ysobel: A kitten on a piano keyboard (music)
[personal profile] ysobel
Ending of Rossini: one glorious movement of nonstop awesome.

Ending of Bruckner: OMG KILL ME NOW.

This is mainly because the end-of-Bruckner soprano part has about eight measures of (top-of-staff) F#, one F## for transition, eight measures of G, yadda yadda nonstop ascending chromatic yadda, all the way up to a Bb, all without any sort of break. And some of it is pp. Hah. And then there's a high C at the end, that, ironically, is easier than the long floaty notes.

(Translation for non-music types: it has lots and lots of high long notes. yes, we're sopranos, but it is still ow on the voice.)

Mind, the Rossini is somewhat similar in that the final post-fugue section has a lot of sustained G/Ab/G/F# stuff, but it doesn't go as high, and we get breaks (and official places to breathe) and it's a hell of a lot more fun.

I am, however, absurdly glad that I did not get around to doing the assigned work of manually writing out measure numbers.

See, okay. Chorus and orchestra often have different scores, with different conventions, and it's nice to have everyone know what "measure 97" is or whatever. On one piece, we have measure numbers along with rehearsal letters, but the numbering starts fresh with each movement, and we were told that the orchestra had no letters and that their measure numbers were consecutive throughout the entirety of the piece. On the other piece, we have nothing -- so were using page number, staff-on-page, and measure-within-staff, like "top of 62" or "page 81 middle system last measure" or whatever -- and were told that, again, the orchestra had consecutive measure numbers.

For the first piece, the TA gave us measure numbers for the beginning of every line. (I generally just wrote the beginning of every page because I am not that fast at writing stuff on music and also I can, you know, count.) For the second, the TA gave us measure numbers for the first movements (we sing movements 1,5,8,10) and then told us how many measures were in 2-4 combined and told us to work on it from there.

Some of you may have lertishly picked up on the fact that I said "we were told the orchestra has" XYZ, not "the orchestra has" XYZ.

This would be because, well, what we were told was /wrong/.

First piece, the orchestra shares our rehearsal letters, and doesn't have any measure numbers. (At least, I am assuming this based on cues like "13th measure of T" or "7 before Y".)

Second piece, the orchestra does indeed have measure numbers, but they start fresh for each movement. So, say, the fugue in the last movement? begins on measure 13. not measure onethousandfuckingwhatever.

...

...I picked up on this more quickly than some, and was able also to pick up measure numbers based on where he would have the orchestra start, and do quick measure-counting from those spots to key locations, so I was able to call out, like, "last measure on page 89" when the conductor gave a measure number. But. Yeah. Reeeally glad I didn't go to all of the trouble of /counting all of the fucking measures in the piece/ omg.

(I am a teensy bit cranky at the TA. I suspect others are somewhat more so...)

Date: 2010-03-03 05:03 am (UTC)
jmtorres: From Lady Gaga's Bad Romance music video; the peach-haired, wide-eyed iteration (Default)
From: [personal profile] jmtorres
*snuggle* You ever on IM anymore?

Date: 2010-03-03 07:00 am (UTC)
greenbirds: (Default)
From: [personal profile] greenbirds
As a fellow soprano: ow, ow, effin' ow. I cringe just thinking about that. [hugs]

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masquerading as a man with a reason

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