Ask Eugene Narmour how he's spending the coming months -- make sure you're sitting down first, though.
"I just finished an article on the relationship between music and painting," the music professor begins. "I'm working on the problem of content and form."
"I'm trying to finish up my third book on melody," he continues, deadpan. "And I've been working with an undergraduate in Engineering on automatic composition."
Describing Narmour as having taken the spring semester off just doesn't seem right. Though not officially teaching, his contributions to the international intellectual community steadily continue.
Then again, a man who's been chair of his department twice, associate dean of the humanities and social sciences and conductor of the University orchestra during his three decades at Penn, Narmour is evidently used to multitasking.
Internationally renowned as a scholar of music theory, Narmour has nevertheless found the time, energy and spirit to make profound contributions to Penn in the classroom -- all while publishing groundbreaking books and pursuing mind-twisting research projects that link music, cognitive science and engineering.
"He's a music theorist, and his theories are known internationally and debated internationally," Music Department Chair Gary Tomlinson says. "He's deeply concerned with music, of course, but also with teaching -- he cherishes both his graduate students and his undergraduates."
In fact, Narmour makes it a point to hold all his students, graduate and undergraduate alike, to the same exacting standards.
"People really have to work in my classes," he says. Students are "paying a lot of money for these classes, and so classes have to be good."
His students appreciate his no-nonsense style.
"He'll try to scare you a little bit," College junior Kellen Yamanaka says. "But he's always really fair and incredibly organized. You don't stop writing in his class because he... has so much to say."
Yamanaka, who took Narmour's History of Western Music class last semester and intends to sign up for another Narmour class when he returns to teach in the fall, added that, rigorous as he is, Narmour is far from unkind.
"He's a really warm guy," Yamanaka says. "He won't dash you into the ground and try and discourage you, but he'll make sure you're careful."
Narmour returns his students' affection -- "because they're not spoiled, they work hard," Penn students have a special place in his heart.
"I haven't had many weirdos," he says. "I just get people who really want to learn."
Julia Gottlieb, a former Daily Pennsylvanian columnist who sits on the Music Department's Undergraduate Advisory Board, even let it slip that "he has a good sense of humor, too."
"He would just tell humorous anecdotes in class," Gottlieb says, mysteriously unwilling to go into detail.
And modest as he is about telling them, Narmour's life is full of great stories. Born in New Mexico, Narmour and his siblings were the first in their family to go to college. Trained as a musician, he started piano lessons in the second grade and later honed his skills at the Eastman School of Music.
"My mother felt that culture was very important, so all the kids in the family played music," he explains. "She only had a high school education, but she always had high aspirations for her children."
Not content simply performing, conducting and teaching musical instruments, Narmour went on to the University of Chicago for his Ph.D.
As an academic, he has found Penn to be a perfect incubator for his work.
"No names please, but I happen to know that the free-wheeling aspect at Penn is unusual," he says. "People are very open here. I really like that."
"My scholarly work is in music cognition, but at the undergraduate level, I teach history," he says. "I get a lot of different experiences, and it keeps me sharp. I'm grateful for that."
With a firm belief that "music is a field where the world is your oyster," Narmour has traveled around the globe as well as around the University's schools and departments, holding a visiting professorship at the University of Beijing.
"The thing that was so sobering to me about China was, when I went there, if you look at their library, they have lots of English books up until the cultural revolution, and then there are none," he remembers.
"My hosts were put out in the field, on their hands and knees for 20 years -- they lost the best part of their youth," he continues.
At the end of the day, it all comes together.
"There comes a time when you begin to see the scope of your life, and you begin to see what being a U.S. citizen is about and the importance of learning," he says. "A free nation has to have an educated population, and art is a very important part of that."
