04 February 2007

Dial "P" for Piggy-Back

I hate to get involved in these things, but here goes nothin'...

A challenge was issued here earlier this week. You can peruse the responses in the comments to that post.

Ostensibly, the point of this game is to uncover unexpected results. But is anyone surprised to see that all of these "classical music" bloggers have so much non-classical music loaded on their iPods? I'm not, so speaking of Musicology, I hereby dial "M" and issue a follow-up challenge for everyone who responded (or even those that didn't). Consider the following scenario:

You are a Musicology professor in a respectable public university music department. You are teaching the final course in the undergraduate music history sequence, which deals with music from the late 19th century through the present day while placing particular emphasis on the American 20th Century. Topics for the final paper are to be chosen by each student individually, but must be approved by you, the professor. A student approaches you to ask if he/she may write their final paper on Thelonious Monk.

Do you approve or reject this request? Why or why not?

Post your responses here or on your own blogs. If at least five people respond, I'll post my own answer here (as well as a list, which will have to be drawn from my iTunes playlist or CD shelf since I don't have an iPod).

2 comments:

Matthew said...

Fine with me. (Not that I'll ever be a musicology professor, but a man can dream.) When I was in my graduate 20th Century Analysis seminar at BU, I convinced my professor (Marjorie Merryman, so you may seek her out and congratulate her on her effortless coolness) to let me do my final project/class presentation on "Sweeney Todd." I'd give the student fair warning about how in-depth the paper better be, though. (And make sure they're limiting their study in a useful way—either pick an album, say, or track the variations in one particular number over Monk's career.) If the department head starts giving me crap? Man's got a Pulitzer! It's all cool.

Stefan Kac said...

The game is afoot.