Quick post on an odd day. I couldn’t get to sleep last night. I got up at 12:45 to write down a poem that I had composed and edited several times in my head, then, stayed up until about 3:00 trying to get tired to the point of falling asleep. I think I may have finally fallen asleep at about 4:00. I was awake before my mom called at 8:10, talked a while, ate breakfast, showered, dressed, and wrote down another new poem that had started to formulate in the shower. I tackled my “homework” for Binghamton Poetry Project, which turned into a rather major edit of the poem I drafted from a prompt in class last week – with research using google and my journal from the Smith College Alumnae Chorus tour of Sicily in 2011. I had had plans for practical things like shopping and cooking, but decided that I needed an afternoon nap instead because I have to get through BInghamton Poetry Project class at 5:30, where I need to be able to write a poem in fifteen minutes from a prompt, followed by University Chorus rehearsal at 7:30, where I need to use brain power to not mess up our new wording in the Mendelssohn. While not being the day I thought I would have, what transpired is probably the most productive poetry day of my life. I’m hoping I can have more similarly productive poetry days, but with more hours of sleep involved.
Category: music
SoCS: putting in “put”
My Saturday is going to be busy, so I am writing this Friday night – late after everyone else is in bed.
Ironically, I spent a lot of time today with the word “put.” The Binghamton University Chorus, in which I have sung for 33 seasons, is preparing Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang for our concert in May, but we are singing it in English rather than the original German.
In movement seven, our scores used the following text, “let us gird on the armour of light,” over and over and over. Unfortunately, the word “gird” is very difficult to sing prettily, especially when the notes are high in our ranges, as they are in this movement. So the hunt was on for a different translation that used less difficult sounds.
After comparing several Biblical translations, our director chose to change “let us gird on” to “and put on us” which is easier to sing and to understand from the audience’s perspective. So, I spent a bunch of time today writing the text change into my score.
I admit that I only wrote it in for the soprano part, which is the part I sing. Fingers crossed that the other parts write their own changes!
The tricky part comes on Monday – when my mind needs to forget the weeks of singing “gird” and put “put” in there instead.
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This is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Join us! Find the prompt and the rules here: http://lindaghill.com/2015/03/13/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-march-1415/
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Paul Goldstaub tribute concert
On January 31st, the Music Department of Binghamton (NY) University presented a concert of Professor Emeritus Paul Goldstaub’s music on the first anniversary of his death. It was wonderful to hear such an eclectic mix of Paul’s music, much of it performed by the musicians who had premiered it.
I found my mind going back to my own studies of theory and composition at Smith. At that time, we began our theory course sequence in a contemporary setting with the study of rhythm, timbre, and melody, before progressing in later semesters to common practice period harmony, counterpoint, and chromatic harmony. The concert opened with a fugue for 3 snare drums, which included some air drumming and left us wishing that we could have seen the score to see how Paul had notated it. The second half of the concert opened with Pastorale II for flute and digital delay, played by Georgetta Maiolo. I loved how it wedded wonderful melodic writing with contemporary technology, with the digital delay taking the place of what would probably have been done by tape in my student days.
I also appreciated that Paul wrote for so many different instruments and combinations. In the concert, there was a piece for trombone and piano and one for marimba and piano. Hindemith came to mind. The concert program included a full list of Goldstaub’s composition, arranged chronologically, which allowed us to appreciate the full scope of his range as a composer.
Paul’s inventiveness as a composer was on fullest display in the excerpts from Every Evening for baritone, a chorus of three sopranos, piano, and percussion duo. Before each movement was sung, the poem was read by Professor Emeritus Martin Bidney, who had translated them from Russian, into which they had been translated from the Spanish folk tradition. The settings that followed had an incredible richness of soundscape, including some pitched speech reminiscent of Sprechstimme, close harmony from the three sopranos, and dialogue between the baritone and varied combinations of the sopranos.
As a member of a chamber chorus drawn from the Binghamton University Chorus, it was my privilege to participate in the final piece on the program, the first movement of Shakespeare Mix, which Paul had written for us in 2002. Accompanied by two pianos and percussion, we sang from Twelfth Night, “If music be the food of love, play on.” As we finished, a photograph of Paul was projected on a screen beside the stage. As the ovation went on, it was good to know that we had all joined together that evening to make sure that Paul Goldstaub’s music does “play on.”
Joanne Corey 