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!
Showing posts with label solfa for mindfulness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label solfa for mindfulness. Show all posts
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Saturday, January 28, 2012
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!
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!
Saturday, December 31, 2011
A True Poem
Welcome, dear students!
It's new year's eve, and everybody's talking about it....including me, it seems. This is, perhaps, a little silly, since today really just feels like another new day, and it will come and go as winter days do (but with extra bluster here in Denver....gusts over 60 MPH, they say). Everyone feels a certain urge to take stock of things -- which my astrologically minded friends might say has more to do with Saturn frowning down at us little earthlings as we labor under the influence of Capricorn than it does with the somewhat arbitrary turning of the year. But, who am I to fight this influence....as you all know, I seldom turn down a chance for some good reflection.
2011 was turbulent, violent, and downright frightening at times. Revolutions and disasters and deaths of prominent people seemed almost commonplace. Hope and fear have danced wildly, as it seemed like every day brought news of some new financial resolution or disaster for the global market. I remember frequently thinking to myself, "Is every year this eventful? Why don't I remember anything like this before?" And, it could be that my own state of affairs as a person finishing a terminal degree (in other words, coming to the end of my last journey as a student to academia's never-never-land) is the cause of my take on 2011 -- I am certainly guilty of being mostly out of the loop on world events when my own little life has me otherwise occupied, and maybe a part of me is just waking up to what everyone else has been saying for years. However, I hear a lot of people around me saying similar things about this year in particular....2011 was a doozy.
So, what to do? We are musicians and artists, not economists or world political leaders. We aren't even engineers or doctors. What can we do? Why does our intonation or rhythmic acuity or performance practice matter in a world that is eating itself alive? I ask myself these kinds of questions a lot (here and elsewhere), and every once in awhile, I get a sliver of answer...
Last night I had dinner with a good friend, and she had spent an absurd amount of time that afternoon at the DMV, during which she passed the time by talking to someone next to her in line. The person she spoke with was a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, and he had some very interesting things to say about his experiences there, particularly about the ways in which the US is "helping" the Afghan people. Specifically, he mentioned that US troops are building schools, which sounds like a lovely thing, right? Well, there's a bit of a problem...there's no money or infrastructure to put books, teachers, or students in these school buildings and run them as schools, and the intended students are part of a culture that doesn't conceptualize education in the same way we do, so the western concept of a school is something that just doesn't compute. So, the buildings wind up standing empty, or they wind up getting repurposed by insurgents, and US troops then have to blow up the buildings they just built. This guy was really frustrated about all of this -- frustrated enough to tell a stranger in line at the DMV about it, and honest enough to say that he didn't know what the answers are. I certainly don't have the answers either, but I can take a stab at diagnosing the cause.
When I first arrived in Hungary for my 10-month stint, I showed up expecting to be disoriented. I expected to need to learn about my environment, adjust to new things, find my way around, etc. I was not at all ready for the constant gnawing feeling that it took me weeks to acknowledge, and probably months to name. The problem was this: nothing about my environment told me that I was who I said I was. The signs on the street, the people around me, the procedure for buying produce at the grocery store -- all those things were foreign, they had been the way they were long before I got there, and would be that way after I left. It had nothing to do with me, and that scared me to death, and I didn't know why. In retrospect, this was just culture shock, but many Americans go through their entire lives without working through a case of it, so we have no idea how "American" we actually are. We live our lives calmly unaware that our pragmatic choices are extremely value-laden. We can't buy a carrot or wash a sock or drink a glass of water without having assumed a whole slough of things about the world around us, and those assumptions are almost 100% unconscious. We think we're being objective, we think we're being pragmatic, and we're actually preaching a gospel we don't even know we believe.
So, what's art got to do with it? Well, what do we learn from art? We learn subjectivity. We learn exactitude. We learn expression. We learn about difference. We learn about interpretation. And, while we still probably have to be caught in the act a lot of times before we really start to get it, this training does give people a basic construct for the idea that different isn't necessarily wrong or bad, and that subtle changes really do matter. It's funny, isn't it? Artists get a pretty bad rap for having "artistic personalities" and for following crazy whims and making irresponsible life choices, but an artistic education might be the best hope any person has for understanding and respecting other people. Why? Because as long as your judgments are unconscious (and therefore you just think of them as "logic"), they control you. As soon as you learn to acknowledge judgments as judgments, it might knock you off-balance, but then you get to be in charge...and you can change your own mind. Like the writer of this poem says, you keep working on it, even though someone might get hurt. You examine yourself, become responsible, and you are able to help others do the same.
My friends, 2011 is at her end. We have worked hard, and we will continue into the new year. I invite you to be the reflective people you are, in your personal lives and your artistic lives, and to allow one to infect the other. Be happy. Enjoy your lives of teaching and music-making. Work on yourself, build up your weaknesses and celebrate your strengths and the strengths of others. Nurture yourself and your students with beauty and goodness, so that you can be strong enough not to shy away from difficulty and ugliness. Say yes. Love each other.
All Levels:
Just some listening assignments this time around....
Cells Planets - Chanticleer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl12ZXZeqa4
Conspirare/Craig Hella Johnson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_qfeE0TjyY
Sweet Honey in the Rock
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCVvoL_F5gA
Happy new year!
It's new year's eve, and everybody's talking about it....including me, it seems. This is, perhaps, a little silly, since today really just feels like another new day, and it will come and go as winter days do (but with extra bluster here in Denver....gusts over 60 MPH, they say). Everyone feels a certain urge to take stock of things -- which my astrologically minded friends might say has more to do with Saturn frowning down at us little earthlings as we labor under the influence of Capricorn than it does with the somewhat arbitrary turning of the year. But, who am I to fight this influence....as you all know, I seldom turn down a chance for some good reflection.
2011 was turbulent, violent, and downright frightening at times. Revolutions and disasters and deaths of prominent people seemed almost commonplace. Hope and fear have danced wildly, as it seemed like every day brought news of some new financial resolution or disaster for the global market. I remember frequently thinking to myself, "Is every year this eventful? Why don't I remember anything like this before?" And, it could be that my own state of affairs as a person finishing a terminal degree (in other words, coming to the end of my last journey as a student to academia's never-never-land) is the cause of my take on 2011 -- I am certainly guilty of being mostly out of the loop on world events when my own little life has me otherwise occupied, and maybe a part of me is just waking up to what everyone else has been saying for years. However, I hear a lot of people around me saying similar things about this year in particular....2011 was a doozy.
So, what to do? We are musicians and artists, not economists or world political leaders. We aren't even engineers or doctors. What can we do? Why does our intonation or rhythmic acuity or performance practice matter in a world that is eating itself alive? I ask myself these kinds of questions a lot (here and elsewhere), and every once in awhile, I get a sliver of answer...
Last night I had dinner with a good friend, and she had spent an absurd amount of time that afternoon at the DMV, during which she passed the time by talking to someone next to her in line. The person she spoke with was a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, and he had some very interesting things to say about his experiences there, particularly about the ways in which the US is "helping" the Afghan people. Specifically, he mentioned that US troops are building schools, which sounds like a lovely thing, right? Well, there's a bit of a problem...there's no money or infrastructure to put books, teachers, or students in these school buildings and run them as schools, and the intended students are part of a culture that doesn't conceptualize education in the same way we do, so the western concept of a school is something that just doesn't compute. So, the buildings wind up standing empty, or they wind up getting repurposed by insurgents, and US troops then have to blow up the buildings they just built. This guy was really frustrated about all of this -- frustrated enough to tell a stranger in line at the DMV about it, and honest enough to say that he didn't know what the answers are. I certainly don't have the answers either, but I can take a stab at diagnosing the cause.
When I first arrived in Hungary for my 10-month stint, I showed up expecting to be disoriented. I expected to need to learn about my environment, adjust to new things, find my way around, etc. I was not at all ready for the constant gnawing feeling that it took me weeks to acknowledge, and probably months to name. The problem was this: nothing about my environment told me that I was who I said I was. The signs on the street, the people around me, the procedure for buying produce at the grocery store -- all those things were foreign, they had been the way they were long before I got there, and would be that way after I left. It had nothing to do with me, and that scared me to death, and I didn't know why. In retrospect, this was just culture shock, but many Americans go through their entire lives without working through a case of it, so we have no idea how "American" we actually are. We live our lives calmly unaware that our pragmatic choices are extremely value-laden. We can't buy a carrot or wash a sock or drink a glass of water without having assumed a whole slough of things about the world around us, and those assumptions are almost 100% unconscious. We think we're being objective, we think we're being pragmatic, and we're actually preaching a gospel we don't even know we believe.
So, what's art got to do with it? Well, what do we learn from art? We learn subjectivity. We learn exactitude. We learn expression. We learn about difference. We learn about interpretation. And, while we still probably have to be caught in the act a lot of times before we really start to get it, this training does give people a basic construct for the idea that different isn't necessarily wrong or bad, and that subtle changes really do matter. It's funny, isn't it? Artists get a pretty bad rap for having "artistic personalities" and for following crazy whims and making irresponsible life choices, but an artistic education might be the best hope any person has for understanding and respecting other people. Why? Because as long as your judgments are unconscious (and therefore you just think of them as "logic"), they control you. As soon as you learn to acknowledge judgments as judgments, it might knock you off-balance, but then you get to be in charge...and you can change your own mind. Like the writer of this poem says, you keep working on it, even though someone might get hurt. You examine yourself, become responsible, and you are able to help others do the same.
My friends, 2011 is at her end. We have worked hard, and we will continue into the new year. I invite you to be the reflective people you are, in your personal lives and your artistic lives, and to allow one to infect the other. Be happy. Enjoy your lives of teaching and music-making. Work on yourself, build up your weaknesses and celebrate your strengths and the strengths of others. Nurture yourself and your students with beauty and goodness, so that you can be strong enough not to shy away from difficulty and ugliness. Say yes. Love each other.
All Levels:
Just some listening assignments this time around....
Cells Planets - Chanticleer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl12ZXZeqa4
Conspirare/Craig Hella Johnson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_qfeE0TjyY
Sweet Honey in the Rock
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCVvoL_F5gA
Happy new year!
Monday, December 19, 2011
To tell the truth...
Greetings, dear readers!
It's a snowy winter's evening here....just right for the week before Christmas, the darkness of the winter solstice almost at its full strength. I think I just might have finished all my Christmas shopping this afternoon, and while there's still Christmas Eve and Day left in the realm of holiday singing obligations, things have finally slowed down. The cycle of the year brings around lots of memories as it moves, and in my line of work, those memories sometimes appear unexpectedly in the form of people who I associate with a past time or former place showing up to concerts in my here and now. And, since the nature of the season inevitably leads to some exhaustion, verbal filters sometimes don't work so well.
This is all sort of an oblique way of saying that I said a little more of what I meant than I really should have at least one time yesterday, and I feel a little bad about it. I'm inclined sometimes to blame my penchant for excessive honesty in these moments on my parents' choice of a name for me, which is derived from Gabriel, angel of the annunciation. Naming a kid after a celestial being who had to start most of his sentences with, "Fear not!" seems like kind of a set-up to me. I've met a few other folks in my time whose names have the same derivation, and we do seem to have this in common...the urge to proclaim sometimes just overrides common sense.
I'm mostly not serious about this, but I'm a little serious about it. People sometimes engage in behavior that is not the best choice for a given situation. People have default settings that steer them consistently in a particular direction, and while it is possible to override those settings under optimal conditions, tiredness has a way of bringing out whatever is most natural or most habitual. For me, that often includes telling the truth...the whole truth, and way more truth than anyone really wants, in far more detail than is necessary or helpful. There have been situations in my life where this tendency has served me excellently -- and probably many more situations where this tendency has gotten me into trouble or made other people feel awkward or created other kinds of problems. We all have stuff like this, I believe. In A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle deals with these kinds of hard-wired personality traits through the character of her protagonist, Meg Murry, who is in the throes of pubescent angst, and is very unhappy, even downright ill-tempered, for much of the book. However, at the moment of crisis, it is Meg's temper and stubbornness that actually winds up saving the world. L'Engle still refers to these traits in Meg's personality as "faults," but it makes me wonder: can the traits that save us truly be considered faults?
To look at the same idea from a different angle, consider a group exercise/pep talk my dear guest blogger, Ted, likes to have with his choirs sometimes:
"Ok, will everyone in this room who is perfect please raise your hand?"
[no one moves, nervous giggles ensue]
"Well, I have news for you. You're all wrong. Each of you is exactly who you need to be. Do you always do perfect? No. But, you all are perfect, right now, today, at this very moment."
So, no matter what we do -- all of us, any of us, even the jerk who stole your parking spot, or the moron who screwed up your account at the bank, or the nasty lady who yelled at you for cutting in line at the coffee shop even though you apologized and said you didn't see her -- we are operating from a good place. We're doing the best we can under the circumstances. It is not easy to believe, and it isn't a release from responsibility or a license to do whatever we want, but...
We're perfect.
And there's nothing that can be done to change that. You can't screw up.
Pretty liberating...and when you get to thinking about it, extremely scary. Sometimes we all feel like freaks/jerks/morons/nasty people...but this is what we've got to work with. And, speaking of work:
Rising Level 2's
Take a look at this piece:
http://www3.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/han-mf10.pdf
Many of you will recognize it -- you're probably used to hearing a soloist sing essentially the same material before the chorus comes in....
For our purposes, use this scheme for the key changes:
in m. 5-6, all parts will move into A Major
at the pickup to m. 19, all parts will return to D Major
in m. 26 and 29, the G-sharp and C-natural are just chromatic inflections
So, you may do as you wish with this piece, but in the spirit of today's blog theme, consider this: what comes the most naturally to you in solfa class? Singing? Analysis? Memory? Sight-singing? Dictation? Whatever your strengths are, design some activities for yourself with this piece that give you a chance to delight in what you already know you do well.
Then, ask yourself about your weaknesses in the solfa classroom. Whatever these might be, design some other activities that will help you build your skills in these areas.
Rising Level 3's
For you, a setting by William Byrd of the same text, but in Latin:
http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/9/9a/BYRD-SUR.pdf
You're on your own for key area choices (though I will tell you that the opening signature is a little deceptive....perhaps even a little Dorian....), but follow the same procedure as the rising level 2's -- seek out your own strengths and weaknesses, and use this piece as a tool to work with both.
Rising Level 4's
And for you, a polychoral setting by Palestrina of the same text, also in Latin:
http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/pal-surg.pdf
You, too, are on your own tonally, and should follow the same procedure as the others -- use what you know best and do best to access what is harder for you. After all, this is what it's all about.
Notice that the text of all three pieces has everything to do with the theme, too:
Arise, shine, for your light has come!
It's a snowy winter's evening here....just right for the week before Christmas, the darkness of the winter solstice almost at its full strength. I think I just might have finished all my Christmas shopping this afternoon, and while there's still Christmas Eve and Day left in the realm of holiday singing obligations, things have finally slowed down. The cycle of the year brings around lots of memories as it moves, and in my line of work, those memories sometimes appear unexpectedly in the form of people who I associate with a past time or former place showing up to concerts in my here and now. And, since the nature of the season inevitably leads to some exhaustion, verbal filters sometimes don't work so well.
This is all sort of an oblique way of saying that I said a little more of what I meant than I really should have at least one time yesterday, and I feel a little bad about it. I'm inclined sometimes to blame my penchant for excessive honesty in these moments on my parents' choice of a name for me, which is derived from Gabriel, angel of the annunciation. Naming a kid after a celestial being who had to start most of his sentences with, "Fear not!" seems like kind of a set-up to me. I've met a few other folks in my time whose names have the same derivation, and we do seem to have this in common...the urge to proclaim sometimes just overrides common sense.
I'm mostly not serious about this, but I'm a little serious about it. People sometimes engage in behavior that is not the best choice for a given situation. People have default settings that steer them consistently in a particular direction, and while it is possible to override those settings under optimal conditions, tiredness has a way of bringing out whatever is most natural or most habitual. For me, that often includes telling the truth...the whole truth, and way more truth than anyone really wants, in far more detail than is necessary or helpful. There have been situations in my life where this tendency has served me excellently -- and probably many more situations where this tendency has gotten me into trouble or made other people feel awkward or created other kinds of problems. We all have stuff like this, I believe. In A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle deals with these kinds of hard-wired personality traits through the character of her protagonist, Meg Murry, who is in the throes of pubescent angst, and is very unhappy, even downright ill-tempered, for much of the book. However, at the moment of crisis, it is Meg's temper and stubbornness that actually winds up saving the world. L'Engle still refers to these traits in Meg's personality as "faults," but it makes me wonder: can the traits that save us truly be considered faults?
To look at the same idea from a different angle, consider a group exercise/pep talk my dear guest blogger, Ted, likes to have with his choirs sometimes:
"Ok, will everyone in this room who is perfect please raise your hand?"
[no one moves, nervous giggles ensue]
"Well, I have news for you. You're all wrong. Each of you is exactly who you need to be. Do you always do perfect? No. But, you all are perfect, right now, today, at this very moment."
So, no matter what we do -- all of us, any of us, even the jerk who stole your parking spot, or the moron who screwed up your account at the bank, or the nasty lady who yelled at you for cutting in line at the coffee shop even though you apologized and said you didn't see her -- we are operating from a good place. We're doing the best we can under the circumstances. It is not easy to believe, and it isn't a release from responsibility or a license to do whatever we want, but...
We're perfect.
And there's nothing that can be done to change that. You can't screw up.
Pretty liberating...and when you get to thinking about it, extremely scary. Sometimes we all feel like freaks/jerks/morons/nasty people...but this is what we've got to work with. And, speaking of work:
Rising Level 2's
Take a look at this piece:
http://www3.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/han-mf10.pdf
Many of you will recognize it -- you're probably used to hearing a soloist sing essentially the same material before the chorus comes in....
For our purposes, use this scheme for the key changes:
in m. 5-6, all parts will move into A Major
at the pickup to m. 19, all parts will return to D Major
in m. 26 and 29, the G-sharp and C-natural are just chromatic inflections
So, you may do as you wish with this piece, but in the spirit of today's blog theme, consider this: what comes the most naturally to you in solfa class? Singing? Analysis? Memory? Sight-singing? Dictation? Whatever your strengths are, design some activities for yourself with this piece that give you a chance to delight in what you already know you do well.
Then, ask yourself about your weaknesses in the solfa classroom. Whatever these might be, design some other activities that will help you build your skills in these areas.
Rising Level 3's
For you, a setting by William Byrd of the same text, but in Latin:
http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/9/9a/BYRD-SUR.pdf
You're on your own for key area choices (though I will tell you that the opening signature is a little deceptive....perhaps even a little Dorian....), but follow the same procedure as the rising level 2's -- seek out your own strengths and weaknesses, and use this piece as a tool to work with both.
Rising Level 4's
And for you, a polychoral setting by Palestrina of the same text, also in Latin:
http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/pal-surg.pdf
You, too, are on your own tonally, and should follow the same procedure as the others -- use what you know best and do best to access what is harder for you. After all, this is what it's all about.
Notice that the text of all three pieces has everything to do with the theme, too:
Arise, shine, for your light has come!
Monday, December 5, 2011
Beginner's Mind...and Deeper Magic
Greetings, solfa sojourners!
I apologize for the lateness of this post....it was quite the week in my little world.
First, I am now officially (drumroll....)......A.B.D. (all but dissertation)! This means that the comprehensive exam process is now completely behind me, and there's just a collection of projects and papers standing between me and a shiny new set of letters to follow my name: DMA. I'm currently curled up on my couch with a glass of Spanish wine and a variegated collection of dark chocolate (courtesy of a much-loved colleague), but The Josquin Companion is glaring at me a little from my bookshelf, and I well know that I'll have to get cracking if I really want to get 'er done in time for a May 2012 graduation.
However, the four concerts and two church services I sang this weekend have earned me an evening of moderate slovenliness (and a breakfast tomorrow morning of these...), and also a moment of reflection -- courtesy of, in part, the aforementioned church services.
The orals portion of the comps process is more than a little nerve-wracking, although I was incredibly fortunate to have an extremely gracious and supportive committee of professors who I believe to be truly invested in my success. Still, though, the prospect of two hours in a room with five extremely smart people tasked with finding out what you know is pretty sobering. I definitely felt the pinch (especially over the "game" one professor decided to play: he told me to study choral music from 1000 CE to 2010, and he had planned to pick four years at random from that millennial span, whereupon it was my job to talk about what happened in those years. In the actual exam, he picked 1190, 1757, and 1910...if you're looking for something musicological to do, do a little digging on these years and see what you come up with...). Interestingly, however, there was a moment in the middle of the exam when I was feeling at a loss for one thing or another, and this thought occurred to me:
"Thank goodness for having more questions to ask."
Not that I'd started to wonder whether or not I know everything....I harbor no delusions on that front. However, there's an unavoidable jadedness that comes with all these years of post-graduate education and the rigors of study and practice and working too hard. Familiarity just breeds contempt, no matter what one does. So, this is analogous to what the preacher on Sunday called "Deep Magic" (in the Narnian sense)...sowing and reaping, the inevitability of a pattern based on natural law. But there is, as Aslan said, a magic deeper still. Sometimes, through the grace of something unforseeable, we are shaken out of the pattern, and we see something new. It isn't the pattern that has changed, as it turns out. It's us. We look at something well-worn and well-known and our perspective is reborn. We are able to be present in a different way, and we are beginners again. A well-known Zen teacher spoke about this phenomenon, too -- he calls it "beginner's mind," and he claims it is always with us. This kind of shift (a move towards enlightenment, if you will) is always about to happen.
So, in this spirit:
Rising Level 2's
See if you can find these in your handouts from Level I:
Canon 109
Canon 106
Canon 75
Sing through each one, remembering the twists and turns of each. Are the things that tripped you up once still troublesome, or have they changed? Do you perceive the phrase structures the same way you once did? Do you hear or see anything new? Sing through one of the other canons on the same xeroxed page and compare the experience of singing something familiar (if distantly so!) with singing something new. How has your musicianship evolved? How has your approach changed, if at all?
Rising Level 3's
Break out your Classical Canons book and track these down:
Canon 115
Canon 117
Canon 179
Follow the same instructions as the rising 2's.
Rising Level 4's
Track down your Kodaly 15 2-part Exercises, please....
Look at exercise number 12 and sing through both lines.
How well do you remember them? Which parts are the easiest to remember? What makes them memorable? How has your experience of this piece changed since July? Now look at number 15 (which I think we looked at only in passing, if at all). How will you approach it? How does it differ from number 12, both in terms of difficulty and in terms of its construction? Does the appearance of accidentals elicit a different intellectual/vocal response from you now than it did in July? How have you changed since then?
It is my hope that you'll be pleasantly surprised by what you discover through these activities -- and even if you're not, my money's on the fact that you've all grown and changed and improved since I saw you last, even if it doesn't seem obvious at the moment. The hard part of this musical journey we're all taking is that we don't always get to enjoy our own progress. However, it's still there. The moment of revelation is always at hand. The deeper magic is never not at work.
I apologize for the lateness of this post....it was quite the week in my little world.
First, I am now officially (drumroll....)......A.B.D. (all but dissertation)! This means that the comprehensive exam process is now completely behind me, and there's just a collection of projects and papers standing between me and a shiny new set of letters to follow my name: DMA. I'm currently curled up on my couch with a glass of Spanish wine and a variegated collection of dark chocolate (courtesy of a much-loved colleague), but The Josquin Companion is glaring at me a little from my bookshelf, and I well know that I'll have to get cracking if I really want to get 'er done in time for a May 2012 graduation.
However, the four concerts and two church services I sang this weekend have earned me an evening of moderate slovenliness (and a breakfast tomorrow morning of these...), and also a moment of reflection -- courtesy of, in part, the aforementioned church services.
The orals portion of the comps process is more than a little nerve-wracking, although I was incredibly fortunate to have an extremely gracious and supportive committee of professors who I believe to be truly invested in my success. Still, though, the prospect of two hours in a room with five extremely smart people tasked with finding out what you know is pretty sobering. I definitely felt the pinch (especially over the "game" one professor decided to play: he told me to study choral music from 1000 CE to 2010, and he had planned to pick four years at random from that millennial span, whereupon it was my job to talk about what happened in those years. In the actual exam, he picked 1190, 1757, and 1910...if you're looking for something musicological to do, do a little digging on these years and see what you come up with...). Interestingly, however, there was a moment in the middle of the exam when I was feeling at a loss for one thing or another, and this thought occurred to me:
"Thank goodness for having more questions to ask."
Not that I'd started to wonder whether or not I know everything....I harbor no delusions on that front. However, there's an unavoidable jadedness that comes with all these years of post-graduate education and the rigors of study and practice and working too hard. Familiarity just breeds contempt, no matter what one does. So, this is analogous to what the preacher on Sunday called "Deep Magic" (in the Narnian sense)...sowing and reaping, the inevitability of a pattern based on natural law. But there is, as Aslan said, a magic deeper still. Sometimes, through the grace of something unforseeable, we are shaken out of the pattern, and we see something new. It isn't the pattern that has changed, as it turns out. It's us. We look at something well-worn and well-known and our perspective is reborn. We are able to be present in a different way, and we are beginners again. A well-known Zen teacher spoke about this phenomenon, too -- he calls it "beginner's mind," and he claims it is always with us. This kind of shift (a move towards enlightenment, if you will) is always about to happen.
So, in this spirit:
Rising Level 2's
See if you can find these in your handouts from Level I:
Canon 109
Canon 106
Canon 75
Sing through each one, remembering the twists and turns of each. Are the things that tripped you up once still troublesome, or have they changed? Do you perceive the phrase structures the same way you once did? Do you hear or see anything new? Sing through one of the other canons on the same xeroxed page and compare the experience of singing something familiar (if distantly so!) with singing something new. How has your musicianship evolved? How has your approach changed, if at all?
Rising Level 3's
Break out your Classical Canons book and track these down:
Canon 115
Canon 117
Canon 179
Follow the same instructions as the rising 2's.
Rising Level 4's
Track down your Kodaly 15 2-part Exercises, please....
Look at exercise number 12 and sing through both lines.
How well do you remember them? Which parts are the easiest to remember? What makes them memorable? How has your experience of this piece changed since July? Now look at number 15 (which I think we looked at only in passing, if at all). How will you approach it? How does it differ from number 12, both in terms of difficulty and in terms of its construction? Does the appearance of accidentals elicit a different intellectual/vocal response from you now than it did in July? How have you changed since then?
It is my hope that you'll be pleasantly surprised by what you discover through these activities -- and even if you're not, my money's on the fact that you've all grown and changed and improved since I saw you last, even if it doesn't seem obvious at the moment. The hard part of this musical journey we're all taking is that we don't always get to enjoy our own progress. However, it's still there. The moment of revelation is always at hand. The deeper magic is never not at work.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
The Way It's Supposed to Be
Hello, my dear readers!
I hope you all had a wonderful holiday this past Thursday and are still basking in the glory of leftovers, loved ones, and a glut of sleep (for a change!). I had the privilege of spending my holiday with a dear friend, and we decided to get our celebration started a day early by doing ceremonial day-before-Thanksgiving grocery shopping (which is quite the people-watching opportunity), followed by a viewing of the new Muppet Movie (which I unabashedly adored -- truly, I felt like someone had just defibrillated my childhood....if you're afraid you'll be disappointed, cast your worries aside and go see it!). All was well, and we decided to go get a bite to eat afterward at a favorite sushi restaurant, and shortly thereafter, disaster struck. Food poisoning, but only affecting me (which was lucky, as it turns out). 'Nuff said.
Several hours into the unpleasantness of all that, I was reminded of a mantra I learned earlier this fall and have used periodically:
"Oh. So that's the way it's supposed to be."
Those of you who know me also know this kind of sentiment does not come naturally to me. Diagnosing and correcting problems is a choral conductor and teacher and administrative assistant's bread-and-butter, and just letting things be is not usually a part of that recipe. I find it especially strange that this thought came to me in a moment when there were some very clear things I would have preferred to change about my state of affairs. It helped....not physically, but it helped my little mind, which was oh-so-upset about the dinner preparations I wasn't doing, the inconvenience I was creating, the church service the next morning I was afraid I couldn't sing, etc., etc., etc. Maybe it was because I was too exhausted to fight it anymore, and my habitual pattern of "preventative worry" (because that always works, right?) was just plain unsustainable.
In any case, I had a somewhat extraordinary experience the next morning at the church service to which I did manage to drag myself. The choir sang two pieces, and normally those particular pieces require a fair amount of mental energy for me to stay focused and accurate throughout, and to my surprise, I found them considerably easier to sing when my brain wasn't working quite as well as usual. Isn't that strange? It was as if there were no distractions, just the task at hand, and I could do it without a problem. Again, this leads me to believe that the "preventative worry" gears in my head that always seem to be turning are a manifestation of energy that could be more effectively spent elsewhere.
With the oral follow-up to the written exams of a month or so ago happening on Monday, the worry gears are definitely grinding away again, but I'm trying to be patient with them, and patient with me as I get ready to cross this turnstile into the last phase of the degree. I am grateful that I had these glimmers of realization, even through the lens of something so very undesirable. Sometimes, it's important to be reminded that "the way it's supposed to be" exists in advance only in our imaginations, and when we form an attachment to that image, regardless of how nice it might be, we are setting ourselves up in a bad way. "The way it's supposed to be" in advance of "the way it is" is a trap. So:
All Levels
As we enter a very busy and crazy-making part of the year, when many of us feel obligated to make magic for other people and spend so much time planning towards an image of "the way it's supposed to be," I challenge you (and myself!) to stop anytime it occurs to you, take a breath, and remind yourself in that moment:
"Oh. So that's the way it's supposed to be."
No matter what it is.
Courage!
I hope you all had a wonderful holiday this past Thursday and are still basking in the glory of leftovers, loved ones, and a glut of sleep (for a change!). I had the privilege of spending my holiday with a dear friend, and we decided to get our celebration started a day early by doing ceremonial day-before-Thanksgiving grocery shopping (which is quite the people-watching opportunity), followed by a viewing of the new Muppet Movie (which I unabashedly adored -- truly, I felt like someone had just defibrillated my childhood....if you're afraid you'll be disappointed, cast your worries aside and go see it!). All was well, and we decided to go get a bite to eat afterward at a favorite sushi restaurant, and shortly thereafter, disaster struck. Food poisoning, but only affecting me (which was lucky, as it turns out). 'Nuff said.
Several hours into the unpleasantness of all that, I was reminded of a mantra I learned earlier this fall and have used periodically:
"Oh. So that's the way it's supposed to be."
Those of you who know me also know this kind of sentiment does not come naturally to me. Diagnosing and correcting problems is a choral conductor and teacher and administrative assistant's bread-and-butter, and just letting things be is not usually a part of that recipe. I find it especially strange that this thought came to me in a moment when there were some very clear things I would have preferred to change about my state of affairs. It helped....not physically, but it helped my little mind, which was oh-so-upset about the dinner preparations I wasn't doing, the inconvenience I was creating, the church service the next morning I was afraid I couldn't sing, etc., etc., etc. Maybe it was because I was too exhausted to fight it anymore, and my habitual pattern of "preventative worry" (because that always works, right?) was just plain unsustainable.
In any case, I had a somewhat extraordinary experience the next morning at the church service to which I did manage to drag myself. The choir sang two pieces, and normally those particular pieces require a fair amount of mental energy for me to stay focused and accurate throughout, and to my surprise, I found them considerably easier to sing when my brain wasn't working quite as well as usual. Isn't that strange? It was as if there were no distractions, just the task at hand, and I could do it without a problem. Again, this leads me to believe that the "preventative worry" gears in my head that always seem to be turning are a manifestation of energy that could be more effectively spent elsewhere.
With the oral follow-up to the written exams of a month or so ago happening on Monday, the worry gears are definitely grinding away again, but I'm trying to be patient with them, and patient with me as I get ready to cross this turnstile into the last phase of the degree. I am grateful that I had these glimmers of realization, even through the lens of something so very undesirable. Sometimes, it's important to be reminded that "the way it's supposed to be" exists in advance only in our imaginations, and when we form an attachment to that image, regardless of how nice it might be, we are setting ourselves up in a bad way. "The way it's supposed to be" in advance of "the way it is" is a trap. So:
All Levels
As we enter a very busy and crazy-making part of the year, when many of us feel obligated to make magic for other people and spend so much time planning towards an image of "the way it's supposed to be," I challenge you (and myself!) to stop anytime it occurs to you, take a breath, and remind yourself in that moment:
"Oh. So that's the way it's supposed to be."
No matter what it is.
Courage!
Monday, November 7, 2011
Spellbound
Hello, long-lost solfeggists!!
I've missed you all!
So, the long-dreaded written exams are behind, and the oral exam lies ahead, but I can't start studying up for it just yet because I'm still waiting for the written exam to be read and evaluated. Part of me is inclined to be extremely anxious about that, but...well, to be honest, I'm just too darn exhausted to work up the energy for a real academic tizzy. Which, by the by, does not preclude other kinds of tizzies, it seems...
This afternoon, I had the decidedly less-than-pleasant dental experience of my first crown (or as I've euphemistically called it, "tooth tiara"). In the abstract, I am one of those people who really, REALLY dislikes the dentist, but I actually like my current dentist a lot because she takes the time to explain what's going on, and this helps with my generalized anxiety. So, today, shortly after she numbed me up, my whole body started to tingle and my heart started to race and I had that weird panicky feeling that comes with really bad stage fright or getting caught speeding or using an albuterol inhaler....
And then I realized what it was. Dental anesthetic contains epinephrine (they use it as a vasoconstrictor to minimize bleeding), and my dentist had told me about it the last time I was there, but only after the shot had caused me to freak out to the point of nausea and to mistake my reaction for my own emotions about the situation. But, it wasn't my emotions that started the reaction -- I just couldn't rescue myself once I'd already gone over that edge. And it wasn't my emotions this time either, and I remembered before the physical sensations hijacked my higher processing skills. I consciously told myself what it was, and was able to ride it out by taking some deep breaths and listening to my iPod. I caught it before I lost my marbles. I broke the spell.
A deep satisfaction came over me with that realization, and I got to thinking about how we get ourselves all worked up about things because we forget that our problem might actually be caused by something external or easily fixable or temporary, and we invest so much in the freakout that we can't even use the solution when we see it. We're afraid to confront it, afraid to take control, because the emotion of the situation has tied our hands, and we can't see that if we simply chose to be present, the power to change things would be ours. So, for me (and maybe I'm just slow on the uptake for this one), today was a little victory -- Panic may still have a lot more points on the scoreboard, but I know I chalked one up for Team Me today.
Now, like I said above, I might just be a slow learner, but I suspect that most of us struggle with these kinds of emotional spellbindings. In the world of solfa, one of my goofy classroom quotes is:
"Solfa is just like therapy. When you talk about your problems, it makes them a lot easier to solve."
I know that's a little silly, but I think it's also a lot true. How often do we plow over and over and over the same musical ground, refusing to stop, step back, and analyze what's really going on? It takes discipline to do this, but more than that, it requires presentness. Your whole brain and heart and body need to be in it together, in the moment. This is an unusual level of focus -- we don't require it of ourselves very often, and to do so may seem extravagant, wasteful, unnecessary, or at least that's what your rebellious ego might tell you, as it often prefers to be off someplace else, diverting your attention to how you look in your pants today, whether or not you are smart enough, who might think you're talented, blahblahblahblahblah.
So, this week's assignment is a little abstract, which might be a little annoying, but I have a feeling that this might be very worthwhile...
All Levels
In your musical tasks this week, whatever they may be:
Be present.
If you have trouble, stop to assess early, before frustration rears its ugly head.
Rest in the knowledge that you have what you need to be successful.
If you need help, reach out.
Recognize the judgmental voices in your head for what they are. Listen to them when it's appropriate (in the moment of performance or teaching is probably not the time), but be in charge of what you do about them.
If you need to freak out, freak out. That's ok, too.
I've missed you all!
So, the long-dreaded written exams are behind, and the oral exam lies ahead, but I can't start studying up for it just yet because I'm still waiting for the written exam to be read and evaluated. Part of me is inclined to be extremely anxious about that, but...well, to be honest, I'm just too darn exhausted to work up the energy for a real academic tizzy. Which, by the by, does not preclude other kinds of tizzies, it seems...
This afternoon, I had the decidedly less-than-pleasant dental experience of my first crown (or as I've euphemistically called it, "tooth tiara"). In the abstract, I am one of those people who really, REALLY dislikes the dentist, but I actually like my current dentist a lot because she takes the time to explain what's going on, and this helps with my generalized anxiety. So, today, shortly after she numbed me up, my whole body started to tingle and my heart started to race and I had that weird panicky feeling that comes with really bad stage fright or getting caught speeding or using an albuterol inhaler....
And then I realized what it was. Dental anesthetic contains epinephrine (they use it as a vasoconstrictor to minimize bleeding), and my dentist had told me about it the last time I was there, but only after the shot had caused me to freak out to the point of nausea and to mistake my reaction for my own emotions about the situation. But, it wasn't my emotions that started the reaction -- I just couldn't rescue myself once I'd already gone over that edge. And it wasn't my emotions this time either, and I remembered before the physical sensations hijacked my higher processing skills. I consciously told myself what it was, and was able to ride it out by taking some deep breaths and listening to my iPod. I caught it before I lost my marbles. I broke the spell.
A deep satisfaction came over me with that realization, and I got to thinking about how we get ourselves all worked up about things because we forget that our problem might actually be caused by something external or easily fixable or temporary, and we invest so much in the freakout that we can't even use the solution when we see it. We're afraid to confront it, afraid to take control, because the emotion of the situation has tied our hands, and we can't see that if we simply chose to be present, the power to change things would be ours. So, for me (and maybe I'm just slow on the uptake for this one), today was a little victory -- Panic may still have a lot more points on the scoreboard, but I know I chalked one up for Team Me today.
Now, like I said above, I might just be a slow learner, but I suspect that most of us struggle with these kinds of emotional spellbindings. In the world of solfa, one of my goofy classroom quotes is:
"Solfa is just like therapy. When you talk about your problems, it makes them a lot easier to solve."
I know that's a little silly, but I think it's also a lot true. How often do we plow over and over and over the same musical ground, refusing to stop, step back, and analyze what's really going on? It takes discipline to do this, but more than that, it requires presentness. Your whole brain and heart and body need to be in it together, in the moment. This is an unusual level of focus -- we don't require it of ourselves very often, and to do so may seem extravagant, wasteful, unnecessary, or at least that's what your rebellious ego might tell you, as it often prefers to be off someplace else, diverting your attention to how you look in your pants today, whether or not you are smart enough, who might think you're talented, blahblahblahblahblah.
So, this week's assignment is a little abstract, which might be a little annoying, but I have a feeling that this might be very worthwhile...
All Levels
In your musical tasks this week, whatever they may be:
Be present.
If you have trouble, stop to assess early, before frustration rears its ugly head.
Rest in the knowledge that you have what you need to be successful.
If you need help, reach out.
Recognize the judgmental voices in your head for what they are. Listen to them when it's appropriate (in the moment of performance or teaching is probably not the time), but be in charge of what you do about them.
If you need to freak out, freak out. That's ok, too.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Course Corrections or Information Marination
Greetings, solfa navigators!
Well, there's no denying it....the equinox has come and gone, and now it's autumn in earnest. The sky has that impossibly blue Colorado summer look here still, but the leaves are starting to turn, slowly but surely.
In my own everyday academic life, I'm up to my eyeballs in studying -- my big doctoral written exams are exactly a month from tomorrow, and while I always swore I'd remain calm when the time came for me to take part in this particular academic ritual, like so many before me, I am eating those words a bit. Gratefulness for the people who remind me of all the reasons why it'll all be ok continues to run high, but sleeping and maintaining focus has already becoming a challenge. However, as difficult as this process is, there's a part of me that enjoys playing Jane Goodall while the rest of me is a bit more like a troop of riled-up chimpanzees, and she's made the following observations:
1. Looking at information that is new or unfamiliar tends to cause the subject (me) to become anxious. However....
2. Repeated viewings improve both the subject's emotional response and her intellectual understanding and retention.
3. Going over information that was formerly familiar to the subject is typically quite successful immediately.
None of this should be a surprise, most likely, but I have to admit -- I'm a little startled at how true it is. Part of me naively insists that I should be able to force-feed myself as much information as I want (familiar or not), and everything should go into a nice little box inside my head and be readily accessible to me thenceforth just because I say so. And it ain't so. As it turns out, being in a hurry just makes it harder. Patience with others is a virtue I've spent a good amount of time cultivating (to varying degrees of success at any given moment), and as I get older, it bothers me less and less to have to repeat myself to my students or my choristers. However, I find myself unaccustomed to being patient with myself -- so it's time for a personal course correction. It's time to make a change. And I'm willing to bet I'm not the only Type A out there in need of this particular lesson. So:
Rising Level 2's
Check out Ottmans 11.33 and 12.39. By the end of the week, I bet you a dollar you can learn to do both of these as sing-and-plays. No, seriously. Breathe. You can totally do this:
First, sing through one voice part at a time. Do this until completely fluent -- give yourself a couple days. Once you're fluent, aim for memory.
When you're nearly memorized on one voice part in each exercise, try tapping the melody of the opposite part from the one you're singing. Go slow if that helps...it may help less than you think. If you find yourself getting metrically lost, you may find it helpful to "conduct" with a foot or sway back and forth...it's a favorite trick of mine, and pretty easy to do in 2/4.
Slowly, add piano. Figure out a hand position and fingering for the part you play that is consistently successful...take the time to be strategic rather than winging it.
Be sure to let me know if I owe you a dollar!
Rising Level 3's
Track down your Classical Canons book and look at #139-166 (all by Cherubini). Before you freak out, I'm not suggesting you read through all of them (unless you want to, of course!). Instead, choose 3: 1 that's easy for you, 1 that requires a little bit of concentration to get through, and 1 that kicks your behind a little bit. If you like, phone a friend and coordinate one or more of your selections. Work together. Collaborate. Teach one another. Encourage one another. Take the time you need for each example, respectively. Observe your own process, and have patience as you let the music sink in.
Rising Level 4's
The day has come....it's time to look at #15 in the 15 2-part Exercises!
You have enough analytical savvy at this point to figure out your own key areas, however, I'll give you these hints:
I spend a lot of time in E minor and G Major -- the end (as you probably figured) is a Picardy.
I go to B minor a bit and C Major a bit, and maybe to A minor for a teensy minute. You'll see the usual signs pointing to these changes...
Figure out the "head" right away and go hunting for it throughout the piece....it's quite tell-tale, I think.
Don't bite off more than you can chew. If you start to feel like the piece is endless, break it up into smaller sections.
Enjoy, and don't frustrate yourself. Marinate yourself.
Well, there's no denying it....the equinox has come and gone, and now it's autumn in earnest. The sky has that impossibly blue Colorado summer look here still, but the leaves are starting to turn, slowly but surely.
In my own everyday academic life, I'm up to my eyeballs in studying -- my big doctoral written exams are exactly a month from tomorrow, and while I always swore I'd remain calm when the time came for me to take part in this particular academic ritual, like so many before me, I am eating those words a bit. Gratefulness for the people who remind me of all the reasons why it'll all be ok continues to run high, but sleeping and maintaining focus has already becoming a challenge. However, as difficult as this process is, there's a part of me that enjoys playing Jane Goodall while the rest of me is a bit more like a troop of riled-up chimpanzees, and she's made the following observations:
1. Looking at information that is new or unfamiliar tends to cause the subject (me) to become anxious. However....
2. Repeated viewings improve both the subject's emotional response and her intellectual understanding and retention.
3. Going over information that was formerly familiar to the subject is typically quite successful immediately.
None of this should be a surprise, most likely, but I have to admit -- I'm a little startled at how true it is. Part of me naively insists that I should be able to force-feed myself as much information as I want (familiar or not), and everything should go into a nice little box inside my head and be readily accessible to me thenceforth just because I say so. And it ain't so. As it turns out, being in a hurry just makes it harder. Patience with others is a virtue I've spent a good amount of time cultivating (to varying degrees of success at any given moment), and as I get older, it bothers me less and less to have to repeat myself to my students or my choristers. However, I find myself unaccustomed to being patient with myself -- so it's time for a personal course correction. It's time to make a change. And I'm willing to bet I'm not the only Type A out there in need of this particular lesson. So:
Rising Level 2's
Check out Ottmans 11.33 and 12.39. By the end of the week, I bet you a dollar you can learn to do both of these as sing-and-plays. No, seriously. Breathe. You can totally do this:
First, sing through one voice part at a time. Do this until completely fluent -- give yourself a couple days. Once you're fluent, aim for memory.
When you're nearly memorized on one voice part in each exercise, try tapping the melody of the opposite part from the one you're singing. Go slow if that helps...it may help less than you think. If you find yourself getting metrically lost, you may find it helpful to "conduct" with a foot or sway back and forth...it's a favorite trick of mine, and pretty easy to do in 2/4.
Slowly, add piano. Figure out a hand position and fingering for the part you play that is consistently successful...take the time to be strategic rather than winging it.
Be sure to let me know if I owe you a dollar!
Rising Level 3's
Track down your Classical Canons book and look at #139-166 (all by Cherubini). Before you freak out, I'm not suggesting you read through all of them (unless you want to, of course!). Instead, choose 3: 1 that's easy for you, 1 that requires a little bit of concentration to get through, and 1 that kicks your behind a little bit. If you like, phone a friend and coordinate one or more of your selections. Work together. Collaborate. Teach one another. Encourage one another. Take the time you need for each example, respectively. Observe your own process, and have patience as you let the music sink in.
Rising Level 4's
The day has come....it's time to look at #15 in the 15 2-part Exercises!
You have enough analytical savvy at this point to figure out your own key areas, however, I'll give you these hints:
I spend a lot of time in E minor and G Major -- the end (as you probably figured) is a Picardy.
I go to B minor a bit and C Major a bit, and maybe to A minor for a teensy minute. You'll see the usual signs pointing to these changes...
Figure out the "head" right away and go hunting for it throughout the piece....it's quite tell-tale, I think.
Don't bite off more than you can chew. If you start to feel like the piece is endless, break it up into smaller sections.
Enjoy, and don't frustrate yourself. Marinate yourself.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Let It Go
Welcome, my dear solfeggists!
I think I've blogged about this general topic before, but I tend to have troubles with hanging onto stuff that doesn't help me. Sometimes it's tangible stuff (why are there paystubs from a job I had in 2006 living in the trunk of my car? Because.), maybe more often it's emotional stuff. Sometimes I blame it on having a weirdly accurate memory about some things, but the truth is that my mind enjoys (???) reliving situations that it can't reconcile to its own satisfaction. It grabs on like gangbustas, refuses all distractions, and really concentrates on being upset. Yeah, I know...healthy, right? I bet I'm not alone...
This afternoon, I had a conversation with a professor who affirmed something related I've begun to suspect about listening to post-tonal music in general. In order to enjoy it, I personally have to consciously choose to let go, be less judgy, and let myself not know exactly what's going on or what's coming next. I have to give up, and in order to do so, I have to on-purpose go find the white flag and run it up the pole. This is tricky -- unraveling a well-established, intentionally-honed skill set and replacing it with calm awareness is definitely not a simple task. I'm starting to see that hyper-analysis musically is very much related to my habit of hyper-analysis of situations, people, etc., and that both have a way of getting in the way of me enjoying my life.
The long-run antidote? I'm not sure. I bet it has to do with both effort towards changing a mental pattern and relaxation towards (if one can relax directionally...maybe that contradicts the whole idea of relaxation) the fact that I have the pattern. After all, I know a lot of neurotic people -- there must be some kind of genetic advantage to being that way, or there wouldn't be so many of us swimming around in the gene pool, right?
In the short term, however, try this exercise for the week:
All Levels:
Select a piece or two from the list below (or a piece by another composer whose work you find a little difficult or intimidating):
Paul Hindemith - When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
Bela Bartók - Cantata Profana
Arnold Schoenberg - Gurre-Lieder
Gyorgy Ligeti - Lux Aeterna
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung
(roughly in order of accessibility)
Track down a recording (you can buy them on iTunes for cheap, or your local university library or a good public library will have them) and set aside some time to listen. Sit someplace comfortable, turn off your ringer, close your laptop. Listen. Exercise your non-judgy muscles. Pay more attention to what happens to the sounds than you do to what the sounds themselves are (a tip stolen fair and square from my aforementioned professor). If your ear needs a break, take one. Try listening to the whole thing more than one time if you can. Observe how your experience changes.
It all sounds a little abstract, I know, but I think we can handle it. Enjoy!
I think I've blogged about this general topic before, but I tend to have troubles with hanging onto stuff that doesn't help me. Sometimes it's tangible stuff (why are there paystubs from a job I had in 2006 living in the trunk of my car? Because.), maybe more often it's emotional stuff. Sometimes I blame it on having a weirdly accurate memory about some things, but the truth is that my mind enjoys (???) reliving situations that it can't reconcile to its own satisfaction. It grabs on like gangbustas, refuses all distractions, and really concentrates on being upset. Yeah, I know...healthy, right? I bet I'm not alone...
This afternoon, I had a conversation with a professor who affirmed something related I've begun to suspect about listening to post-tonal music in general. In order to enjoy it, I personally have to consciously choose to let go, be less judgy, and let myself not know exactly what's going on or what's coming next. I have to give up, and in order to do so, I have to on-purpose go find the white flag and run it up the pole. This is tricky -- unraveling a well-established, intentionally-honed skill set and replacing it with calm awareness is definitely not a simple task. I'm starting to see that hyper-analysis musically is very much related to my habit of hyper-analysis of situations, people, etc., and that both have a way of getting in the way of me enjoying my life.
The long-run antidote? I'm not sure. I bet it has to do with both effort towards changing a mental pattern and relaxation towards (if one can relax directionally...maybe that contradicts the whole idea of relaxation) the fact that I have the pattern. After all, I know a lot of neurotic people -- there must be some kind of genetic advantage to being that way, or there wouldn't be so many of us swimming around in the gene pool, right?
In the short term, however, try this exercise for the week:
All Levels:
Select a piece or two from the list below (or a piece by another composer whose work you find a little difficult or intimidating):
Paul Hindemith - When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
Bela Bartók - Cantata Profana
Arnold Schoenberg - Gurre-Lieder
Gyorgy Ligeti - Lux Aeterna
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung
(roughly in order of accessibility)
Track down a recording (you can buy them on iTunes for cheap, or your local university library or a good public library will have them) and set aside some time to listen. Sit someplace comfortable, turn off your ringer, close your laptop. Listen. Exercise your non-judgy muscles. Pay more attention to what happens to the sounds than you do to what the sounds themselves are (a tip stolen fair and square from my aforementioned professor). If your ear needs a break, take one. Try listening to the whole thing more than one time if you can. Observe how your experience changes.
It all sounds a little abstract, I know, but I think we can handle it. Enjoy!
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Knowing what to ignore
My dear solfa friends,
Greetings! I hope the ravages of Irene have run their course for all you east-coasters, and that life is quickly getting back to normal.
My last first week of school as a student is now behind me, and predictably (as all students know), it came with a few bumps in the road. In fact, there's kind of one central bump I've been wrestling with quite a bit lately. That bump is a combination of two related issues:
Getting tied up in negativity -- about myself, others, political situations, you name it
and
Not knowing where to put my focus.
These are fairly standard human problems, I think, and maybe they're even more standard for artist types -- because we tend to be sensitive souls, and many of us are basically hardwired for perfectionism because we notice a lot of subtlety and feel responsible for it. I think folks who grew up with parents, guardians, or teachers who tended towards the strict side also relate strongly to these issues because we're used to operating from a diagnostic perspective -- the main reason we heard from close authority figures was because something was wrong, and basically, there was (and is) always something that could be better, so we're conditioned to constantly seek out and weed out problems. The probable result of either (or both...heaven help us) of these situations? Harsh, constant self-criticism that gets translated into the ways we relate to other people and situations. It's exhausting. I'm exhausted just from writing all of that.
So, what does one do? Especially when the criticism inside gets echoed by criticism outside, and then it seems like the entire world is against you. What do you do?
Well, first off (and this is so difficult to do, and even more difficult to gauge when you're actually doing it), make a friend. That friend is yourself. I'm not saying that self-criticism is a bad thing, nor am I saying that we all ought to walk around in the world feeling like we're always right (because if you did, the entire world would turn into Boulder, CO....jes' sayin'). I'm saying that, when the chips are down, things are looking ugly, and the oxygen masks start falling from the panel above your seat, you have to care enough about yourself to put on your own darn mask. Have your own back. In the heat of the moment, practice non-reaction as much as possible, and then go away and think about it. That's the great thing about being a musician rather than a brain surgeon -- if you choose not to make an immediate decision about something, or if you change your mind later, probably no one is going to die. Probably. If, upon reflection, you want to change the way you handle a similar situation in the future, that's a choice for YOU to make for YOU on YOUR time.
Second, read this. Seriously, read it. It's pretty genius.
Finally, use non-emotionally charged activities to train yourself to ignore things that aren't helpful. That might sound either abstract or kind of silly, but I have a feeling it works. Why? Well, because I have the easiest time following all of my own advice (see above) when I am in the head-space I use for sight-singing or analysis. You know the head-space I mean...non-emotional, task-oriented, strategic -- still human, still musical, but not so busy with myself that I can't be present with the task (or the person or the conflict or the difficult conversation) at hand. Try this:
Rising Level 2's
Take a look at this:
This little piece has a lot of visually forbidding things about it that might get you all hot and bothered....however, don't worry. Ask yourself:
What is familiar and easy about this piece (it's in C major, it's in 4, there are only 2 parts, the melody is very singable, etc.)?
What is the best way to isolate small parts of the piece and deal with a little bit at a time (i.e., isolate the rhythm, look at only one section at a time, etc.)?
Notate on your own score the parts of the piece you personally find easy. That way, when you're reading through, you'll recognize when you're in friendly territory.
Each day, choose one or two difficulties within the piece and come up with a creative solution that makes the difficulty seem easy. If you get frustrated, walk away for a few minutes or look at a different section, and come back to the tricky bit. Change tactics. Don't beat your head against a wall. Play to your strengths.
Rising Level 3's
Look at this piece:
Before you do anything else with it, listen to it here:
Cool, isn't it?
Take another listen with the score (use the first link, even though they're singing it in a higher key in the recording -- the score is just a little nicer to look at than the one in the video), and make a little textural map for yourself -- where is the homophonic material? How much imitative material is there really? Is texture tied to text in some important ways?
If you try to visually determine from the score which solfa to use at any given moment, you may wind up a bit frustrated, because there are some funny twists and turns in the piece, and the key signature is sometimes profoundly unhelpful. Instead, I'd recommend that you give yourself one more listen to the recording with score in hand and circle the spots where you hear definite cadences. Then, work backwards from those points to determine your solfa choices.
Try to sing through each part and mark which keys/modes are in play. For fun, you may even want to do a solfa chord analysis of the homophonic sections -- you'll have to make some key decisions in order to do that, but who knows? Your harmonic analysis may actually wind up informing your key area/mode decisions, and thereby your musical decisions. That's right folks, I'm suggesting that musicality can and should be informed by analysis and vice versa. It's a two-way street, and it doesn't even have to be unpleasant. You can even change your mind. Who knew?
Rising Level 4's
Look at this piece....Rheinberger, if you've not heard of him, was a contemporary of Brahms.
Now, I'm not going to give you a recording like I did for the 3's....if you find one, please feel free to use it like I had them use it, if you wish. However, there's no need for panic with this piece either, even without the aid of a recording.
Scan your way through the piece. Take note of the places where accidentals appear, especially where they are repeated. If you had to guess, what key(s) do you visit? Do the cadences reflect your suspicions? In general, how does the bass line (and therefore, the harmony) move?
Using your own musical discretion, divide the piece into manageable sections. Sing through each part -- if you can, sing one part and play another. Once you've sung through all the parts and made some solfa decisions you feel comfortable with, do a Roman numeral analysis. Do the numbers behave like they're supposed to? Do you think you might want to reconsider some of your key area choices in light of the information the analysis gave you?
So yes, I think solfa and analysis can actually serve as a backdrop to positive behavioral changes that can have a lot of impact on the way you feel about your life as both a musician and as a person. The fringe benefits of a musical life aren't just for our students -- they're for us. The music can be our refuge, too.
Enjoy!
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Our daily bread
Hello much-missed students!
....yes, it's true....I miss you all!
So, I have spent this past week house/dog-sitting and re-acclimating to life at high altitude after my long sojourn on east and west coasts, respectively. School starts up for me a week from tomorrow, and like many of you (I'm sure), I've started to get anxious about it. This is supposed to be a big year -- the year of comprehensive exams, dissertation projects, final orals and GRADUATION....and the thought of all the work standing between me and that goal (see word in all caps) is staggering, and it makes me want to freak out.
There, I said it.
Many of you had a similar reaction to reading Kodály's "Who is a Good Musician?", and I think I can safely say that this feeling of freak-out is a common human phenomenon. It happens to everyone, and I think most of us tend to think our freak-outs are some sort of secret flaw that no one else has, and that's not true.
We also tend to think that only special people will live to achieve monumental things in their lifetime, and that you have to have been born with some kind of one-in-a-million genius in order to do so. Part of that is too much TV or something...
No, seriously...
At pretty much every major milestone in my life, I've had this irresistible urge to wander the streets looking for a phone booth that contained my unitard, cape, and superpowers, all of which I clearly needed in order to check off the next item on my list....and you'll probably be as disappointed as I was to discover that there is NO phone booth.
Anyhow, I think another part of it is a refusal to acknowledge our own empowerment, our own human ability to transform ourselves through transforming our behavior. We'd rather not believe that work is just work. I'm not saying that there aren't things in life we can't do, and probably we have a much better shot at prowess in some things than others, just from our genetic predispositions.
But, the truth is this: for the most part, it's just work. The daily grind is the path to greatness. There may be some kind of miraculous transformation or unprecedented revelation waiting for you in the wings, but do you know how it'll reveal itself? Day by day, in the business of doing what needs to be done, probably with very little fanfare, and probably when no one else is watching and when you yourself have perhaps forgotten why you've bothered -- that is when the magic happens. It doesn't live in some big genius/talent storehouse. It comes to you like your daily bread, and you have to trust that each day will bring its proper allotment as you do your daily work in order to earn it. Some days you'll feel like you're going hungry. Some days you'll feel too tired or depressed to put in the time. But, if you're patient and diligent and gentle with yourself along the way, you'll discover that you can transform yourself, and that no one can take it away. That's why I'm so serious about this weekly blog business...it's an investment that cannot fail. There's no way not to make good on the time you've spent and the effort you've used.
So, this week:
Rising Level 2's
In your Ottman, sing through:
11.24, 11.25, 11.26, 11.27, & 11.28
Identify any tricky spots after your initial reading of each melody, isolate those spots and creatively problem-solve your way through them. Hint: look for arpeggiated harmonies, melodic and rhythmic patterns, and places to strategically use your audiation chops.
Once you've sung through all five, do a little phrase/form analysis of each melody. How are the melodies similar to one another? Does the national origin of each melody seem to be reflected in unique phrase structure? Are melodies from areas geographically close to one another more similar?
Finally, choose one or two of these melodies and harmonize them. Sing and play, by yourself or with a friend.
Rising Level 3's
Take a look at these Ottman examples:
13.19, 13.22, 13.25
From an initial scan, determine if you'd like to change solfa at any point -- my advice would be to change if you sense a cadence in the new key, or if you do multiple arpeggiations of a chromatic chord in the original key (i.e. something that looks like a major II, aka V/V). Did your solfa choices work for you? If not, is the solution more practice, or is it to change your approach?
Additionally, look at examples 13.20, 13.23, and 13.24.
Sing through each, and then harmonize portions of the melodies as indicated in the textbook. Do you agree with Ottman/Rogers' harmonic choices? Did you come up with an alternative you like better? What's the easiest way to figure out what a V/V in the key of D is (hint: see parenthetical statement above or look at your secondary dominant planet handout to spell in solfa, then translate into letters)? How would you harmonize the final cadence of 13.24?
Feel free to share your findings!
Rising Level 4's
DISCLAIMER: I avoid this chapter of Ottman during the summers, mostly because the question of modulation in such short passages often causes tremendous confusion or bitter arguments, while studying modulation in longer chunks or imitative contexts is usually easier and less emotionally draining. If you experience distress from the following exercise, please submit a complaint to the management.
Look at the following Ottman examples:
14.5, 14.6, 14.17, 14.19 (note that the fi in the last line isn't a modulatory fi), 14.24, and 14.30
In each case, determine where each modulation occurs in each piece, noting that you should only need to move in either the dominant direction by one fifth or the subdominant direction by one fifth (meaning that you're looking for fi and ta). Note also that some of these excerpts modulate away and some end in the new key. Devise a solfa change plan for each example before singing through it. After the initial reading, decide whether you think your initial assessment was correct or if you should strategically alter it. Try to reach a point of fluency with each example.
Enjoy, my dears, and remember...in order to gain mastery, all you have to do is put in the time to make solfa your daily bread.
Monday, August 8, 2011
A new year carol
Hello, my long-lost solfeggists!
So, we are now one week into the 49-week cycle. You will have noticed, perhaps, that I missed week 1 -- sort of intentional on my part, but mostly due to my quick jaunt to Portland, OR for the wedding of the first of my siblings, my older brother. A good time was had by all, I think....in fact, dancing with my younger brother was sort of a cultural education in itself, but I digress...
On the last day of classes, my dear Loyola students were kind enough to collaborate with me in gathering some "solfa aphorisms" -- it brought me back to my days in girls' chorus when we (being the littlest bit dorky) carried around what we called "autograph books" (a la Laura Ingalls Wilder) to collect little sayings from our friends. Don't judge....we were homeschoolers, so we didn't have yearbooks. Anyway, here are some of the sayings that we came up with just a bit over a week ago, many of which transcend solfa and the musical realm:
"Let us take our children seriously! Everything else follows from this...only the best is good enough for a child." (ZK, paraphrased)
Live a little. Music doesn't belong in a china closet.
Modes are messy.
Solfa class is just like therapy....a place to share your troubles. When you talk about your problems, they become easier to solve.
You cannot be a great teacher without giving a little of your heart to every student and in every lesson you teach.
Chromaticism is just a splash of color.
Sometimes anger is just a part of caring.
Solfa is like a workout for your brain.
Listen. It's better than making noise.
We teach people. We teach music. Remember to love both.
Teach your students as if you were teaching your own children.
You choose what you take with you.
You never know for sure what seeds you plant will wind up taking root and flourishing.
Being a good teacher to yourself is a necessary step to becoming a good teacher of others.
The British Invasion would've really taken off if they had used solfa syllables.
Your teacher knows better than you at this moment.
Drinks are better than drama.
Sometimes sitting with failure is more valuable than a thousand successes.
C, D, E.....as easy as ut-re-mi!
You have both your strengths and your weaknesses for a reason. Embrace them. Know them.
Obviously, some of these are more serious than others, some are mostly inside jokes, and some are firmly in my favorite touchy-feely realm. However, I have to say that I think it's valuable to reflect on our recent experiences in the solfa classroom in ways that are both comical and serious, both concrete and hopelessly abstract, and both practical and merely ideal. After all, solfa is a musicianship course, and we all know that our personal experiences and reflections and senses of humor are inextricable from our artistic behavior.
As we ease into this new year, and in the spirit of all of the above, I invite you:
All Levels:
Take a moment sometime this week to write down what you enjoyed about this year's solfa experience, and record the ways in which you know you've grown. Brag. Revel....just a little.
Then, take another moment and write down the things you wish we would have spent more time with in class, the gaps in your own experience that you'd like to have spackled up, and the goals you have for yourself before embarking upon the next phase of your musical training.
If you feel comfortable, please share either or both of the above lists with me. I cannot overstate how important it is to me that each of you feels that this course is supposed to be for YOU, to help YOU grow and succeed. Believe me when I say: if it lies within my power to help you, I want to do that. Also, knowing what you want to work on during the year will really help me guide my posts here on the blog -- at the moment, I sort of follow my nose and try to give you all a nice variety, but if there's something you'd like me to focus on, I'd be glad to do that.
And, just so I don't feel totally soft-core about this week's post:
All Levels:
Each day, select 2 Ottman examples to sight-sing (one in major, one in minor), using the principles we discussed this summer....most importantly, DON'T STOP! If you're wondering what chapter(s) to use, try:
Rising 2's - ch. 6, 8, or 9
Rising 3's - ch. 11, 12, or (if you're feeling frisky) 13
Rising 4's - ch. 13, 7 (if you'd like to practice alto clef), or 20
Enjoy, my friends, and please do consider sending me some feedback -- just like at Burger King, I'd like you to have it YOUR way.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Intuition
Hello, my artistic colleagues!
So, today I've got a little theory I'd like to test-drive on all of you...your feedback, as always, is invited and appreciated.
Probably most of you have had the experience of performing with a conducted ensemble in a hall that is either large enough or reverberant enough (or both) to have elicited this instruction from the conductor to the ensemble:
"Trust your eyes, not your ears."
Now, the reasons why vision is more trustworthy than hearing in this kind of situation are rather cold and scientific, as it turns out (sound waves travel more slowly and are "bendier" than light waves, meaning that light gives you time-related information more reliably in an objective sense). However, the reasons why we tend to have a hard time making our eyes the boss of our ears when we're behaving artistically are probably more complex. At the surface level, music IS sound, so it makes sense to use sound to govern the production of sound. I would argue, however, that we westernly-enculturated people are accustomed to using our eyes for most of the information-gathering we do any given day. And, while we use our ears for some pretty bland stuff as well, we still function relationally largely through our ears, and most likely, the feeling-ful aspects of music are what drew us to it first. So, when we make music, we are in the habit of listening and reacting, because our ears are a more direct connection both to our hearts and our intuition, if one accepts intuition as a kind of highly-ingrained and partially unconscious memory for how things have been before and are likely to be again.
That's my theory, anyway: there is a hierarchy of heart/intuition connectedness within our senses, which is probably a little different for everyone, but for many of us, our ears are probably more intuitive than our eyes. And, in turn, this intuition comes from habit and experience, but it's so close to us that we experience it as almost a "sixth sense". The good news is that if intuition is derived from conscious experience, we have the chance to educate it, and it'll become more finely tuned over time, if we invest our energies in awareness.
Rising Level 2's
Look at Ottman, 8.49 and 8.50
Read through the treble voice first in each example. What aspects of the melody behave as you expected (for example, the V-I feel between the first anacrusis and downbeat in each)? Did any turns surprise you? Are you able to suss out what you expected that didn't happen?
Now, for each example, read through the lower voice for each. Choose a voice to memorize in each example, and take a stab at singing the memorized part as you play the other on the piano. Go by feel. Trust your instincts, now that you've taken a little time to intentionally inform them.
Rising Level 3's
Look at Ottman, examples 8.51 and 8.52. Follow the same instructions as the rising 2's.
Rising Level 4's
Look at Ottman, examples 8.53 and 8.54 (mind the clef in 8.54). Follow the same instructions as the rising 2's.
And, in honor of intuition:
Monday, May 16, 2011
Going on
Hello all,
So, I find myself at the end of my concert season (just one more show this weekend, and as a just plain choral singer), and it's been a wild ride this year. Good work has been done, obstacles overcome, friendships grown stronger, experience gained. It's been hard, and I imagine many of us feel the same weariness.
Over the past few weeks, my attention has been drawn to a sort of lousy habit of mine...I dwell. I get hung up on something, and I let it become my whole reality. Not only is this exhausting, it's almost always completely counterproductive. Sure, people need to talk about things and process things, but hanging on so, well....it seems....ill-advised. Interestingly (and, as life goes, appropriately), one of the biggest, most consuming projects of the year contains this lyric by Stephen Schwartz:
Now the Age of Gold is dead
And the dreams we've clung to dying to stay young
Have left us parched and old instead…
When my courage crumbles
When I feel confused and frail
When my spirit falters on decaying altars
And my illusions fail,
I go on right then.
I go on again.
I go on to say
I will celebrate another day…
I go on…
If tomorrow tumbles
And everything I love is gone
I will face regret
All my days, and yet
I will still go on…
And everything I love is gone
I will face regret
All my days, and yet
I will still go on…
It's hard to keep going. It's hard to bounce back, especially when the thing that seems like it's going the most wrong is also the thing you wanted and needed most to go right. Loss happens. Injustice happens. Deals are broken. The only thing to do is to go on, look toward the future, take the education of unfortunate events for what it is, and call upon the people in your life who love and support you. And soon, things will look better. Why? Because re-invention happens. New pathways can be found. New relationships will be forged.
A very wise friend of mine once told me years ago when I complained that it felt like people were lining up just to be able to fight with me: "Yes, but if you look around, you'll see that there are just as many people lining up to help you." He's right. And the hardest part is to just convince yourself to take that look, because if we allow trouble and bad situations to become our reality, we'll miss out on the opportunities for resolution.
Rising Level 2's
Take a look at this piece:
Look at the bass line first. Check your key signature and meter, but then try to just forge ahead. You'll encounter a D-flat in the last line -- call it "ta" for now. Next, look at the soprano line. Knowing what you know about the bass line, do you anticipate any modulations? Sing through it. Repeat this procedure for the inner voices. Then, if you're feeling like a little warm-up for the summer, do a quick Roman numeral analysis of the diatonic chords only. Next, look at the chromatic chords, and see if you can find a justification for each of them...meaning: do they resolve? What is their quality? Any idea about how to label them?
Rising Level 3's
Take a look at this piece:
Carefully examine your key signature and meter before you begin, but try to just read through each voice. When you encounter an accidental, see what your instinct tells you to do -- make a snap decision about whether to modulate the first time around, but then go back and see if you think it might have been easier to do things another way.
Rising Level 4's
Take a look at this score:
....while you listen to it here:
What do your ears tell you about the chromaticism, especially the more adventurous bits? Print out the score and listen again, marking the bits where you definitely feel you may be in a different key than indicated by the signature. Next, read through the soprano part, and see if you can change keys at the places you've marked successfully. Repeat with the other voices. If you're feeling adventurous, do a Roman numeral analysis of the score and discover what sorts of modulation Mr. Haydn used.
Enjoy!
Monday, May 9, 2011
Fluency and Immersion, part 2
Greetings, solfa-speakers!
Well, my friends, I've been thinking about last week's post (see below), and while part of me is a bit nervous that I've made my final descent into dogma, there were two things that happened this week that both helped me feel more confident about what I said and suggested to me that I ought to follow up. Both incidents involved educators I respect deeply, and their perspective on this (as in many parts of my life!) has helped refine my own.
First, one dear friend of mine asked me soon after I posted: are you saying it has to be solfa? And the answer is no, I don't think it has to be. Kodály-based solfege pedagogy isn't a form of monotheism. It is certainly not the only path to good musicianship. It just happens to be the path I know, so it's the path I teach. And, while a healthy sense of the whole scope of options is good for one's sense of open-mindedness, I do also think there's a danger in being resistant to following one path because one is afraid of being cut off from other options. The other options will always be there -- and once good musicianship is in place, it can be endlessly re-informed and made over. It is true that whatever one does first may always feel like a kind of mother tongue (witness that, under pressure, most everyone counts and does arithmetic in whatever language they first learned). However, I don't think that's a bad thing. It is ok to embrace one perspective for a period of time and open one's self up to other perspectives later. It may not be ok to embrace one perspective to the permanent exclusion of all others....and it may also not be ok to refuse to embrace any perspective in the name of open-mindedness and then wind up not knowing things one wants and needs to know.
The other incident wasn't directly related to the blog or even to solfa, but it is a story about immersion. After a choir concert, the conductor and I were sitting at the post-concert dinner gathering and one of the choristers, a young guy who has sung in several choirs, asked if the choir could sing something in the restaurant. The conductor told him that was fine, but that he (the chorister) had to lead it. The chorister agreed, and led the chorus in a rendition of "Bonse aba" with himself as the caller. At the end of the piece, when a little bit of conducting is required, this brave singer (who has no formal musical training beyond that of a typical community choir singer) simply threw out his arms and gestured his way to the end of the piece, and his fellow singers followed him perfectly. His conducting was very reminiscent of my friend, the conductor of the group, and my friend definitely noticed. We talked about it later, and my friend said how unexpectedly touched he was by the experience, and how surprised he was that our singer, on the power of pure instinct, did what he'd been shown by the conductor and it worked. I said that I think we maybe shouldn't be so surprised when this happens. As conductors and teachers, we form mini-cultures in the form of classrooms and choruses, and we probably shouldn't be surprised when our singers' cultural vocabulary goes from passive to active -- because that just means we've done our job. The immersion has worked. The message has been sent.
So, in the spirit of immersion:
Rising Level 2's
Your Ottman examples are: 11.2, 11.5, 11.6, 11.7, 11.8, 11.10
For each example, scan (checking for tempo/character markings and noting the origin of each melody), set your key/meter, and sing it through. Then, do a bit of reflecting: did the melody do what you expected? Where did you have trouble? Did the trouble spots coincide with the places where your expectations were not fulfilled? Can you use this information to refine your musical instincts?
Rising Level 3's
Your Ottman examples are: 14.1, 14.2, 14.4, 14.5, 14.6, 14.7
Follow the same instructions as the rising level 2's, but add to your list of reflective questions: in each example, there is an opportunity to modulate (to a key a fifth away...watch out for the Handel!). Did you choose to? What was the key relationship involved? Did it work? What happens if you make a different choice? What seem to be the deciding factors?
Rising Level 4's
Your Ottman examples are: 14.8, 14.9, 14.10, 14.11, 14.12, 14.13
Follow the same instructions as the rising level 2's, with the same added questions as the 3's.
Jump right in, and enjoy!
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Fluency and Immersion
Hello, my faithful readers!
Well, I missed another week....naughty, naughty. I have good excuses, related to Holy Week, the Bernstein Mass, and some annoying health-related woes, but nobody likes a whiner, right? Onward and upward!
During aforementioned Holy Week, I was privy to some quite good sermonizing on the part of the clergy at my current gig....and I must say, the speakers at this gig really are a cut above. You know it must be something kind of special if I keep on stealing material...sincerest form of flattery and all that jazz, yes?
Anyhow, at Easter Vigil, the preacher talked about language acquisition, and naturally, my ears perked up. His language up for discussion was Spanish, and specifically, how he really wants to learn Spanish, and he can decline and conjugate and memorize vocabulary with the best of them (being, as he is, a scholar and teacher of Hellenistic Greek), but what he feels is the missing link in his linguistic learning experience is immersion. Immersion is the gateway to fluency.
The speaker went on to tell a story about a friend of his who learned formal Castilian Spanish in the classroom, and considered himself quite accomplished in the language, and then he up and moved to Nicaragua and guess what...all his vocabulary and skill was essentially non-functional in that environment. He toughed it out, but had an incredibly hard go of it for a long time -- months, maybe longer. Then, it's the part of the story you already know if you've had an immersive linguistic experience: he woke up one morning, and he suddenly understood. He was thinking, speaking, even dreaming in the language of his surroundings. Having had a small taste of that experience myself, I couldn't stop smiling through that part of the story, even though I knew it was coming. Why? Because that feeling of finally getting it, of finally fitting into the rhythm of what is around you, of not having to struggle for every word anymore feels SO GOOD. I remember it as euphoric, no exaggeration, and my own experience was just a small transition from idiot American to barely functional temporary expat. But, when my teeny-tiny functional Hungarian vocabulary became second nature, I was completely delighted, and I have a suspicion that a linguistic neophyte has kind of an advantage in these matters, because the jump from one plateau to the next must be similar each time, and the joy must be just as wonderful and just as surprising each time.
You probably already know where I'm going with this.
Why do I fuss at you for writing in all your solfa or for wanting to read things on a neutral syllable before you "add solfa" or for not keeping tuning forks on your person, etc.? Why am I so picky about things that don't seem to matter? Because it's about immersion. And, the difference between learning a language and learning to be fluent in solfa is that you have music to interact with everywhere, all the time, all around you. It can certainly be helpful to have other people around you to help reinforce the immersiveness of your experience in daily life, but you can actually opt to be immersed in solfa anytime you want.
Really.
I know it for sure...because I was the kid on the trampoline in my backyard with a hymnal and a Casio keyboard to give me starting pitches (this was before my first encounter of the tuning fork kind). Granted, that's a little extreme, and definitely very homeschooled of me, but I know that's the time it took for me to get from stumbling over re, fa, and la to being able to apply the syllables instantaneously. The same thing happened when I was in college and struggling with dictation -- I just made myself solfa everything I heard and then write some of it down. I opted in for an immersive experience in my daily life, and it took some mental discipline and some time, but mostly it just took me making the decision. It didn't cost me any money. It took a lot less time than I thought. It just took me committing to it, buying in, deciding I wanted it, and choosing to pay attention to what I heard all the time. And the best part of all? Once you have it, it's yours. You get to keep it, and it doesn't go away, and no one can take it away. The more you do it, the happier and more empowered it will make you. Check it out: personal fulfillment, happiness, and empowerment, courtesy of Guido d'Arezzo, a dude who's been dead for 1100 years. It doesn't get any better than that.
So, this week:
All Levels:
Make an immersive decision, just one, every day this week. Stop yourself when you hear a tune you like (even if it's something you already know), solfa it, and write it down. Pick up a piece of music, any piece you like, and read it in solfa. Then read another part in solfa. Then tap one and read the other. Switch.
You can do this. It just takes time, and making the decision. Who knows? You might become addicted! Don't say I didn't warn you!
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Fatal Flaws
Salutations, my dear solfeggists!
I'm writing from my comfy couch, looking out on an April snowstorm....not an uncommon occurrence in Colorado, but always a shock to the system when it follows an 80-degree day -- although that, too, is not uncommon.
This week's blog post subject material is courtesy of a conversation from yesterday with one of AKI's own...with a little help from church this morning.
In yesterday's conversation, we were discussing our respective "fatal flaws" -- the thing we just can't stop doing, even though we'd like to change it. Everyone has one (or several...), and chances are that you know about them in both yourself and other people. In fact, to some extent, we are even known by our flaws, and they actually become a part of our identity....it happens in choirs and classrooms all the time. You know the part in X piece where that one person always makes a mistake, and you can take a good guess at which kid turned in a paper without a name on it by looking at which answers are incorrect.
In a sense, when we Kodály types talk about going from the known to the unknown, we're dealing with an outward manifestation of an inward process: as we know ourselves and our strengths more thoroughly, we are better able to ascertain when we understand a concept, and we're able to demonstrate what we know in varying ways. Group dynamics and blind luck can disguise what is understood and what is not, and in the classroom, this happens all the time -- in fact, it is infrequent to be observed from the outside in a way that is identical to what's going on inside. If this is true, then all education is really self-education, because only the individual truly knows what he or she understands. And, similarly, when I teach you, I'm bound to start by teaching you as if you were me with all the flaws and strengths I recognize in myself. Hopefully, over time and by watching others, a teacher cultivates a more extensive bag of tricks than only what is effective for him/herself, but we all probably default to using ourselves as a point of departure. We are always our own first student.
So, all of that being said, I invite you to plot your own course for this week's assignment. Do what you know you need to do to be successful with this material. Make a note of what works for you and what doesn't. Be creative. Increasing your own self-knowledge is the name of the game.
Rising Level 2's
Take a look at this bicinia by Orlando di Lasso:
....and this lovely Brahms piece (you may know it in another form, with German text, as the second movement of his motet "Warum ist das Licht gegeben")
What is easy about each piece? What is difficult? Do they behave how you expect them to behave? If not, how will you cope? Creativity in practice is encouraged.
Rising Level 3's
Take a look at these pieces:
Sometimes you'll want to be in the key notated, sometimes a fifth away...I'll leave it in your capable hands to decide.
Rising Level 4's
Take a look at the chromaticism in these pieces:
What can you do to make the chromaticism seem less forbidding?
Now get out there, and show your flaws who's boss!
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