You know you're a music geek (or just a geek) when...
Guillaume's Travel Journal - October 19, 2006
... the newest followers of your blogging adventures happen to be people from the University of Lancaster Music Society (including alumni of said association that I've never met and even the choir director, believe it or not). Anyhow, good to have you all along. I would call everyone's attention to the fact that my composition recordings have been updated in the side column, so if you have yet to sample what Guillaume's compositions are like, by all means, treat/torture yourself.
One of the things that the Lancaster area seems at least decent at doing is putting on concerts. While it doesn't quite compare to Edmonton, the classical offerings are much higher than in a city of similar size in Canada, say... Lethbridge. This evening I attended a performance of Franz Joseph Haydn's The Creation with the Chetham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, part of the 38th season of the Lancaster International Concert Series. Sounds pretty fancy, doesn't it?
Well, one thing dawned on me as soon as I entered the concert hall (which, by the way, has nothing on Convocation Hall, nevermind the Jubilee or Winspear) was that everybody in the Chetham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus was basically under 25. Now, I'm not one to automatically discredit a performance simply because it's being given by a youth orchestra, but somewhere I guess I thought the words "International Concert Series" and "local youth orchestra" were more or less mutually exclusive. That being said, the orchestra did offer a pretty good performance (though the star of the evening was unquestionably the featured baritone) - a few rhythmic imprecisions now and then, a few wrong notes in French Horns somewhere and a questionable first minute, but besides that, the level of performance was really quite good. Maybe not "international standard" good, but enjoyable nonetheless. The only real beef I have with the orchestra comes with the musical interpretation that was being commanded by the conductor, which I thought definitely lacked balance in his violin-heavy and cello- and doublebass-deprived orchestra, not to mention that he decidely wasn't too subtle with the bass trombone halfway through the second part (I tend to think it comes in subtly to underscore the baritone's solo with a pedal point. According to Mr. Paul McCreesh, it not only underscores, but also harshly steals the show.). The conductor seemed like a fantastic choral director - whenever the choir had to partake in the music, I thought his gestures were precise, readable and on-the-spot. It's his orchestral conducting that I'm left wondering "why oh why" - had I been playing in that orchestra, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have had a clue what he wanted out of me half the time. Most of it just seemed too imprecise and vague, certainly compared to when he was leading the choir. Sadly, it often kinda looked as if he was more into his aerobics routine (the arm flailing and knee-springing full body motion probably had something to do with it) than he was a certain page of the The Creation.
On the whole though, most of my above complaints is just my musical snobbery coming through. The performance was enjoyable - my biggest complaint has to do with them not giving us an intermission with which to digest what we've heard, and I feel I'm hardly alone in fielding this request.
Aside from this, I've been spending a lot of time with the Debating Society people this week. Tuesday night was Lazer-Tag Tuesday, so we went over to Morecambe (basically northwest of Lancaster, actually by the sea) for that. On the way back, we stopped at Wetherspoon's (this fantastic, inexpensive pub) where I got a hearty dinner and a pint of beer for 5£ (that's roughly 10.50$ Canadian for an Earls-sized meal and a pint). These debate peeps are absolutely wonderful people, and I totally love being in their company, so just bear that in mind as you read what comes next.
On wednesday I attended 'Debate training'. I took a few key concepts out of this session:
1) The Lancaster University Debating Society fully acknowledges that they are nowhere near a solid debating club - well, I'm glad they know this themselves, because I would hate to have to tell them. Dan, the official club Training Officer, admitted to us all that he was the most experienced debater in club, having about 1.5 years of experience and having attended 6 tournaments in that time. When that's as deep as your club runs, its understandable that quality debating where I might learn something on a regular basis maybe shoudn't be expected. We did a mini, pseudo-CP style debate at the end of the training session and I basically got up with nothing to say (on opposition, I was supposed to speak second, but then my partner politely told me as he was being asked to give a speech that he had nothing, so in good ol' "pro-of-the-team" fashion, you take a hit for your novice) and basically made up the core of my refutation as I went along and had next to nothing for constructive arguments. Basically, I gave a 5-minute speech with 4.5 minutes of refutation and a final 30 seconds of 'constructive' (and I use the term loosely) arguments, only to be later told by Dan that I had 'already developed a really good style' (gee, I wonder why, I'm guessing he missed the part about me doing this for three years) and that my arguments were 'bloody brilliant' (which I'm not exactly sure they were - I basically just took out the standard "you're stigmatizing this group and that's bad" and "businesses have a right to determine their own biz model"), but that I just needed to 'work on balancing construtive and rebuttal materials' (yep, totally agree with you there buddy, that was one lopsided speech I gave, though surely having 2 seconds to prepare my speech had something to do with that). It troubles me that, around here, I can be told I'm 'bloody brilliant' when I'm making my argument as I think of it as I'm speaking.
2) The Lancaster University Debating Society is not exactly well-versed in competitive debate tactics - I'm pretty sure this is a direct result of not having anyone with good experience around for longer periods of time (this is a primarily undergrad university), but the strategies that were being given on 'how to win a round' would probably be more accurately described as 'how not to lose a round'. Summary speeches were explained in terms of just collapsing the debate into a 5-minute speech, not in terms of what gives Proposition II the win versus Opposition I / II or Proposition I (or OppII win, given the case). The rule of thumb "have three arguments for your speech" is seen as law by the more advanced debaters as opposed to a guiding notion for novice debaters. If I'm only speaking for 5 minutes and that I need to do some quality refutation in there somewhere, I'm only giving two constructive fleshed-out points, to allow for time to adequatly address other stuff. There was no mention of using POI's to lay claim to arguments in a BP-style round, no guidelines for "who should be asking the POI's when", and I got weird glances when I started talking with my partner in-round about what arguments needed to be made in his speech, as if talking to your partner about strategy is, at very least, uncommon. Teamwork was defined as "referring to what your partner said earlier or what your partner will say later". All of this lack of competitive sense is stirring quite an issue with me - more on that later.
3) The Lancaster University Debating Society does not have a lot of money - this is the reason the LUDS likes to give for its lack of success at tournaments. This is appreciable to some extent; if the UADS were funded like the UBCDS or Hart House are funded, we'd have more opportunities to refine our skills. What I don't like about the attitude here is that people seem to blame the absence of money for all their weaknesses, but then operate the society on a system that allows only select members to gain tournament debating experience in a way that bears no semblance to equitable division of funds among those interested in improving (essentially, the exec sets the number of teams that will go to x tournament, and then pays most of the costs for that number of teams to go). This system only further perpetuates the lack-of-money equals lack-of-opportunities scenario. What further annoys me is that they don't seem willing to do anything about it - I've chatted about some of the fundraising the UADS does to help support our initiatives, and the answer I get is basically 'nah'. Then again, the people who are likely to go to tournaments under the present scheme are the ones giving this answer, so I can see why they might be reluctant to change it (not because they would supposedly be greedy, but because they have earned their place among the preferred debaters under the current system and a change would necessarily mean giving that up in favour of more open participation, at higher individual costs). As far as I can tell, hosting a high school tournament some weekend as a fundraiser is simply out of the question (despite other universities doing it).
So now, to the heart of the issue. Most people who read this blog are very aware of my debate-training activities I've been undertaking in the past two years. The question I submit to all my readers is the following: should I stand up and offer to help these people at least advance their strategic skills and risk being the "know-it-all foreigner" who comes in and messes everything up, or should I sit quietly and keep on watching them continuously partake in debates that I know they could do better at if they only had a bit more strategic sense? Like I said earlier, these are good people, I don't want to offend or alienate them, the Society just suffers from the fact that nobody ever sticks around long enough to acquire a considerable practical experience (undergrad degrees last 3 years here, and this is a primarily undergrad university).
Anyhow, I'm speaking on monday against the motion 'abandon the London 2012 Olympics' for the debate meeting (other problem: main debate meetings consist of watching debate, not learning how to debate.). Who knows what might come out of that.
... the newest followers of your blogging adventures happen to be people from the University of Lancaster Music Society (including alumni of said association that I've never met and even the choir director, believe it or not). Anyhow, good to have you all along. I would call everyone's attention to the fact that my composition recordings have been updated in the side column, so if you have yet to sample what Guillaume's compositions are like, by all means, treat/torture yourself.
One of the things that the Lancaster area seems at least decent at doing is putting on concerts. While it doesn't quite compare to Edmonton, the classical offerings are much higher than in a city of similar size in Canada, say... Lethbridge. This evening I attended a performance of Franz Joseph Haydn's The Creation with the Chetham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, part of the 38th season of the Lancaster International Concert Series. Sounds pretty fancy, doesn't it?
Well, one thing dawned on me as soon as I entered the concert hall (which, by the way, has nothing on Convocation Hall, nevermind the Jubilee or Winspear) was that everybody in the Chetham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus was basically under 25. Now, I'm not one to automatically discredit a performance simply because it's being given by a youth orchestra, but somewhere I guess I thought the words "International Concert Series" and "local youth orchestra" were more or less mutually exclusive. That being said, the orchestra did offer a pretty good performance (though the star of the evening was unquestionably the featured baritone) - a few rhythmic imprecisions now and then, a few wrong notes in French Horns somewhere and a questionable first minute, but besides that, the level of performance was really quite good. Maybe not "international standard" good, but enjoyable nonetheless. The only real beef I have with the orchestra comes with the musical interpretation that was being commanded by the conductor, which I thought definitely lacked balance in his violin-heavy and cello- and doublebass-deprived orchestra, not to mention that he decidely wasn't too subtle with the bass trombone halfway through the second part (I tend to think it comes in subtly to underscore the baritone's solo with a pedal point. According to Mr. Paul McCreesh, it not only underscores, but also harshly steals the show.). The conductor seemed like a fantastic choral director - whenever the choir had to partake in the music, I thought his gestures were precise, readable and on-the-spot. It's his orchestral conducting that I'm left wondering "why oh why" - had I been playing in that orchestra, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have had a clue what he wanted out of me half the time. Most of it just seemed too imprecise and vague, certainly compared to when he was leading the choir. Sadly, it often kinda looked as if he was more into his aerobics routine (the arm flailing and knee-springing full body motion probably had something to do with it) than he was a certain page of the The Creation.
On the whole though, most of my above complaints is just my musical snobbery coming through. The performance was enjoyable - my biggest complaint has to do with them not giving us an intermission with which to digest what we've heard, and I feel I'm hardly alone in fielding this request.
Aside from this, I've been spending a lot of time with the Debating Society people this week. Tuesday night was Lazer-Tag Tuesday, so we went over to Morecambe (basically northwest of Lancaster, actually by the sea) for that. On the way back, we stopped at Wetherspoon's (this fantastic, inexpensive pub) where I got a hearty dinner and a pint of beer for 5£ (that's roughly 10.50$ Canadian for an Earls-sized meal and a pint). These debate peeps are absolutely wonderful people, and I totally love being in their company, so just bear that in mind as you read what comes next.
On wednesday I attended 'Debate training'. I took a few key concepts out of this session:
1) The Lancaster University Debating Society fully acknowledges that they are nowhere near a solid debating club - well, I'm glad they know this themselves, because I would hate to have to tell them. Dan, the official club Training Officer, admitted to us all that he was the most experienced debater in club, having about 1.5 years of experience and having attended 6 tournaments in that time. When that's as deep as your club runs, its understandable that quality debating where I might learn something on a regular basis maybe shoudn't be expected. We did a mini, pseudo-CP style debate at the end of the training session and I basically got up with nothing to say (on opposition, I was supposed to speak second, but then my partner politely told me as he was being asked to give a speech that he had nothing, so in good ol' "pro-of-the-team" fashion, you take a hit for your novice) and basically made up the core of my refutation as I went along and had next to nothing for constructive arguments. Basically, I gave a 5-minute speech with 4.5 minutes of refutation and a final 30 seconds of 'constructive' (and I use the term loosely) arguments, only to be later told by Dan that I had 'already developed a really good style' (gee, I wonder why, I'm guessing he missed the part about me doing this for three years) and that my arguments were 'bloody brilliant' (which I'm not exactly sure they were - I basically just took out the standard "you're stigmatizing this group and that's bad" and "businesses have a right to determine their own biz model"), but that I just needed to 'work on balancing construtive and rebuttal materials' (yep, totally agree with you there buddy, that was one lopsided speech I gave, though surely having 2 seconds to prepare my speech had something to do with that). It troubles me that, around here, I can be told I'm 'bloody brilliant' when I'm making my argument as I think of it as I'm speaking.
2) The Lancaster University Debating Society is not exactly well-versed in competitive debate tactics - I'm pretty sure this is a direct result of not having anyone with good experience around for longer periods of time (this is a primarily undergrad university), but the strategies that were being given on 'how to win a round' would probably be more accurately described as 'how not to lose a round'. Summary speeches were explained in terms of just collapsing the debate into a 5-minute speech, not in terms of what gives Proposition II the win versus Opposition I / II or Proposition I (or OppII win, given the case). The rule of thumb "have three arguments for your speech" is seen as law by the more advanced debaters as opposed to a guiding notion for novice debaters. If I'm only speaking for 5 minutes and that I need to do some quality refutation in there somewhere, I'm only giving two constructive fleshed-out points, to allow for time to adequatly address other stuff. There was no mention of using POI's to lay claim to arguments in a BP-style round, no guidelines for "who should be asking the POI's when", and I got weird glances when I started talking with my partner in-round about what arguments needed to be made in his speech, as if talking to your partner about strategy is, at very least, uncommon. Teamwork was defined as "referring to what your partner said earlier or what your partner will say later". All of this lack of competitive sense is stirring quite an issue with me - more on that later.
3) The Lancaster University Debating Society does not have a lot of money - this is the reason the LUDS likes to give for its lack of success at tournaments. This is appreciable to some extent; if the UADS were funded like the UBCDS or Hart House are funded, we'd have more opportunities to refine our skills. What I don't like about the attitude here is that people seem to blame the absence of money for all their weaknesses, but then operate the society on a system that allows only select members to gain tournament debating experience in a way that bears no semblance to equitable division of funds among those interested in improving (essentially, the exec sets the number of teams that will go to x tournament, and then pays most of the costs for that number of teams to go). This system only further perpetuates the lack-of-money equals lack-of-opportunities scenario. What further annoys me is that they don't seem willing to do anything about it - I've chatted about some of the fundraising the UADS does to help support our initiatives, and the answer I get is basically 'nah'. Then again, the people who are likely to go to tournaments under the present scheme are the ones giving this answer, so I can see why they might be reluctant to change it (not because they would supposedly be greedy, but because they have earned their place among the preferred debaters under the current system and a change would necessarily mean giving that up in favour of more open participation, at higher individual costs). As far as I can tell, hosting a high school tournament some weekend as a fundraiser is simply out of the question (despite other universities doing it).
So now, to the heart of the issue. Most people who read this blog are very aware of my debate-training activities I've been undertaking in the past two years. The question I submit to all my readers is the following: should I stand up and offer to help these people at least advance their strategic skills and risk being the "know-it-all foreigner" who comes in and messes everything up, or should I sit quietly and keep on watching them continuously partake in debates that I know they could do better at if they only had a bit more strategic sense? Like I said earlier, these are good people, I don't want to offend or alienate them, the Society just suffers from the fact that nobody ever sticks around long enough to acquire a considerable practical experience (undergrad degrees last 3 years here, and this is a primarily undergrad university).
Anyhow, I'm speaking on monday against the motion 'abandon the London 2012 Olympics' for the debate meeting (other problem: main debate meetings consist of watching debate, not learning how to debate.). Who knows what might come out of that.
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