Cadenzapalooza

First-time adventures in writing my own cadenzas.

I've decided I'm going to add tag-lines at the beginning of these posts, in case that seemed weird.  You know, so when I post the link on facebook, the first sentence that shows up under the title isn't about blueberry muffins or something....

So tonight, I finished writing out very nice-looking copies of the first drafts of my first attempts at cadenzas for the Mozart concerto, movements 1 and 2.  (I'll write one for 3 in the next few days.)  It was actually a lot of fun!  I definitely kept in the spirit of the game that I wrote about last entry.  At the beginning, I went to Blair in order to finish these cadenzas, work on reeds, and maybe practice a little.  Old mindset would have been worrying about reeds while working on the cadenzas and mangling reeds while frustrated I didn't have enough time to practice today.  New mindset said I have to write these cadenzas at some point, and if it takes a little longer tonight and I don't get to the oboe, that's OK.  Originally I was going to do them over fall break because I "wanted to have a lot of time" to do it, but I've come to realize that isn't the best mentality, and I can do just as good of a job in the middle of a school week as during a four day break.  I have to manage time according to quality of product, not quantity.

Well, about the cadenzas!  I got the part about deconstructing the themes into motives and piecing them together in interesting ways.  And I had a lot of fun snaking around different key areas.  The most difficult part for me was writing a "virtuosic" part - basically, interestingly noodley sequences.  Noodle, noodle.  I asked Professor Ploger about it, and today in Musicianship, we talked a little about sequences. She gave us a Bach Fugue (WTC Eb Major) to analyze and basically suggested that we will learn how to write best from studying fugues and written cadenzas and playing around with it ourselves.  So, I actually did give myself the time to just play around with chords and discover things for myself (learning-oriented) instead of allotting time to write the cadenza (product-oriented).  This afternoon, before embarking on my cadenza expedition, I analyzed the fugue in great detail - blue for statements of the subject, yellow for countersubject, and then identified how the motivic fragments played themselves out in the episodes (with more colors!  Green, orange, purple, grey!).  I also did a general harmonic analysis and a very specific one when it came to the sequences.  I learned SO much from doing that!  The noodley parts in my Mozart cadenzas are very Bach Eb Major Fugue inspired...

The other major difficulty I had was writing the cadenza for the second movement.  I found it to be a lot more challenging that for the first movement, primarily because the technique I used to modulate in the first cadenza is inextricably embedded in the melody of the second movement.  That doesn't seem to be too clear, I might just end up babbling nonsensically about this...but for example...I want to take the descending motive "la sol fa mi re do#"....well, what exactly do I change?  The melody already did a rather suave move from fa major to re harmonic minor.  So I ended up with a lot more embellishment, jumping octaves, and less harmonic adventure, but I'm still pleased at how it turned out.  The sequence is kinda nifty that I used because I actually come back to sol harmonic minor in a different way than I left it...

So, they aren't masterpieces, of course, but I am so proud that my first attempts turned out so nicely!  Can't wait to write the third movement's.  I know they'll be good, because I'm looking forward to some ingenious feedback from Professor Ploger and Professor Hauser.  Maybe I will show them to Dr. Rose as well...

Today's Entry

I'm posting two entries at once - don't be confused, the last entry I wrote yesterday but couldn't post until just now because I didn't have the internet.

Played in my first Baroque orchestra today! Eee! It was...so. cool. I'm a little frustrated with myself because I know I was playing scared - it's hard not to do when everyone sounds so much better than you and the ornaments are coming at you waaaay too fast to read. But I've learned so much from the experience already; just sitting next to the verrrry good bassoonist is extraordinarily enlightening.

F#, I am playing so scared of F#. Least favorite note.

I survived the sonata in master class! I played the first three movements, and all things considered, it wasn't terrible! I'm polishing a little more but also taking on some new music, including music in French violin clef. Yay! The ornaments are surprisingly hard in FVC, I'm not sure why they should be. I'm reading by interval. But somehow the ornament part of my brain is wired to the treble clef, seeing the notes on the page. WWPD? (What would Ploger do?) I'm not visualizing the ornaments probably. Should visualize the ornaments probably.

Mmm, popcorn.

Baroque dance class continues. There was a lot of hopping around today. I was pretty ungainly. Baroque French dance, and subsequently the music, requires a good deal of elegance, poise, and grace, none of which are inherent aspects of my...person. My mother will certainly attest to this.

But tonight, what an excellent surprise! I was practicing, and Gonzalo and company came in to the room I was in because they needed to use the harpsichord to read some Couperin. They invited me to stay and listen, which I did (DUH). It was beyond amazing. I absorbed so much from just listening and following along with the score. Gosh, the ornaments. All in the fingers, not the wind, Lindsey. Remember that. Blarrrrg and the harmony, it was just soooo good.

Also we worked on reeds today. I tied two blanks. I'll keep you updated on how those turn out...this is a very unorganized blog entry. My brain is kind of unorganized but filled with intense French Baroque ornaments right now. Whee.

Keep Going

Hooray! Just came back from a beautiful performance of the St. Matthew. Three hours long. I'd really like to get to know this Passion better - so much music all at once for the first time is difficult to digest.

Why did they remove the non-functional microwave in the kitchen and replace it with a different non-functional microwave? I want popcorn.

Had a lesson with Marc today. It was so helpful to work on my ensemble piece with him. The piece is really coming together I think, but it is a little rough that I haven't really practiced it outside of ensembles. But with a little TLC before the concert tomorrow...it should be fine. It's really just those dang trills and ornaments. (You know, only like one of the most important aspects of Baroque music, so annoying :P)

I also need to practice my choreography for tomorrow's show. Yes, that's right, I am dancing the minuet in front of people. Haha! This week of dance class has really been a lot of fun. Somehow everything is a lot easier when we have choreography to learn, instead of just learning steps. Then, learning the different steps in context reinforces them a lot. New teacher this week - she pushed us a lot harder.

Baroque reeds! I have made three of them! Two of which were pieces of cane that I hand shaped! At lunch yesterday, I shaped three pieces, but only two of them came out okay. Which is fine really, because I don't have very many staples...anyway, I made them into reeds this morning, and one of them turned out really well! The other one that I made that turned out really well was from a piece that Gonzalo shaped. I'm not sure about the third one, I think it was too short (my shaping caused me to have to tie it on a lot shorter than is desirable), and perhaps I scraped too much out of it. But I'm getting better at getting a thinner tip - that goes for modern and Baroque reeds. Hope the Arkansas stone waiting at home for me will help.

Oh, home. I can't wait to go home. I really need some time for my brain to recuperate. I can't quite comprehend that I still have another week in Georgia to go.

Uh, I feel like I had a lot more to say, but I am kind of brain dead right now.

What do I have tomorrow?

dress rehearsal 10:45

lesson 10:45

Yeah, I have to figure that one out.

dance rehearsal 1:00

concert 2:00 (but I probably won't be playing until around 5:00...)

So before 10:30 am, I need to practice new stuff for my lesson.

Need to practice dance before 1.

Other things to remember:

turn in your dang lesson cards

transfer the recordings/change recorder batteries

Do Re Mi

Part of me really wants to practice modern oboe. I don't know if I should. Professor Hauser recommended not. I think my poor battered ego wants a boost. I'm listening to a recording of myself playing principal in the Beethoven octet. That's pretty bad. I NEVER listen to myself playing oboe. My ego must be desperate.

Well, I think things are coming along very well, all of that aside! Today I took a nice long practice session (about an hour) without my instrument. I really need to get on this style train. A lot of the stuff we talk about is stuff I've worked on with Smith, both in class and in our Hertel chamber music coachings. One of the most basic ideas in the Baroque style is that of rhetoric. Music should be natural, like talking, and have the same sorts of natural inflections and emphases that talking does. So I took that idea and spent an hour talking through my music. (Solfeging, of course). At first I was solfeging and singing, but still not exactly getting the results I wanted. I reverted back to just talking the syllables, but concentrating on attaining a beautiful, lilting, well-phrased speech, with the grammar just so and the rhetoric right on target. It was a heck of a lot harder than I had anticipated. And of course this was the right step, because if I couldn't even say the phrases exactly how I wanted consistently, how would I possibly expect to be able to play them on an instrument I have only been playing for two days? Silly. So in that time I worked on all four of the movements in the French duos I will be performing in the chamber concert on Saturday.

Just now, I got back from practicing these movements about an hour and a half on the actual oboe. I have to say, I definitely achieved a lot in a relatively short amount of time. The most difficult part about getting the style is getting the style consistently - getting all of the inegalite just right all the time, not forgetting myself at a phrase. But having a much better idea of how the speech of the piece went, I could really think much more clearly. Sometimes I really had to remind myself by speaking the phrase of how I wanted it to go, but then it would be fixed when I played it after speaking it. Didn't entirely help the squeaks and whatnot...I'm still looking for a reed I really like. The second teacher coming next week plays on the same type of oboe that I do, so that should be pretty helpful.

We learned to play a scale in gamba class this morning! Definitely...the two hands at once bit is a little difficult. It's funny though. I notice that I want to stop the bow when I change notes. It's exactly the same problem with oboe! A common oboe problem is stopping the air (our "bow") between notes instead of speeding it up, which is what we really need to do in order to make a seamless connection, particularly over large intervals.

We had another oboist join us today! She's been playing Baroque oboe for about 4-5 years. She started after her kids left, etc, but she had played modern oboe before she had kids.

Gee, I sound pretty good in this Beethoven recording. But anyway, another reason I kinda want to practice modern oboe is so I can brush up on the Vivaldi enough to maybe have twenty minutes of my lesson on style, even though I'd be playing modern oboe. But I think it would be well worth it.

Oh my gosh, the sleep really did the trick. After that three and a half hour nap yesterday, I also slept from 10pm-7am. I was awake all day! And could focus! Yay! Now I just have to remember to bring snacks with me in the morning, since we typically have oboe class from 10-1:30 with no breaks for lunch. I get a little eeeee if I don't have lunch.

In Baroque dance, we've learned the German/English and French minuets. And some other fancy step, I think we danced it to a Gavotte and maybe something else too. So much fun!