Howgarts Clubs ( was Ignorance and the Toad)

[o_caipora]

No: HPFGUIDX 85212

I wrote:
>> Many universities have glee clubs or other singing groups (such 
>> as the Wiffenpoofs) that are entirely student run. 

"Nora Renka" said: 

> Being as I am currently a Yalie of sorts (but a Graduate one), I 
> can tell you that the Whiffenpoofs and other groups are selected 
> experienced singers, who are able to sing without a director and in 
> complex harmony because they really know what they're doing.  

and Nora is correct. The Whiffs were a bad example: they're all 
seniors, chosen competively from students who've sung in less well 
known groups for three years already. But AFAIK many of those groups 
do pick freshman. The Wiffenpoofs just came to mind, being well 
known, and across the alley from the thread topic.

Nora said:

> We find 
> it so easy to sing by ear only because we've been raised from birth 
> in these systems which have been standardized.  Take away the piano 
> and try to teach a bunch of kids to sing part-music by ear, and 
> it's wildly difficult.

The wildly different tempos at which the Hogwarts anthem is sung are 
surely easier to cure than bad pitch? 

The diversity there, and the tolerace of it, may be telling. Whatever 
bad things one can say about North Korea, they're marvelous at 
organizing mass exibitions of people moving in perfect uniformity. 

Given all the bad of North Korea (and similar societies) that's 
reason alone to suspect that those things they are good at are 
probably bad things.

I think that there's an idealogical message to the anthem, that 
Rowling is saying that there's room for diversity in joyous voices 
raised in a hymn to a common cause. Surely that's the books main 
message.
Me: 
> > No doubt real magic would have similar effects, though I can't 
> > imagine just what.

Nora:
> The ability of magical reproduction seems to 
> me to kill imagination, in that area.
[snip]
 > And to end on another slightly off-topic note, I might be able to 
> accept that magic could change a voice into a Hochdramatische 
Wagner 
> soprano (a much, much prized but very rare voice type)

Speaking of magic, voice and reproduction, do you think a spell could 
let a man sing Idomeneo's son as written, without the early 
sacrifices needed in the Muggle world?

> There's a lot to art that 
> magic couldn't possibly do, and I suspect that it has had a 
> stultifying affect on the development of the fine arts. 

We know from the MOM lobby that the WW is big enough to have at one 
time supported a scultor, though not a good one. Although political 
sculpture in the Muggle world shares a lot with the MOM's decorative 
choices.

> -Nora gets back to writing on Strauss' Intermezzo...

That was an Intermezzo intermission?

Cheers,
Caipora