robespeeair rants about music history for an eternity
Music history is a class most music majors at my school take once they’ve gone through all three levels of basic music theory. It’s pretty much so a catch all for people who don’t want to take AP music theory or did so their freshman year. Our teacher just went on leave for the rest of the year, and he has a replacement, but that guy doesn’t come till next week, leaving us two days with a random sub. For that, me and this other dude got put on a simple project: present on Wagner until the new guy comes along.
Now, I’ve presented on stuff for music history while the teacher’s been out before, and it’s not that bad. You pretty much talk about the assigned topic and have everyone listen to some music. From time to time there’s a worksheet, but nobody likes getting handed work by a student, so it’s usually just a little explaining and you’re done. The whole Wagner thing was suppose to be like that, but it wasn’t. That’s this story.
Me and the person I was working with don’t get along, but we used to. I’m not sure what happened, but he told me it was my fault and left it at that. Obviously, he’s a superb communicator. He’s pretty elitist, even for a classical musician, and he thinks he’s better than me and everyone else in the class. I’m good at dealing with difficult types like that, however, because you kind of have to be as a woman in classical music. He seemed happy enough to work with me and put aside our personal stuff, however, and I wasn’t too concerned with the work we were going to be completing over spring break.
Fast forward to two days into spring break. I have other projects and stuff to do, so I haven’t given the music history thing any thought. Other dude has shared a google doc with me, though, so I decide to give it a look. He’s done literally all the work, which is strange considering we haven’t exactly discussed what opera we’re presenting on. He’s chosen an opera I’m not too into, but I go with it, because my opinion is besides the point. I text him that I’ll be presenting my own research on the history of the story (if that’s ok with him, of course), and he says that’s cool, and we don’t speak about the project again.
It’s important to recognize that I asked permission to present on everything I researched. I let him take the lead, because clearly he wanted it, and he still totally disregarded me in the end.
I walk into class early the day we’re supposed to start presenting, because I recognize that I’ve been trusted with some level of authority and have every intention of respecting it. My partner does this as well, which was a good start. He presents his research, and outright admits that he’ll be giving us zero information on Wagner’s notorious anti antisemitism. This is so problematic, because music history spends a lot of time denying it in the first place. I throw it into my half of the presentation because it should be talked about.
The opera which I didn’t choose bores the class to death. It’s musically hefty and opens with the lead soprano screaming in German for approximately half an hour. To make things worse, he hasn’t bothered to find a recording with English subtitles, probably because he has a “get on my level or perish” attitude. I try to drop some hints, like “maybe we should look at another piece,” or what have you, but this guy just isn’t listening to me. My friends are practically asleep, and honestly, so am I. No one leave the class excited to continue on Friday.
My plan for Friday is to politely ask my partner if we can present a different opera, or perhaps just call it quits entirely. But no. Motherfucker comes in with an entirely new lesson on electronic music? He has worksheets and stuff printed out, and he plans to collect them at the end of class like he’s our teacher or something. Firstly, to entirely commandeer an entire class period to teach without permission shows that you think you’re better than your peers. It’s not a good look. Especially enraging is the fact that I was supposed to be helping him, and that our teacher had literally given me permission to do so.The sub, who has no idea what’s going on, thinks me and all my friends have a huge attitude for not participating in his thing, because everyone else is. We try to tell them that there’s supposed to be a completely different thing going on and he’s just doing this presentation in some sort of power trip, but they’re not buying it.
The paper collecting thing is what gets me the most, because he has no access to anyone’s grades. He literally only did it to feel like he’s on a higher level than us. I knew full damn well that nothing was getting graded, so I just didn’t do it and didn’t give him the paper. A couple people handed their’s back blank, but I was the only one who outright recycled the thing. It didn’t have anything to do with him being a bad partner at that point: I just couldn’t give him the satisfaction of being better than everyone, and that’s what he wanted.
