Ode to immitative counterpoint...

Ah, history of western music, how i love you!

This is my third semester teaching an undergraduate course in music appreciation. Each semester begins with me bombarding poor unsuspecting (and largely uninterested) students with a crash course in medieval and renaissance music. I will refrain here from digressing into a diatribe on traditional musicological pedagogy and the challenges of making plainchant relevant to today's non-major student. What I will say, is that each semester, about two weeks into class, we come to Palestrina (dear old savior of polyphony and musical hero of the Council of Trent) and his famous Pope Marcellus Mass. Every time I play Palestrina's Agnus Dei from this mass, something in the unfolding of the first contrapuntal notes stops me in my tracks. Listening to this music is a spiritual experience for me and one that provides me with a sense of awe in the science and art of musical sound. I always play it for my students with the lights off and I always feel that when it is over, nothing I could possibly say, point out, lecture, instruct, or explain could do it justice. So I don't say anything, I just play it again (still in the dark...while students look at me as if I'm just a tad bit crazy...). There are no words.