Hello Everyone,
What a lovely evening, presenting our commissioned piece, What the Heart Cannot Forget in honor of Elisabeth Curtis. Janet organized and led our presentation – thank you. We were joined by many members of Elisabeth’s family as well as Joyce Sutphen – poet, and Grace Brigham – composer. I thought it was a wonderful celebration of music, poetry, friendship and love – the perfect way to honor Elisabeth and mark International Women’s Day.
If you would like to have a look/listen, I edited both Karla and my recordings of the presentation to make a nice-as-possible-it’s-still-zoom recording of our very special evening.
Please don’t share this link but rather let’s have Elisabeth share that as she chooses. It is on the WVC YouTube channel but is unlisted so only those with the link can view it. When we create our virtual project, you will be free to share with abandon!
Thank you to the commission committee: Deb Hollis, Laura Delauney, (and me) led by Janet Huebner. Thanks to the board for their enthusiastic support of the commission, to those who contributed to the commission fund, and thanks in advance to all who will add their voices (and instruments) to mine (yay!) to create a virtual project. Most of all, thanks to Elisabeth for being the inspiration for it all.
After the presentation, Joyce sent me an email and I thought I would share this quote, “I love Elisabeth and Meg and all of these women!”
After the presentation, we rehearsed the following:
I Started Out Singing
mm. 51-65
‘hair’ off on 7
‘sand’, ‘land’ space in the back of mouth with tongue relaxed
Ah ‘my’
‘stories’ less weight on 2nd syllable
mm. 66-end
Ih ‘clear’ ‘singing’
Ah ‘dime’
Accents with slight pulse
O Ignee Spiritus – Recordings are due 3/15/21
Latin vowels (pure – with no diphthongs)
A – father (timpanis, citharis, operaris, flagrant, tabernacula, animarum, ipsarum)
E – bed (ignee, et, operaris, mentes, de, te, et, tabernacula, eorum, vires, continent)
I – ski (ignee, spiritus, tibi sit, qui, in, timpanis, citharis, opraris, hominum, animarum, vires, ipsarum, continent)
O – loft (O, opraris, hominum, eorum, continent)
U – moon (spritus, qui, tabernacula, animarum, eorum, ipsarum)
AU – similar to hour – sing the oo lightly at the very end of the note (laus)
Consonants
S always S not Z
T is dental not aspirate
TH is T
R is flipped
mm. 1-50
light tone
minimize vibrato
even flow of breath moving through each phrase
mm. 33 and 43 sing like a wheel turning gently
mm. 51-end
faster tempo – Mentes through continent
extra beat for the breath mm. 54, 96
Some Glad Morning
Three important aspects to consider:
- Observe the eighth rests and eighth notes at the ends of phrases or in-between words. Some notes are shorter than you may feel, and it is important to keep things light and moving and to not hold over into the rests.
- ‘the’ should not be stressed but rather lead into the next word.
- Ascending eighth note pairs – top notes should be sung lightly – ‘happened’ ‘leafy’ ‘highest’ ‘coffee’ ‘pitched’
Looking Ahead to 3/15/21
I Started Out Singing – work on phrasing.
Some Glad Morning – practice tricky intervals and work on syllabic stress/phrasing.
Sectionals:
What the Heart Cannot Forget mm. 1-26 and the soli section, mm. 34-43. More information about solo auditions to come.
The Bird’s Lullaby (as time permits)
Looking Ahead to 3/22/21
I Started Out Singing
Some Glad Morning
Sectionals:
What the Heart Cannot Forget mm. 49-end
See you on Monday!
Yay us!
Laura