Intellectual and Cultural Events Journal

Professor Smith's Sabbatical Report on Flying and Singing

from JoeUser Forums
Although I was fascinated by what he said about the physics of flying and singing, I was even more interested in what Professor Smith pointed out about the tension between the form and the content of the song cycle by Shubert, Winterreise. The Romantic movement was one that often focused on human emotion, and the singer's feelings of unrequited love were nothing short of melodramatic. I found myself thinking of what Rosalind says to Orlando in Shakespeare's As You Like It when he says that he will die if she does not return his love: "The poor world is almost six thousand years old," she says, "and in all this time, there was not any man who died...in a love cause....Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love." At any rate, what Professor Smith pointed out so eloquently is that Shubert's music acts as a rational, technical counterpoint to the depressed complaints of the singer who has lost his love. The singer's words may wallow in self pity, but the song he sings is carefully crafted to present an intellectual contrast to his emotion. This interplay, this tension between form and content, is what excites me most about literature and the other arts. As Virginia Woolf says about painting in her novel To The Lighthouse, "Beautiful and bright it should be on the surface, feathery and evanescent, one colour melting into another like the colours on a butterfly's wing; but beneath the fabric must be clamped together with bolts of iron. It was a thing that you could ruffle with your breath; and a thing that you could not dislodge with a team of horses." Art consists not only in what we first notice about a piece. Sometimes its inner workings are even more impressive than its surface qualities.
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Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
I thought the connection that Professor Smith showed between singing and flying an airplane was interesting. I feel like things can sometimes become more symbolic or important to you if you can somehow link them to another one of your loves in life. So the fact that dreading his sabbatical at first, he came to link his love of singing and music to flying a plane which he had someday hoped to do, and enjoy his sabbatical very much.
This provost's forum I liked because it was interesting and had a more light mood. Professor Smith used little jokes and pictures to make the information about flying more interesting to the audience. I personally also liked the fact that his speech included fragments of music from Winterreise, because it added the cultural dimension of music to the program. Not to mention that I enjoyed listening to the lyrics in German, for I am taking German, but for me it still would be impossible to understand without the aide.
I also found the sad depressing lyrics sometimes out of place with Schubert’s musical composition, but it was intriguing to hear the music and then listen to how Prof. Smith would analyze it. I am not experienced with analyzing music, but i suppose that it is alot like analyzing a short story which is interresting as well.
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
As both a pilot and a musician I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Smith's lecture on his sabbitcal and how he was able to take the time to relate flying with singing. In fact there are many other relationships that could be analyzed, but Dr. Smith decided to take Bernoulli's Principle, the fundamental theory of how heavier-than-air flight is achieved, and apply it to the voice. I would like to further analyze the intricacies of flying and singing. First, let me say that flying and singing are the most rewarding things that I do. Part of the reward comes from just knowing that I have made it this far. Attaining a Private Pilot Liscense is a very difficult process in and of itself. I was required to have fourty hours of total flight time, ten of which had to be solo time, or flying by myself. I also had to pass a written test that took over two hours to complete, exemplify knowledge of the airplane's operating systems, pass a medical exam stating that I am physically fit to fly the airplane, show superior knowledge of safety standards for flight, fly with a check pilot, prove that I can properly plot a course using a map (known as a sectional chart), and a plotter. Overall, I must prove that I can efficiently aviate, navigate, and communicate all at the same time. With music I must be able to proplerly communicate the lyrics in a way that tells a story, otherwise I am just singing a bunch of notes put to a constant beat. Music happens when the singer is able to tell the story as if it where a first person, real life occurance.

Although Dr. Smith and only scratched the surface of our common interests, I believe Dr. Smith did a marvelous job in his presentation. I look forward to his full presentation of Winterreise on Sunday.
Galactic Civilizations III