Terpsichore XX
So many thoughts re: Terpsichore. Not sure how to organize them.
The short version is that this was a really wonderful Terpsichore for me. The classes I went to were so good. (Burgundian Basse Dance; Dance Atrocities 2014; The Reconstruction Experiment.) I had sufficient actual good music playing time. I got to dance a fair number of dances. Court was moving. All in all I didn’t feel like the event got in the way of spending time with friends. Or more accurately, the event did get in the way of spending time one on one with friends, but it was worth it.
To start at the beginning. The last couple weeks were stressful for reasons I will not get into here. In particular Monday and Tuesday pre-Terp I spent my day and evening dealing with The Issue instead of preparing for Terp. The Issue has been dealt with more-or-less, but it still meant I was behind on Terpsichore prep. Really behind.
Wednesday I should have put my nose to the grindstone and started working on everything. Instead I spent most of the day on IM chatting with a friend about The Issue and gender roles and RPGs and whatnot. It felt good to chat, but I really needed to get on task. I might have taken care of some minor things that evening. Pretty sure I didn’t practice.
Thursday was better in terms of getting things done. I bought ingredients for the deviled eggs for the desert revel. I finished my setting of Bizzaria and my edition of Mi Amore Cadenza for Gwommy. (Turns out I’m missing a bar in the A and B sections. I’ll fix that sometime this week. Maybe today.) Again I can’t remember if I actually got anything else done. I have a fair amount of teaching on Thursdays and my Viol lesson, so I might not have done anything else. My Viol lesson went surprisingly well given that I definitely didn’t practice much and felt frazzled. I’ve yet to have a lesson where I can’t focus, so I went even though I was feeling crappy. The same thing was true for my voice lessons. Most of the time even if I was in a sour mood, I was able to get a lot out of my lessons. Pretty sure I was thoroughly drained when I got home, but better than I was before I left.
That left me with Friday: the last day I could possibly do prep. I got my music together for the Peascod Gatherers set. (Yes, I had not taken care of that until the day before the event. *So much shame.*) I made about 40 more crepes for Sunday. (Yay Crepes and Cascarda!) In the middle of that, I gave a piano lesson. (My goodness, were those some unfocused lessons. x_x ) Then I made the deviled eggs. Then I gave another piano lesson. Then it was time to go to Saline. Again, I didn’t practice.
While I was making the deviled eggs, I was struck by how my year is defined by SCA events. In February is Step Spritely. The end of March and Beginning of April is Terpsichore. (“On what day does Terpsichore fall this year?” is as reasonable to ask as “When is Easter?”) After Terpsichore is St. Cecilia. Then Known World Dance (although not for us for the next 3 years...) Then Pennsic. Then Grand Tourney. Then Wassail. Terpsichore in particular feels like a holiday in a way that many of the others don’t. For me there’s a lot of preparation that goes into the event. We have weekly ball rehearsals for two months, which means that for two months I’m thinking about this event. I make some “Traditional Foods”, which is to say I only make deviled eggs for Terp. I use the same recipe every year. It feels good to do that. There’s a lot of work (and a fair amount of money) that goes into make the event a success, which reminds me of all the best holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas-Eve, Christmas, Easter. I’ve said before that the SCA is my replacement Church, but that idea really hit home this Terpsichore.
That evening I went to the seafood place for dinner. aelkiss and I never get to go because usually people go during the dinner break and we’re always at the site doing sound check. But this year, because of the tight schedule, people didn’t intend to leave site for dinner, and thus decided to go to the restaurant on Friday before dancing. Honestly I’m kind of hoping the same thing happens next year. It was nice to be able to go out to dinner with people. The food was pretty good too. :) And I got to see Felice! My due date buddy! :D
At the Friday evening dance I got in as much practicing for the Peascod Gatherers set as I could. Finally. I learned that things weren’t as dire as I feared. I’m not terrible at keyboard. And I got to practice some with my band-mates since some of them were there and also wanted to practice. Yay!
We introduced one of our contra friends, Matt, to SCA dance that Friday. He did really well. I don’t think he was too scarred by being dragged through Bella Gioiosa. :P It reminded me of “the good olde days” 8 or so years ago when I was dragged through Bella after having danced only a handful of times. All smiles and encouragement. He seemed to have a good time.
I played a bunch of music on various instruments. I think mostly keyboard and viol. Some recorder. Duffy, the bassoonist from the Toronto area, joined us at some point. We didn’t get to play with him at Step Spritely, so it was really nice to get the opportunity here. Overall I thought the pickup band for Friday sounded pretty good. I danced some too, of course. I remember feeling overjoyed that so many of my friends were in the same place. :)
We did not go to elaine_alina and charles_midair after the Friday night practice in part because I’m pregnant, and in part because we had a lot to do the next day.
Saturday morning got off to a slow start. I didn’t have the energy or inclination to rush. I had vague intentions of getting up early so we could actually go to Gwommy’s vigil and not miss any classes we wanted to go to, but in the end we didn’t arrive on site until significantly after 10AM. Oh well.
Rorschach decided Saturday morning that Teleri’s sleeping bag needed to be peed on. Oh cat. Embarrassing and frustrating. We took care of that promptly, but still. Things neither Teleri nor we needed to deal with. (He did it again Saturday night.... although missed the sleeping bag thank goodness.) Oh, and when we got back Friday night we found that he didn’t keep his dinner down. :( :( On the bright side, that meant he’d want to eat in the morning. On the negative side, the vomit was there for several hours. Gross. Other than that he seemed in good spirits. Sometimes it’s hard to understand cat.
After spending some time in the musician lounge, aelkiss and I went to Gwommy’s vigil. Remember when I said SCA is like Church? I like AACTMAD (Ann Arbor Community for Traditional Music and Dance), but... there’s nothing even close to resembling the pre-laurel Vigil. (Nor should it really. AACTMAD is all about the dancing.) I love that in the SCA there’s a built in ritual for talking to someone about topics that don’t usually come up in conversation. For talking about personal growth, and telling people why you appreciate them. I love that there’s recognition for both excellence and good character. The Vigil in particular reminds me of Confession. A good, but uncomfortable kind of thing. They managed to find a nice nook for Gwommy’s vigil. This was the first time we’d gone to a vigil at Terp. Usually we are way too busy, and with elaine_alina’s we were young and shy on top of busy. :P I’m glad we went. Maybe one day I’ll feel up to going to one without aelkiss.
After that I went to the Burgundian Basse Dance class. Late, of course because of Vigil, but I still got to dance. I’ve only been to a handful of Burgundian Basse Dance classes. This was the first time I felt like I could bring back what I learned to dance practice. Also hemiola doubles make me the happiest kitty ever. It was nice that I could express my enthusiasm about them to Meg and that she understood what I was talking about.
Then lunch. Lunch tavern was better than it has been in a few years. I skipped out on Gwommy’s verse of St. Paul’s because energy. Took some time to do more practicing for the ball. Tried to find a roadmap that would work for Bizzaria. Rounded up some musicians for playing at court and practiced the pieces. We picked a pavane from the Pennsic Pile (La Donna) for the procession and a gaillarde (New Year’s Gift) for the recessional. We thought that was what we were playing for. Turns out there was time at the end of court for a performance. Oops. At court, we played what was going to be our recessional for the performance, and we scrambled and read the La Donna Galliarde for the recessional. The practice was really fun. So many strings. And there was a moment where I was playing and thought someone had joined in singing. I got really distracted and then realized it was Duffy on the Bassoon. So cool. I’m developing an appreciation for 16th century pavannes and galliards when they aren’t played by recorder consorts. I think I was the only recorder player? Maybe there was one or two more. The rest was Viol, Cello, Violin, Bassoon, Drum. Good times.
Also during lunch I received Vendetta’s baby blanket from Her Excellency of Northwoods. :) So cute. It’s a bear!
Sion’s Dance Atrocities class was fun. I’m not sure we’ll dance Crossed Purposes as much as Two Fat Ladies, which it is similar to, but it was still fun.
Felice’s Reconstruction class was the best class I’ve been to in a long time. How much of that is because I’m in on the joke, I’m not sure. Regardless, I had so much fun. I’m also glad she is done with that project and can play with us wholeheartedly now. I probably have more thoughts on her class, but I don’t feel like processing them right now.
After that was dinner / sound check. I didn’t participate much with setting up the sound system because of Vendetta. Also because I didn’t really have a good handle on what aelkiss wanted. Meg played Emergency Backup Kasha for soundcheck because Kasha hadn’t arrived yet. Soundcheck went fine. I was glad Matt was there to help with that. Dinner was pizza. It was good enough. I wonder if next year they will add a dinner tavern to Terp. Not having to leave site was nice.
Court was next. We got the sanctuary this year, which was really helpful given how many people were at the event. I decided to have the musicians sit in the choir area. Good decision. That meant we had great seats, would be easily heard, and had chairs instead of pews. The organ backdrop was nice too. As I mentioned we weren’t entirely sure what we were in for. On top of that we only had two copies of the music, which was really insufficient for the number of people playing. aelkiss ran down to get another copy and I think didn’t get a chance to play for the processional. Oh well.
I think I knew everyone who got an award, except for the Knight and the other Laurel. All were well deserved. All were quite prestigious. :) aelkiss and I might have received our Evergreens. aelkiss was surprised that he got one. I was... not. Which probably makes me a bad person. :P His thought was that he doesn’t teach enough to deserve one. It’s true that we don’t teach very many classes. I certainly don’t go out of my way to go to events just to teach. We didn’t teach at all this Terp. We’re only teaching one class each at St. Cecilia (and neither is particularly exciting. Useful and necessary, but not exciting.) We taught a couple things at Pennsic. I taught a couple of classes at KWDMS and one at twelfth night and step spritely. OK maybe I have done a lot of teaching recently.... but, still, usually the people I see getting Evergreens teach all_the_time. Anyway, we are happy. :D
The elevations at court were moving. Again I was reminded of how SCA is like church. It helped of course that court was in the sanctuary, but even it if it wasn’t. All the processionals. I was an altar server as a kid. I remember carrying the cross and following cues and setting up the incense. I remember how I loved all the things that needed to be done for Easter Vigil. This court in particular reminded me of all that. Not least of which was the sense of sincerity I got from the elevations. We call this a hobby, but... no one involved in those ceremonies was just playing. Either that or they are really good actors.
I was also amused by the fact that my feelings about priests is similar to my feelings about SCA royalty. I don’t really like that SCA royalty is always chosen by combat. I don’t like that there is no other way to get that accolade. It’s not representative of our organization. Likewise I don’t like that in order to be a Catholic priest one has to have boy parts. In both cases when people try to defend the tradition, I am unimpressed. In fact usually it’s better if it’s not discussed.
At the same time, the role of the priest and the role of royalty are necessary for these ceremonies to work. The sincerity of the people in those roles matters. It’s obvious that Cellach and Vukasin take being King and Queen very seriously, and because of that all of the rituals have more gravitas. It takes a special King to deliver a buffet to the new knight.
All of this makes me think of this Ted Talk, and of how the SCA should be doing recruitment. It’s also made me think about the Romantic element of the SCA in a new light.
After court was the ball. Ritornello, the group that came to Sunday rehearsals, played for the first set. The Peascod Gatherers played for the second set. The third and fourth set were open.
In my humble opinion, I thought this worked really really well. Ritornello sounded quite good for the first set. It was enough music to be challenging, but not so much music to be overwhelming. People rose to the challenge. I was very pleased. Also I got to play gamba almost the whole time. And I played the three chord wonder that is Karobushka on the bouzouki so as to free up aelkiss to play mandolin. Good times.
The Peascod Gatherers played the second set. We had the weird stuff, the stuff that would best be done by a small group, and a few favorites. For the first time at Terpsichore I felt like I was playing with a band. And by a band, I mean a group of people who are paying attention to each other as much as the music that’s in front of them. For Bizzaria we ultimately decided to wing the arrangement because we didn’t have time to practice together as a group and because the way the microphones were set up made it hard for us to change instruments. Our arrangement wasn’t that boring! We listened to each other. We did some neat things on the fly. My only wish is that we got to practice more together so we’d be even better in sync. For Trenchmore we played a bunch of out of period contra tunes since it’s a longways out of period dance. My goodness I miss playing contra tunes. Also viol, mandolin, harpsichord, and recorder worked amazingly well for that music.
The other two sets were open band. The open band did its job... more or less. I’m still surprised / dismayed when people can’t play the melody. :P I danced a lot in those sets. The dance cards helped a lot. aelkiss, unfortunately, felt a bit glued to the pit, but he seemed OK with that.
The “battlefield court” was well done. elaine_alina and Felice are Court Baronesses. Yay! We attempted to lead music for Gwommy’s elevation. I think I missed every cue. People laughed. It was fine. I still felt bad that I messed it up. His elevation was also moving. In particular, the letter from Mistress Judith. Everything she said was both well-said and true. Honestly after that it almost felt like no one else needed to speak. Yay Gwommy! Yay another dance laurel!
On the topic of cues, in the future aelkiss and I are going to make it a point to make sure we figure out the cues for music when we play for court. As in we are going to find the herald and hash it out. elaine242’s elevation went perfectly in large part because ermenrich told us what the cue was for us to start playing, and what it was for us to stop playing. For Gwommy’s and for court proper I thought we could wing it. I was mistaken. Granted, everything went OK. No one died. But it could have been smoother for sure.
Desert revel was delicious as usual. (Yay magda_vogelsang)
We got through every dance in the ball.
After the ball came clean up. aelkiss offered to let me go straight to the post revel, but I offered to help with the little stuff. The trusting that people won’t secretly be annoyed with me for not doing physical stuff due to baby is one of the harder parts of being pregnant. It felt good to be useful. I mostly packed up our instruments. Well.. packed up everything except my instrument. *shame* The keyboard is light for digital keyboards, but still heavier than I would like. Cleanup felt really efficient. aelkiss has definitely learned a thing or two about how to mobilize volunteers.
After cleanup was the post rev. We stayed until 1 AM. I was happy to sit and chat. I talked some to Margrett Norwoode about A&S. Found out that the Pippins did well. Yay Pippins. I complained some about A&S for performance, like I usually do when I hear about it. Margrett suggested that at some point I’d have to do it if I wanted to continue to grow. I was surprised at how comfortable I was about saying I didn’t see that happening. Honestly, I think I’d be pretty OK with not being Laureled if I believed that placing well in an A&S competition was a prerequisite. I certainly wouldn’t have a problem with not being laureled if I thought that spending my time supporting that particular bit of tradition was necessary. That said, the reasons she gave for why she does it seem totally valid to me. For me, I’ll find other ways to grow.... like creating and playing in the Master Class at St. Cecilia. :P
The next day was Crepes and Cascarda at our house. I did some cleaning and tuned the harpsichord. aelkiss took care of heating up the crepes we’d made in advance. In the past we’ve served French Toast, but that tended to mean that one or both of us was in the kitchen instead of socializing. The crepes were much easier to serve on the day of. They did take quite a bit of work upfront, but in the process we learned how to make them. By then end they were even looking pretty!
The dancing part was so much fun. aelkiss and Meg tuned down their instruments to match the harpsichord. I actually got my fill of playing good dance music. It was much easier to pick which dances to play with the new layout of the Pennsic Pile. We just had to skim the 16th century Italian section. :D Another highlight was playing Montard bransle for 12. It’s easy enough to accompany that I can watch the dancers the whole time. Such silliness. :)
We had about as many people as was reasonable given the amount of room we have at our house. Hopefully we’ll be able to do it again next year, but I make no promises given Vendetta.
After that people left, and a few of us went to an early music workshop that was being hosted in Ann Arbor and lead by a person from NY. We played a Dowland Pavane whose name I forget, Earl of Essex Galliard, and a Brahms madrigal of all things. I played gamba, and was able to hold my own alright. I’d had a good time playing at the workshop at Dawn Dance, so I was optimistic about this one. Yeah... not so much. If the music isn’t going to sound good given the group of people there, I’d rather just play a lot of music instead of spending a bunch of time working on getting it up a few notches from mediocre. Also the Brahms... bleh. I suspect the instrumentation had a lot to do with it. The piece was a originally written for a choir.
I knew I wasn’t going to get much time to spend with Felice and Mike one on one, but I’m still sad it didn’t happen. I might try to arrange to do so when we go to Origins in June. I’m open to the idea of spending the better part of the day with them instead of playing board games with lots and lots of people. Oh, overstimulation.
And that’s my Terp wrapup. Next big project is St. Cecilia. And maybe actually getting around to preparing the house for baby.
Oh also, my brother is engaged. Whee!
The short version is that this was a really wonderful Terpsichore for me. The classes I went to were so good. (Burgundian Basse Dance; Dance Atrocities 2014; The Reconstruction Experiment.) I had sufficient actual good music playing time. I got to dance a fair number of dances. Court was moving. All in all I didn’t feel like the event got in the way of spending time with friends. Or more accurately, the event did get in the way of spending time one on one with friends, but it was worth it.
To start at the beginning. The last couple weeks were stressful for reasons I will not get into here. In particular Monday and Tuesday pre-Terp I spent my day and evening dealing with The Issue instead of preparing for Terp. The Issue has been dealt with more-or-less, but it still meant I was behind on Terpsichore prep. Really behind.
Wednesday I should have put my nose to the grindstone and started working on everything. Instead I spent most of the day on IM chatting with a friend about The Issue and gender roles and RPGs and whatnot. It felt good to chat, but I really needed to get on task. I might have taken care of some minor things that evening. Pretty sure I didn’t practice.
Thursday was better in terms of getting things done. I bought ingredients for the deviled eggs for the desert revel. I finished my setting of Bizzaria and my edition of Mi Amore Cadenza for Gwommy. (Turns out I’m missing a bar in the A and B sections. I’ll fix that sometime this week. Maybe today.) Again I can’t remember if I actually got anything else done. I have a fair amount of teaching on Thursdays and my Viol lesson, so I might not have done anything else. My Viol lesson went surprisingly well given that I definitely didn’t practice much and felt frazzled. I’ve yet to have a lesson where I can’t focus, so I went even though I was feeling crappy. The same thing was true for my voice lessons. Most of the time even if I was in a sour mood, I was able to get a lot out of my lessons. Pretty sure I was thoroughly drained when I got home, but better than I was before I left.
That left me with Friday: the last day I could possibly do prep. I got my music together for the Peascod Gatherers set. (Yes, I had not taken care of that until the day before the event. *So much shame.*) I made about 40 more crepes for Sunday. (Yay Crepes and Cascarda!) In the middle of that, I gave a piano lesson. (My goodness, were those some unfocused lessons. x_x ) Then I made the deviled eggs. Then I gave another piano lesson. Then it was time to go to Saline. Again, I didn’t practice.
While I was making the deviled eggs, I was struck by how my year is defined by SCA events. In February is Step Spritely. The end of March and Beginning of April is Terpsichore. (“On what day does Terpsichore fall this year?” is as reasonable to ask as “When is Easter?”) After Terpsichore is St. Cecilia. Then Known World Dance (although not for us for the next 3 years...) Then Pennsic. Then Grand Tourney. Then Wassail. Terpsichore in particular feels like a holiday in a way that many of the others don’t. For me there’s a lot of preparation that goes into the event. We have weekly ball rehearsals for two months, which means that for two months I’m thinking about this event. I make some “Traditional Foods”, which is to say I only make deviled eggs for Terp. I use the same recipe every year. It feels good to do that. There’s a lot of work (and a fair amount of money) that goes into make the event a success, which reminds me of all the best holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas-Eve, Christmas, Easter. I’ve said before that the SCA is my replacement Church, but that idea really hit home this Terpsichore.
That evening I went to the seafood place for dinner. aelkiss and I never get to go because usually people go during the dinner break and we’re always at the site doing sound check. But this year, because of the tight schedule, people didn’t intend to leave site for dinner, and thus decided to go to the restaurant on Friday before dancing. Honestly I’m kind of hoping the same thing happens next year. It was nice to be able to go out to dinner with people. The food was pretty good too. :) And I got to see Felice! My due date buddy! :D
At the Friday evening dance I got in as much practicing for the Peascod Gatherers set as I could. Finally. I learned that things weren’t as dire as I feared. I’m not terrible at keyboard. And I got to practice some with my band-mates since some of them were there and also wanted to practice. Yay!
We introduced one of our contra friends, Matt, to SCA dance that Friday. He did really well. I don’t think he was too scarred by being dragged through Bella Gioiosa. :P It reminded me of “the good olde days” 8 or so years ago when I was dragged through Bella after having danced only a handful of times. All smiles and encouragement. He seemed to have a good time.
I played a bunch of music on various instruments. I think mostly keyboard and viol. Some recorder. Duffy, the bassoonist from the Toronto area, joined us at some point. We didn’t get to play with him at Step Spritely, so it was really nice to get the opportunity here. Overall I thought the pickup band for Friday sounded pretty good. I danced some too, of course. I remember feeling overjoyed that so many of my friends were in the same place. :)
We did not go to elaine_alina and charles_midair after the Friday night practice in part because I’m pregnant, and in part because we had a lot to do the next day.
Saturday morning got off to a slow start. I didn’t have the energy or inclination to rush. I had vague intentions of getting up early so we could actually go to Gwommy’s vigil and not miss any classes we wanted to go to, but in the end we didn’t arrive on site until significantly after 10AM. Oh well.
Rorschach decided Saturday morning that Teleri’s sleeping bag needed to be peed on. Oh cat. Embarrassing and frustrating. We took care of that promptly, but still. Things neither Teleri nor we needed to deal with. (He did it again Saturday night.... although missed the sleeping bag thank goodness.) Oh, and when we got back Friday night we found that he didn’t keep his dinner down. :( :( On the bright side, that meant he’d want to eat in the morning. On the negative side, the vomit was there for several hours. Gross. Other than that he seemed in good spirits. Sometimes it’s hard to understand cat.
After spending some time in the musician lounge, aelkiss and I went to Gwommy’s vigil. Remember when I said SCA is like Church? I like AACTMAD (Ann Arbor Community for Traditional Music and Dance), but... there’s nothing even close to resembling the pre-laurel Vigil. (Nor should it really. AACTMAD is all about the dancing.) I love that in the SCA there’s a built in ritual for talking to someone about topics that don’t usually come up in conversation. For talking about personal growth, and telling people why you appreciate them. I love that there’s recognition for both excellence and good character. The Vigil in particular reminds me of Confession. A good, but uncomfortable kind of thing. They managed to find a nice nook for Gwommy’s vigil. This was the first time we’d gone to a vigil at Terp. Usually we are way too busy, and with elaine_alina’s we were young and shy on top of busy. :P I’m glad we went. Maybe one day I’ll feel up to going to one without aelkiss.
After that I went to the Burgundian Basse Dance class. Late, of course because of Vigil, but I still got to dance. I’ve only been to a handful of Burgundian Basse Dance classes. This was the first time I felt like I could bring back what I learned to dance practice. Also hemiola doubles make me the happiest kitty ever. It was nice that I could express my enthusiasm about them to Meg and that she understood what I was talking about.
Then lunch. Lunch tavern was better than it has been in a few years. I skipped out on Gwommy’s verse of St. Paul’s because energy. Took some time to do more practicing for the ball. Tried to find a roadmap that would work for Bizzaria. Rounded up some musicians for playing at court and practiced the pieces. We picked a pavane from the Pennsic Pile (La Donna) for the procession and a gaillarde (New Year’s Gift) for the recessional. We thought that was what we were playing for. Turns out there was time at the end of court for a performance. Oops. At court, we played what was going to be our recessional for the performance, and we scrambled and read the La Donna Galliarde for the recessional. The practice was really fun. So many strings. And there was a moment where I was playing and thought someone had joined in singing. I got really distracted and then realized it was Duffy on the Bassoon. So cool. I’m developing an appreciation for 16th century pavannes and galliards when they aren’t played by recorder consorts. I think I was the only recorder player? Maybe there was one or two more. The rest was Viol, Cello, Violin, Bassoon, Drum. Good times.
Also during lunch I received Vendetta’s baby blanket from Her Excellency of Northwoods. :) So cute. It’s a bear!
Sion’s Dance Atrocities class was fun. I’m not sure we’ll dance Crossed Purposes as much as Two Fat Ladies, which it is similar to, but it was still fun.
Felice’s Reconstruction class was the best class I’ve been to in a long time. How much of that is because I’m in on the joke, I’m not sure. Regardless, I had so much fun. I’m also glad she is done with that project and can play with us wholeheartedly now. I probably have more thoughts on her class, but I don’t feel like processing them right now.
After that was dinner / sound check. I didn’t participate much with setting up the sound system because of Vendetta. Also because I didn’t really have a good handle on what aelkiss wanted. Meg played Emergency Backup Kasha for soundcheck because Kasha hadn’t arrived yet. Soundcheck went fine. I was glad Matt was there to help with that. Dinner was pizza. It was good enough. I wonder if next year they will add a dinner tavern to Terp. Not having to leave site was nice.
Court was next. We got the sanctuary this year, which was really helpful given how many people were at the event. I decided to have the musicians sit in the choir area. Good decision. That meant we had great seats, would be easily heard, and had chairs instead of pews. The organ backdrop was nice too. As I mentioned we weren’t entirely sure what we were in for. On top of that we only had two copies of the music, which was really insufficient for the number of people playing. aelkiss ran down to get another copy and I think didn’t get a chance to play for the processional. Oh well.
I think I knew everyone who got an award, except for the Knight and the other Laurel. All were well deserved. All were quite prestigious. :) aelkiss and I might have received our Evergreens. aelkiss was surprised that he got one. I was... not. Which probably makes me a bad person. :P His thought was that he doesn’t teach enough to deserve one. It’s true that we don’t teach very many classes. I certainly don’t go out of my way to go to events just to teach. We didn’t teach at all this Terp. We’re only teaching one class each at St. Cecilia (and neither is particularly exciting. Useful and necessary, but not exciting.) We taught a couple things at Pennsic. I taught a couple of classes at KWDMS and one at twelfth night and step spritely. OK maybe I have done a lot of teaching recently.... but, still, usually the people I see getting Evergreens teach all_the_time. Anyway, we are happy. :D
The elevations at court were moving. Again I was reminded of how SCA is like church. It helped of course that court was in the sanctuary, but even it if it wasn’t. All the processionals. I was an altar server as a kid. I remember carrying the cross and following cues and setting up the incense. I remember how I loved all the things that needed to be done for Easter Vigil. This court in particular reminded me of all that. Not least of which was the sense of sincerity I got from the elevations. We call this a hobby, but... no one involved in those ceremonies was just playing. Either that or they are really good actors.
I was also amused by the fact that my feelings about priests is similar to my feelings about SCA royalty. I don’t really like that SCA royalty is always chosen by combat. I don’t like that there is no other way to get that accolade. It’s not representative of our organization. Likewise I don’t like that in order to be a Catholic priest one has to have boy parts. In both cases when people try to defend the tradition, I am unimpressed. In fact usually it’s better if it’s not discussed.
At the same time, the role of the priest and the role of royalty are necessary for these ceremonies to work. The sincerity of the people in those roles matters. It’s obvious that Cellach and Vukasin take being King and Queen very seriously, and because of that all of the rituals have more gravitas. It takes a special King to deliver a buffet to the new knight.
All of this makes me think of this Ted Talk, and of how the SCA should be doing recruitment. It’s also made me think about the Romantic element of the SCA in a new light.
After court was the ball. Ritornello, the group that came to Sunday rehearsals, played for the first set. The Peascod Gatherers played for the second set. The third and fourth set were open.
In my humble opinion, I thought this worked really really well. Ritornello sounded quite good for the first set. It was enough music to be challenging, but not so much music to be overwhelming. People rose to the challenge. I was very pleased. Also I got to play gamba almost the whole time. And I played the three chord wonder that is Karobushka on the bouzouki so as to free up aelkiss to play mandolin. Good times.
The Peascod Gatherers played the second set. We had the weird stuff, the stuff that would best be done by a small group, and a few favorites. For the first time at Terpsichore I felt like I was playing with a band. And by a band, I mean a group of people who are paying attention to each other as much as the music that’s in front of them. For Bizzaria we ultimately decided to wing the arrangement because we didn’t have time to practice together as a group and because the way the microphones were set up made it hard for us to change instruments. Our arrangement wasn’t that boring! We listened to each other. We did some neat things on the fly. My only wish is that we got to practice more together so we’d be even better in sync. For Trenchmore we played a bunch of out of period contra tunes since it’s a longways out of period dance. My goodness I miss playing contra tunes. Also viol, mandolin, harpsichord, and recorder worked amazingly well for that music.
The other two sets were open band. The open band did its job... more or less. I’m still surprised / dismayed when people can’t play the melody. :P I danced a lot in those sets. The dance cards helped a lot. aelkiss, unfortunately, felt a bit glued to the pit, but he seemed OK with that.
The “battlefield court” was well done. elaine_alina and Felice are Court Baronesses. Yay! We attempted to lead music for Gwommy’s elevation. I think I missed every cue. People laughed. It was fine. I still felt bad that I messed it up. His elevation was also moving. In particular, the letter from Mistress Judith. Everything she said was both well-said and true. Honestly after that it almost felt like no one else needed to speak. Yay Gwommy! Yay another dance laurel!
On the topic of cues, in the future aelkiss and I are going to make it a point to make sure we figure out the cues for music when we play for court. As in we are going to find the herald and hash it out. elaine242’s elevation went perfectly in large part because ermenrich told us what the cue was for us to start playing, and what it was for us to stop playing. For Gwommy’s and for court proper I thought we could wing it. I was mistaken. Granted, everything went OK. No one died. But it could have been smoother for sure.
Desert revel was delicious as usual. (Yay magda_vogelsang)
We got through every dance in the ball.
After the ball came clean up. aelkiss offered to let me go straight to the post revel, but I offered to help with the little stuff. The trusting that people won’t secretly be annoyed with me for not doing physical stuff due to baby is one of the harder parts of being pregnant. It felt good to be useful. I mostly packed up our instruments. Well.. packed up everything except my instrument. *shame* The keyboard is light for digital keyboards, but still heavier than I would like. Cleanup felt really efficient. aelkiss has definitely learned a thing or two about how to mobilize volunteers.
After cleanup was the post rev. We stayed until 1 AM. I was happy to sit and chat. I talked some to Margrett Norwoode about A&S. Found out that the Pippins did well. Yay Pippins. I complained some about A&S for performance, like I usually do when I hear about it. Margrett suggested that at some point I’d have to do it if I wanted to continue to grow. I was surprised at how comfortable I was about saying I didn’t see that happening. Honestly, I think I’d be pretty OK with not being Laureled if I believed that placing well in an A&S competition was a prerequisite. I certainly wouldn’t have a problem with not being laureled if I thought that spending my time supporting that particular bit of tradition was necessary. That said, the reasons she gave for why she does it seem totally valid to me. For me, I’ll find other ways to grow.... like creating and playing in the Master Class at St. Cecilia. :P
The next day was Crepes and Cascarda at our house. I did some cleaning and tuned the harpsichord. aelkiss took care of heating up the crepes we’d made in advance. In the past we’ve served French Toast, but that tended to mean that one or both of us was in the kitchen instead of socializing. The crepes were much easier to serve on the day of. They did take quite a bit of work upfront, but in the process we learned how to make them. By then end they were even looking pretty!
The dancing part was so much fun. aelkiss and Meg tuned down their instruments to match the harpsichord. I actually got my fill of playing good dance music. It was much easier to pick which dances to play with the new layout of the Pennsic Pile. We just had to skim the 16th century Italian section. :D Another highlight was playing Montard bransle for 12. It’s easy enough to accompany that I can watch the dancers the whole time. Such silliness. :)
We had about as many people as was reasonable given the amount of room we have at our house. Hopefully we’ll be able to do it again next year, but I make no promises given Vendetta.
After that people left, and a few of us went to an early music workshop that was being hosted in Ann Arbor and lead by a person from NY. We played a Dowland Pavane whose name I forget, Earl of Essex Galliard, and a Brahms madrigal of all things. I played gamba, and was able to hold my own alright. I’d had a good time playing at the workshop at Dawn Dance, so I was optimistic about this one. Yeah... not so much. If the music isn’t going to sound good given the group of people there, I’d rather just play a lot of music instead of spending a bunch of time working on getting it up a few notches from mediocre. Also the Brahms... bleh. I suspect the instrumentation had a lot to do with it. The piece was a originally written for a choir.
I knew I wasn’t going to get much time to spend with Felice and Mike one on one, but I’m still sad it didn’t happen. I might try to arrange to do so when we go to Origins in June. I’m open to the idea of spending the better part of the day with them instead of playing board games with lots and lots of people. Oh, overstimulation.
And that’s my Terp wrapup. Next big project is St. Cecilia. And maybe actually getting around to preparing the house for baby.
Oh also, my brother is engaged. Whee!