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Hi Everybody,
We're nearing showtime at last! I'm sorry to be a bit late with this letter, especially since I'm going to ask you all to do some very necessary homework! We've come such a long, long way in our preparation, and our music is getting better by the week, but there are a few things you each can do at home to raise our level of musicianship.
I wish you all could be in my place on the podium to hear the astonishing difference in our music after I've reminded you to give full value to all the notes that end your phrases. It sounds impossible for that to be the case, but please take my word for it! Unless you're a professional musician or have many many years of performing under your belt, doing everything that's on the page doesn't come naturally. That doesn't make you a bad person, just one that still has some things to learn! The pages are full of information! So this task that I'm going to ask you all to accomplish can probably be accomplished in an hour, maybe two, and I'd call that a massive investment if you all schedule that time.
I've stopped our work repeatedly to remind you to give full value to the notes that end phrases: the tone of the note does not end until the rest that follows it. If the word ends with a consonant, you place the consonant at the rest; in the case of a vowel ending, the tone stops at the rest. Not before, in either case, unless we've agreed to mark a change. After I remind you, and everyone does it (not just the highly experienced singers) the music comes to life! I wouldn't kid you about that. But if that attention to detail is not a habit, the detail work drops off fairly soon. SO. We're close to concert time. Since I don't want to keep stopping over that particular detail, and I most assuredly don't want to give up, I am asking you to sit down with your music and draw an arrow from each note that ends a phrase to the rest that follows.
Example: The first two words in the Brahms waltzes are "Answer, maiden,"
so you release the n on the rest over the barline (with a light "nuh", actually)
Now continue through ALL of your music! I am not kidding. It won't take as long as you think, and you will know your music better. Promise yourself a bowl of ice cream or something as a reward -- but the real reward will be the meticulously musical texts we will all deliver. This assignment will help you all to become more aware, and thus be better musicians!
My one regret is that I didn't think to have you do this assignment sooner. I forgot that if note duration hasn't been habituated, it will inevitably drop from the mind very quickly after reminders. So I hope I can count on you all to take the assignment seriously!
I can see the hands of a couple of detail sticklers waving vigorously:"What about staccatos?" My answer: DO WHAT'S ON THE PAGE.
However, we now turn to the issue of inconsistent staccato application between pages 30 and 31 in the Brahms. Please make this change, all of you: make measures 5-11 on the top of pg. 31 mirror those same words on top of pg. 30: staccatos on the same texts. I believe it to be an editorial mistake that they weren't used on pg. 3.
Here comes another small but important correction: basses and tenors, in Amor de mi Alma, make the curved dotted connecting lines in measure 17 identical to those in measure 6. (This correction courtesy of the indefatigable Georg Mueller, 2nd Tenor.)
Though I'm going to try to fit in a few more fixes in rehearsal, I do want to let you sopranos know that I'm letting you off the hook: I'm going to have Nicole Peldyack sing that rigorously difficult solo passage at meas. 65 in the Wedding Cantata. You may all breathe much more easily now!
Enjoy your weekend, everyone, and I am very serious about everyone marking all of your releases!
See you on Tuesday,
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