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Hello dear singers,
FCO has always hoped to be thought of as a community, not just a group of strangers who sing together—and last Tuesday you proved that! When Sue had her emergency, her fellow altos sprang into action: calling 911, helping her to be comfortable, checking vital signs (thank goodness Donna Rue is a nurse), manning the outside door so that the emergency responders could be let into the building, on and on. Meanwhile, your fearless leader on the podium? I couldn't even remember the name of the church! Turns out I'm not good in an emergency. Take note of that, in case The Big One comes while we're in rehearsal! My brain froze. You probably would be well advised not even to accept a ride from me on a drive to the coast or somewhere. Those great altos who took over to get things done? Ride with one of them. We're all happy to know that Sue is feeling fine, and we're proud of her for giving blood last Tuesday.
OK, onward and upward. As you remember, we covered the remaining movements in rehearsal, fixing notes and becoming more secure in every way. That really fast clip in the last movement was absolutely thrilling, so I'll keep that in the books. To me those angular phrases even seemed easier.
So we'll continue to work hard on two very big performance aspects: diction and dynamics.
Remember last week, when I reminded you in this column that you have a pronunciation guide to refer to and to practice with as often as possible, as a means of becoming more and more familiar with our text? Yet on Tuesday there still was a question about a word which is different in the rental scores. The pronunciation guide is correct. I know, we often think bound copies of music are authoritative, but I now see that I should have made it clear that those rentals are old editions. Later scholarship has cleared mistakes like that, making the new edition correct and making regular reading aloud of the pronunciation even more important. Same with pronouncing every "i" as "ee"! That's how you study the music, now: with the pronunciation guide.
As for dynamics, you'll be able to spare more attention to dynamics the more you recognize the words at a glance. Really performing the rise and fall of each crescendo/decrescendo will be ravishingly beautiful! But we have to rehearse all those features to get in the habit. We still have some baritones singing louder than is helpful when the dynamic is soft, so the dynamics will have to be noticed though familiarity gained from not having to stare at all the words.
It'll be on me to be as clear as possible so that we can be exactly together, and to indicate when notes must be full value. Observing commas is on you, though, so if you haven't indicated them, don't put it off, OK? Think about all the reminders you're tired of hearing from me, and please make it your goal to spend real time studying your score ahead of these final two rehearsals before we're together with the orchestra. If you do that, you'll be surprised at how much more you're able to discover in this rich score.
Sorry about the rain. I guess it'll mean more time inside, studying your scores.
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