🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 19 May 1995, Timothy Allen McLeod wrote:

> As a challenge to my students, I include a quote on the bottom
> of their monthly syllabus but intentionally leave off who it is
> credited to.  Their extra credit on the next scheduled test is
> to identify who the quote is from.  It's real easy to tie in
> some history this way and the students enjoy the challenge.

Tim,

That could be tough. I recall a music appreciation course I took in
college. On the final exam the prof included a separate section (which he
said was an experiment which wouldn't be weighted heavily in the grade)
in which he played excerpts of music we had not heard in the course. We
were to identify the composer, if possible, and the time period and
country of origin.

One of the excerpts puzzled me greatly. I found out later that it was
Stravinsky's _Circus Polka_ written for the Ringling Bros, Barnum and
Baily Circus entrance of the elephants.

Another was Prokofiev's "Variations on a Hebrew Theme" or something like
that, which was written during his three years in Paris when he was
influenced to try some styles unlike anything he did before or after. I
probably have the title messed up, but it's a very interesting piece, and
not easy to find in record stores.

And still another was a string quartet by Alois Haba, a Czech composer of
the 20th century, in a microtonal scale (24 tone scale). Later I looked at
a score of it in the music library. In addition to sharps and flats it
uses up and down arrows for quarter tone up/down.

How would your students do with this one:

"The reason campus politics are so vicious is because the stakes are so low."

I've seen it attributed to Henry Kissinger, but he probably got it from
Santayana.

And "I seem to be only a small boy playing at the seashore....standing on
the shoulders of giants." Newton, you say, but he stole it from someone else.

        - Donald