My copy of Finale finally arrived yesterday, and it even came with a free designer-blue glass. I presume that if I drink out of it while composing, my work will be of a higher caliber. I spent yesterday afternoon printing out the user manual in its entirety. It will take about nine hundred pages (front and back) and a good deal of toner, but should be a great reference source for the future (as well as a much easier read for me). If anyone ever wants to borrow the hard-copy, just let me know.

Peril's Gate and the calendar arrived on schedule as well. I bought a cat-themed calendar because there was nothing else sufficiently manly or artsy enough to order.

There's something intoxicating about getting a brand new hardbound book of several pounds and seven hundred odd pages, especially when you know it's going to be good. This will sidetrack my other current reading assignment, The Muse That Sings, which I'll talk about on a later date.

Another pedagogy class yesterday. I think the main reason that it's ineffective as a class is that we're wading through tons of minutia and examples of the materials to be taught, but we don't discuss it from the pedagogic standpoint, or study the overarching premises behind the examples. It presents a splintered view of the subject from the outside, when we should be studying from the inside-out. The situation reminds me of the old S. Gross cartoon where several blind men are in an elephant pen trying to figure out what an elephant is through touch alone. They each give their conclusion ("An elephant is like a tree trunk." or "An elephant is like a long wiggly vine"), and then the final guy (who is kneeling in spoor) concludes, "An elephant is soft and mushy".

"If I had the power, I would insist on all oratorios being sung in the costume of the period -- with a possible exception in the case of The Creation." - Ernest Newman