I just arrived home from a lovely Halloween party given by my lovely graduate colleagues, and I so wish I could have stayed longer, but my wig alarm went off. What was the costume, you ask? Well, it involved shoes. Shoes. And, in an apropos instance of life imitating art, I learned my lesson about buying shoes that are too small for my feet. If you are wondering what in the devil I am talking about, click here.
In the realm of solfa, I have fear on the brain. What are the tasks you dread in the theoretical/analytical/solfegging world, and how do you dispel your fears? For myself, I frequently get flustered when there's something about the notation that looks thorny...sometimes I just walk away on the basis of that alone instead of puzzling out how to break the task up into do-able sections that will also help me re-assemble the parts back into the whole. So, how do we take ourselves by the hand and walk down the dark alleyway of unfamiliarity in order to give ourselves access to something new? How do we show those freaky-looking dots and lines who's boss? Well, I believe the first step is just to bloody well decide that you're going to do it.*
Rising Level 2's
Look at Music for Analysis, p. 92, example 149. Ugh! Lots of staves! Minor key! Leading tone seventh chords! Accidentals! Yuck! Right?
Step 1: Listen to the piece here (the whole movement, please, because it's pretty darn cool...how 'bout that zippy tempo? Good old John Eliot Gardner...)
Step 2: Does it sound like the section given to you in the book stops on a perfect authentic cadence? So what do you make of the stopping point? What is the significance of F-sharp in this tonality?
Step 3: Sing through the successive vocal lines in solfa. Notice some of the notational quirks (eighth and sixteenth notes flagged individually rather than barred, etc.) and decide how to interpret them. Also, think through how you might re-notate some things if you were the editor.
Step 4: Notice the orchestral reduction's various textures. What are the running sixteenths in the first two bars? How are those first two bars different from what follows in terms of the relationship of the reduction to the vocal lines? Can you find the leading tone seventh chord(s)? What are you looking for exactly?
Step 5: Find another piece in the book with similar notational challenges and follow a similar set of steps. Were you able to accelerate the steps? Did you need additional steps? Why?
Rising Level 3's
Look at Music for Analysis, p. 379, Example #393 and in Ottman, #21.12
Step 1: Listen to the Debussy here (note that the soprano part appears with text and the other parts look like an instrumental part...goofy, yes?) and the Britten here.
Step 2: How are these pieces similar? What are the chief barriers for each?
Step 3: If you were teaching these pieces to a high school choir, what elements would you isolate to teach first? Would you have them sing on text right away? Would you have them sing the line first or learn the rhythms first? How would you deal with the funky key signature and triplets in the Debussy and the wacky (and zippy!) time signature in the Britten (the recording actually demonstrates kind of an interesting layering technique rather than teaching this as just a round...)? What is the most effective means of dealing with an asymmetric time signature...do we treat it as an aberration to be pounded out with the power and determination of our cerebrums, or do we get a feel for it as its own kind of rhythmic world?
Step 4: Learn and sing these pieces (preferably with a friend).
Rising Level 4's
Step 1: Open up either the Ottman or Music for Analysis to a page of your choosing late-ish in the volume.
Step 2: Using the steps laid out for the 2's and 3's as your guide, dream up a way of understanding and internalizing this music. Notice that in the examples above, I've used the magic of YouTube to help get the ball rolling and immediately define the dots and lines in terms of sound, not in terms of a scary task that your poor brain has to take on all alone like a nasty calculus problem.
Step 3: Follow your plan and see what you can do. Did you find that you know how to make a plan sort of intuitively, or did you do a fair amount of consulting what I said to do? Did you decide to try the "garage band rehearsal" technique for awhile (meaning that you just did it over and over until you got it), or did you immediately look for a sneaky way of accomplishing the task at hand? You know me, guys....I'm all about the sneaky way.
Good luck, boys and ghouls!
*Yes, I said "do it."
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