St. Cecilia II Part 2 -- Classes I Took And Classes I Taught
Classes I Attended
Neumes to Notes
I enjoyed Robyyan’s class in spite of there not being any recordings. It was neat seeing that the Cantigas D’Amigo was definitely a song cycle. (Seriously. It was like a 19th century Schubert song cycle except from the 13th century! And so beautifully sad!) I learned that there’s a key for reading the neumes and it might not be the hardest thing ever to do. (Sweet!) Actually I think Robyyan had mentioned before about there being a key, but I actually remembered the fact this time!
Main takeaways were:
- This stuff is cool!
- Examining period sources is fun and interesting and rewarding!
- Make informed decisions.
- Don’t be afraid to change your mind.
- There is no right answer.
Le Roman de Fauvel
I took this class thinking that Roman de Fauvel was some French guy named Roman from some place called Fauvel. When I saw the subtitle to Margrett’s class “A Horse Is a Horse . . . Or Is He?” I was confused. Of course I wouldn’t have been if I actually read the description. *facepalm* Je suis stupide de temps en temps. I’d seen the name in Singing Early Music as an example poem for Middle French and in her class name and that’s it.
Oh my goodness. How have I not heard of this book? It’s Bad Horse!! This stuff has got to be performed or at least played with somehow. This could be a candidate for a Project. If nothing else a kids book with the illuminations of Bad Horse Fauvel and kids-book style text describing what’s going on would be so cool! Or maybe a coloring book! Or maybe some sort of video type thing with music and pantomime horses. Hee!
Articulation
I was sad that more people weren’t at this class. D00d guys. Articulation is where IT IS AT! Especially with recorders.
This would have been a great class for me two years ago. I.E. before I started playing with my recorder group and before I went to Rotem’s recorder workshop. I did learn a couple things, though. 1) I am terrible at sight singing music without barlines. Je suis trés dependent. Not that I’m great at sight singing with well written modern notation, but I’m particularly bad when it’s not there. I should probably work on that. 2) I need to develop more recorder tonguing. ti-di is good, but not sufficient.
Master Class
The two Master Class entries were C&C (Court and Country) and Kasha (with aelkiss and I accompanying). I learned a little bit from it. Try breathing between repeated notes. Cadences are important. Listen to the bass. This last one I already knew, but my habit is to listen to the top line since it’s often the melody and it always stands out. Being reminded to listen to the bass was good.
For Kasha’s it felt a bit more like advertising for her piece than advice, per se. :P We did end up making one change in the way we performed it. We put the intro to Belle Bonne Sage between verses 6 and 7. (i.e. right before the last AB of the rondeau.) That worked really well. And we even managed to do it correctly in the concert! We only had two rehearsals with all three of us for Kasha’s pieces before Cecilia, and we had such a hard time with roadmap on Belle Bonne Sage. I don’t know what the problem was aside from it being olde weird music.
I think the Master Class would have been much better if there were copies of the pieces for the audience to look at.
I need to think more about the Master Class in general. Essentially we had the same groups in it as last year. This wasn’t on purpose. It was just that no other group stepped forward, and I know C&C want to be better performers, want feedback, and don’t mind getting it in front of a group. And of course, both incarnations of Psallite (the medieval band and the vocal polyphony group) want feedback. But it’d be nice if it wasn’t the same two groups every year. That said, even if it is the same two groups, people in the audience got something out of it, and that counts for a lot.
Classes I Taught
Intonation
aelkiss and I co-taught this class. As is now apparently tradition, I wrote up the handout for this class the day before the event. I’m actually pretty proud of it. I think it’s pretty useful. :D
The point of this class was to get people to have a positive experience with hearing justly tuned notes. I wanted them to be able to hear a difference tone and to hear beats. I didn’t want to talk about the physics of why this stuff works. aelkiss was resistant to not talking about physics at first, but eventually came around to the idea.
We used cleartune on each of our iphones to give a pitch. Say, 440 and 660. Then we went around the room and held up the phone to peoples ears and told them what to listen for. Then we demonstrated the intonation on our recorders. Then we paired people off. People quickly found quiet spots to work, and soon were making consonant noise. Same thing with unisons. Same thing with thirds. Then we tried to get the group to tune.
We mostly used recorders because difference tones are pretty easy to hear on them. Per Robyyan’s suggestion we stuck with left hand notes.
For myself, I learned that when I’m listening to hear if I’m in tune I tend to underblow and go flat because I want to be quieter. So that was useful!
I think the class succeeded with its goals. I saw lots of light bulbs turn on. :) I’m happy we co-taught the class. We had an odd number of people, so I was able to work with the odd one out and Aaron could still go to each pair and see how they did. And being able to demonstrate on recorders together was cool.
We intended the class to be for recorders and voice, but it ended up being just recorders since even the singers had them. I’m not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand it’s easier to hear difference tones on recorders. On the other hand, it’d be useful to hear with singing too.
We’re going to teach this class again at KWDMS (assuming our classes get accepted...). What I’d do differently is I’d start with a minor 3rd because the difference tone is a totally different pitch and fills out a major chord. With the fifth it can be hard to tell if you’re actually hearing the octave below the lower note or if you’re making it up.
I’m also dubious about how well the group tuning went. But maybe we’ll do it again. I dunno.
Overall I’m thrilled with how well the class went. We got lots of thanks afterward. :D
Switching Recorders (or playing in other clefs (or playing from facsimile))
For this class, I did a little bit of talking about going from C recorder to F recorder. The thing to watch out for is the Alto B is the Soprano F#. I also explained how C clefs work. Then I deferred to others in the room on advice on how to play C clefs since I have little to no experience with actually doing it. Not sure if that was the right thing to do or not.
Then I gave people a stack of straightforward music at whatever difficulty level they wanted. One was score in modern clefs. One was a score in original clefs. And there was a copy of the facsimile in partbook form. I briefly thought of offering part books in modern notation, but decided that that was not the point of this class. It’d be hard enough with score.
Then I gave people two minutes to play through the music by themselves. Then we played together at a stately almost dirge-like speed.
Overall I think it went well. I probably could have cut off some whining earlier. :P People said it got easier the more they did it, and they were able to get back on the bus by listening for cadences. Granted, this music was hella straightforward, and one can’t count on cadences later on. But for getting started with playing in an unfamiliar clef or on an unfamiliar instrument, I think I’m OK with that crutch.
The main sad thing is that I couldn’t actually take my class. I had to conduct it. :( I want to learn to play C clefs! It would be more fun to do it in a class than just by myself with my handouts! Whine!
Yay class, though. I’ll be teaching this one at KWDMS too. (Again, assuming it gets accepted.)