Machaut and a Mutant
I missed my Friday newsletter deadline by a lot of days. I wish I could say it was the only deadline I missed.
Calamus Words #2
The View from the Ivory Precipice
I haven’t written much recently. I’ve been busy getting students moving forward on their essays and fretting about contract negotiations. I have, though, been thinking a lot about the Ars Nova and power. Both my University of Minnesota History of Western Music students and my Augsburg Musical Philosophy students have been subjected to my obnoxious musings about Guillaume de Machaut.
Early music isn’t my strong suit, which makes teaching about it strange. I view a lot of cultural history through the lens of political and social power, though, and 14th-century Europe has plenty of that. When I have time, I am going to spend more time with Machaut, whose motets are . . . weird.
Power is top of mind right now, as I fret about upcoming union things. The next Hamline University negotiation is scheduled in such a way to prevent me from attending an Augsburg University presentation by Dr. Philip Ewell, whose work has been incredibly beneficial to my teaching of music history. That’s annoying but real.
Even though I find all of this frustrating on a physical and psychological level, I have to restart that part of my brain because my husband and I just got back from a week in Savannah, GA, a place that knows plenty about the dangers of power. It was a lovely week, largely because the people we interacted with were friendly while not being horrifically ignorant of the history of the place.
We did an open mic, something I haven’t done in decades:
Fun Things I Enjoy
I’m behind in Baldur’s Gate 3, but I finally hunted down Ketheric Thorm in the Mind Flayer Colony. I prefer misused power to be in fiction.