Soprano - Recently Updated Pageshttp://soprano.wetpaint.com/pageSearch/updatedRecently Updated Pages on http://soprano.wetpaint.comen-usinfo@wetpaint.comSat, 01 Dec 2007 19:03:55 CSTSat, 01 Dec 2007 19:03:55 CSTwetpaint.com60Sopranohttp://www.wetpaint.com/img/logo.gifhttp://soprano.wetpaint.comA Soprano Rehearses Bachhttp://soprano.wetpaint.com/page/A+Soprano+Rehearses+BachKatharine.Hadowhttp://soprano.wetpaint.com/page/A+Soprano+Rehearses+BachSat, 01 Dec 2007 19:03:55 CST9:59 a.m. Feel bad about being ten minutes late to Bible study, but at least it put me right on the church campus. I am on time for the dress rehearsal.
10:01 Tell Sue that this will be my first performance with reading glasses. She tells me that she left her glasses at home.
10:02 Wonder whether I should wear my glasses with the zebra stripes or the Swarovski crystals to the concert tomorrow. Is Swarovski crystal a fancy new name for rhinestone? Ponder suggesting to Jim that he keep a couple of spare pairs of reading glasses for people who forget theirs.
10:04 Miss an entrance.
10:10 This is the first time the choir hears the arias. Sharon looks drained but the solo fits her voice better than anything I’ve ever heard.
10:13 There are a lot of musicians, aren’t there? Jim said there would be thirteen, but it looks like more. Maybe he said there would be seventeen. Some prime number. That’s good. I promised Adriane I would be at her house at 12:45 to baby sit. With a huge orchestra like this Jim won’t keep us past noon. The overtime is too expensive.
10:16 Flip to next chorale. Notice a da capo at the end of Sharon’s aria. He’s not really going to take these pieces back to the beginning, is he? The rehearsal would be so much more efficient if we skipped the da capos, or stopped immediately and resumed about five measures before the segno. Would you call more than one da capo "da capi"?
10:17 Yes, he is going back to the beginning and continuing to the segno.
10:18 My nail polish is badly chipped. Should I repaint with red, or should I do something more somber in observance of advent?
10:20 Can’t see Jim very well in these glasses. It seems silly to wear my contacts and then put on reading glasses that blur my distance vision. Take off the glasses. Now text is practically unintelligible. Why? Put glasses back on. It’s a serif font, but the descenders are narrow and the kerning is tight. It’s a double challenge to read the font, including those funny double esses and the umlauts, and to remember the German pronunciation at the same time.
10:21 A little jealous of the fourth oboe, who has his glasses down by his chin and is reading the New York Times. His hinges must have springs in them. His right earpiece dangles by his earlobe.
10:22 Is his oboe larger than the other oboes? Does it have a different name? Can I ask somebody without looking stupid?
10:23 Consider advising publisher how difficult it is to read this font. While I’m at it, consider suggesting a heavier cover stock. This score is 236 pages. The cover should do some of the work of supporting it, so I can grasp the music from the bottom if I want, without the pages folding over. I swear, this cover feels flimsier than the pages inside.
10:29 Bass soloist has a powerful voice and good pronunciation.
10:31 Sue murmurs that the weather tomorrow may affect attendance. I haven’t checked the weather. What’s supposed to happen? “Snow.” The weather is such a mixed blessing. If it’s bright and sunny, people decide to stay outside and not attend. If it’s horrible, they stay inside and not attend. Maybe a little precipitation would be a good thing.
10:35 Chagrined to realize that this is the dress rehearsal and I still don’t know I’m supposed to hold that note for so long. Mark it.
10:37 Decide the long oboe is also known as a cornet. That makes sense. The "c" in “oboe da c” must be German for cornet.
10:41 This is taking a long time. Wonder how we are going to finish by noon.
10:45 Remember my uncle’s theory that reading glasses make the eyes weaker. Take off glasses. Can’t read text. Put them back on again.
10:52 Bass soloist looks familiar. Could he be the guy I sang “All I Want Is a Room Somewhere” with at the library fundraiser revue?
10:56 Joanna and Andi trill. Do not feel comfortable trilling unless a professional tells me that I am doing it right. My singing teacher told me up toward the end that I had a natural coloratura voice. She waved a couple of pieces with trills in them in front of my face, but only introduced me slowly to turns. So much of our music calls for trills, and I feel inadequate to perform them. Maybe I can teach myself trills by looking on Wikipedia.
10:58 Remember piano lessons, how I never in three years learned how to use the sustain pedal. Why do music teachers hold off all the showy techniques?
11:00 We are not halfway through. Hope that most of the rest of the music is chorales. Chorale pages go much faster, since you can only fit two systems of music on each page. It’s the arias that take longer per page. At least now I know that Jim is not going to call a break.
11:10 Jim calls a 10-minute break.
11:18 “Are your oboes different lengths?” I ask the principal oboe player. They are, she informs me. The long one that belongs to the New York Times reader is an English horn. I tell her that the score calls it an oboe da c. She tells me that is short for oboe da caccia, another name for the English horn. She seems pleased that I have taken an interest in their instruments.
11:23 Jim announces that Sharon has gastric distress and may not be able to lead the alto section tomorrow, but she will sing her soloes. That explains why her illness does not affect her voice. We resume.
11:26 Tenor soloist sounds much better in the sanctuary than he does in the rehearsal room. His voice is richer, less reedy. Then he deftly tackles a couple of runs of 16th notes, reminding me that the “run of shame” is coming up.
11:27 Since September I have struggled with the runs in this music. They go on forever, with complicated twists and turns. I have done everything with them except take them home and actually work on them. At least four of the sopranos have mastered them. My plan is to smile and pretend. The key to good pretending is having a clue as to when the run ends. You don’t want to be the only soprano with her mouth shut while everyone else is still singing.
11:29 I am pretty sure I read about a guy who wrote a computer program to analyze Bach’s music. The program looked for patterns. It told you which notes Bach “really meant.” If I knew that, I could skip the nonessential notes. Or maybe it analyzed Mozart.
11:30 Singing in German is hard, especially high-velocity German. I imagine what it felt like to Bach’s contemporaries to hear religious music sung in modern German instead of Latin. Our audience tomorrow will miss the thrilling immediacy. But even when we sing in English the text is hard to understand. Perhaps the Germans couldn’t understand the words either.
11:31 We are not going to finish at noon.
11:32 Lasset uns nun gehen gen Bethlehem. I picture Bavarian villagers in dirndls and lederhosen convincing one another to visit the miraculous stable. Oh, yeah, like the Austrian nativity set my family had when I was a girl.
11:47 It’s not just German, it’s gemütlich German. Ja, ja, mein Herz soll es bewahren translates to Ah, yea, my heart will ever cherish, words I am pretty sure you will never find in Händel or Duruflé. Practically Brahms in its schmaltz.
11:53 Almost done, but no way we will finish by noon.
12:06 Done, including going back to page 74 and singing through page 80. Sue leaves. She has to go to work. I consider following her, but I would have to step over all the other sopranos in the pew, or through the oboeists.
12:07 Jim asks the chorale to wait while he asks the orchestra to play the sinfonia again.
12:11 Jim excuses the orchestra and asks the chorale to sing the first chorus. Again.
12:15 We finish.
12:49 Arrive at Adriane’s house, my pencil still in my hair.

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]]>Anarchy in the Soprano Sectionhttp://soprano.wetpaint.com/page/Anarchy+in+the+Soprano+SectionKatharine.Hadowhttp://soprano.wetpaint.com/page/Anarchy+in+the+Soprano+SectionSat, 01 Dec 2007 18:56:20 CSTIs it like this at your church? The service is nearly over. You’re starting to think about that cup of coffee, when all of a sudden there’s this caterwauling at the back of the church. You check your hymnal but those high notes are not in the book. What’s going on? Call it “Anarchy in the Soprano Section.”

The roots of this anarchy go way back, to when they only let men and boys sing in choirs. I have two little boys. I know what they’re like-they can’t pay attention. And if I were a choir director and I had to have some music ready by Sunday, I know what I would do. I would give them the easiest line in the piece and keep my fingers crossed. That’s exactly what happened. The choir directors gave the easiest part—the melody—to the people with the highest, squeakiest voices.

The tradition continued, so that if you visit a choir practice today, this is what you will see: The altos, tenors and basses sit up straight, both feet on the floor, watching the choir director. The sopranos loll around, talking to one another, doing anything but paying attention. Why? Because they don’t have to. Singing the melody is easy. If you show up most of the time and pay attention some of the time, you can sing the melody. This is why choir directors are always on the prowl for the lower three voices. Do you know a talented alto, or baritone with a big voice but no car? The choir director will make sure that someone gives them a ride. Know a soprano without wheels? Sopranos are a dime a dozen—she can hitchhike or take the bus. That’s because singing harmony is work, and it’s always harder to find people who want to work.

The hitch—and there is a hitch—is that as our vocal cords get older, they lose flexibility. We lose those high notes. This is a terrible thing for a soprano. Completely out of our control. And there is no Viagra for the voice. We live in dread of the day when the choir director pulls us aside and suggests that, honey, maybe you want to try singing alto. What, God? Isn’t one change of life enough? Now you want me to harmonize?

So there she is, our soprano, at the end of the church service. Her voice is finally warmed up, and she is bursting with the glory of God—and the desire to prove that she still has those high notes. She takes a deep breath and assigns herself a solo, raising the rafters with notes so high the congregation gets whiplash craning to see which soprano is smirking this week.

You can call this anarchy in the soprano section. Or you can call it an echo of the days to come when we will all be able to hit all the notes, and all of us, even the congregation, will be able to harmonize, joining together in singing “Alleluia, amen.”

A note from Katharine: Thank you for visiting soprano.wetpaint.com. What you read above was my comedy routine in the McDonalds GospelFest 2006 Gospel Comedy competition. I was too busy to enter the competition in 2007. Find out why at katharineandlloyd.wetpaint.com

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]]>punctuation and grammarhttp://soprano.wetpaint.com/page/punctuation+and+grammarKatharine.Hadowhttp://soprano.wetpaint.com/page/punctuation+and+grammarFri, 30 Nov 2007 18:09:54 CST soprano.wetpaint.com 6/11/2006

Punctuation and Grammar

for Breathers

that that is is that that is not is not that that is is not that that is is not that that that is not that that is not is not is not that that is is not that that that is

An English teacher looking at the passage above would say, "Hmm. Here is a string of words obviously in need of punctuation."

A choir director looking at those same words would say, "Hmm. There is no punctuation in this passage. Obviously my choir should sing it straight through without pausing for a breath."

Punctuation and grammar are a pleasant pastime in school. For choristers who enjoy respiration, they are a matter of life and breath.

Remember diagramming sentences? I found analyzing the sentences to be a lot of fun, but what was the point? Did it really matter?

Yes! Analysis matters when singers need to decide when to breathe. Ordinarily breathing is not allowed between the subject and the predicate. I say, a quick breath between the body of the sentence and any dependent clause is fair game, though, of course, my choir director often overrules me. Still, ability to diagram in my head gives me a leg to stand on when arguing the point.

Here's to breathing early and often!


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]]>Linkshttp://soprano.wetpaint.com/page/LinksKatharine.Hadowhttp://soprano.wetpaint.com/page/LinksFri, 30 Nov 2007 18:05:47 CST

soprano.wetpaint.com 6/10/2006


Other sources of hilarity for choristers





Books
"Yes, I've switched from soprano to alto. I've also moved from St. Paul to Minneapolis. I can't think of any more fundamental changes short of a sex change operation.
"....I hadn't sung alto in twenty years. Could I still read music well enough? Sopranos rely on their ears so much. There it is, the melody, high above everything, easy to hear, easy to grab hold of. But the alto, the harmony...."

In How Can We Keep from Singing: Music and the Passionate Life (2001, W.W. Norton), Joan Oliver Goldsmith wryly discloses what keeps singers going, and how "amateur" comes from the Latin for "lover," not "can't make a living at it." This book is a great present for your favorite chorister--you!



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]]>Homehttp://soprano.wetpaint.com/page/HomeKatharine.Hadowhttp://soprano.wetpaint.com/page/HomeFri, 30 Nov 2007 17:59:58 CST Welcome to soprano.wetpaint.com,
a wiki site devoted to humor for choristers.
Twenty million people sing in choirs, choruses and glee clubs in the United States. With that many people regularly rubbing elbows, funny things are bound to happen. This is the place to share them!


Please use the "email this page" button to send it to your far-flung friends,
or the "edit the content" button to add a joke or two.

Promotional announcement: I sing in Calvary Chorale, which has performed choral music with its intended instrumentation in Summit, NJ, since 1973. This Sunday, December 2, we will sing the first three cantatas of Bach's Christmas Oratorio. kh

]]>Small Investment Conveys Musical Expertisehttp://soprano.wetpaint.com/page/Small+Investment+Conveys+Musical+ExpertiseKatharine.Hadowhttp://soprano.wetpaint.com/page/Small+Investment+Conveys+Musical+ExpertiseTue, 21 Aug 2007 04:29:47 CDThttp://soprano.wetpaint.com 7/17/06

Small Investment Conveys Instant Musical Expertise


Even though I had two small demanding children and had given up hope of ever singing anywhere again except in my church choir, I bought a second copy of 26 Italian Songs and Arias. Why? Because this edition came with a CD and not an audiocassette. How many times when I studied voice had I wished to flip effortlessly among songs, instead of stopping the fast forward, and asking, “Is this Amarilli, Mia Bella?” Most of the accompaniments sounded alike to me. Now, at the touch of a button, I could move among the three arias I had actually studied and practice them whenever I had time.

Ha ha ha. I had time to chauffeur my children from sports practice to school to playground, but not to practice runs and trills. Nonetheless, I took 26 Italian Songs with me to the playground, and copied my notes from the previous edition to the new one. I had paid my music teacher a lot of money for her comments, and I didn’t intend to waste them.

“Oh,” said one of the other mothers. “Are you a musician?” To her, I didn’t look like a soprano. I looked like a musician: I was looking at a page of staffs and notes, and marking on it. For all she could tell, I knew what I was doing. What gave me this authority? A pencil, a common object that every parent treads on daily.

I started to mark my music seriously when I took singing lessons. Why pay my teacher to correct the same mistake week after week? The pencil freed me up to make mistakes. While it didn’t prevent the same errors from occurring regularly, at least it warned me that they were approaching. It allowed me to sing boldly, knowing that if I committed a flagrant musical sin, my penance would be to circle the note and try again.

My choir director pleads with his choir to mark up the music. Maybe half of us do, myself included. I like to alert myself to upcoming trouble spots. I also like to alert myself to upcoming breaths—and to alert the choir director to them as well. “Jim,” I interpose, “I have a breath marked here.” Naturally, he is extremely grateful, and eight times out of ten, he agrees that the breath is appropriate. However, as is his prerogative, even though he suffered us to breathe last time, this time he may change his mind. That is why it is so important to use a pencil, and, almost as important, an eraser. Music gets messy very quickly if you cross out rather than erase the ghosts of previous directions and mistakes.

Once we sang with a guest conductor who had marked up his score. He asked us to borrow his score and copy all his markings into our own with red pencils. This was a great idea, in theory. For the record, may I say that red pencils are too waxy for the job, nearly impossible to erase? I say, stick with the HB, otherwise known as the #2.

Office supply aficionados already know that the Post-It note was invented by a choir director. While self-stick notes may be handy for directors, they are not nearly so useful for ordinary choristers, tending as they do to mask the notes and the words.

One woman in my choir uses Post-It flags to mark each chorale, making her the instant expert when the director needs to know what page to turn to. I admire her organizational skills. It’s amazing what she can do while I am picking up dirty socks and driving children to school.

First sopranos know that 99% of the time they will just sing the top note of the system. As if singing harmony were not enough of a challenge, the lower three voices also have to contend with music that jumps around on the page. Erasable highlighters save the day for a tenor whose notes combine with the basses on one page and are broken out on another, right underneath the two alto lines that may diverge and converge. Theoretically he could use ordinary highlighters, but what happens if he temporarily—or permanently—needs to sing baritone?

The really, really organized singer goes one step further. Instead of highlighter, she uses removeable transparent highlighter tape. The tape gives her score a look of icy perfection to which I can only aspire while I furiously cross out the accidental notes I've given up trying for, and scribble “Watch Jim for the cutoff!!!!” with my rapidly dulling lead.

Had I but time and office supplies enough, my scores, too, would be polychromed things of beauty. I know, though, which is the most valuable, and which confers instant expertise. None of the flags and highlighters add as much to my singing as does my trusty friend, the humble #2 pencil. Now if only I could remember to take it out from my hair before the church service.

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]]>cross traininghttp://soprano.wetpaint.com/page/cross+trainingKatharine.Hadowhttp://soprano.wetpaint.com/page/cross+trainingThu, 15 Jun 2006 16:23:11 CDTsoprano.wetpaint.com 6/12/2006previous page

SOPRANOS & BASSES SHOULD AVOID THIS VIRUS: BELL's PALSY (continued)

Cross-training:
Easy to Pronounce and Good for You

If you break your right leg, believe it or not, exercise the left. Your brain, that foreman, will send workers to both legs, speeding the health of the injured leg as well. This is called cross training.

By the same principle, if half of your mouth has stopped moving, move the other half. Your speech sounds funny, but your brain sends regenerating electrical impulses to the paralyzed lips.

Much though I wanted to take a two month vow of silence, I believed that talking and singing were the best way to take advantage of cross training for my face.

Haltingly, I continued to talk and sing, embarrassed but determined. The left side of my mouth dragged the right side along, and the words emerged, imperfect but largely intelligible.

Thanks to cross-training, antivirals and steroids, my face was almost normal two or three weeks later. Now, I am happy to say that Bell’s Palsy lies entirely behind me.

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]]>consonant productionhttp://soprano.wetpaint.com/page/consonant+productionKatharine.Hadowhttp://soprano.wetpaint.com/page/consonant+productionThu, 15 Jun 2006 16:20:05 CDTsoprano.wetpaint.com home 6/11/2006

Basses and Sopranos Should Avoid this Virus: Bell's Palsy (continued)


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Why I Appreciate Consonants

Consonants are very important to our listeners’ understanding. In experiments, scientists have taken recorded speeches and edited out all the vowel sounds. They have found that the meaning still comes across. Take out all the consonants, though, and what you get is bel canto, lovely, perhaps, but unintelligible.

And I had lost some of my favorite consonants! Take the name of the disease: Bell’s Palsy. How many times a day did I have to contort my lips into the dreaded “B” and “P” just to explain that, no, I hadn’t had a stroke. This is a disease in dire need of a new name, one that goes easy on the “B”s and “P”s. “Novocaine mouth” will do—anything that doesn’t force a sick person to trip over her plosives ten or twenty times a day.

Altos and tenors can still pronounce their parts, but sopranos and basses had better try to avoid this disease, whatever it be called.

That’s the thing that hurt about this disease, the thing I couldn’t even say, the blow to my pride, when I couldn’t form the words that used to spill off my lips.

Taking Stock of Consonant Production Capacity

My mouth is a factory producing words, hot air (and occasionally pollution, but we won’t go there). Many of the main production areas were operating fine, but the labial production areas were on strike.

I took a consonant inventory. My sibilants were still there. Those are the hissing sounds “s” and “sh.”

Fortunately, the palsy affected the lips, not the tongue or hard palate. The consonants we produce by putting the tongue to the teeth or hard palate were no problem—er—sweat. I could say “d,” “j,” “l,” and “n.”

I only had a half stock of those other labial consonants, “m,” “v” and “w.” If I formed them slowly and only used a few of them so my mouth didn’t tire, I could pronounce them. I told the inventory control department to ransack the thesaurus, substituting sibilants and gutturals whenever possible for my depleted labials.

The problem with a factory is, it’s hard to shut down. You can’t turn off a blast furnace over the weekend, or everything in it solidifies and has to be chipped out.

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]]>Basses and Sopranos Should Avoid this Virushttp://soprano.wetpaint.com/page/Basses+and+Sopranos+Should+Avoid+this+VirusKatharine.Hadowhttp://soprano.wetpaint.com/page/Basses+and+Sopranos+Should+Avoid+this+VirusThu, 15 Jun 2006 16:15:07 CDTsoprano.wetpaint.com home 6/12/2006

Basses and Sopranos Should Avoid This Virus: Bell’s Palsy


A few weeks ago I was desperately trying to eliminate plosives and fricatives from my speech.

Plosives are the sounds you make when you pinch your lips together and explode air behind them: P-P-P-P-P and B-B-B-B-B.

Fricatives are the sounds you make when you touch your top teeth to your bottom lip: F-F-F-F-F and V-V-V-V-V.

One morning only half of my mouth woke up. The other half was numb. As the day waxed it did not get better, but worse. By the end of the day, I couldn’t even blink my eye on the numb side. The right side of my face was paralyzed.

The doctor diagnosed Bell’s Palsy, a flareup of an old virus that paralyzes the facial nerves for a couple of months.

A couple of months! For a gregarious singer, this was a calamity. I gained a new appreciation for consonants.

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