. Since we start around 7:00, and our children's bedtime is 8:00, twice a month they get to stay up a little late. Often both Sam and Noah are so exhausted that they fall asleep on the way home, and we usually dress Noah in his pajamas before we leave for that eventuality. But sometimes they are too wound up to sleep.

Tonight was one of those nights. We loaded in the car and immediately Sam started scat singing to make Noah laugh. Hearing Noah laugh just made Sam laugh harder and scat louder, so I decided to short circuit the cycle by turning on a little music. I picked a beautiful, slow work by Lou Harrison that is meditative and calming off the iPod and turned on the stereo.

The music didn't phase Sam and Noah.

I sighed, resigned myself to staying up late with both boys coaxing them to sleep when we got home, and turned my attention to Joy. We talked about our day and I mentioned that I was teaching Post-Romanticism and had gotten my students' attention with a disco/funk recording of Also Sprach Zarathustra by Eumir Deodato. I flipped over to the recording on the iPod so Joy could hear it and immediately the back seat went dead quiet.

This immediate, strong reaction to disco can only mean one thing - Abba is not far in our future.

More Wheat, Please

One of the great things about having a four-year-old boy is the insatiable curiosity with which he attacks each day. And one of the most exhausting aspects of having a four-year-old boy is the constant questioning of every little thing on the planet. Joy read that the average four-year-old asks 400 questions a day.

Sam surely doubles that number.

But we don't want to squash his inquisitive spirit, especially when he is obviously so eager to learn about everything under the sun. Including this week's obsession - wheat.

Given that we live in Kansas, being curious about wheat is not too strange, I suppose; we learned more about corn in our years in Illinois than I thought I would ever want to know. But with Sam, wanting to know about wheat means a level of depth you've never imagined. We have found videos about wheat growth and production, read treatises on how wheat gets from the field to your table, explored the food pyramid to see wheat's nutritonal value, dug through the nutrion information on everything we eat to see if it has wheat, and even played internet games about wheat (did you even guess there was such a thing?) Every morning for breakfast this week, Sam has asked if he could have wheat for breakfast (I had to make pancakes with wheat flour this morning, which were surprisingly delicious). He's asked if his tomatoes on sandwiches have wheat and then not been sure he wanted to eat them. It has been nonstop wheat at our house.

Oh, and the Olympics, but don't get me started on trying to explain the biathlon to him.

Snake Dancing

Wonder what we've been doing for the past two weeks instead of regularly blogging?

We've been sick.

But beyond being sick, we've also been dancing. Dancing with snakes.

A Little Light Reading

Looking for a little light reading? Have access to online journals through your local library or institution of higher learning? Then you should check out my new article "Rekindling Ancient Values: The Influence of Chinese Music and Aesthetics on Harry Partch" in the Journal of the Society for American Music. The cover features my picture of Partch's Chromelodeon and is full of fun facts like Partch's experiences in San Francisco Chinese theaters. You can read the abstract and more about the article on the journal's webpage.