sloggery
Frankly, Horatio Parker's music isn't hard enough to be this hard.
(Yes, I expect that didn't make much sense.)
We're less than a week away from the next Pacific Chorale performance, and true to form this year, we are not ready. I do not know what is up with us, our act seems persistently to refuse to get together.
Among the many (many, many, many) pieces on our program of music by American composers, we find Mr. Parker's Jam sol recedit.
It's not a difficult piece. So WHY will it not stay in my brain?
In every rehearsal, I open the piece and it's as if I've never seen it before. The pencil markings are all in my handwriting... how is that possible?
And there's so much else on the program that also refuses to settle firmly into place in my mental space...
Oy vey.
Update:
Extra caffeine helps. A LOT. :-)
posted by meeegan @ 5:01 PM
4 Comments:
There are many composers I know change the notes from rehearsal to rehearsal. Britten. Howells. Stravinsky. I see my handwriting on this page. Who has learned to counterfeit it so very well? Well, I sang that note wrong, I'm sure the composer would have written it that way if only they had ever stopped to reconsider.
We are in concert week for the Theofanidis "Music of Our Final Meeting", a piece which I have learned thoroughly, but which refuses to evidence even the remotest shred of charm for me. My favorite part is the baritone exclamation at the beginning of the final movement, "His laughter was his freedom and his gift to the eternal!" which wants oh so badly to be followed by a Kermit-the-Froggian "YYAAAAAYY!" resplendent with arm-gesticulation at the end.
Perhaps that's just me. Nobody else around me seems to even know what I mean when I say this. It's alarming.
I know exactly what you mean. We sang Parker's "Light's Glittering Morn Bedecks the Sky" for Easter, and as our choir director related...he was asking a church organist friend what he was doing for Easter, and the friend said, "I hate to say it, but we are singing 'Light's Glittering Morn Bedecks the Sky' for Easter." To this confession, our choir director confessed that we, too, were singing the same anthem for Easter. It's one of those truly Victorian and truly guilty pleasure pieces. I think I still managed to sing a few notes wrong, but the texture was so thick, who the hell would've known. Break a leg on the concert. We are singing "The Here and Now" by Christopher Theofanidis and Ravel's "Daphnis and Chloe" this week, so if it all works according to schedule, Pacific Chorale will be singing it very soon.
Much love to ya,
Wanda
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Ha! I'm so glad to hear it's not just me!
A smaller ensemble from PC is, in fact, doing Daphnis et Chloe in a few weeks, with the LA Phil. I had to turn down the invitation to sing it because I have too many work conflicts, some of them with the performances.
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