The People's Chorus

Greetings from a prodigal blogger!


My, how time flies.  It's the last day of April, and a perfect spring day in Colorado -- this evening's post is being typed outdoors in celebration.   


Degree work has been quite frenzied over the past two weeks, and there's been a heavy dollop of concertizing on top of that, the most recent of which was with the community chorus conducted by one of my very dearest friends.  He was short a soprano in his chamber group, so I filled in, and was thereby privy to two performances of a concert he'd entitled "The People's Chorus," a title I absolutely love...I find the concept inspiring.  Too many people believe that music-making is a rarified-air kind of activity, that people who are musicians had to grow up in a special kind of family or live a special kind of life -- that musicians are born, not made, and you either are one or you're not.  You either have a good voice or you don't.  You either read music or you can't.  How sad, especially in a world where people like Kodály have worked hard to get the message out: Music belongs to everyone.  Art is a birthright, a necessity, something everyone can make and learn about and benefit from.  Lots of people still don't believe this, and you'd think that a university town would have a greater proportion of people who do, who are courageous enough to be willing to take hold of their artistic inheritance and do something with it.  And, to its credit, this particular university town does have many enthusiasts for the arts in various forms.  However, the "rarified air" mentality is still hard to combat, maybe because it's either a cultural or a human tendency (and an extremely powerful one, either way) to choose to believe that one cannot learn/grow/change in order to fend off the guilt of not trying.  So, we tend to stay the same....we dabble and form opinions, but we never really get down and dirty and comfortable with who we are so we can make a proper start toward who we'd like to be.  Just think what would be possible if this were not the case!

One of the more magical parts of these concerts was a piece composed by another friend of mine on a text attributed to F.G. Lorca:

"The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink - and in drinking understand themselves."


To my knowledge, Kodály and Lorca never interacted, but it definitely sounds like they were on the same page, doesn't it?  However, perhaps Lorca reveals something of the Catch-22 involved here: by engaging with art, people come to understand themselves.  But, without a pre-existing connection to their truest selves, how will they come to art to begin with?  How will they recognize the solution to their thirst if they haven't acknowledged the thirst?  This is the crux, and perhaps the hardest part of the musician's task.  Obviously, the solution of teaching the very young to value art is the best one for our future, and it's usually a pretty short reach to get kids to be and express their true selves.  But, what about the grownups?  How can we reach out to them?  Classical musicians can't out-spend Mark Zuckerberg or ABC, so how do we pry the public away from Facebook and "Dancing with the Stars" and get them out to a concert hall or a rehearsal or a class or a private lesson?  


It strikes me that the answer may be "one at a time," but I think there might be something even closer to us that we must consider.  In order to be compelling, in order to make art and teach lessons that are worth experiencing, we ourselves must be in touch with what compels us.  In order to change the world, we need to lead by example.  Heavy, I know, but necessary and beautiful....and maybe even sometimes fun.  As mentioned above, kids are almost always rarin' to go on the authenticity-honest-self front, and they don't ever like to not have a good time.  


So, despite the fact that you poor darlings haven't had a "real" assignment in weeks, I'm going to go with this as your task for the week:


All Levels


Spend time this week feeding your inner artist.  For more specific advice, look here.


Spend time this week thinking about how you'd like to impact your community through music-making and teaching.  Dream wildly.  Imagine that money is no object.  Be extravagant.


Feel free to email or call me up with your ideas -- 'tis the season for big dreams and brainstorming.


Also, get ready next week for the start of pre-AKI Solfa Boot Camp (my new idea for May and June).  I'll be taking requests for specific areas you'd like to address, so again, feel free to email!

The Red Sea

Happy Easter!  Happy Passover!  Happy Spring!

Predictably, it's been a crazy week -- not only was it Holy Week (meaning that I have spent large portions of the last seven days here, working with some of the best people I know.  It's been exhausting, but also wonderful -- Holy Week in high church mode has always felt so full of magic to me, so rich with imagery and drama, and it never really fails to capture my imagination.), but....

I passed my final DMA orals this past Tuesday, which means that my five committee members have agreed that I will be graduating on Thursday, May 10....and they officially gave me leave to start calling myself "Doctor".  !!!!!

So, now I have many loose ends to tie up (revisions, finishing up editing projects, etc.), but my trajectory towards graduation has been confirmed.  This, in turn, means that I need to figure out what's next -- I need to find a job, figure out what to do with my living situation, and generally prepare myself for life after my terminal degree.  GULP.

To be honest, I guess I started thinking of the completion of my DMA like my own personal Red Sea somewhere along the line.  I got so wrapped up in the student life I've known for many years now that I guess I never quite expected it to end -- I mean, I did, but I convinced myself it'd happen to a me that would be much wiser and more prepared than the me I am currently feels.  This theoretical person would be ready for all that post-student life demands and offers, and she would step proudly across the graduation stage and listen as her advisor announced her extremely well-conceived future plans to the people in the auditorium, and smile serenely, knowing that all was as it should be.  The reality is that for me, everything is still very much up in the air.  It's early yet, and I made the conscious decision to focus first on finishing, and second on finding a job for next year, which is all very logical -- one has to be certain one will have a doctorate before one applies to positions that require one to have a doctorate.  But now, the Red Sea is parting....the miracle of graduation is about to occur, and I have no idea what awaits me on the other shore (not to mention the chariots who are giving chase....in my case, they're not people, but student loans and my perceptions of others' expectations of me).  It's time for me to walk through, and I don't know what's going to happen, and sometimes this makes me extremely anxious.

So, Holy Week came along in the middle of my misgivings, accompanied by a flare of an old back injury that slowed me down enough to remind me to be careful and make me think.  Holy Week, with all of its stories and rituals -- all of which I've heard and seen before, but part of the Red Sea story really sucker-punched me this time around.  In the story, the Israelites have made their escape from slavery, and they're up against the Red Sea, and now all of a sudden, they're being pursued by their former captors.  They do what we all sometimes do: they freak out.  They start talking crazy.  They start saying they wished they never tried to leave.  Then, in comes a message: RELAX.  They get that call that I really wish would come in for me -- they get told that all they have to do is keep still, and that their battle will be fought for them.

I don't really expect that someone else is going to find me a job or pay off my student debt or any of that (although if anyone out there would like to make either or both of those things happen for me, I will not say you nay!).  However, the story still rings true, and it's true for everyone.  If you're in a situation that you know to be unsustainable, and you make a choice to change it, it's true that it might be really difficult for awhile.  It is also true that unsustainable is unsustainable, and when it's time to go, it's time to go.  There's no getting around it, and no point in trying to beat yourself up for not being willing to stay where you don't belong.  I have no doubt that now is the time for me to graduate and move on with my life.  The fact that I'm not sure exactly what that looks like does freak me out, but the fear doesn't change my certainty that I'm doing what I have to do.  I wish I could do more to ensure my future, but for now, this is it.  I'm doing the work to go to someplace unknown, even though it's unknown and scary, and I have to trust that I wouldn't be so certain if something wasn't going to come meet me halfway.

Ok, so now for the big solfa tie-in...why do we sometimes stagnate in our musicianship studies?  Well, I think sometimes it's because we're afraid of what we could do if we didn't have the obstacles we've come to rely upon as compass points.  We've convinced ourselves that we need limitations, we need to be afraid of harmonic dictation or Roman numeral analysis or sight-singing or using the keyboard, because those limitations tell us who we are.  And, these kinds of limitations are self-fulfilling prophecies -- if you tell yourself you can't play the piano, you're right, you probably can't.  However, if you were willing to start chipping away at the thing you believe you can't do, if you started making friends with your abilities as they are right now and doing careful, thoughtful, compassionate work in order to build upon them, you would grow.  You would become someone new.  You might not even recognize yourself....and believe it or not, that could be ok, because you would recognize yourself again in time.  You could re-draw your own borders, and make a whole new map of what you can do.

All Levels:


Spend your first 15-minute practice session doing a little soul-searching.  What is it that you think you can't do in the world of musicianship?  Write it down.  I challenge you to be vulnerable and honest in your diagnosis -- no one has to know but you.  If you can't get your head around it the first day, sleep on it, and come back to it.

Once you know what you'd like to work on, look back on some old posts:

http://49weeksofsolfa.blogspot.com/2011/09/body-remembers.html

http://49weeksofsolfa.blogspot.com/2011/09/like-cures-like.html

(etc.)

 to find some concrete suggestions for activities, or feel free to design your own course of study.

In even just a week's time, I bet you'll find you were able to make some headway.  Give it more time, though.  Don't be afraid.  The you you never thought you could be (the you who does flawless sing-and-plays or lightning-quick analysis or crackerjack sight-singing) is waiting on the other shore.

Lift Every Voice

Welcome, readers!

DISCLAIMER: While I'd like to think this post will be musically substantive, you should probably know up front that I'm going to sound kind of like a hippie.  But, since I grew up in Portland and have spent the last decade spending large portions of my time in Boulder, I don't think any of you should really be that surprised.

Last week's Alan Lomax post, in combination with my journey to the OAKE conference a few weeks back, got me thinking about "music of the people" for the past few days.  I tend to get a little shifty about this whole topic, torn between the fairly hard-core opinions of the traditional Kodály camp (the most conservative of whom tend to profess that the only legitimate folk music tradition in North America is that of its indigenous people, and all the English-language stuff is either stolen from Great Britain or composed, and therefore not technically folk music) and a more "progressive" point of view.  I find the former far too restrictive (especially in its more extreme incarnations), but I'm also not entirely comfortable with the inclusion of songs like "Rock around the Clock" on this list assembled by NAofME (formerly MENC) of songs that have a place in the American "canon" of songs everyone should be able to sing.  I think it's a sticky dilemma all around -- on the one hand, we want people to sing, and it stands to reason that they're more likely to sing songs they like.  However, I sort of think of "Rock around the Clock" as the musical equivalent of Cheetos....many will find it appealing, but the song is fundamentally without musical or emotional (nutritional) value.  And, like several other songs they include, it's pretty difficult to sing it well, which means that when people unaccustomed to singing try to sing it, it won't sound good.  Now, one might argue that "it doesn't matter what it sounds like," but I agree with one of my favorite authorities on communal singing, Alice Parker, on this one.  In her book Melodious Accord, Ms. Parker writes:

"...the statement 'I just want the people to enjoy singing; it doesn't matter how they sound' is meaningless. Music is sound, and the better it sounds, the better it is -- and the more people will be caught by it."

So, all of that has me taking a big step back into a more classic Kodály paradigm. But, at the same time, I don't really have a problem with "Edelweiss" or "Over the Rainbow" making the list.  Is that just my personal taste talking?  Maybe.  Can we really consider either one of those pieces folk music?  Nope.  However, I think there's something emotionally honest and compelling about both of them, and I think they have melodies that are made for singing (even though there are some tricky leaps).  I don't believe they're necessarily what we should be teaching kids to sing in kindergarten music classes, but I do think it'd be a great thing if kids grew up singing those songs at home with their families, and I feel that way about maybe 60% of that list, give or take.  And, it should be said that I cut my teeth on the musical equivalent of strychnine in the form of really awful church music from the words-on-the-overhead-I-V-IV-I (no, that's not a typo)-sing-the-chorus-9000-times-Jesus-is-my-boyfriend tradition, and somehow I still came out loving Bach and Josquin, so there you go.  Maybe all those Wee Sing and Simon & Garfunkel tunes (with a little help from the classical station always playing at my grandparents' house) were enough to prevent my permanent descent into the ignoble.

I'm asking all levels to do the same assignment yet again, but as always, I encourage you to regulate your own difficulty level -- if it's too easy, kick it up a notch; if it's too difficult, dial it back.

All Levels:


Read through this article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/03/how-communal-singing-disappeared-from-american-life/255094/

And check out this link (the NAofME list mentioned above):

http://www.nafme.org/resources/view/get-america-singing-again

Follow these steps:

1. Take a quick look through the list of songs on the link above.  Without thinking too much about it, mark which ones you think everyone ought to be able to sing.  If you don't know a song, skip it.  If you're feeling conflicted because you LOVE a song, but you fear it might be trashy, include it -- I promise not to judge you.

2. Make a note of how much of NAofME's collection you actually chose to use.  Sort the pieces into genres: true folk songs, patriotic songs, composed traditional songs (I'd put Stephen Foster in this category, but I'll leave John Denver and Joni Mitchell up to you), pop songs, or any other designation you come up with.

3. Dust off your solfa chops and put syllables to a few songs from each genre.  Try to transcribe one from each genre in a key you think is appropriate for communal singing.

4. Analyze your transcriptions informally, but with an eye towards the elements you look for in your song collection analyses.  What elements are easy to find?  What elements are almost non-existent?  What makes a song difficult or easy?  How did you deal with the rhythms in the more syncopated examples?  Did you find that you really didn't want to have to write down the rhythms the way that you actually sing them?

5. If you were to make your own list from the songs you chose, plus others you know, what songs would you include?  Remember, these are songs you think every grownup in North America should know and be able to sing...not necessarily the songs you'd use in your classroom (so, in a sense, I'm asking you to choose with your heart rather than your head). How do your examples differ from the songs you chose to leave off your list?  Do your own examples come from your Kodály song collection, or from another source?  How personal are these songs to you?

6. Just for fun, as you go about your daily life, sing some of your favorite songs -- with others, or just by yourself.  Who knows?  Maybe you'll inspire other grownups to lift up their voices and sing.

Spring Break with Alan Lomax

Hello all!

Well, my writing obligations are not yet completely fulfilled, so I need to make another brief (and late....sorry!) post.  However, the resource we'll be using is quite the treasure trove, and I hope it provides you with many happy hours of diversion, not only as solfa practitioners, but as people who are listening for the enrichment of your hearts.

All Levels:

First, read this:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/03/28/148915022/alan-lomaxs-massive-archive-goes-online
(I especially like the part where the blogger describes Alan's analytical system as being "like Pandora for grad students".....yeah, dude, if you only knew.....)

Then, follow the link in the article here:

http://research.culturalequity.org/home-audio.jsp
(the server seems to be pretty busy, so be persistent if it doesn't work the first time)

Break out your tuning forks and manuscript paper (or stick notation), and get ready to party.  You might even be able to add to your song collection!

Listen, transcribe, and enjoy!

Time held me...

My dear readers,

I know this post is late, but it'll also be a bit short -- forgive me, and I promise more and better soon!

All Levels:


First, let Mr. Hopkins read this to you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpydvqTm0hI

I recommend just closing your eyes and listening the first time.

Then, for the visual learners, read the poem here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175908

John Corigliano's setting of the poem appears several places on YouTube, but this one seems to work well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tp7yyn1xcY (Part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhEnCb0LJeU (Part 2)

Listen to the whole piece (about 20 minutes total).

Derive the form (I have my own opinion about it....I'd love to know yours!).  How does this reflect the form and/or content of the poem?

Figure out what's going on metrically...find the big beat, and then figure out what's up with the subdivisions.

Sing the opening instrumental theme, and see if you can apply some solfege to it.

Sing the opening vocal theme (soprano part), and see if you can apply some solfege to that.

At the end of the piece, something very interesting happens to the opening vocal theme -- it's sung in unison by the whole choir at "Oh, as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means," but it's altered -- how would you describe this alteration?

Transcribe anything you'd like....it's challenging, so take a small bite and see what you can do.

That's it this time...but please enjoy!  Time has its own hold on me at the moment, which I'm hoping it will loosen soon!

Balance

Welcome, dear readers!

Spring-like weather is tentatively continuing here in Denver...I am attempting to remain skeptical, but all these sunny days have my hopes running sky-high for real spring!  My journey to Phoenix later this week will probably only make it harder to keep my spring fever at bay, since they're expecting high 70's and 80's.  I plan to bask unapologetically the entire time I'm there -- will any of you be joining the big OAKE party?  If so, let me know, and let's catch up!

Thinking about the weather is an extremely pleasant distraction from the rigors of degree-finishing and future-forging that occupy most of my head-space at the moment.  It's an interesting time, and my hopes are high -- I'm lucky to have good support from my faculty, and I believe that good things are on their way, employment-wise.  Keeping the sense of urgency at bay is hard, sometimes too hard, and panic kicks me around the schoolyard and steals my sleep (like so much lunch money) and makes me feel like I'd better get my hands on a refrigerator box ASAP.  And then, I'm lucky again...my dear friends help me piece my sense of well-being back together and remind me that sometimes I just need a good night's sleep and maybe an afternoon off...and having those things will not prevent me from getting everything done.

I'm sure I am not at all alone in this.  The middle path is difficult to keep track of, and I'm not really sure why.  It's just too easy to run to extremes -- enough somehow usually doesn't seem like enough.  It's too big an issue for one little blog, really.  But, a funny thing I caught myself doing two times today is sort of the inspiration for this week's assignment.  Immediately upon both church services finishing, I made for the out-of-doors and immediately did something extremely silly -- skipping in my choir robe, quoting this movie, maniacal giggling, you get the idea.  Why?  Not because I disliked the services (I actually like the services and the music quite a bit), but because I had to behave myself just so for a certain period of time, causing a backlog of silliness that demanded to be set free the moment such a thing became possible.  It felt good (like the proper resolution of a V7 or a 4-3 suspension), no one seemed to be the worse for wear, and balance was restored to my little corner of the universe.  So, in that vein...

Rising Level 2's


Here's a little gem for you:

http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/5/53/Praetorius_-_Wie_schoen_leuchtet.pdf

We've dealt with this tune before, so hopefully it sounds a little familiar to you, though the rhythmic language of this setting is a bit more complex than what we've worked on before.

Therefore, start with the lowest line (extra points if you can tell me a little something about what "Bassus generalis pro organo si placet" means), just so you're not distracted by melodic material.  Determine what meter you're actually in (hint: the top number in the time signature is NOT an 8, and neither should you count in 8), then tap or clap your way through.  Once that feels comfortable enough, sing that bottom line (note the clef changes -- you may choose whatever octave you want to sing in).

Now, go do something silly for five minutes.

At your next practice session, look at the top line and clap/tap your way through.  Try tapping the rhythm with one hand while you conduct with the other.

Now, go do something silly for five minutes.

Next time, sing through that top line.  Note that the B-naturals are just a little chromatic inflection that you will call "fi" -- they shouldn't pose much of a problem.

Guess what?  Go do something silly for five minutes.

Now, tackle the rhythm of the middle line....it's probably the most rhythmically challenging, and conducting along with your tapping is a good idea.

Done?  Good...time for your five-minute break!

Try singing the middle line...like the top line, it has a "fi" here and there, but no worries.

And one more five-minute break!

If you can, find a friend or two to sing through this with....it'll be fun, and then you can take your silly breaks together!

Rising Level 3's


And here's a piece for you:

http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/scar-exr.pdf

Note that there's a rhythmic error in the next-to-last measure in the alto part -- that last C-sharp should be a whole note, not a half note.

You're going to follow the same general practice-break scheme as the 2's, but your learning procedure will be a little different.

First, look over the piece up to m. 45 and find what material Mr. Scarlatti used imitatively -- basically, you're hunting for motives or themes.  The first one is easy: the opening of the soprano part, which I think you might call Theme A.  Does it happen in other parts?  Is it transposed?  Find and label any repetitions.  Then, find a few more themes like that in between the beginning of the piece and m. 45.

Now, what changes at m. 46 (hint: think texture)?  How are you going to deal with the chromaticism you encounter?  Go back through the whole piece and locate any places you suspect you may need to change keys.

Now, just tackle one vocal line per day.  If you whip through that easily, do a solfa chord analysis of m. 46-end.  Again, singing through the piece with friends could be a lot of fun....

Rising Level 4's


For you guys, something very Lenten and fun:

http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/f/fe/Battishill_o_lord_look_down.pdf

You're also on the alternation-of-work-and-fun plan, like the 2's, and your learning process is going to be rather similar to the 3's.

Begin by looking over the whole piece, noting any divisi and marking any homophonic sections.  Do a cursory examination of the accidentals you encounter, and decide where you might want to change keys.

Now, look over the text and see if you can associate particular themes or motives with textual sections.  Label these motives if you discover them.

Sing through the lines one at a time, paying special attention to intonation in any minor seconds or augmented seconds you encounter.

For fun, using the keyboard score (which is essentially a simplified reduction of the vocal lines), do a Roman numeral analysis of this piece.  Or, if you don't have time for the whole piece, focus on these spots:

mm. 71-86 (in C minor)
m. 107-end (trust the key signature)

Enjoy!

Dear March, come in!

Welcome, solfeggists!

As I look out my window today, I could easily be hoodwinked into believing that spring has arrived in Denver -- but, I've lived here long enough to know this is almost certainly just a tease.  I grew up on the west coast, and by now, we'd be at the end of crocus season and the daffodils would be raring to take over with tulips close on their heels, but here....not so much.  However, the 60-degree weather is a welcome change, though I know it's only for the next few days (for you non-Coloradans out there, I like to think of Denver as the only place I know where people could reasonably dream of a White Easter and probably eat their Thanksgiving Dinner on their outdoor picnic table later the same year...it's a weird place)....I have to make the most of bits of spring as they come here, since there's often just a stark segue from the last April or May blizzard directly into summer.

So, let's find some springtime music to enjoy!

Rising Level 2's


Here's a recording to listen to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf6P2K_uXH8

(There are plenty of other recordings of this piece on YouTube, and feel free to choose another one if you like it better)

Try to figure out the rhythmic pattern you're hearing before you look at the score below - note that the meter isn't constant and that the pattern seems to be anacrusic.  Speak the rhythmic pattern in tas and ta-tis, then transcribe it.

Check your transcribed rhythm against the score here:


http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/7/74/Lejeune_Revecy.pdf

What metric decisions did you make aurally?  Do they differ from the notation here?  How?

Now, sing through the various parts in solfa -- nothing too difficult, yes?  Almost completely diatonic (the odd fi and di pop up, but nothing earth-shattering), and lots of stepwise motion. What do you notice about the texture throughout the piece.

Finally, read this little Wikipedia write-up on the genre this piece is frequently used to exemplify in music history classes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_mesurée

So yeah, it's a piece about spring, but evidently it was also one more weapon in the arsenal of a bunch of French guys looking to save the world through music.  Some commentators have also said that the  rhythmic pattern of this little ditty (though the same pattern is also found in Latin American dances) was actually Bernstein's inspiration for writing this piece...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rjy9acXwovE

Rising Level 3's


Listen to this lovely tune:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjJzPok_qmE

After one time through the whole recording, I bet you'll be able to derive the form of each strophe -- what is the form?  What is the meter?  How long does each phrase last?

Now that you have that information, listen a few more times and put each line into solfa.  Which line has the chromatic bit?  What interval does the chromatic syllable create with the note it is approached by?  How does the singer in the recording treat the chromatic note?

Memorize the melody.  Transcribe it in a key comfortable for your voice.

Now, look at this score:

(higher voices)
http://conquest.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/c/c0/IMSLP46772-PMLP99648-Mozart_-_Sehnsucht_nach_dem_Fr__hlinge__K_596.pdf

(lower voices)
http://javanese.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/0/0e/IMSLP115749-PMLP99648-Mozart_-_Sehnsucht_MV_rsl.pdf

Does your solfa line up with what you see here?

Now, notice how simple the accompaniment is...you probably discerned that from the recording (although the pianist there added some fancy stuff), and maybe you even saw this phase of the assignment coming...

Do a quick Roman numeral analysis of the accompaniment, including figured bass.

Now, either working from your figured bass (which might prove to be easier) or from the score, accompany yourself as you sing the memorized melody in solfa.  If that's easy, transpose to a new key.

Rising Level 4's


Listen to this piece:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MhxgM84Th8&feature=related

Listen to the whole thing the first time to get a sense of what happens in the piece.  Then, focus on the first statement of the melody by the sopranos and altos.  What is the metric structure of this theme -- is there one meter throughout, or are there several (hint: watch the conductor...he's extremely clear!)?  What is the tonal language being used?

The words (drawn from the Song of Solomon in the Bible) are:

Awake, O north wind, and come, thou south;
Blow upon my garden
That the spices may flow out
That the spices flow out
Let my beloved come into his garden
And eat his pleasant fruits.


Memorize the theme (upper part when it splits briefly) with the words.  Notice that it is treated imitatively later in the piece -- what do you think this depicts?

Now for the tricky part -- try to solmize this.  It won't be easy, but I bet you can do it.  You have my permission to use piano to help yourself if you get reeeeeeeeally stuck, but try to go without it as much as possible.  Here are my hints:

You will probably be tempted to call the first leap in the melody mi-la.  You can do that, but it'll mean you'll need to use fi several times later on.  However, the good news is that that's the only chromatic syllable you'll need at all -- and you won't even need that if you call the first leap la-re.

The first note and last note of the tune are the same.

The highest note in the piece is an octave and a fifth above the starting note.

If you successfully solmize the whole theme, you should transcribe it and send it to me and I will tell you that you're wonderful and send you a prize.  No, seriously, I will.

Good luck, all, and have a fantastic week!

Choose to Bless the World

Greetings, dear friends!

Well, it's happened....I got older today -- a nice prime number this time around, and have had a great day of feeling extremely loved and remembered.  What more could a person want?

It's been a busy weekend (ergo the late post!), but a good one, filled in part with rehearsals with my beloved Denver Gay Men's Chorus.  They're prepping for a very exciting collaboration at the moment, and one of the pieces they've begun rehearsing has struck quite a chord with me, especially as a new year of life begins.  The piece is "Choose to Bless the World" by Nick Page, and is based on three divergent somewhat unlikely elements: Page's own arrangement of "Niska Banja," a poem by a Unitarian Universalist minister named Rebecca Parker, and Michael Praetorius' well-known canon "Jubilate Deo" --   you can listen to/watch a recording of one of my new favorite people conducting it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xabP5G-Q1A

(I know, it has the Lentenly forbidden A-word, but try to forgive me...)

The full text of the poem is this:

Your gifts
whatever you discover them to be
can be used to bless or curse the world.
The mind's power,
The strength of the hands,
The reaches of the heart,
the gift of speaking, listening, imagining, seeing, waiting
Any of these can serve to feed the hungry,
bind up wounds,
welcome the stranger,
praise what is sacred,
do the work of justice
or offer love.
Any of these can draw down the prison door
hoard bread,
abandon the poor,
obscure what is holy,
comply with injustice
or withhold love.
You must answer this question:
What will you do with your gifts?
Choose to bless the world.

Cynicism and exhaustion are by-products of almost any graduate program, I think (and as many of my AKI students will likely attest), and it can be hard to remember that we still have a choice.  We don't have to buy into the drama that our little grad program worlds tend to create.  Or, if we do, we can catch ourselves and make a new choice.  The circumstances of our lives are what they are, and on days when we're feeling the burn, it can be so hard to remember this, but we still have a choice.  In every moment, no matter how crappy we think we are, no matter how hard things have been, no matter how little we think we have to offer, the choice is still there.  We can choose to bless the world....and the secret wonder of making that choice is that it doesn't take anything away from us to do this.  Our egos and bone-weariness might convince us that trying to bless the world is like trying to get blood from a turnip.  But, it's not a matter of trying.  It's a matter of choosing to honor what we already are in a state of being....we are each and all a blessing to the world.


So, if you have the energy and the inclination, there are lots of cool things you could transcribe from the recording above, or you could teach yourself to hand-sign the canon in two parts (or three -- one with your voice and one with each hand), or you could always catch up on your sight-singing.  However, the assignment I'm going to work hard to embrace this week and in the coming year is this:


All Levels:
Choose to bless the world.

Holding steady

Hello, stalwart solfeggists!

It's been a crazy week in my world, and the weekend has left me with very little room to breathe.  So, this week's installment will be short, but (hopefully) pithy.

In your Ottman book, chapter 18 is all about forbidding-looking rhythms, specifically, those that use very small divisions of the beat.  Recently, I've been teaching some rhythmically challenging pieces in choral contexts, and it's once again come to my attention that many folks use a repetitive physical gesture (foot or hand-tapping, usually) when they encounter any sort of rhythmic difficulty, and they usually try to tap to a pretty small rhythmic value.  I understand the inclination to do this, but I'm quite opposed to it.  Why?

-We tend to be taught as children that our western rhythmic system is based on mathematical operations, and that's not really true (I mean, it's factual in a way to say that rhythm is mathematical, but math is not nearly as influential on our experience of rhythm as we think it is).  Our rhythmic system is extremely influenced by hierarchy, and it is hierarchy that makes a rhythmic pattern feel how it feels to us.  Therefore, if we don't reflect hierarchy in any aid we use to read a rhythm, we're sabotaging ourselves.

-Tapping a small rhythmic value as your "beat" the same way over and over (without any kind of hierarchy) is a recipe for getting lost.  Your brain barely has a fighting chance of keeping track of all that repetitive motion, despite what your sense of security might be trying to tell you.  We tend to feel like we're being more accurate because we're doing something, but the something we're doing in this case is likely to just distract us from inaccuracies.

-Rhythmic patterns aren't made difficult by speed, they're made difficult by unpredictability or unfamiliarity.  So, slowing something far past the point of its intended tempo is probably less useful than we think -- the composer heard it inside her/his head as a pattern that made sense at a given tempo, and if we get too far away from that tempo, the pattern doesn't feel the same way anymore.

-Our brains aren't wired to perceive quick notes as isolated incidents, but rather as elements of a pattern that has a specific interplay within an established hierarchy.

Now, these rules start to fall apart if you start working with some types of early music or 20th/21st-century serialized rhythms or rhythms chosen through chance operations, etc., but the Ottman examples we're dealing with here definitely play by these rules.  So, I'm going to insist on a few things:

1. Conduct.  This doesn't necessarily have to be a traditional hand/arm pattern, but you have to do something with your body that shows the beats of the measure in distinct places AND gives a sense of which beats are strong in the hierarchy of the meter and which are not.  For example, if you were to use your foot in a 2/4 meter, you could decide that your heel touching the ground would be beat 1 and your toe touching the ground would be beat 2.

2. Don't stray too far from the notated tempo.  A conservative tempo is one thing, but if you're thinking in 32nd notes, the rhythm you think you're performing has nothing to do with the actual piece of music the composer wrote (unless it's in 3/32 or some such craziness).

3. If you're struggling with notes and rhythms together, isolate the rhythm.

4. Think in groupings and phrases, not in isolated note values.  Start to see that the last sixteenth note of a beat will feel like a pickup to (or a decoration of) the beat that follows, etc.  Just like in the world of pitches, the magic of rhythmic patterns has everything to do with the relationships being expressed.

5. Trust your body.  Before you begin reading each example, take the time to really ground yourself in the the meter by moving (see item 1).  Once you've started reading, if something seems wrong, see if you can figure out a reason -- it might just be a mistake, or it might be a misplaced metric accent, or an unusual phrase length, etc.  Trust that your body knows how a good, solid 4/4 ought to feel, even if it's slow, and if something happens to upset your expectations, be a good detective and figure out why.

Rising Level 2's

Try your hands/feet/voices at these...ignore any grace notes:

18.1 & 18.2
18.12 & 18.13
18.16
18.17 (make sure you look carefully at the key)
18.22
18.29

Rising Level 3's


Give these your best shot:

18.18
18.19
18.21
18.23
18.25 (don't let the sixteenth rests freak you out)
18.26

Rising Level 4's


Your examples are longer and more complex, so you can spread them out over multiple days as you see fit:


18.30
18.31
18.32
18.34

So, hold steady and don't let the little notes scare you -- they're just a decorative part of the whole, and if you approach them calmly, they'll fall into place.

PS: It looks like I lied about this post being short...sometimes that happens when we get going, I guess...my apologies!

O tell me the truth about love

Greetings, much-loved solfeggists!

First, in honor of Valentine's Day, please indulge me in reading the following by one of my all-time favorite poets, W.H. Auden.  Benjamin Britten set it and three of Auden's other poems about love in his "Cabaret Songs" -- you can follow this link to hear a performance of all four songs (the audio quality isn't the best....sorry!).

Some say that love's a little boy, and some say it's a bird,
Some say it makes the world go round, and some say that's absurd:
But when I asked the man next door who looked as if he knew,
His wife grew very cross indeed and said it wouldn't do.


Does it look like a pair of pyjamas or the ham in a temperance hotel?
O tell me the truth about love.
Does its odour remind one of llamas, or has it a comforting smell?
O tell me the truth about love.
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is, or soft as an eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.


I looked inside the summerhouse, it wasn't ever there,
I've tried the Thames at Maidenhead and Brighton's bracing air;
I don't know what the blackbird sang or what the roses said,
But it wasn't in the chicken run or underneath the bed.


Can it pull extraordinary faces?  Is it usually sick on a swing?
O tell me the truth about love.
Does it spend all its time at the races, or fiddling with pieces of string?
O tell me the truth about love.
Has it views of its own about money? Does it think patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar, but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.


Your feelings when you meet it, I am told, you can't forget,
I've sought it since I was a child but haven't found it yet;
I'm getting on for thirty-five, and still I do not know
What kind of creature it can be that bothers people so.


When it comes, will it come without warning, just as I'm picking my nose?
O tell me the truth about love.
Will it knock on my door in the morning, or tread in the bus on my toes?
O tell me the truth about love.
Will it come like a change in the weather?  Will its greeting be courteous or bluff?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.


Clearly, Auden isn't being too serious about all this (ergo the allusion to nose-picking), but his request is well-taken.  We've all been enculturated into the rosiest of illusions about love, courtesy of the Disney princesses, Hallmark, eHarmony, etc.  We've also seen the reality of our own and others' relationships, and the cognitive dissonance between the illusory and the real can be hard to take.  In particular, I've been noticing that this concept of the ideal often prevents people from having the guts to talk about what's real (and what's really bothering us) because we feel guilty that we haven't managed somehow to magick fantasy into reality.  Then, we get resentful because things drift ever further away from the way we want them to be, and it becomes harder and harder to salvage whatever's gone wrong.  Luckily, no one has a perfect memory, and we all forget many of our disappointments, which turns into a kind of accidental forgiveness....but it's clear that this isn't a real solution, and sometimes it isn't so easy to wait until the feelings pass.

My rising level 3's will remember me saying several times this summer:

Solfa is like therapy.  When you talk about your problems, it becomes a lot easier to solve them.

I'd like to add to that:

Your relationship to your own ideal musical self is like any other relationship.  It doesn't thrive because you feel fuzzy about it.  It thrives because you work on it.

This is not to say that you shouldn't enjoy the work.  Lucky for us, there's a lot to love about being a musician, and we should strive to immerse ourselves in the most satisfying parts of that as often as we can, whether that's performing, listening, composing, whatever.  But, there's also spinach to be eaten...and we can't expect to be virtuosi if we shy away from the aspects of our musicianship that fall short.  We have to be honest about them.  We have to talk about them.  We have to give them some attention, and be ok with the fact that it might be intellectually and emotionally difficult in the short run. But, if we believe it's worth it, we have to try.

All Levels:


Take a look at this love song by Hans Leo Hassler:

http://www3.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/hassler/hass-gmu.pdf

The gist of the text is, "Woe is me, I'm in love with someone too good for me..."

Sing through the melody first, and then as many of the harmony parts as you care to tackle.

Memorize the melody


Do a chordal analysis (rising 2's, do as much as you dare) -- you can take your pick of solfa chords (meaning that you start with a Do major) or Roman numerals.

Then, look at this setting of essentially the same melody:

http://www.saengerkreis-bamberg.de/noten/geistlich/passion/Bach_WennIchEinmalSollScheiden.pdf

Sing through the parts, and do a Roman numeral analysis (again, as you are able).

The text of this verse of the chorale (taken from Bach's St. Matthew Passion, and this harmonization is sung just after Christ dies) is:

When I must once and for all depart,
then do not depart from me;
when I must suffer death,
then stand by me;
when my heart will be
most fearful,
then snatch me from the terrors
by the virtue of your own fear and pain!


....and suddenly it's a whole other kind of love song.  You can listen to it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Q6rxdPT7A

And finally, to answer Mr. Auden's question:

Love is little, love is low
Love will make my spirit grow
Grow in peace, grow in light,
Love will do the thing that's right.
(Shaker Hymn)

Happy Valentine's Day!

The Power of Suggestion

Greetings from snow-blanketed Denver!

The Universe gave me the unexpected gift of a snow day yesterday -- despite my disappointment in the cancellation/delay of conference events at my British Studies gig, I must confess how badly I'd needed a real day off.

A little time to think and gather myself, plus a few conversations with my graduate colleagues and some of my private students, have brought the article below back to my mind:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/12/07/143265882/vowels-control-your-brain?sc=fb&cc=fp

The gist of the article is this: front vowels ([i], [I], [e], [E]) tend to imply smallness or lightness, and back vowels ([u], [o], [a]) tend to imply heaviness or largeness.  Obviously, this isn't completely universal, but there are definitely some pretty convincing examples in the article.

What does this have to do with solfa, you ask?  Well...I have a bit of a pet theory that I can't exactly prove yet that Guido's choice of syllables (and the later evolution of our modern syllables, including chromatics) wasn't merely coincidental with the beginning of each line of the chant Ut queant laxis.  I believe the syllables were chosen intuitively and intentionally to phonetically represent both the tendencies and the relative placement of each tone.  Furthermore, I believe these vowel choices had some impact on the evolution from a modal to a tonal system.

Here's what I mean -- the original six syllables were ut, re, mi, fa, so, & la.  If we go strictly by the rubric above, ut, fa, so, and la fall into the category of back vowels, and re & mi belong to the front vowel category.  I would argue that Guido's Italianate [a] would have been more toward the bright (front) side, especially in the case of la, since the dental [l] pulls the tongue forward (resulting in a more fronted vowel).  Let's leave fa in the back vowel camp for now, and assume that we now have this situation:

ut (heavy)
re (light)
mi (light)
fa  (heavy)
so (heavy)
la  (light)

or in the more modern system:

do (heavy) 

re (light) 

mi (light)

fa  (heavy)

so (heavy)

la  (light)

ti  (light)

Now, as speakers of American-accented English, we pronounce these syllables differently, so they feel a little different to us, and our pronunciation idiosyncrasies create intonation issues different from the ones likely encountered in 11th-century Italy.  If we think carefully about our pronunciation, however, the tendencies of these vowels reflect the proper intonation for a major scale, especially if we designate the vowel [o] as "stable" rather than "heavy" (which seems an allowable substitution to me):

do (stable) 

re (light)             (note that the resulting do-re-mi 3rd should be wide)

mi (light)

fa  (heavy)

so (stable)

la  (light)

ti  (light)

If this theory holds water, it casts some significant doubts on the pedagogical wisdom of both fixed-do solfege (where the vowels are at least partly contradictory of correct intonation in all keys except C) and do-based minor (where the syllables me, le, & te are used to denote the lowered 3rd, 6th, and 7th scale degrees in minor, and each has a vowel that still implies "highness" -- la to le being particularly egregious).  In my earlier years, I felt much more absolute about all this.  These days, I'm more willing to acknowledge that vowel influence is probably much stronger for some people than it is for others.  However, from an acoustical standpoint, this all seems to hold up, too, and if physical fact gives one system even a small advantage over another, I think that's worth acknowledging.  If vowels can suggest to ear and voice that two notes have a certain relationship to one another, why not use the power of suggestion to our students' advantage?

I'm curious to know what you all think about this, and I'd like you to try it out and let me know:

All Levels

Read the NPR article and all my verbiage above.

Track down your Ottman book and read some examples that come easily for you (ch. 2-9, as appropriate).  The first time through, sing without thinking much about the syllables -- just sing as you normally would.  The second time through, be extremely sensitive to your pronunciation of each syllable.  Does your intonation improve?  Do you feel an increased sensitivity to the proper intonation of each syllable/interval?  If you like, choose a few examples in minor and try singing them once in do-based minor and once in la-based minor, both times with a strong focus on pronunciation.  Was it hard to get the intonation of the lowered scale degrees correct in do-based minor?  Try singing an example or two in fixed-do (no chromatic inflections, meaning that F-flat, F, and F-sharp are all called fa), still with an eye towards pronunciation.  What happens to your intonation?  

I'm really quite curious to hear what you discover...

A Farewell to Agony

Greetings, dear students!

Now, before anyone panics, I'm talking about self-inflicted agony here.  This isn't the kind of agony that can't be avoided, the kind that comes from outside.  This is the kind of agony we bring upon ourselves by fixating on all the wrong stuff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2ZWZqTD5Hg&feature=related

In general, I'm sort of a chronic agonizer....I've talked about the symptoms lots of times, and I know many of us could cop to the same sort of thing: something complex or unexpected happens, and we spend endless amounts of time thinking about why it happened, whose fault it is, all the various ways we could respond, the possible consequences of each of those responses, all the things we'd like to do about it but probably shouldn't, etc.  It's crazy-making.  It seems to be one of my favorite pastimes.  And I think it's time to quit.

So, four weeks into the new year, I'm determined to make this something I work on: giving up on agony.  This is hard, because I know for a fact that the processes behind my agonizing (attention to detail, a propensity for empathy, the desire for clear communication) aren't bad human qualities at all, and in fact, they've played a huge role in my personal and professional success.  But, they're kind of like tonsils as Bill Cosby used to describe them in his stand-up routines -- tonsils are like big security guards armed with bazookas that stand guard against germs, but sometimes something goes wrong and they join the other side.  Tonsillectomy, as I learned at the age of four, isn't a pleasant solution, but it's a permanent one.  The problem with the other side of this little analogy is that it's not desirable (and probably not possible) to remove qualities like empathy or attention to detail or a desire to understand/be understood, so there's no scalpel involved in the long-term fix...it's got to be a moment-by-moment management kind of thing.  I need to find a way to be empathetic, detail-oriented, and a person who desires to communicate clearly, but also to stop myself from obsessing over the stuff in life I can't change or control.  This has become clearer to me over the last few days through several performance experiences wherein I almost managed to steal the joy of performing from myself by working myself into a tizzy about the details rather than trusting the process.  I don't want to be that guy.  I want to be happy.  So, if being happy means I have to be brave enough to change, so be it.

I've spoken before about using solfa as a kind of mindfulness exercise, a way to reinforce the kind of thinking that makes us into healthier and happier people.  Sight-reading in particular forces us to live in the present and continually move on from any setbacks if we wish to be successful, so I've got some of that on tap for you this week:

All Levels


Before you even go hunting for your Ottman, refresh your own memory as to the procedures behind good sight-singing:

1. Look ahead.
2. Pick a good tempo and maintain it -- conducting is a very good idea!
3. Ground yourself in the key.
4. Keep your eye moving ahead of your voice.
5. If you make a mistake, keep going.

Rising Level 2's


Ottman, ch. 9 is your playground.  Pay attention to the character/tempo markings in the book, and try to find examples you don't already know.  Read 2-3 examples per day -- I bet you'll find that your strategy gets better between the first and third example of a given day.

Rising Level 3's


Go nuts with Ottman, ch. 12.  If you find that you know most of the examples already, expand your search to ch. 11 and include some C-clef examples (you're allowed to pretend you're in a different key if you want).  Read 2-3 examples per day.

Rising Level 4's


Take a look at Ottman, ch. 16.  The main challenge of this chapter is meant to be rhythmic rather than melodic, but I'd like you to work with the melodic examples (16.37 and up).  If you get in over your head in terms of chromaticism, you have my permission to backtrack.  Read 2-3 examples per day.

Good luck, dear students!

The Morning Star

Greetings, dear solfeggists!

I'm safely through my last first week of classes as a graduate student, and the part about safe is more important to me than usual.  Why?  Well, there's been a little weirdness afoot in my life, and I think I've had an indirect hand in it, but I'm not entirely sure how to reverse it....or if I want to.

You see, for much of the holiday break, there was a fair amount of hand-wringing going on around my house about the future.  Theoretically, I only have to start worrying about the future in earnest if I really pull myself together and graduate like I'm planning to, so I could put those worries off.  However, I've reached that point of needing to graduate for the sake of my sanity...a hundred miles of driving for every school day simply can't continue indefinitely.  So, over break I realized that means I need a plan, and I need it sort of immediately, and I drove myself up the wall for a week or so worrying about what the plan was going to entail.  Then, once I got good and exhausted from that, I changed my tune.  Nobody can control the future -- it'll be what it'll be, and I can get myself as ready as I can be, but I can't control it.  I can look for jobs, apply for jobs, make my CV look like a million bucks, ask everyone I've ever met for letters of recommendation, and put together the best conducting video known to humankind, and I still won't be able to control the future.  So, I started saying to the Universe:

Look....I'm throwing myself on your mercy.  I'm scared, but here we go.

And, after the last week, I'm not sure I can recommend this course of action if what you want is peace of mind, but I can definitely recommend it if you're looking for some excitement.  Of course, there's no way to say for certain that my change in perspective has caused any of this, but suddenly things are moving in quite an unusual way, quite an unexpected way, and I'm not comfortable with it, but I'm too curious about it to dig in my heels.  I still can't control the future, and the future is now looking a lot more open than I expected just a few weeks ago.  For the first time in a long time, it looks like an adventure instead of a series of bills I have to figure out how to pay or deadlines I have to meet.  And really, it only took a week of strangeness, just a few odd incidents to shake me into this renewed perspective.  I don't know what's going to happen.  I know a few things have started to happen that I didn't expect, and if they can blindside me like that, just about anything else could follow.  I'm only writing my own lines in this script, and there's no way of knowing for sure what anyone else will do or say or what their timing will be like.  So, we have to improvise, roll with the punches, keep the center of gravity low...and realize that we are at the mercy of a lot of forces we don't control or fully understand.

In the midst of all of this, we can be especially grateful that we are musicians.  Why?  Well, we are bearers of a tradition that has bequeathed us the best kind of toolkit for dealing with chaos and unpredictability: beauty, and the knowledge that it is fleeting.

All Levels:


I can't think of a better example of this than Bach, a musical Rumpelstiltskin par excellence....the man not only knew how to seize a moment, he could spin a simple tune like this one (about the beauty of the morning star) into a masterpiece like no one else:

http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Scores/BWV001-V&P.pdf

Begin with the chorale at the end of the piece (p. 41).  Sing through each part in solfa, paying particular attention to the soprano melody.  Notice the form of the tune (you must take the repeat).  If you're a rising level 3, you may recognize it from the duet in Cantata 37 from a few weeks back.

Memorize the melody....believe me, it's worth keeping in your mental library.

Now, go back to the beginning of the piece and sing the soprano part of the whole piece.  Does it look/sound familiar?  How does this part function in relationship to the other three voice parts, both in terms of form and texture?  Do the parts come together homophonically at any point?  If so, why do you think it happens there?  You may want to refer to the text translation in order to answer that last question.

Tackle as many of the other voice parts in the opening movement as you feel able to deal with.  There is definitely some flirting with other key areas going on, but Bach doesn't stray too far.....why do you think that is?

If you found all of that reasonably easy, do a Roman numeral analysis of the final chorale and compare it to the key areas visited/referenced in the opening movement.  Is there any correspondence?

My friends, embrace the beauty around you -- in the morning star, in the stark beauty of winter, in your lives and the lives of other people.  We don't know what's going to happen.  But, we have what we have right now.

Higher Ground

Hello, Solfa People!

So, courtesy of the 2009 Conspirare holiday album, I've had Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground" stuck in my head for days, especially the chorus:

I'm so darn glad he let me try it again,
'Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin,
I'm so glad now I know more than I knew then
Gonna keep on tryin' 'til I reach my highest ground.

It's a good general walking-around tune for sure, and possibly an even better one for this time of year full of freshly-made resolutions.  I get especially black-and-white about my resolutions sometimes, and one little slip-up on one lofty goal or another causes me to abandon the whole effort.  This is more than a little childish, but I think this happens to everyone -- we get terribly dualistic and hard on ourselves, and we sabotage our own best efforts by believing that we have to be completely successful or completely unsuccessful.

So, this post is especially dedicated to those of you who maybe haven't worked on solfa in months and months, or who did it for awhile and got behind, and even to those of you who have been pretty consistent.  It's ok to miss a day, a week, a month....and even missing more than that doesn't mean that you should abandon any idea of working on your skills between now and July.  You can try it again any time -- falling off the wagon can be just an isolated incident.  It doesn't have to be the end of the world.  Every moment is a new chance to start reaching for your highest ground.  In fact, it is only in each moment that we have the chance.  So, forget about what you didn't do yesterday or last week or last month.  Right now still belongs to you.

All Levels


Seek out your Ottman and your tuning fork, and put them someplace visible -- a coffee table or end table might be a good spot.  Remember, you can get your daily 15 minutes of solfa in during the commercial breaks of an hour-long network television show -- you just have to hit the mute button.

Rising Level 2's


Check out these longish examples, and work through one a day.  Be sure to find the key from your tuning fork, and to work intentionally on any snags:

8.44
8.46
9.3
9.15
9.36
9.37

Rising Level 3's


You have the same marching orders as the 2's, but with these examples instead:

14.26 (the D-sharp is "di")
14.28
14.29
14.31
14.32 (despite its ending, this piece is in D)
14.33

For all examples above, I stay in the same key, but you're welcome to experiment with changing if that helps!

Rising Level 4's


Your instructions are also the same as the 2's, and you also get your own examples to play with:

14.38
14.40
14.41
14.42
14.43
14.44

In each case, the choice of whether to change keys or not is up to you!

Carpe diem, my dear students!  It's time to try again.

Bit by bit

Greetings!

It's the first post of 2012, my friends, and I've proclaimed this the year of "One _______ at a time."  As in:

Q. How do you eat an elephant?
A. One bite at a time.

Q. How do you finish a doctorate?
A. One project at a time.

Q. How do you improve your musicianship?
A. One practice session at a time.

There's more, but you get the picture.  You see, January has felt pretty heavy so far, in part because I'm such a future-tripper.  You can probably guess what future-tripping is (I'm borrowing the term from a friend of mine, who wisely advises against it....against future tripping, that is) -- living in some imagined reality that hasn't happened yet and is based on all manner of predictions, assumptions, words we've put in other people's mouths in imagined conversations that have yet to take place, etc.  When I choose to live in this kind of projected reality (a choice I usually don't realize I've made right away), I take on burdens that aren't yet mine to carry...which frequently results in mental exhaustion.

Just to be clear, I don't mean that planning ahead is a bad idea, nor do I think that flying by the seat of one's pants (under the supposed banner of "living in the moment") is the way to reach one's goals.  I believe in long-range planning, in setting out a course and following through.  But, while looking toward the future is one thing, a good thing, living in it rather than the present is a one-way ticket to stress and frustration.  We are best equipped to move toward the future when we live in the present.  This isn't easy, and I haven't met many people who can do this consistently without ongoing reminders.  I know I can't.  I generally have to wear myself to a frazzle with worry before I realize why everything seems so hard -- and it's usually because I'm trying to do everything at once and worry about everything at once instead of taking it one day and one project at a time.

The applications to solfa are pretty obvious.  In fact, this philosophy is a big part of the motivation behind this blog: nobody undergoes a total transformation of their musical abilities in a three-week summer session, no matter how intense.  So, I encourage you to work incrementally and consistently throughout the year, and if you do it, you'll get better.  I don't know this because I can see the future.  I know it because it happened to me, and I've watched it happen to others, bit by bit.

So, let's tackle a biggish piece of music and take it on a little at a time:

Rising Level 2's


Look at this piece:

http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Scores/BWV037-V&P.pdf

Scroll down to page 23 and look at the chorale.

First, look at the melody.  Despite the key signature, I'd advise you to begin in D major.  After the first fermata, A major should work well.  Sing through the melody a phrase at a time, then all the way through.  Sing it through a few times, until it starts to really feel like a melody to you.

Next, look at the bass line.  Lest your eyes go buggy with looking at all the accidentals on the page, realize that D-sharps are "di" in the first phrase only, and "fi" thereafter.  C-natural is "ma" & it only happens in that little chromatically descending passage.  All the other accidentals are either for courtesy or a return to regularly scheduled programming.  Sing it through a few times, until you can follow the melody line out of the corner of your eye while you sing it.

Alto and tenor are next on the agenda, whichever you'd rather sing first.  The alto line is pretty challenging to begin in D, so experiment with A, and possibly also E minor (remembering to call the C-sharp "fi" if you sing in E minor).  Notice all the non-harmonic tones Bach uses...in my opinion, their artful placement is really what separates an A+ four-voice part-writing assignment from truly beautiful music.

Once you get through all four voices, call up a friend and sing through two at a time.  Or, sing one and play another.  Or, if you'd really like to warm the cockles of my heart, get a quartet together and sing through all four parts together!

Rising Level 3's


You'll be working from the same piece, but you'll start on page 9.

http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Scores/BWV037-V&P.pdf

First, the rhythm....you see, J.S. Bach sometimes used a kind of shorthand when notating complicated rhythms in compound meter.  Sometimes this shorthand leaves some room for interpretation, and this piece has several incidences of that.  With few exceptions (and I challenge you to find them), if you think of the dotted quarter as being the beat, but a beat that can sometimes be divided into two equal eighths instead of three, you'll be fine.

Next, look at one voice at a time -- it might be good to start with the one that sits most easily in your voice (octave exchanges are acceptable).  Notice that both voices begin somewhat simply and become more elaborate as the piece continues.  I stay in D major the whole time for both voices.

Once you have a handle on one voice, switch to the other.  If you run into a strange rhythmic snag, see if you can use the other voice to help you decide what to do.

Notice the patterns Bach used in the melismas....they're a lot less predictable than Handel, are they not? It's tricky to get them to sit in the voice....I'm in the middle of learning that the hard way (I'm singing the soprano part in a concert on Jan. 21...say a little prayer for me!).

Rising Level 4's


You, too, will be drinking at Bach's musical font, but you'll start with the opening movement -- the choral bits begin on p. 2.


http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Scores/BWV037-V&P.pdf


Because you all are advanced, I'll leave the key changes up to you.

Begin with the bass voice, and only go as far as Rehearsal B to start with.  Then, look at it in relation to the tenor, alto, and soprano voices.  Is this a strict fugue?  Why or why not?

Cover the ground from Rehearsal B to C next, beginning with the soprano voice this time, and going through the same comparative process.

Finally, work from letter C to the end, again using comparison as you go to help you navigate each line with information from the other lines.

If you like, use the alto/soprano duet at Rehearsal C as a sing/play, and if you had fun with that, do the same with the tenor/bass duet that follows.

Enjoy, my friends, and remember to take it one little bit at a time!