Every year I end up talking at some point about soggetto cavato, the practice of making themes from the letters of people’s names, the way Schumann used “S – C – H – A,” better known as “E-flat – C – B – A,” to stand for himself in Carnaval (S being German for E-flat, and H for B natural). I commented on the limited possibilities of my own name in this regard, but my student Ezekiel Virant came up with a possibility I hadn’t considered: a G and A followed by two Neapolitan chords, the Roman numeral analysis symbol for the Neapolitan being an N:
By this logic, I guess the first letter of Virant’s last name could be expressed by a V chord, or the submediant could cover the first two letters by itself.
While we’re talking about student takes on my name, for years I’ve been teaching the movements of the mass:
Kyrie
Gloria
Credo
Sanctus
Agnus dei
according to a mnemonic that a student named Jason came up with back when I was at Bucknell:
Kyle
Gann
Can’t
Sing
Anything
It’s also helpful in that I can use the movements of the mass to help me remember what it is that I can’t do.