New Ways of Thinking

This week I was struck my three blog posts by Greg Sandow who blogs about the Future of Classical music on http://www.artsjournal.com, in the past he has been a composer and a music critic.  I was going to try to pick just one of the blogs entries to use for this weeks post but each of these three is an expansion on a similar idea and one that I found fascinating. 

His first blog post was eye opening for me because he discussed that while outreach and educational programs are great they will never do enough to fill the seats in our music halls.  He makes a call for us to "create performances so powerful" because we have tough competition with the current popular culture.  Our first thought should be filling seats before we move to creating educational and outreach programs in our community.  I would have to say that I agreee with Mr. Sandow mostly, except that I believe we should be creating new and exciting performance opportunities in our field but that we also need to have the other programs running simultaneously.  Though I do believe that those programs need to have a stronger focus on what is happening in today's world of classical music and not getting heavily bogged down in the past.  We need to be teaching what is happening now and while giving them a strong foundation of the past, we need to show the how to take it further. 

The second post continued Mr. Sandow's ideas on where we need to head into the future with our art form.  It was discussing why we don't want to move forward.  Mr. Sandow, 71, said that when you look around at today's audiences its hard to see anyone in attendance who was born after 1943.  I will admit that I live in a classical music bubble so I disagreed with him a little bit with this point but I did understand what he was trying to get at.  This article was a explanation to older audiences that we will never see a growth in classical music if we don't start to change that allow for newer audience in our concert halls.  He goes on to say that many of the older generation are afraid that they will have to dumb down music to get younger audiences to the concerts.  Here I agree with Mr. Sandow that you don't have to dumb down classical music but we will actually be forced to enrich it further.  We will have to make it savvier for my generation. 

The last post was about how the arts as we know it is changing and to even call it the arts means that we are out of touch.  If you look around in today's world there is art everywhere but not in the ways we are use to it.  He makes a comparisons to shows on HBO and that they are comparable to great novels of the past.  We need to open up our eyes to the changing world and not be afraid to try different ways to get our art out there.  We cant rely on the arts to continue, but we will always have ways to keep art alive and we need to find ways that do that.  We should not be afraid to branch out to contemporary culture because it won't dumb down our art form but only make it better. 

Classical Music is late to the Tech Party

I've been thinking a lot recently about why classical music seems to be the last art form to look at how technology can help improve itself.  It not only seems that we are late to the party but that we are trying so hard to catch up that everything we do already seems dated.  The fact that we even question if we should have social media pages or Instagram accounts is a sign that we are behind.  I can understand why we are hesitant, the Internet is a scary place, technology moves incredibly quickly and we feel the loss of privacy.  I don't think that this needs to be the case.  I was at a concert a few nights ago and before the music started we were asked to take out our phones.  We were asked to take photos, tweet them, post them as well as hashtag certain phrases.  As I thought about what they were doing I felt it was to little to late.  They had to explain what hashtag meant and which sites they should post to.  I thought to myself that if this is how we are using technology we are so far behind that it wasn't even useful to use it.  We need to stop trying to play catch up and get on the forefront of how the world of tech is evolving and not wait till something is already popular to use it.  It is the same as when our parents joined onto Facebook and suddenly we felt the coolness of the site get sucked out with the click of accept.  We are the parents signing onto Facebook to look cool when that is the last thing we are.  It is not that I feel we need to alienate older audience because that is far from my point.  It is that we need to start using technology for what it is, which is cutting edge. 

The article I read that made me think even more about this was and article by Xeni Jardin "a tech-culture journalist and co-editor of the collaborative Weblog BoingBoing."  She spoke of how Houston Grand Opera is using streaming technology to reach a larger audience and trying to show how hip and cool they have become to attract larger audiences.  The very idea of that sends shivers down my spine. I think its great to have that in our arsenal of tactics to keep audiences but I do not feel it brings them in as much as we think that it does.  While looking in on a streaming of a dress rehearsal is fascinating for me I do not believe it does the same for people new to opera.  Also, selling it as approachable to younger audiences does the opposite to them.  If opera companies started to work closer with start up tech companies we might see some really cool and cutting edge creations come out of that collaboration instead of being late to the party. 



Click here for the full article

The Beethoven Effect?

We have all heard of the Mozart effect and many of us grew up listening to Mozart because of it, but in his recent article in the New Yorker, Beethoven's Bad Influence, Alex Ross explores the length and width of the shadow Beethoven cast over other composers, both before and after his time.

CREDIT ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL ADEL

Ross brings many interesting points into his argument,exploring Beethoven's background, relatives, politics etc, but what caught my attention was the way that Beethoven elicited change through his music. He didn't cater to the public, he wrote what he wanted to write and his audience caught his vision so well, that it soon became the expected norm.

As Ross puts it in his opening paragraph "Beethoven is a singularity in the history of art—a phenomenon of dazzling and disconcerting force. He not only left his mark on all subsequent composers but also molded entire institutions. The professional orchestra arose, in large measure, as a vehicle for the incessant performance of Beethoven’s symphonies. The art of conducting emerged in his wake. The modern piano bears the imprint of his demand for a more resonant and flexible instrument. Recording technology evolved with Beethoven in mind: the first commercial 33⅓ r.p.m. LP, in 1931, contained the Fifth Symphony, and the duration of first-generation compact disks was fixed at seventy-five minutes so that the Ninth Symphony could unfurl without interruption."

While reading the rest of Ross's well expressed thoughts, I found myself still thinking about this paragraph. Could it be that in the year 2014 we have gotten so wrapped up in our desire to preserve past art that we are not as free to focus on creating our own? Have we put Beethoven and others like him in demigod power over the arts?

"Yet the idolatry has had a stifling effect on subsequent generations of composers, who must compete on a playing field that was designed to prolong Beethoven’s glory. As a teen-ager, I contemplated becoming a composer; attending a concert at Symphony Hall, in Boston, I remember seeing, with wonder and dismay, the single name “BEETHOVEN” emblazoned on the proscenium arch. “Don’t bother,” it seemed to say." Alex Ross

What would happen if young composers and young musicians when listening to the works of this genius where not struck with "Don't bother" but instead thought "I am going to do that!" What if we paid homage to this brilliant man by not simply by playing his music, but also by attempting to carry out his legacy in our own compositions & performances? Bravely making them uniquely ours and not copies of another mans genius? Now that would be a Beethoven Effect worth having.

For more information visit http://nyr.kr/1w6FU5J

Developing the Audience by Reforming Music Education

“The crisis in classical music comes in important measure from obsessively narrow way we have trained musicians for more than two centuries,” wrote by the leading educator and musicologist, Robert Freeman. In his recently published book, The Crisis of Classical Music in America. Mr. Freeman mentions the issues classical musicians face today, including the declining interest of the population in attending performances and decreasing jobs in music area. These problems can be attributed from the old-fashioned music education, which involves intensive training for only a few children and a narrow focus on becoming a professional musician.

A child not being exposed to music at a young age is the reason for these issues, pointed by Peter Luff, Associate Principal French Horn for the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. “It should be a right of kids to have music, and a responsibility of us to provide them with music,” said by Luff. That is why the OSQ devotes propagating the music and has been offering series of children’s concerts for many years.

There are three solutions, now in progress, which might improve these situations in classical music area today. First, a film for children, combining classical music, live action and cartoon, is being produced by the British Broadcasting Cooperation. “We hope that the project will inspire a generation of children to learn more about classical music,” said by Roger Wright, director of BBC Proms.

Second, extend the constructive ear training in primary school. The app, “Minute of Listening,” is used in the primary school of the United Kingdom. It collects many of one-minute-long sound and music such as, excerpts of pieces from classical music, or the sound of birdsong form the nature. The young students will obtain the progress and the knowledge of hearing by discussing and thinking about the detail of sound and music daily.

Moreover, attract new audiences by integrating the different area with music. For example, the upcoming concert of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Journey through the Cosmos, combines science and music for encouraging new audiences to attend the concert. It delivers the presentations by the British physicist Professor, Brian Cox, with Holst’s The Planets Suite and Marianelli’s Voyager Violin Concerto; the orchestra will play with big-screen video.

In my opinion, these prescient and meaningful ideas inspire me a lot. There is a close connection between popularizing the classical music and the population of audience. When we participate in music education for all children, we train not only the professional musicians, but also the well-educated audience, with interests in classical music and how to enjoy it. This concept might take one or two generations to be accomplished, but it is worthy to try.

For more information, please read: Expert warns classical music is failing audiences of the future

Food Trucks... How did they become so hip and how can they get hipper?

Food trucks… How did they become so hip and how can they get hipper?

Food trucks are everywhere! Food trucks have been an integral part of U.S. history since the late 1800's. The first food trucks were wagons in New York City where workers, also known as night owls, would buy a meal after the restaurants had closed for the evening. It seems that the food truck craze comes in waves. Much like today, food trucks could be found in major cities such as Manhattan and L.A. throughout our nation's history. Taco trucks became increasingly popular in the 1970’s so much so that L.A. initiated its first mobile food truck application in 1973.

The modern food truck phenomenon has hit an all-time high. They can be seen on city streets, weddings and formal events, at food truck festivals where dozens of trucks line up side by side for a lucky someone's own choosing, and many food truck companies have their own casual dining restaurants as well.

Food trucks come in many different shapes, sizes, and flavors. The Boston Food Truck Alliance serves twelve unique food trucks including Grilled Cheese Nation, Bon Me, and The Cupcakory.

What could make a food truck more amazing?

Pairing it with music education and community outreach initiatives, that’s what!

Savannah Marshall, a music educator and percussionist, has come up with a brilliant plan to combine her love of food trucks, music, and conquering the world with kindness. A graduate of University of Massachusetts Lowell’s music education program, Savannah’s project is called Fresh Beets.

“Fresh Beets will feed, educate and excite the citizens of Lowell, a city I am proud to call my home.”-Savannah Marshall

Fresh Beets is a food truck that will also be configured as a mobile music venue to give local musicians and younger music students a place to perform and music for the greater community to listen to. Along with that, kids will also be able to enroll in free music lessons in exchange for their contribution to the maintenance of the food truck. These students can earn their music lessons by performing a music set, working on the truck, or volunteering with the truck’s community partners.

Fresh Beets already has community partners in Lowell such as Mill City Grows, where the truck’s food supplies will originate. Savannah’s Fresh Beets has also won the 2014 DifferenceMaker Idea Challenge in which Fresh Beets earned a $4,000 award to help kick start the program. 

 

Eric Whitacre and the Virtual Choir

“I wanted to be a rockstar,” composer Eric Whitacre stated at his TED Talk in 2011. He then explained how he went from playing the synthesizer and not being able to read music to becoming obsessed with choral music in college to earning a master’s degree in composition at Juilliard. Whitacre’s early interest in popular music must have had an impact on his career in composition and conducting, as evidenced by his slightly-more-diatonic-than-average compositions, his generally casual nature, and his use of technology in musical projects.

Inspired by a video of a girl singing the soprano part of one of his choral pieces, Whitacre made a blog post in 2009 with an open call for amateur and experienced singers to film themselves performing single parts from his piece “Sleep,” using a recording as a reference. When this proved successful, he invited more singers to perform his “Lux Aurumque,” this time to a video of him conducting the piece. The result was Virtual Choir 1.0, a technological collaboration effort that connected the choral art music community in a completely new way. Whitacre proceeded to virtually conduct another one of his pieces each year for the next three years. The most recent project, “Fly to Paradise” from Whitacre’s musical Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings, features close to 6,000 singers from 101 countries. It was also a change from the three preceding a cappella pieces in that it was recorded over an electronic dubstep-esque instrumental track, bridging the gap between the popular and “art” styles. Whitacre’s website includes more details about the Virtual Choir, such as testimonials of hardship and loss from participants and a forum where Whitacre’s fan community can discuss past and future projects.

In the age of communications media, artistic collaborations are easier and more abundant than ever: One only needs to search the term “collab” on YouTube to find a myriad of examples. However, the typically anti-technology art music world does not easily allow for these kinds of projects, which is a shame due to their nature of bringing people together and making a more tightly-knit community. Whitacre confessed in his TED Talk that in the Virtual Choir he felt like he was part of something greater than just a set of people in front of computers connected by data. In my opinion, Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir is a pioneering effort to bring art music, modern and otherwise, into the digital age. I have already read of some other virtual choirs inspired by Whitacre’s, and I hope that this kind of mass collaboration makes a difference overall in the world of classical music.

What Not to Wear

I got into an argument with a friend recently.  The subject of my jury was brought up.  I started to explain the repertoire and how I imagined it would all go down.  I ended the explanation with a bit of a poke I knew she was not going to like:

“...and like hell I am wearing a gown.”

My friend’s face dropped and her pupils centered, she was obviously offended in some way, or maybe just confused?  She delved:

“Well, what do you mean?  What are you going to wear?”

I described my supposed black pant suit with red flowers.  

“Well, just to tell you now, people are going to think it odd.  And you may get in trouble.”

I hesitate to say it, but I live for these debates, so we went head to head on this touchy subject, eventually coming to no conclusion or agreement, as it tends to happen with conversations of art, freedom, and censorship.  She will do her thing, and I will do mine.  her reaction has been plaguing me so I did some research trying to find some examples of classical musicians who went against the norm and stepped outside of tradition.

The most discussed example I could find was from 2011.  Yuja Wang, an infamous concert pianist, was being blasted and equally applauded for wearing a less than formal skimpy orange dress for her performance at the Hollywood Bowl.  Here is a great photograph of the scandalous event.

This photograph is great because of the disapproving gentleman behind her.  This dress got so much press from this event, it shattered the classical music image for that window of a week.  There was a plethora of critiques which ranged a wide spectrum: 

“I cannot believe she wore that!” 

“Good for her, being herself on stage.”  

“She thinks she can do whatever she wants because she has made it as a classical musician.”

“It is a feminist move.”

And so on... I am not quite sure how I feel about the orange dress but I like that she did something as an individual, hopefully not for the attention, but more for artistic reasoning.  This is something I would like to see in the future of classical music.  More bold decisions, less tradition and rules.  Of course we are speaking only of what to wear, but the possibilities are endless for what can be represented through the music and the art mixed together.  I can see it going very wrong, but I would at least like to see an effort.  Why not explore what more a performance can be?   

Heres the 2011 article.

Atlanta Symphony update / WiFi and Music

One of the places I can call "home" is Atlanta. Due to that, I'm personally chagrined to write here that the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra remains locked out. There has reportedly been some progress made in the health care negotiations, but unfortunately, several other areas of negotiation are at an impasse.

http://artsculture.blog.ajc.com/2014/10/24/limited-progress-reported-in-atlanta-sympony-mediated-contract-negotiations/

---------------------------------------------------------------------

In happier news, an eclectic collection of instrumentalists recently used the WiFi in several NY subway stops to perform together. This feels like the spirit of Eric Whitacre's virtual choirs to me, but instead of many performances being carefully edited together in a production studio long after each individual performance occurred, this performance occurred simultaneously for all performers and for those audience members lucky enough to be strolling by at the right moment.

As a collaborative pianist, I admit to a bit of professional discomfort with technology. The ideal performance setting for Art Song is dogmatically taken to include the following characteristics: acoustic piano (grand absolutely required, Steinway label optional but preferred), live well-dressed pianist (muted colors or black only), no means of amplification for any musician, live well-dressed vocalist, acoustically-live hall and appreciatively passive audience (also preferably well-dressed).  A departure from any of these items is viewed as suspect or impolite at best, and as an unacceptable bastardization of the hallowed composers' original intents at worst.  The use of recording technology to disseminate performances seems to be barely accepted, and even in that, is regarded as unquestioningly inferior to the original live performance. 

Dogma gives structure, but structure in this context can also prevent natural evolution. I would wager that the violinist and cellist shown here have likely practiced a fair amount of Bach in the course of their training.  And yet, here they are in performance with a theremin player and vocal beat-boxer, and there continue to be no reports of any long-dead composer spinning in his or her grave. The self-appointed guardians of the American high-art tradition will likely look down their noses at this endeavor, but as for me?  I love this idea, both in terms of the specifics of what they did, and in terms of the general idea of embracing technology as musicians.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/signal-strength-connects-underground-ensemble-in-nine-subway-stations/?_php=true&_type=blogs&ref=music&_r=0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6PhsrcO80g 

Study Questions for Hewett, "Music: Healing the Rift"

Introduction

1.      Although Hewett examines the entire musical realm, he defines his discourse in terms of Western classical music. Why?

2.     Why is the term “world music” a misnomer?

3.     What does Hewett see as a reason for the “unhealthily hermetic character” of modern music?

4.     Why does Hewett see as ironic the attempt by modernists like Boulez to rebuild the musical realm?

Chapter 1  Depths and Shallows

1. Historically, in what regard has its social function been an important component of music’s identity?
2. When music began to be transported from one location to another, what new formal aspect was created?
3. As the Age of Sentiment shifted criteria from taste to sincerity, how were musical forms affected? The notion of “pretty”?
4. What was lost as certain features of music became highlighted for particular attention?
5. What ironies are suggested when Couperin is accepted into the canon while Liszt in not?
6. Is all folk music admired?
7. What is the artistic response to a middle class that does not want to be highbrow all the time?
8. “In traditional societies, music cannot be a matter of personal choice.” Why?
9. Enumerate other ways in which our Western conception of music differs from that of traditional societies.

Chapter 2  Words, Words, Words

1. In what regard is music “cultural fly-paper”?
2. As music evolved from a public to a private endeavor, what changes did it undergo? Conversely, what changes emerged in the public music experience?
3. Characterize Stravinsky’s and Schoenberg’s opposing concepts of music’s content. Which 19^th-century figures would agree with one or the other of the two composers?
4. How did composers and promoters respond to music’s becoming, increasingly, the province of professionals?
5. How did 19^th-century musical trends develop in the 20^th century? 

Chapter 3  Things Fall Apart

1. How has classical music historically viewed the musical Other? In what regard is this view more complex that the view held by tradition musical cultures?
2. In addition to a gloomy Viennese mainstream, suggest a second vein in which modern music developed in the 1920s.
3. Before Western music embraces a novelty, it customarily neutralizes it. Which musical cultures was Western music able to embrace readily?  Which cultures, conversely, proved problematic? For what reasons?
4. As we read in Levine, “mass culture” poses problems for modern music. How was jazz regarded, positively and negatively, in the first decades of the 20^th century?
5. Hewett suggests an underlying cultural agenda behind Schoenberg’s 12-tone system. What is it? Why is his point curiously valid?
6. What qualities in Balkan folk music allowed Bartók to constitute his later compositions in a wholly different light?
7. In retrospect, what salient characteristic dominates the music of the 20^th century’s giants?

Chapter 4  Multiplicities

1. How did fascism and Stalinism respond to the modern?
2. How did mid-century composers respond to the absence of a simple, agreed-upon ordering of music?
3. How do middle-class audiences frequently respond to compositions that lack melody, harmony, tempo, or form?
4. What is the ironic result of the cult of “pure” music?
5. How do composers like Carter and Ligeti manage, in some regard, to make their music a collective experience?
6. How is Boulez’s highly mathematical system problematic in a way that Schoenberg’s is not?
7. How does one best describe the institutional unity shared by the highly personal constructions of modern composers? How does this differ from 19^th-century Vienna, for example?
8. What danger do we court in our neutrality? 

Chapter 5  Text, Body, Machines  Depths and Shallows

1. Explain the distinction that Hewett makes between craft and technology in modern music. 
2. In the first half of the 19^th century, sincerity and simplicity were acceptable modes of musical discourse. What spectre arose in the second half of the century? With what unfortunate and enduring results?
3. What key elements of classical music composition does electronic music eliminate? What “metaphysical duality” is lost as a result?
4. How does a score differ from a blueprint?
5. In their attitudes towards the score, how do contemporary composers and performers differ from their counterparts who worked before the end of the 18^th century?
6. The increased fetishization of the score has what result on performance?
7. What expressive need does the violence of modern music serve? What is its opposite?
8. Why did most mid-20^th-century composers ultimately abandon attempts at styles of notation that gave performers more choice?
9. In what respects are the solutions of John Cage, Luciano Berio, and others, problematic?
10. How have some composers attempted to reconfigure the relationship between text, performance, and audience? With what result?

Chapter 6  Authenticities

1. In its futile attempt to reconstitute a historical unity, what result has modern music achieved instead?
2. In what respects have the paradigms of modern music changed in the past 30 years? What are some characteristics of the recently new plurality?
3. Since so few specifics characterize the bulk of modern music, is it sufficient for it merely to aspire to seriousness?
4. What traps make authenticity a slippery criterion?
5. What contradictions inhere in discussions of the authenticity of world music?  Jazz? Baroque and classic repertoire?
6. When composers scrupulously avoid expressivity, what ironic result ensues?
7. When obliquity becomes a composer’s goal, what dangers lurk? 

Chapter 7  Expression Makes a Comeback

1. What reasons does Hewett offer for spending more time on modernist music than on neo-tonal music?
2. At the start of the modern era, when tonality was seen to be not a law of nature but a convention, what changes occurred in its status within a composer’s available choices? With what results?
3. How does Hewett characterize sentimentality? How does minimalism avoid genuine sentimentality?
4. Hewett describes the music of several American composers. Which are you moved to investigate? Why?
5. How does Hewett distinguish between discourse and gesture?
6. What lay behind the 19^th-century dream of a music without conventions? As modernism strove to realize that dream, what new conventions did it create?
7. What characterizes modernism’s fraught relationship with the past? 

Chapter 8  The New Naivety

1. In modernism’s continuing dialogue with the past, what form of memory produces a deep discomfort?
2. What other processes tinge the “desire to re-enter a lost paradise” that characterizes the new tonality?
3. Repeated patterns, and references to tonality, make possible un-classical classical composers. For all that they reject, what do they still desire?
4. What function did the “web of allusion” serve during the period of common practice?
5. What does Hewett see as the result of a musical discourse consisting solely of evocations?
6. How have the sampler and the fader affected modern music? 

Chapter 9  Rediscovering Music

1. When it seeks public funding, what double bind does classical music encounter?
2. When music loses its social function and becomes an autonomous realm, how do performers and listeners then participate?
3. How is modern music faring in its strenuous efforts to maintain the integrity of its realm and not be taken over by expressivity, evocation, words, and images?
4. Discuss the two parodic inversions that music has undergone in the past decade?
5. What is the unspoken assumption of their music that composers fail to question? Why is this dangerous?
6. Why does Hewett feel that Western classical music offers the last best hope for the future of music? How do you evaluate his reasons for denying comparable status to one or another of the rival claimants for musical “depth”.
7. How is Hewett able to state that classical music is both historical and contemporary?
8. Within the concept that music only serves us well when we submit to it, what advantages does classical music hold over other musical practices?
9. What results will ensue if and when we are able to make musical culture active again rather than passive?
10. What advantages are there to being musically bilingual? Why does Hewett embrace this condition?
11. Hewett invokes Leonardo and Jung to suggest an essential component that is missing from our contemporary experience of music. What is that component?  How are we to compensate for its lack?

Final Project

The Future of Classical Music
Final Project

Groundwork Deadline: Tuesday, November 4, 2014, 11 a.m.

Final Project Deadline: Tuesday, November 25, 2014, 11 a.m.

Groundwork Goals

1. Begin learning how to write for Wikipedia
2. Create and populate your user page
3. Formulate 3 – 5 possible topics for your Final Project
4. Enter your topics on the Class Blog

1. Begin learning how to write for Wikipedia

• Figure out what a “wiki” actually is
• Create your own account on http://wikipedia.org
• Bookmark and read the following:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial

2. Create and populate your user page

• Read:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_page

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_page_design_center

• Create your user page.

NB. The easiest way to accomplish much of the formatting is to copy it from another “Edit” page to your own.

* Place the following links on your watchlist:

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ijmusic/Futureclass

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ijmusic/Vision_of_music's_future

 * Add your name, using 4 tildes (~~~~) to the list of class members at    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ijmusic/Futureclass

* Add some information to your user page, like

• Your musical background and outlook
• The music you are most interested in
• A link to your own home page

* Give each section an appropriate heading

* Add the Longy box if you like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_by_alma_mater:_Longy_School_of_Music

3. Formulate 3 – 5 possible topics for your Final Project

      Wikipedia boasts millions of entries on a variety of topics, but the music of our time needs greater representation. What aspects of your music does it lack? Appropriate definitions? Noted artists? Significant regional developments?

Keeping in mind the Guidelines that you have read, devise 3 – 5 possible entries that you might compose as your Final Project. Wikipedia adheres to strict guidelines: an army of editors patrols daily! They will summarily delete all copyright material, which includes text, music, and pictures copied verbatim from another Web site or book. Articles with only one source are marked for “Speedy Deletion.”

      You will need to document your sources: remember, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, thus, a secondary and tertiary source. When you jump through all the hoops, though, you are rewarded: Immortality!

      Voceditenore has been our angel. Reading and heeding the following information will save you a lot of aggravation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ijmusic/Futureclass

4. Enter your topics to the Class Blog before 11 a.m. on Tuesday, November 4, 2014.

Late entries not accepted.

Final Project

Final Project Deadline: Tuesday, November 25, 2014, 11 a.m.

1. Post to our Wikipedia User page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ijmusic/Futureclass, the link to one or both of the following:

* A new article

* A substantive addition to, or edit of, an existing article

(See also http://www.courses.dce.harvard.edu/~musie145/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Electroclass.)

2. Send me, by e-mail, your list of blog and Wikipedia entries, with URLs.

Late submissions not accepted.