Presentation Materials

Feedback Response

Ernesto’s response raises important questions. He asks what scholars should and can take from personal accounts of other cultures. It seems that every scholarly work, not just in the field of ethnography but also in history, sociology, etc., will be biased by the views of the author. Every scholar will view a subject differently, and so will write subjectively about it. Even in the sciences, researchers must analyze and interpret their findings—empirical data can show different scholars different things. Ethnographies that are written in a reflexive and subjective style, then, should be taken just as seriously as any scientific paper. Ethnographers should critically read each other’s works and learn about other possible perceptions of a culture, even if they do not align with their own analyses.

It is true that there is no clear answer to Ernesto’s questions about building personal ethnographies based on several other people’s personal experiences. This can be debated at length, and it seems unlikely that any group will come to a consensus, but since I believe it is up to the individual to decide, I will offer my opinion. It seems unfair to judge a culture or even create one’s own ethnography without actually experiencing that culture for oneself. Therefore, ethnographies are interesting to read and serve as an informative teaching tool in many ways, but one cannot truly understand them unless 1) they are about one’s own culture, or 2) one has also experience the culture about which the ethnographer has written.

Challenge Question Commentary

The concerns that Trevor raises about missing important facets of a culture by only giving a snapshot of one day are valid. He is right that one can only grasp a culture by being present in it for a long time, and so one can only represent it truthfully by painting an imagined picture of this culture; it seems that a scholar must have boundaries, however, and that these boundaries are unclear.

This leads me to wonder whether scholars can EVER write an effective ethnography—can any scholar truly understand another culture well enough to portray it on the page? Are scholars like Agawu (who, himself comes from the culture he describes) the only ones with valid opinions and thoughts? Can any outsider ever write an ethical ethnography?

Trevor acknowledges that scholars must be transparent in their work, and I agree that this is a very important in writing an ethnography; there is still a danger, though, that even the most transparent of scholars will fictionalize and generalize aspects of a culture with which the actors of the culture might not agree. Even with the reflexive work that ethnomusicologists have been doing in recent years, it remains impossible, in my opinion, to capture an unbiased and objective picture of any culture.

It seems, then, that all ethnographies are fictional. Each describes a culture as one person (the author) saw it at the moment of the book’s writing. These can be valuable sources, but even with the transparency and all-encompassing work that Trevor suggests, I do not believe that an ethnography can be separated from the ethnographer.

Critical Review #10

In her article “Dancing with the Enemy,” Pacini Hernandez outlines a history of Afro-Cuban music and describes its emergence on the world scene. Because of the country’s history, she talks quite a bit about politics and the 1959 revolution. She makes interesting points about the “value of authenticity in the world music landscape;” the idea the Cuba inadvertently supported all musical traditions, even those that it might have felt badly about supporting; and marketing. She then describes the difficulties that Cuban musicians have faced in exporting their music, not because of their musical training (which she says was fantastic), but because of their lack of experience with capitalism. She closes her article with questions about the future of Cuban music. It seems that with a new president come new Cuba policies, so perhaps she will soon see some answers.

Pacini Hernandez mentioned that some Cubans were exasperated by Afro-Cuban music “hogging the spotlight” in the US. Does this happen with other music cultures? Is there one type of music that represents Africa to us, for example?

Critical Review #9

Questions for Kiri:
When the Chicago Sacred Harp singers talk about being "founders" of a new tradition, how do they say this word? Do they believe themselves creators of something entirely new, or is there some sort of reverence for the past, as in much of the Sacred Harp singing community?

Is it viewed as more prestigious to be able to lead a song without the book? Is this reserved for older members of the community? Have you ever led a song without the book?

Question for the class:
Kiri talks a bit about the Sacred Harp book and the Bible. We discussed this a bit in our last class. How can it be made clear to singers that the Sacred Harp is NOT a sacred text? In our listserv reading, it sounded like some singers consider it to be the law. What other areas of society and culture have arguments about this type of codification?

Challenge Question Response

Ethnographies have changed a great deal over time, and the “new fieldwork” discussed by so many authors has led to a great deal of reflexivity in ethnographic works. Scholars place themselves at the center of their work, building stories about their research and making observations about themselves, in addition to the culture they are experiencing. Other scholars may wonder, then, how reflexive a work can become without becoming useless in the field of study; they question where the boundary between the personal narrative and the scientific text should be. Reflexivity in writing ethnography is of utmost importance—by including oneself in the portrait of another, scholars show the reader their magnifying glass.

The painter Diego Velazquez painted himself into the famous portrait of several Royal Maidens, Las Meninas, in 1656. This reflexivity is one of the things students study today about his work; he shows the viewer of the canvas his perspective. Ethnographers practice (and should practice) the same technique by demonstrating their own backgrounds and histories to the reader so that he can better understand the observations.
This “stepping backwards” began to occur only in the last 50 years in the field of Ethnomusicology, and some authors are strong advocates of it. Jeff Titon, for example, suggests that researchers should focus on the experiential aspect of their studies when they write ethnographies so that the reader can identify with the situation. He places himself, thus, at the epicenter of a music-culture and tries to explain from within. Similarly, Deborah Wong writes about her own feelings and experiences, hoping to convey these messages through a performative ethnography to the reader.

Both of these authors strongly believe that ethnography cannot be written objectively by a researcher in safari gear with a voice recorder, who has come to the Field to find himself. They do not subscribe to the idea that a culture is a fixed text that can be set down to be read in the same way forevermore. It is impossible to take a snapshot of a music-culture by writing an ethnography; the snapshot would look the same to everyone. A culture is something with which one must come into contact and experience for oneself in order to understand. It is, therefore, the way a person interacts with a culture that will help him understand it. The reflexive paradigm in Ethnomusicology comes out of a belief that by showing how one person has interacted with the culture, another person may be inspired to better understand it or even experience it for himself.

This does not mean that the new, reflexive ethnographies can be used to generalize. It is still impossible to make any accurate generalizations about a culture—every person who encounters it will find different truths and will focus on different aspects, and most will make viable observations. By being reflexive, the authors give themselves a sort of cushion, which, in a way, grants them permission to make subjective observations. After all, the book is just one person’s thoughts about a culture, right?

Challenge Questions

Agawu wrote a great deal about fictional ethnography. In the end, he seems to suggest that the ethnomusicologist is entitled to some liberties in writing his ethnography; Agawu imagined a scene based on his own life experiences and knowledges of the culture. What are the boundaries that a scholar must observe when he or she writes about a culture? Do these boundaries change if the culture is his own?

Write 2-3 pages about these boundaries, paying specific attention to the ethical concerns of the fieldwork that he must conduct and thinking about the reception of the work when it is published.

In her chapter in Shadows in the Field, Deborah Wong advocates a "new" approach to writing ethnomusicology-she argues for a Performative Ethnography, in which the author both presents the subject as he knows it and reflects on his research at once. How does this writing style differ from Jeff Titon's views, outlined in the same book? How are these two similar? What can future scholars learn from these two authors about writing ethnomusicology?

Think about these questions and the two articles mentioned, and write a 2-3 page response. Look closely at the ways that these two authors write about writing ethnographies.

Critical Review #8 (questions for Kiri)

Questions for Kiri:
How do the people with whom you interacted in your fieldwork react to the term “diaspora” ?

Were the “pilgrims” at Southern conventions treated the same way as the lifelong participants? Were you considered a pilgrim? How were you treated?

Question for the class:
Kiri’s description on pages 38 and 39 of the way non-Southerners cannot differentiate between Southerners sounds awfully familiar to an Arkansan among primarily non-Southerners at Brown. Is every group lumped together before you get to know it and understand that the invented group is in fact composed of many smaller groups, which are in turn composed of smaller groups and so forth?

Critical Review #7

Shelemay, Kay Kaufman. “Toward an Ethnomusicology of the Early Music Movement: Thoughts on Bridging Disciplines and Musical Worlds.” Ethnomusicology 45.1 (2001) 1-29.

In her ethnography of early music, Kay Shelemay describes the early music movement in the United States, using as a basis the BEMF conference in the 1996-1997 academic year. She writes in this article, “Ethnographic inquiry constantly brings pragmatic, grounded issues into focus” (23). After a long description of early music groups in Boston and a data-based analysis and comparison, she writes a short ethnography of these groups; it is in this third section of her paper that she address “pragmatic, grounded issues.” These issues include the need to make money and the desire to fill halls.

Shelemay suggests that an ethnomusicologist’s analysis should incorporate many pragmatic, extra-musical issues. At what point should an ethnomusicologist draw the line? At what point does this become purely anthropology?

PS. There is no “Intergalatic Double Reed Society.” There is an “International Double Reed Society.” She must be poking fun at someone.

Critical Review #6

Nettl, Bruno. “In the Service of the Masters.” Heartland Excursions. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995. 1-42.            

Nettl’s chapter about the “Heartland Music school” is an interesting attempt to analyze his own music-culture from an ethnomusicologist’s standpoint.  He spends more than 25 pages describing, and finally, on page 41, he begins to make concise and clear statements.  He writes about Western classical music that outsiders see in it “certain guiding principles of society: hierarchy, specialization, the drive to complexity, the tension between inspiration and labor, conformity, and more.”  He continues by comparing music with religion and with government, but finally he acknowledges that he has raised many questions and provided very few answers (if any at all).

Is it easier for an ethnomusicologist to work in a music-culture that he already knows well?  Do 50 years of experience make him a better ethnographer and a better person to represent these people?

Interview Transcript

I talked to Melissa K, who is directing a scene from the Threepenny Opera as part of BOP's Scenes Concert, for a good 20 minutes.  I have transcribed a portion of the interview here.

Interview with Melissa Kagen

Josiah’s   11:02 pm   Sunday 10/19 

Jason: How does this scene fit into opera as a genre?

Melissa: It’s obviously right at the cusp of opera turning into musical theatre, even though you still have full fledged operas after, it kind of bridges the gap.  I feel like it’s more musical theater.  What’s cool about it is that people sing in unison all the time.  I feel like that’s something that doesn’t happen as often in opera and I think it makes it easier to sing.  The music is pretty simple, but it has tons of accidentals.  Like the version I have is mostly written in C, and you’re thinking “oh good, I’ll just play it in C” but then you can’t really play it because it’s so difficult.  It’s underhandedly complicated.  But I don’t want to get into the whole Musical theater purist versus opera argument, “musical theater can be complicated too.” (laughs)  But basically, I think it’s a send-up of opera.  No one likes any of the characters.  They do what they do, but they don’t have real good motives.  It’s very Brechtian.  But in terms of opera, the characters are complex enough to make it interesting.  The show seems really off-putting at first, but by the end you love to hate these people.  I feel like in opera, there’s always one character that you like.

Jason: When you were casting, did you think about people’s voices that fell into an “opera” category or a “musical theater” category?

Melissa: I thought about them mostly in the negative.  [name removed] does not have a traditional opera voice.  It was really exciting because in the auditions I knew that none of the other directors wanted him for their scenes.  If it had been with Musical Theater people, everybody would have wanted him because he had the best stage presence.  It was mostly fitting things together. […] I was paying attention to acting more than singing.  Any of them could have done the music.  It’s not that hard.  I was more concerned with which of them was interested, which of them was coachable.

Jason: Do you have a music director for the scene?

Melissa: No.  Should I?  I would like to get an accompanist, though.  I could accompany, I guess, but I wouldn’t really like to.  I am music directing the rehearsals.  I guess I hadn’t really thought of that.  We’ve just had script rehearsals.  I guess that’s gonna require a rehearsal pianist.  I’d better note that.  (makes a note) I almost feel like having a Music Director and a Director breaks up the divide superficially and with a scene this short, I feel like one person can do both.  […] That may just mean I don’t know enough what a music director does. (laughs)

Jason: Is there anything I should know before I come to a rehearsal?

Melissa: I want to do this whole thing organically.  I mean, with Yeoman (sorry to bring up Yeoman again, I guess it’s the last major thing I did) it was so planned out and I had to just say “hit this point,” “experience this emotion.”  I wanna do a lot of improv like we did tonight with the scene.  I want the whole thing to be comfortable and I want the scene to evolve, instead of me telling them exactly what to do.  It’s a much more Socratic directing than I’ve done before.

Critical Review #6

Waterman, Richard. “African Influence on the Music of the Americas.” Acculturation in the Americas.  Ed. Sol Tax.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952. 207-218.

In his chapter on the influence of the music of Africa on American music, Waterman makes a great number of soaring generalizations and characterizes the music of an enormous region by outlining very simple elements that are common.  His oversimplification of the subject allows him to draw any conclusions he might like, and so he shows the influence of African rhythms on jazz in an unconvincing argument.  This article shows the earliest attempts at ethnomusicology, and the reader can still see the attempt by the scholar to put everything into categories and into a system understandable by the Western reader (for example, he cites three Western rhythms to be played at once in order to understand the African rhythms). 

What can we gain from this article today?  Can we still learn anything from Waterman’s study? 

Critical Review #5

Barz, Gregory.  “Confronting the Field(note) In and Out of the Field.”  Shadows in the Field.  Ed. Barz and Cooley.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. 206-223.

Gregory Barz addresses the writing of fieldnotes in this chapter.  He tackles the old notion of fieldnotes as a stepping stone from Experience to Interpretation and suggests that the process is more “interactive.”  While he acknowledges that reflection goes into the writing of the fieldnote, he suggests three levels of notes: an “initial” note written in the field, a “second, reflective note” written after the fact, and a third note whose goal is to analyze the first two.  He suggests that the ethnomusicologist begins to reflect and analyze before writing and continues the analysis well after the fieldnotes are completed.  His interactive model reminds me of Wong’s performative ethnography.

According to Barz's model, fieldnotes happen after the "experience." How can we account for our preconceptions and other things that happen before the "experience" itself? Do we not start to think about our topic well before we make our first "fieldnotes?" 

Fieldnotes 1

BOP Scenes Concert – fieldnotes 10/4/2008

I attended the Brown Opera Productions board meeting today. I am currently serving a double role—although I am a member of the board, I am also directing one of the scenes for the scenes concert. I will not conduct fieldwork on the piece on which I am working and consequently will be an observer during rehearsals and not a participant-observer.

Doug, a sophomore, has been put in charge of this evening of scenes as a sort of producer. The board was careful to make the distinction that it is the BOARD that produces the show and not Doug; Nick, who is a co-chair of the board wanted to make sure that no one person had too much power and that instead all of the decisions were made democratically. Although there is another co-chair, Charlie, it seems that Nick holds all the power and all of the board members really defer to his decisions and opinions. He has also been on the board the longest (since his freshman year, which coincided with the inception of BOP). This creates an interesting power dynamic.

The concert is scheduled for the weekend of November 7-9, but the board had not made much progress on its planning on Saturday. It seems like the kind of event that will come together quickly, even though they want it to have a lot of rehearsal. Last year, according to Ben Skerritt, his group only rehearsed twice before their performance. I am certain that the quality of the work will be high, but I worry that my fieldwork may be constricted. I will have to conduct some preliminary interviews with cast members and directors before the rehearsal process starts. I am curious about the preconceptions of the actors and the director. I would like to see how these thoughts play out during the rehearsal and performance process.

Doug has been emailing directors this week to arrange auditions for the scenes. There are (tentatively) 6 directors. Directors will hear all the singers and then split up the singers according to needs/fairness/distribution. I will have to be in contact with other directors as soon as plans are finalized so that I can arrange to be at their rehearsals and schedule interviews. Auditions will occur next Tuesday and Wednesday.

I hope to do my fieldwork on the scene directed by Melissa Kagen. She will choose an excerpt from Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. The board has been worried about drawing an audience with opera scenes because the genre is outdated. Charlie talked about “crossover” shows, between musical theater and opera. Last year, a scene from Bernstein’s Candide was performed, and this year, Threepenny Opera seems to be filling that void. It will be interesting to see who comes to see which scenes and why. I don’t know how best to investigate this other than to gauge the audience reaction (laughter, poise, applause) at the concert.

I will focus primarily on the relationship between the dramatic action and the music (embodied in the roles of the director and the music director, if Kagen chooses to employ one). I will refer to my research questions and try to explore the possible conflict in this relationship.

Critical Review #4

Wong, Deborah.  “Moving from Performance to Performative Ethnography and Back Again.”  Shadows in the Field.  Ed. Barz and Cooley.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. 76-89.

Deborah Wong’s chapter on Performative Ethnography is accessible to the general public, unlike last week’s Clifford reading, which is only easy to understand for a select group of scholars.  Wong employs several “ethnographic moments” throughout her text to draw the reader in, as though the reader is attending a performance; it is this writing technique that drives her argument.  Her work is wholly reflexive, and she is constantly referring to her double role as a Taiko drummer and an ethnomusicologist.  For her, the job of the ethnomusicologist is not only to develop broad generalizations about a culture but also to study the important ethnographic moments.  I hope that ethnographic writing moves more in this direction. 

On page 80, Wong outlines a few “ideological problems” that Classical western musicians may encounter, including “the understanding that performing is categorically different from everyday life.”  What are the implications of this statement?  Would she have classical instrumentalists look at their “performances” as extensions of everyday life, or vice versa? 

SEM through the ages

The mission statement of the January 1956 “Ethno-musicology” newsletter declares that the publication “at present is intended to serve as a vehicle for the exchange of ideas and opinions, news and information among the widely scattered members of our field of study.”  This fledgling periodical was then calling itself a “newsletter” and it had only printed five issues.  In its very early stages, as the journal was trying to find its niche and hammer out its mission, the field of Ethnomusicology as we know it today was at a turning point.

In order to better understand the history of the discipline, I looked at and compared three issues of the journal from different stages in its history.  The earliest “newsletters” were concise, 30-page publications with about 10 pages of text followed by a 20-page bibliography; there were no complete articles, and much of the journal was dedicated to recording the minutes of related meetings.  

The next journal I removed from the shelf was Volume 32, Number 1, from winter 1988; this issue was already markedly different.  Not only had the mission changed to include more relevant language (“all interested persons, regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin are encouraged to become members”), but also the sheer size of the journal had increased to more than 150 pages.  Even the title had changed: whereas in 1956 there was a hyphen between Ethno- and musicology, by 1988 the word had been accepted as a whole.  Additionally, the journal was no longer a “newsletter,” but a Journal for the Society of Ethnomusicology, which had not yet been established in January 1956. 

When I pulled out the most recent journal on the shelf (Volume 51, Number 3), I found Kiri’s article on Grand Theft Auto, and it was clear to me that the field had changed a great deal.  I opened to page 402 and began to read, and immediately I spotted reflexivity, even in the first sentence.  Although I did not read the articles in the 2007 issue of the journal in their entirety, the authors seemed to focus as much on the cultures of the people studied as on their music; an article subtitled “Rock, Cosmopolitanism, and the Nation in Trinidad” by Timothy Rommen, and another exploring “Expressivity and Grammar in Vocal Performance” appear with Kiri’s work. 

I turned back to Volume 1, Number 6 and read the list of papers of interest that were presented at the American Anthropological Association that year; the first, by Willard Rhodes, was called “Toward a Definition of Ethnomusicology.”  It seems that defining the discipline will never grow old.  The other three papers, however, seem dated: all seem to focus on the classification and analysis of the music of the world, with very little focus on each music-culture.  I noticed that there were no Americans studying music of the USA in that journal and that there were few, if any, indications of reflexivity. 

The issue from 1988 does indeed show the evolution of the field, as one might expect.  When I read the beginning of Chris Goertzen’s article on Country music in Vienna, I noticed the extreme importance he attributed to his fieldwork, as has always been done, but I also noticed the term “participant-observer,” which indicates reflexivity. 

Ethnomusicology seems to be an ever-evolving field, and only by understanding its history can we hope to continue to progress. 

Critical Review #3

Clifford, James.  “On Ethnographic Authority.” The Predicament of Culture.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988. 21-54.

Clifford’s dense chapter on ethnographic authority addresses the perennial problem of the responsibility of the anthropologist; he must portray the people he studies in a scholarly fashion, but he must figure out how to be honest.  This raises the question of objectivity and participant-observation, about which he writes in some detail.  He outlines the history of writing ethnographies, citing major authors and describing their methods and their techniques of asserting authority, and his article shows that he is in favor of the evolution that has taken place in the past century.  He describes “experiential, interpretive, dialogical, and polyphonic processes” that must all be employed in writing an ethnography to assure its “coherent presentation” (54).  

In his discussion of interpretive anthropology, Clifford suggests that reading a culture is like reading a book, and that one can analyze a culture as one would a text.  Does this idea fit into the “participant-observation” frame that he has so carefully laid out?  Isn’t a culture ever-evolving, whereas a text (written firmly on the page) is only evolving in the way we see it? 

Fieldwork

I would like to write about the Brown Opera Productions scenes concert, which will take place the weekend of October 30-November 2.  Four to six scenes will be presented, and I will select one of the groups with which I am not involved to study from an ethnomusicological perspective.  Each group will include a director, an accompanist/music director, and several singers.

My hope in studying this kind of group is to understand the relationship between the fields of theater and music.  How does a director who works primarily with non-singing actors interact with singers who find it hard to "come out of their shells"?  What kind of role does a music director/accompanist play?  Are boundaries crossed in working with opera that allow all the members of the scenes to gain a greater understanding of both theater and music?  Is there some kind of hierarchy between music and theater, and how do the opinions of this ranking differ within the group?  What is the rehearsal dynamic?  Is there a definite leader, or is it a collaborative effort?  

Critical Review 2

Shelemay, Kay K. “The Ethnomusicologist, Ethnographic Method, and the Transmission of Tradition.”  Shadows in the Field.  Ed. Barz and Cooley. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. 141-156.

I found Kay Shelemay’s description of the active role of the ethnomusicologist in the transmission of tradition convincing.  She addressed the differences in the field work of anthropology and ethnomusicology, and ultimately she came to the conclusion that ethnomusicologists must reconcile the commitment to preserving musical heritage from the musicological standpoint with the reciprocity and responsibilities that anthropologists worry about.  After citing her own field experience, she outlines the ways that ethnomusicologists will inevitably become involved with the transmission of a tradition and then lays out a set of rules or guidelines that they should follow.   She effectively makes the point that the ethnomusicologist must work reflexively, acknowledging that he or she will have some effect on the people with whom he works, and that he must make conscious choices in his work, understanding their consequences at all times.

Shelemay mentions “concerns regarding reciprocity and social responsibility” on page 143.  She later writes of an “implicit contract between the ethnomusicologist and the tradition’s native carriers” (150).   What does this focus on responsibility mean for the field of ethnomusicology, and how does it differ from studying Haydn and Mozart in “historical musicology”? 

Critical Review #1

Handler, Richard and Jocelyn Linnekin. “Tradition, Genuine or Spurious.” Journal of American Folklore 97.385 (1984): 273-290.

I was caught off guard by the thesis of Handler and Linnekin’s article on tradition: their suggestion that even “spurious” traditions are “genuine” made me take a step back and see “tradition” in a different light. They draw an important distinction between commonsense tradition, which suggests that a core of traits are passed from one generation to another, and tradition as a symbolic interpretation of a society’s past. They demonstrate their hypothesis by suggesting that the Quebecois have a tradition only because they put so much stock in a shared heritage and culture, even though objectively, their culture is very similar to most Canadians. Similarly, they show that Hawaiians look to rural villages to learn about their heritage and consequently adopt “traditional” practices, while the villagers have adopted modern ways.

In a world where globalization is causing languages to die and cultures to change, what is the role of “tradition?” How do societies that value their past reconcile traditional culture with mass media and the sometimes-called Americanization of the rest of the world?

24-hour log

Thursday, September 11

11:50 am-12 noon.  First two tracks of Wagner's Götterdammerung.  iPod.

2:20-2:55 pm. Continuation of Götterdammerung. iPod.

2:55-3:00 pm. Rock coming from the headphones of the person next to me in the mailroom.

3:00-3:10 pm. Continuation of Götterdammerung. iPod.

3:15-3:45 pm. Songs from Mamma Mia. iPod.

3:55-4:15 pm. Mozart oboe concerto. iPod.

Interruptions:

3:57 pm. Cell phone rings pop song.

4:05 pm. Rap coming from the windows of AEPi.

4:15 pm. 80's rock coming from the windows of AEPi.

4:26-4:38 pm. Prelude to Wagner's Parsifal.  Computer speakers.

4:45 pm. Random piano practice and singing practice as I entered Steinert.

4:46-6:25 pm. I played scales, Ferling etudes, Martinu, and Hindemeth on the oboe.  I also played English Horn during this time.  Steinert practice rooms.

6:26 pm. Sacred Harp ensemble.  Steinert practice rooms.

6:32 pm. Beginning of Un Ballo in Maschera.

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I arrived at orchestra rehearsal and heard all of the instrumentalists warm up until 7:24.

The following were the pieces we rehearsed during the next few hours:

7:24 pm. Lord of the Rings medley. 

8:00 pm. Brunoniana (LeRoy Anderson)

8:20 pm. Overture to Candide.

9:15 pm. Empire Strikes Back medley

9:21 pm. Harry Potter suite.

9:35 pm. Pirates of the Caribbean medley.

----

I then returned to my house, where we had a birthday party.

10:45 pm. Happy Birthday, sung by about 9 people.

11:55 pm-12:50 am. Random selections from Rock Band.

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Friday, September 12

10:10 am.  "Friends" theme song.  Computer speakers.

Test Post

This is a test.