A week ago I had the most wonderful conversation with a teenager. While visiting me at work, her family seemed smitten with the parlor organ. Noticing the music book's small size, this teenage girl asked about it, and this launched us into an exciting conversation about Sunday Schools, revivals, and 19th century hymnody.
I think we reached the high point/nerd threshold when we talked about how hymns' texts and tunes were written to be interchangeable. I taught her about metrical and tune indices, and she was actually excited to learn that the TUNE NAME is the thing in caps and number and dot combinations like 8.6.8.6. (CM) describe the beats in each phrase.
I was so happy for the rest of the day. I love talking about hymnody, but I haven't really done so since college. In fact, the only reason I know this stuff is because I took too many church music classes. (Thank you Greg Scheer.) Anyway, I guess sometimes you do get to use the "useless" information you absorb in school.
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