Monday - April 21, 2008
music department banquet & roast
Yesterday evening, the music department here hosted its first annual end-of-the-year banquet for students and faculty. It was a lot of fun. The department has been growing a lot over the course of the last few years. We're getting more and more majors (and minors, for that matter) and we've increased the full-time faculty from 3 when I got here in 2000 to 6 now.
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The banquet was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, a lot of the students didn't show up. That was disappointing. But a lot of the kids *did* show up. Nice dinner.... little awards ceremony for outstanding senior, outstanding freshman, etc.
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The seniors were given free reign toward the end of the banquet to do a little roast of the faculty. They were pretty respectful, but it was funny nonetheless. They did a little skit for me. Let me tell ya, they had me down pat. They left out many things that they could have gone with (mercifully), but they focused on some real winners. My piano skills are really quite bad. So when I play harmonic dictation exams (in particular), or try to work my way through 3 voice fugues that my counterpoint students have written, it's really quite sad. When I get to a spot where I am lost with my fingers on the keys, I have a tendency to say "damn it" - so they had that down. I also call a cadential 6/4 chord a V chord rather than a I6/4 chord. Come on! It's a dominant function not tonic! sheesh. They give me a hard time about that because the other fellow here that teaches theory defnintely calls it a 1 6/4 chord. So we have a little disagreement about that. They nailed that one, too. I like to use the word "nebulous" in the context of describing tonality in places (especially Brahms, for example). So they used that, too.
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All in all it was great fun. I hope this idea catches on. It's good to celebrate the end of the academic year & to salute the students - especially the seniors.