limitations.

Hm...hi everyone. First I wanted to apologize for the double invitations. I was confused and accidentally invited you to be authors instead of readers. I see this mishap as the beginning of a great relationship with Blogger...sigh.

The topic choice for my research blog has been a difficult one and is, unfortunately, still ongoing. There were several ideas that I was initially drawn to until I considered the San Diego field work limitation. These were mostly outside of my own musical world, but the one that I kept coming back to was a topic inspired by one of my old piano teachers.
This teacher, despite having already attained a DMA in piano performance, returned to school to work on a PhD in ethnomusicology. He was inspired from spending some years teaching at a a secondary school at a Navajo reservation. My knowledge is severely limited, but I was always fascinated by the few stories he shared. One of my favorites was when he was left to teach a class of "problem adolescents". He had introduced them to J.S. Bach's fugues and encouraged them to create their own, despite having no knowledge of written music in the Western tradition. And they did.
Anyway, there are many topics within this idea as there are many tribes. I looked up the reservations in the area and grew overwhelmed. As interesting at it is to explore such a new musical sphere, is this really feasible?

So then I considered just playing it safe and staying more with what I know and delving into more specific topics. This would be limited to music of the Western classical tradition. Some ideas I've been considering include: the perceived elitism of Western art music, the compositional culture in creating "NEW" music particularly at UCSD, and the performance tradition and the societal pressure that comes along with it.

I've also been trying to think of topics pertaining to a more psychological viewpoint. Oh yea...psychology... my other major. Perhaps involving movie/tv/game soundtracks and its effects or how culture plays a role in music perception (Ex. it's been argued that dissonance, as we mostly understand it, is a construct of Western tradition. Schoenberg attempted to eradicate dissonance using serial methods).

I don't know. I find them all very interesting.

Anyway, related to the performance idea:

OUCH.
The piece here is Chopin's "Thirds" Etude, Op. 25, No. 6 attempted during the 1986 Tchaikovsky Competition.
I hate the title of the video though. This man is not a failure. This piece is extremely difficult and added with the numerous pressures that he must endure, I can only commend him for his efforts. Apologies to the man in the video -  I sincerely hope he has moved on from this. Of course, here I am perpetuating this video that depicts what may possibly have been one of the most horrifying moments of his life.

The wonders of youtube.