Magnificat

This past Sunday, I got to make music in a way that I really "believed.” During the course of times that have been far too crammed, this came (strangely) as a huge blessing and gift.   

I have known the Bach Magnificat perhaps since undergraduate, when I played some of the solo arias in lessons for friends and colleagues. 

At Westminster Choir College, Dr. Andrew Megill led the Westminster Kantorei in a rehearsal and performance process that was life-changing.

Several other performances have followed.

When I was asked to take over (some) choral duties at UNM for this academic year, I bartered for the top auditioned choir. This year has been an amazing journey for me with them, as I have learned some things as a choral conductor “from scratch” (warm-ups, administration). Other things I feel have been a very natural extension of me (rehearsing a cappella, further development of ears, honing in on rhythm, controlling more lines of polyphony, further work on musicianship). 

The only thing I REALLY wanted to do, all year, was this piece. 

Thirty minutes of unadulterated joy. It’s also one of the most perfect pieces of music ever written. It’s the best of Bach (and that is saying a *lot*). Imagine my surprise when my colleagues delightedly volunteered to play in the orchestra. They were able to recommend graduate students to fill out the ranks.

One of my best students (a good undergraduate singer) said,

“The thirty minutes we shared on stage might be one of the best memories of my life. Doing anything."

Thank you.

As Bach said, "Soli Dei Gloria." 

Red for Music, Blue for Text

This is a post that I've been meaning to write for a while. I got this idea from a colleague with whom I worked in Italy (thank you, HH!) and have been working on how to implement it for quite some time. 

There are many schools of thought about how to mark a score. Mark everything. Mark nothing. Mark what you need. Mark what you think you will forget "next time." For an instrumentalist, fingerings and bowings are necessary. Singers - translation for sure (though many of them also write staging or technical suggestions - those scores look "interesting" and I've been privy to seeing a lot of them.)

But when I really starting using this method, everything became even more clear about intention, form, and expression. 

The other thing I've started doing (though I've been advising singers to do this for years) is to write out "all" of the text ..." then check for rhyme-scheme, structure, poetic form, assonance, alliteration, vocalic harmonization (a big fancy term for what kinds of vowels are adjacent to each other) ... then to re-implement what blueprint that has, against the text. 

I am attaching my text-anaylsis of the final trio from "Faust." This was part of Syracuse's recent "Nine Operas in Ninety Minutes" which I played and coached. 

Notice how Faust's lines rhyme with a lot of what Marguerite sings. They were in a love for a time, and he wants to be helpful to save her eternal soul. At another point, Faust and Memphisto have the same line, showing that they are / were in league together. 

Yet another level to notice is that Marguerite's vowels are bright and pure (she has a lot of [a] and [y] and [i] here). No coincidence, since she is enlisting leagues of angels to save her. 

I'm not going to pretend this isn't time-consuming, but what it shows cannot easily be discovered when the text is "on the page" amidst rhythms, an accompaniment, a vocal line, dynamics, and orchestra. In doing this, I have firmly adopted an adage of my own from my beloved colleague and mentor of sorts, Laura Brooks Rice (Westminster Choir College / CoOPERAtive program).