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Jesu Christe
Aug. 4th, 2005 02:48 pmThis week's sing-along was considerably less painful than last week's. There were places where I got lost, when the score switched from all choirs singing in unison to choir 1 and choir 2, or unison choirs with soloists on top, or both choirs and soloists, so that there could be three lines of music, or two, or just one on any given page, but overall Mozart makes more sense to me musically than Prokofiev. The Grand Mass in C has some astonishing intervals, but they are mostly allotted to the sopranos and particularly to the soprano soloist. It's a work written for Mozart's wife, who must have had a fabulous voice.
At the break, I remarked on how much easier this was than last week's Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff. Several other singers said they felt the same way, that they had all been glad that the summer started with the relatively easy Orff before the humiliation of Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff. I have no doubt that all of us would have been fine had we practiced ahead of time, but that's the trick with a read-through: you do as good a job as you can with whatever preparation you have, including no preparation at all in many cases. That will be the case for me again next week, when we sing Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalmn, which I have never even heard.
In other news, I retrieved my sewing machine today. It just needed a fuse replaced on its motherboard rather than a new motherboard, so it was a much less expensive repair than I had feared. Now I just need to be careful to pace myself while sewing.
If you aren't already reading![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wild_irises, take a look at her most recent entry, "Friendship Is NOT Disposable". I value Debbie's friendship way above rubies. I wish that everyone had as much dedication to talking through problems as she does. My life would not be simpler, but it would be richer in its complexity if I could convince other people to keep talking throughout difficult times rather than shutting out whatever is hard. The unbearable awkwardness of difficult and embarrassing conversations only lasts a little while. The unbearable awkwardness of not speaking lasts, well, at least as long as the silence. That one isn't speaking with one's non-interlocutor doesn't mean that that dialogue doesn't go on in both parties' heads; it just means that the dialogue in each person's head gets farther and farther from representing what the other person would really say or think or do, and the possibility of rapprochement gets more and more distant all the time.
At the break, I remarked on how much easier this was than last week's Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff. Several other singers said they felt the same way, that they had all been glad that the summer started with the relatively easy Orff before the humiliation of Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff. I have no doubt that all of us would have been fine had we practiced ahead of time, but that's the trick with a read-through: you do as good a job as you can with whatever preparation you have, including no preparation at all in many cases. That will be the case for me again next week, when we sing Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalmn, which I have never even heard.
In other news, I retrieved my sewing machine today. It just needed a fuse replaced on its motherboard rather than a new motherboard, so it was a much less expensive repair than I had feared. Now I just need to be careful to pace myself while sewing.
If you aren't already reading
wild_irises, take a look at her most recent entry, "Friendship Is NOT Disposable". I value Debbie's friendship way above rubies. I wish that everyone had as much dedication to talking through problems as she does. My life would not be simpler, but it would be richer in its complexity if I could convince other people to keep talking throughout difficult times rather than shutting out whatever is hard. The unbearable awkwardness of difficult and embarrassing conversations only lasts a little while. The unbearable awkwardness of not speaking lasts, well, at least as long as the silence. That one isn't speaking with one's non-interlocutor doesn't mean that that dialogue doesn't go on in both parties' heads; it just means that the dialogue in each person's head gets farther and farther from representing what the other person would really say or think or do, and the possibility of rapprochement gets more and more distant all the time.
