I finally got my first rejection letter for one of my job applications that I sent out nearly five months ago. Such is the snail�s pace of the academic job search. Except when it�s rapid, as with a friend who found herself moving on three weeks notice a couple of years back. In general, if you haven�t heard anything in a month or so, you can assume rejection. It�s nice when someone bothers to write you a letter though.

I applied only to a handful of A-list jobs this year, since I�m not yet done. This meant I was pretty much setting myself up for rejection across the board � quite honestly, I kind of wanted to. It will be nice to have some time to regroup and get a head start on publishing projects. I also have this idea that I will take AJ to the beach with my parents for a few weeks, who would do some babysitting while I did research on some projects down south. But I�m not allowed to think of anything new until everything old is signed sealed and delivered. As of last Friday, my desk is cleared of everything but the diss. Now it�s all about focus.

The job for which I was rejected today was the one in which I was the least interested. They received more than 100 applications and hired someone who was already in a tenure-track job at a Research 1 (top tier) school. This tells me that my c.v. was probably not even looked at. The two jobs I was most interested in actually ended their searches without hiring � something I�ve heard only through the grapevine one must build in order to figure out what is happening. One of these schools came out with a new job description which indicates that they�re looking for someone further along in her career without actually stating that outright. The other is still a bit of a mystery.

All of this information confirms that I was right not to squander too much time on job applications before I was finished. Since I can afford to wait a year, it seems like it�s a good idea to do so. I�ll be better off with a diploma in hand; better still with a diploma and a book contract and maybe an article or two.

* * * * *

Sunday we dropped AJ off at my mother-in-law�s and headed downtown for a fantastic concert of viola da gambas in honor of the 350th birthday of Marin Marais. The ensemble included three of the best gambaists in the country � my friend C (who played at our wedding); M, with whom I worked at my last job and who is now a lecturer in my department; and W, whom I also hired for a couple of gigs at my last job � as well as a harpsichord and theorbo. Between my work with Baroque instrumentalists, my early music singing gigs and church jobs and my university connections, I had met almost everyone in the audience. Such is the early music mafia, especially here in Chicago. After we sat down, I noticed my department chair (who is also on my thesis committee) across the aisle. I hadn�t talked to him since I turned down the teaching job he offered me, so it was good to have a chance to make nice with him. He�s an interesting guy and my husband enjoyed meeting him as well.

An all gamba concert is a difficult proposition, because there is little timbral variety and because gambas don�t even have much of a dynamic range � the construction of the resonating body of the instrument combined with the gut strings give everything a kind of muffled sound. But the lively acoustics of the church, which served as the recital hall, helped it out, as did the incredible enthusiasm and musicianship of the players.

The first piece on the program was a lovely trio for 3 gambas by Purcell. This was my husband�s favorite piece on the program, in part, I think, because it was the only one without either the harpsichord or theorbo (which, if you are unfamiliar with this particularly ungainly instrument, is a sort of bass lute). I was less enthralled, mainly because W. was having a serious tuning problem. At some point all early music concerts are about tuning. Even without the famously persnickety wind instruments, gut strings have a tendency to stay in tune for about three seconds. And since gambas have frets, which fix the pitches in a way that fretless instruments like violins do not, if you get off on the wrong pitch, there�s nothing you can do about it until you can stop and retune.

The body of the program was drawn from the late seventeenth century. There were two pieces by Bach, a short Handel suite that was almost completely contrafacted from The Messiah (imagine �For Unto Us� and �All We Like Sheep� played by gambas and you�d have parts one and three of the three-part suite) and a lovely dance suite by 17th c. German composer Theodor Schwartzkopff, whom I�d never heard of. Most of his music has been lost to history. This suite had an especially beautiful Chaconne. The last piece was a dance piece by Marin Marais himself, which was clearly the centerpiece of the program. The players had huge grins on their faces while they played and it was impossible not to be riveted.

Mostly, though, it was just so nice to be out in a beautiful part of town on a nice spring day hearing lovely music with my husband. We haven�t done that in entirely too long.

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