Today was a most challenging practice.\u00a0 Here’s the setup:<\/p>\n
The\u00a0 polyphony choir that I’m in, led by Jenny Donelson, is leading the Holy Hour service tomorrow afternoon at 5:00.\u00a0 We had a decent practice yesterday, but another group needed our practice room so we got swapped over to the vestibule of the Mundelein hall.\u00a0 Not so bad, but for one fatal flaw:\u00a0 no piano.<\/p>\n
We started practicing a Tantum Ergo<\/em> written by Kevin Allen, a new piece just published in 2007.\u00a0 So it has lots of modern harmonies.\u00a0 Which means that none of us had a clue what the thing should sound like.\u00a0 Well, Jenny did, but it’s hard to sing four parts at once.<\/p>\n After a total flameout after four measures on the first try, we started splitting it into sections.\u00a0 It started feeling like we were in trouble when it took the tenors about half an hour to get through the first page and a half of four pages.\u00a0 The basses didn’t do much better.\u00a0 And the poor ladies were feeling totally left out, so they tried doing sectionals in other parts of Mundelein hall.\u00a0 Time for a deep breath and a break.<\/p>\n While Jenny worked with the ladies, the tenors and basses went off into corners to remind ourselves of the Domine Non Sum Dignus<\/em> (Tomas Luis de Victoria) that we practiced yesterday.\u00a0 It’s feeling like that’s getting under control.\u00a0 But when we come together, what’s the Tantum Ergo<\/em> going to sound like?<\/p>\n Well, it was surprisingly good.\u00a0 Not perfect by any means, but we certainly earned lots of indulgences for the sweat and tears put into this afternoon.\u00a0 One of the hardest practices I’ve ever had.<\/p>\n But after we sleep on it, what about tomorrow?\u00a0 That’s anybody’s guess.\u00a0 We have one more practice after lunch and then a little warmup before the service starts, so hopefully these old brain cells will retain a bit of what we worked so hard on.\u00a0 If not, well, I guess we count it as time of purification in Purgatory.<\/p>\n Quote of the day: “Putting church music under copyright is rather like using the state to attempt to control something which should be divine.” — Jeffrey Tucker<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/input><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today was a most challenging practice.\u00a0 Here’s the setup:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[22,23,24],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-carl","4":"has-more-link","5":"post-443","7":"format-standard","8":"category-sacredmusic","9":"post_tag-chant","10":"post_tag-colloquium","11":"post_tag-sacred-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":460,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions\/460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}