And since I am also on this course, so far fairly invisibly, but about to become more visible soon, I would like to say that this is my very first blog ever. As a performer and a fairly aged person, all this technology is beyond me, luckily not necessary to playing the viola da gamba. Yet one tries to keep up, and I can certainly see the advantages of much of it. I am very much enjoying your introduction to old things (though for me 1769 is not so old). I very much look forward to making some music and talking to you about historical performance and old notation.

From Academia to YouTube

Since I have opened the blog, I should probably introduce myself. My name is Giovanni Zanovello and I am a junior faculty with the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Prof. Wendy Gillespie and I have designed this course as a multidisciplinary experiment in musicology, performance practice, teaching, and media.
Starting this class meant being open to step outside our strict area of competence -- for example, I am hardly new to the study of music manuscripts, but I generally work on sources much older than the one we are examining in this class; I have not been active as a performer in a long time; I am by no means media-phobic, but I do not have a facebook page and have never had a chance to post a video on YouTube.
What we were hoping -- and is indeed happening -- was that the class would start working as a team and collaborate on the project of study and communication we have proposed. This blog is part of this collective endeavor, and the decision to open it has been approved by the large majority (totality?) of the class.