CIV part 1
I have arrived home from 10 days in Canberra to find that my vegie garden has thrived without me. Tomatoes ripening, another eggplant ready for picking, and a zucchini that weighs a few kilograms, are but a few of the splendours that greeted me.
8 hours of driving, from Canberra to Melbourne, passed quickly and painlessly as my mind eagerly grasped at the opportunity to reflect and daydream about the music, activities and people who had filled my week.
The Music:
From the very first rehearsal I rejoiced at the fast pace with which we approached the learning of the music. In the first morning of rehearsals we sang straight through every piece of music we had, in an exhausting, yet exhilarating, sight-reading feast of delight. Now, this has always been my favourite part of learning music, where nothing more matters except the notes; their pitch, timing and placement within the chords. As such, I have often in the past become bored of music once it is being tweaked and, well ... made into music. By that, I mean made meaningful, and often also beautiful. With the exception of Victoria’s Mass, I take enormous delight in the fact that my excitement for this music did not decline, but in fact intensified.
Some of the songs from the Red Book of Montserrat, along with the Catalan folksongs, were fun and bouncy, with strong beat and funky rhythms. They implored my body to jiggle, sway and beat in time. As percussion was added in they developed an invigorating tribal feel of rejoicement. Others of the Red Book songs portrayed serene beauty and a sense of longing. Amongst the other music, Whitacre’s Cloudburst produced amazing effects through its portrayal of a thunderstorm, and achieved a long, intense moment of silence from the audience at its conclusion in the concert. Lastly, but certainly not with least affection, I speak of Lauridsen’s Nocturnes. I was always aware that these pieces were pretty music, but it was not until Sarah’s passionate recitation of the poem from Soneto de La Noche that I felt overcome by their intense and fragile beauty.
Having decided to sing Alto 2 for this IV, I was faced with the challenges of reading tenor clef and bass clef, as well as treble clef notes that were so far below the stave that it took immense concentration to decipher what notes they actually were. As an alto 2 I also had the pleasure of singing music that spanned a 2 ½ octave range, from the D below middle C to the G two above middle C. The D below middle C is the lowest note that I can reach, so I started off okay, but after a couple of days of over-use of this lower end of my voice range, I soon began to lose it, leaving me to goldfish through the lower notes of my part. While my lowest notes faded away to nothing, however, my mid-range alto notes strengthened immensely and developed nicely in tone, so that overall I am well on my way to producing a strong and decent alto voice. While I have in the past often become quite insecure when singing soprano, my confidence in my own singing was quite reasonable as an alto. I also felt pretty damn pleased when a fellow chorister informed me that my singing was ‘fantastic!’ *squee*
For the benefit of those who weren’t at CIV, here is the poem from Lauridsen’s Soneto de la Noche:
When I die, I want your hands upon my eyes:
I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands
to pass their freshness over me one more time:
I want to feel the gentleness that changed my destiny.
I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep,
I want your ears to still hear the wind,
I want you to smell the scent of the sea we both loved,
and to continue walking on the sand we walked on.
I want all that I love to keep on living,
and you whom I loved and sang above all things
to keep flowering into full bloom,
so that you can touch all that my love provides you,
so that my shadow may pass over your hair,
so that all may know the reason for my song.