Piano

We have a piano in our house. Not a tinny keyboard, not even a full heavy electric job with pedals and weightings and what have you – no an actual, proper piano which RF bought from a charity shop in second year and hence has followed her within Durham.

(I have two housemates, both of whose names begin with an ‘R’, rather inconveniently for the purposes of this blog. She will hence be called RF and he will be called RM.)

Anyhow, she has just been playing it, rather lovely-ly, and I have been listening with my door open. Listening to a live piano played musically has a wonderfully calming effect on me – particularly if it feels spontaneous – if somebody is just playing for their own pleasure. Some of my favourite moments at home-home are when, just very occasionally, my Dad sits down to play and he loses himself in the music and I creep in and curl up on a sofa at the other end of the room, and I can just focus on him and his playing and the music, and without having to say or do anything just feel a part of that.

I need that calm, I really do. I don’t know how to articulate my life at the minute, but I know that the piano helps.

Wanting Memories

I should know better than to listen to songs that I know make me cry :’)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K_FMvktMpI

x

Regret

I just went to the Spring Concert at my old school, in which both of my siblings were playing. I shouldn’t have gone.

It’s always funny being back, of course. Times change, people move on, perceptions differ and the rest of it, but it was not a pleasant jolt of surprise with which I realised that the only pupils I recognised were those in the U6, my sister’s year, and about to leave (- as well, actually, as a sprinkling of L6s who I’m sure were out past their bedtime, for God’s sake)

And my, did it bring back the memories of every school concert that I’d taken part in since Y7. Choir, Chamber Choir, Wind Band, Orchestra. Miss, and Sir, and Mr Taylor on the organ. Friends in my year and the years above and below. The friendship dynamics, and the departmental gossip, and the feeling of belonging to a group of people, having a niche within the school. And of course the music – all the wonderful, tedious, tricky, energising music that we played and sung over the years, and that I will always associate with school whenever I hear it.

All those times are gone.

What aren’t gone are the memories. The good memories, yes, and the bad ones. Every department like that has its friendships but also its politics. I remember the frustration of feeling usurped by other, more confident players. The long series of clarinet teachers that I had over the years, meaning that it wasn’t until U6 that I got some proper technique sorted and started to love playing as opposed to just enjoying it. The fact that whatever I did, and however hard I tried to be confident, I always felt like I was playing second fiddle to someone else who naturally flourished in taking the limelight.

I was never asked to do a solo during sixth form. Nor were others now I think about it – they volunteered themselves – but it always felt a bit presumptuous. Granted I never was and never will be an exceptional performer, but I’d've been perfectly up to the standard of many who do so – I got an A on my A-Level recital after all, so I can’t have been that bad. I just figured that I wasn’t good enough. Yes, I was one of four doing Music A-Level, but that’s just because I enjoyed it, really? Sure, I wasn’t bad. Nothing special in either direction.

I spent a lot of the concert this evening with those thoughts going round my head. Enjoying the music, and admiring the performers, and feeling sad inside that I never was and never could have been one of them – those happy, confident, smart people who didn’t have to stand on the end of a row, sticking out like a sore thumb for being 6′ tall, with big hips and badly fitting trousers. The ones who didn’t freeze and panic as soon as all eyes and ears were on them. The ones who are free to enjoy their time in the Music department without having all subsequent memories defiant and tainted by an ongoing internal battle. The ones who truly believe in themselves.

Hodie

What represents Christmas for you?

For me, it would have to be Benjamin Britten’s ‘Ceremony of Carols’. I listened to it earlier for the first time this year, and for the first time it felt vaguely like December 22nd. It’s beautiful, it really is.

Evensong

I will have sung Evensong three times this term once the next fortnight is out. Two weeks into term brought Jazz Evensong in St Oswalds, a local CofE church, and I will be singing traditional Evensong in the cathedral on the coming two Mondays – tomorrow with Choral Society, and in eight days’ time with Trevs (college) choir. All of them will be/ have been special in their own way, but it’s tomorrow’s service that I’m particularly looking forward to. It’s going to be very, very beautiful*.

I do not consider myself a Christian. I do not appreciate badly played, wheezing organs, most hymns are pitched way too high for us altos, and music does not play a large part in my religious life, that is to say, any part at all. In theory I love the idea of attending a musical Church service regularly – but the theology gets in the way, because I find that I don’t believe a lot of the words I’m singing: “The foolish body hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and abominable in their wickedness: there is none that doeth good…” ?

Even in choir-led services, I do draw the line at saying the creed. I do not believe in the resurrection of Christ, in the Holy Catholic Church, and I am not prepared to say those words without a certain level of integrity. Sorry.

But this is the thing – I love, love, love the music. What draws me in is the magic of the chords and the cadences, the shifting harmony and weaving polyphony of the Responses. The rigid structure that allows for such expression in the Psalms. The echoing of voices in a stone acoustic and the sense of being part of a centuries old tradition. The focus on sound and four part ensemble and phrasing. The familiarity of the oft-set words. The purity of plainsong. The Bach, and the Montiverdi, and the Rachmaninov, and the Tavernor. And yes, despite everything, the overwhelming spirituality of it all.

Sometimes I’m very grateful that I sing.

x

*Starting at 5:15pm, all welcome! :not-so-subtle plug for those in Durham

Plan For The Week

This week is going to be spent tying up loose ends, so to speak. Getting my hair cut and (more importantly) thinned. Going to the chiropractor. Cashing in a prescription. Seeing the one or two friends who are still about. Playing the Kegelstatt Trio (and no doubt discovering just how out of practice I am!). Sorting out a mound of clarinet music, not to mention a large pile of receipts. Getting to the rag market if I have time after trying to finish my final garment for the summer.

Going through the Choral Soc treasury folder and printing off the auditions rota – weird to think that I am no longer the scared, overwhelmed, flu-ridden fresher, but the one to be showing people in and assessing their singing/ sight-reading skills!*

Emails, urgh. I’ve reached my storage limit on the university server and despite my best efforts at rationalising as I go along, my inbox is in a complete mess. Does your place send out tens of the damn things every day as well? Yeh, thought so. I think that takes priority over my laptop’s hard-drive, also long in need of rationalisation – that will have to wait for another year, probably.

Sorting out my third-year module choices, preferably before I have to start attending the lectures. This isn’t actually as crucial as it sounds – provided I haven’t missed anything, I can still change my mind up to October 31st or thereabouts, so it’s perfectly possible to hedge my bets and attend too many modules with a view to getting a better idea of what each involves. But it’d still be nice to be able to attack things with certainty. Maybe even doing some preliminary reading for the modules that I am certain on, although in all honesty that probably won’t happen, not least because I don’t have any of the books.

Packing. ParcelForce proofing and organising and delivering. Defending the number of clothes that I want to take up North, yes really! Repacking. Spending the last couple of nights in a room that looks too tidy and bare to be mine. Navigating the train journey from hell due to big engineering works on the line between Chesterfield and Sheffield.

Saying goodbye to Birmingham for ten weeks. Going from home (where hardly anyone has any concept of my university life) to university (where hardly anyone has any concept of my home life). Playing hunt-the-fellow-Midlander, a game that never gets old because success rates are so occasional and surprising. Meeting hordes of new people, and having to remember to be sociable.

Being with too-long-separated-from friends and housemates. Going back home :-)

x

*We’ll give them a grade. The range goes from A : “You’re a soprano and we’ve got too many sopranos but wow, you’re amazing, and there’s no way we’re not going to take you!” to E : “You’re a tenor, every choir in the country is desperate for tenors, but absolutely no way”