First Things First
TONIGHT’S REHEARSAL PLAYLIST
- Mozart: CREDO
- Mozart: SANCTUS (fugue)
- Mozart: Kyrie
- Mozart: Qui Tollis
- Mozart: Gloria
PHEW!!!!
As time permits…
FORREST REQUIEM – from back to front. Movements 5, 4, 3, 2, then 1.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL
Perhaps many of you have heard me use the metaphor for air traffic control as a structural outline in preparing for a concert. I most frequently use this analogy when working with high school honor choirs. Most all of those kids have at least flown to Florida once or twice, and they know the drill when the flight attendants collect up remaining food items, announce the last chance for the lavatory, trays, and seat backs up, tighten your seatbelt. Time it next time you fly somewhere. It’s almost always exactly 30 minutes from the beginning of the initial descent to wheels down on the runway.
We’re at the point where the pilot announces that we’re about to begin our our initial descent (maybe 35 minutes and 250 miles out) so if you need to “get up and stretch your legs one last time, this is the time to do that.”
And-a-stretching we will go!
Tonight we need to do a bit of work “on the landing gear.” Most specifically, the Sanctus fugue and Qui Tollis from the Mozart. For both Chorale and Schola, those two movements have most certainly proven the most challenging in the entire program.
We’ll try and touch everything in the program tonight, including the Forrest, working back to front, but I plan to take whatever time it takes to get a grip on that pesky fugue!
All that said, the Events Staff and I all visited St. Elizabeth Church (pictured above) this morning to size things up for logistics. For those of you who’ve been to Salzburg, I had assumed that Mozart had performed this piece in the Dom (the Cathedral), but alas, the first performance took place in the “smaller” St. Peter’s Abbey, tucked back away near the convent in the shadows of the Festung.
As it happens, I suspect the acoustics of the smaller St. Peter’s are very similar to those of St. Elizabeth. While this is certainly the largest church in greater Delaware, I was pleased with the general sound while making spot checks about the altar and singing. There’s a three-second decay out in the nave (the main seating area in the church), but from where you’ll be standing, you’re hardly aware of that – except that I think you find it very easy to sing in that space without over-exerting.
That’s good news – especially for the Mozart.
So all said, we have five more rehearsals until wheels hit the tarmac on May 1. With that, I would simply ask that for these next few weeks, if you get home and think, “maybe I’ll skip Schola, tonight!” – I would implore you… “Maybe not!”
It’s an arduous process to teach music of such complexity, but even more so if we need to teach it over and again because people are absent.
In return, I’m confident that given this beautiful space, and the forces of over two-hundred performers on stage (orchestra and choir combined), this will surely be a performance to remember! For all the right reasons, one hopes!
See you soon.
pdh