spynotes ::
  October 12, 2006
Musica ficta

Two inches of snow. Two! That�s what we got at home. It�s mostly melted now, the temperature having warmed up to a balmy 34 degrees (give or take a brisk wind).

I wasn�t home. I was standing in front of my class when the snow began in the city. I stopped in the middle of a discussion of Renaissance dancing so we could stare out the window and marvel at the weather. Chicago�s not exactly known for its temperate climate, but snow on October 12 is bad even by Chicago standards.

I missed AJ tearing around in the snow with two of his friends � everyone was out early and celebrating the weather. Snow! In October!

Inside my class there were madrigals and trumpet fanfares and one hastily muffled cell phone. The radiator hissed and banged steadily. Afterwards I watched the flurries from my office window while I uploaded coursework to my website. Students came and went. We talked about listening and musical architecture and missed assignments.

My noon appointment didn�t show, so I ran, leaping over broken sidewalks and optimistically throwing myself in front of cars pausing at stop signs, to catch the train, just making it in time. Unexpectedly, I�ll be able to pick up AJ from school. He�ll be wearing his puffy red coat and his black hat with the earflaps. I haven�t seen him like that since last March.

But until then, I�m listening to brass and choral music � Giovanni Gabrieli�s In ecclesiis, its florid alleluias accompanied by the rumbling of the train wheels down the track.

M, the countertenor and a former colleague, is singing long swooping lines in my left ear. It sounds like a sled sliding ever faster down an icy hill.

Snow! In October!

Alleluia.

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