This post's purpose is to collect my common tags in one place, so readers (and I!) can easily access entries on several subjects.

is the sound of my post-performance crash. One minute you're swinging along in a vast orchestra-fueled ocean of sound, then there's a lot of clapping, and you're clapping for your soloists, and then, once the orchestra is off, you're leaving the stage in dribs and drabs, and your feet hurt.

Big, rapid dispersal of singers, some of whom I won't see again until fall. Mind emptied out. It's after 11:00 pm. Matthew the Evangelist ducks into the grocery store across the street, wearing a denim jacket over his tux shirt. I walk home alone with my trench coat over my blacks; someone honks at me, a few blocks on, and it's one of our emeritus professors from work, with a carload of people he apparently brought to the concert as well: a nice surprise that I am too tired to appreciate fully.

Our annual re-auditions are this week, then it's off to WisCon for me. Must pack. I'm flying out Friday morning.

Philadelphia is still hovering on the edge of rain, a state which always leaves me with uncomfortable sinuses. I had Thursday off from work, so was able to sleep in, then meandered around in a daze doing some laundry instead of writing. Before I left home for my afternoon rehearsal, I put on a nice crisp blue shirt to perk myself up (over a tank top, because the German Society room is very stuffy). I blew off my extra hour or so after lunch by browsing in Strawbridge & Clothier, because it's conveniently close to the 8th Street L stop. Was not in the mood for shopping and successfully prevented myself from spending too much money on a cool bracelet I have no need for.

Rehearsal went well, but I am still nervous about the dress tomorrow. That will be our first and only complete run before the performance. I know adrenaline will keep me on my toes for all the transitions, but it's not just me that counts, it's close to a hundred singers whose hearts have to beat as one. And I want it to be fabulous. I may never get to sing "St. Matthew Passion" again, and I want it to be fabulous; I want it to make an impression on the audience, and I want to be transported.

There's an extra edge one gets from live performance. Concentration is always intense when singing, but there's a little extra adrenaline when there's an audience; it's like you're getting feedback from them, which you then spin out to them again. And you're singing for them, trying to make yourself more for their sake and for the sake of the music itself. "Serving the music," as The Donald says. It's hard to explain. (It's always hard for me to put my singing self into words. I think singing and writing take up similar space in my brain, and I can't give up either of them, because it would be like amputating.)

We still haven't heard the New Jesus, but we heard our baritone Pontius Pilate for the first time yesterday. He has one of those rich, dark voices that is best described as "virile." And I mean that in the best way. Nummy, nummy, nummy.

I'm up at the crack of dawn (not literally) to get warmed up a bit before my 8:30 am call. First run of the entire piece with everybody. First run in the actual performance hall. First time with no stopping.

The first rehearsal with orchestra is always such a rush. For those who came in late, my choir is performing Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" on Sunday night.

Last night we met at The German Society in Northern Liberties or thereabouts, a large building that looks unpromising on the outside but proved to have a lovely neoclassical ballroom in cream and colonial blue, complete with musician's balcony and glowering bust of Beethoven.

The absolute angularity of the ballroom made everything boomy, particularly when we got loud. Why is one always compelled to oversing in a room like that? We dealt. After an hour or so, I think we had the hang of the room. Also, the boys' choir departed after that. They're very well-behaved in general, but I hadn't realized how many little noises from them and comments from their conductor were required to make it so. Since they were in the balcony above us, their small sounds sometimes seemed to be coming from odd corners, adding to the aural confusion.

We didn't run the whole thing. We did the first and twenty-ninth movements at the beginning so the boys could then leave. After that, Choir II did our movement with the soprano and alto soloists (who sing a duet), and then our evangelist arrived. We ran some sections where evangelist and choir go in tight sequence, like number nine, which has a lot of Choir I solo stuff. Then Mark, our tenor soloist, ran numbers nineteen and twenty with Choir II. Mark is so great; a good singer and a really sweet guy. This will be his third concert with us. He did the major solo in Finzi's "Intimations of Immortality" a couple of years ago, beautifully, then Mozart's Requiem last spring. On the strength of that, David apparently hired him for something down in Charlotte and now this. Anyway, those were some tricky bits and I'm glad we got to work out the kinks. All we need now is to run some sections with Jesus, and the bits with Pontius Pilate. And of course the big total run on Saturday morning in the actual hall.

Tonight is the free lecture David's giving about the Passion. Unless I am dead tired, I think I will go.

Small writing omen: I took the L to 2nd and Spring Garden, then walked over to the German Society. On the way, I found a memorial to the World War One soldiers of the 11th and 12th wards, a bronze sculpture of a doughboy atop a plinth that listed names.

Six hours of "St. Matthew Passion" rehearsal this week. I spent three hours last night belting out the words of a mob, fast and loud, over and over again. It's invigorating to use the full power of my voice like that, but it's also a bit scary to find out how much I can scream and sneer and mock in the midst of a lovely fugato. Scary, and revealing. I suppose it's meant to be.

A Passion isn't a Passion without the hate and anger. Drawing on memories of college German, I noticed something last night about our text--earlier, we're addressing "Herzliebster Jesu" (beloved Jesus, literally "heart's love") and calling him "du," the intimate you. We also use "du" for mocking lines like "Bist du Gottes Sohn, so steig herab vom Kreuz!" ("If you're God's son, get yourself down from that cross!") The tenor Evangelist uses the formal "Sie" instead of "du." An interesting point, that.

We use the formal for "Laß ihn kreuzigen!" ("Crucify him!"). That's our only line in that section, repeated in fugue. Was Bach depersonalizing the crowd in this instance? Must hunt around and find some articles about this. Maybe when we're done with it and I have time!

Not sure if the music influenced me or I was just being my usual musically intolerant self, but when whoever it was behind me put their "zig" on the wrong syllable for about the fifth (sixth? seventh?) time in a row, I felt the desperate desire to bludgeon her about the head with my score. Draw a fucking line where the syllable changes, bitch! Do it the first time you fuck up, not the tenth! Plunging from the sublime into the depths of depravity...

I no longer have to listen to my cds of Matthäus Passion. I was working away yesterday and thought, my, it's quiet, I can pull out my little cd player and--but no. It started up on its own, in my head, with the first movement.

After a while I thought, 'I know this, I need to work on the blitzen part,' and my brain neatly switched over to that one and kept it on continuous replay. In fact, by thinking about it, I just started on it again.

I went to sleep last night replaying the first movement because it was the last thing we did in rehearsal--that always happens to me, unless I carefully listen to something else before I crawl into bed. I woke up this morning on the soprano solo that kicks off the second half. Did my brain play through the entire first half while I slept? You decide.

My brain doesn't know all the words, only the ones I've learned already because I've sung them, and some bits of aria and recit that are relevant to choral music that follows. But the music seems to be there. All of it. I'm still going to listen to the second half obsessively, because we've only just begun working on it, and being able to play through it in your brain is not the same as having it in your voice. It's like the difference between just reading through something and reading something which you then discuss with others.

As of Friday, one month to performance.

David conducted a couple performances of Walton's "Belshazzar's Feast" over the weekend. Both nights, he broke his stick, not in a normal way, (like rapping it on the stand) but by stabbing himself in the shoulder with it on an upbeat. Both nights, it broke at the same place in the music. He said the first night, his singers didn't even notice his stick had become a splintery stub, and thought he switched to his bare hands for some obscure artistic reason. The next night, they were watching like hawks. He was glad he wasn't conducting us because he said we would have seen it, and laughed loudly. Probably true. We laugh a lot.

Good quote from last night: "That was fantastic. Ish."

After some futzing around (i.e., writing, deleting, writing, cutting it and sticking it at the end of the document, writing, sneering, etc..) I decided I wasn't happy with a decision I'd made for my next section and decided to leave it and reconsider. Went home, ate macaroni with broccoli and cheese (Derby with sage), and then sang through the whole first half of Matthäus-Passion in preparation for Wednesday night's rehearsal.

This part (27.b) is fun to sing, especially when your mood is not the best:
"Sind Blitze, sind Donner in Wolken verschwunden?
Eröffne den feurigen Abgrund, o Hölle,
Zertrümmre, verderbe, verschlinge, zerschelle
Mit plötzlicher Wut
Den falschen Verräter, das mördrische Blut!"

It all sounds so much more vicious in German.

My favorite of part one, however, remains #20, with the heartbreaking oboe solo and heartbreaking text:
"Tenor: Ich will bei meinem Jesu wachen
Chorus II: So schlafen unsre Sünden ein.
Tenor: Meinen Tod büßet seine Seelennot; sein Trauren machet mich voll Freuden.
Chorus II: Drum muß uns sein verdienstlich Leiden recht bitter und doch süße sein."

God, I love Bach.

Singing Bach makes me feel like a viola da gamba. I'm the bow and I'm the body. Stroke, stroke, stroke, each stroke swelling and falling, swelling and falling. Only it's not just individual strokes, each is part of a line, and the line strokes, too, and swells and falls, mezza di voce in both short and long. You could divide each note in Bach down into infinity, down to molecules and smaller, and each particle would still be sung mezza di voce.

And then there are suspensions where you hang in space and time in glorious dissonance, for long seconds that, in reality, pass by without tempo change, because it's all in your head, you want to fly on that clash of tones but it's too late, you're already three beats past it and somebody else has taken over.

I love Bach.

We begin rehearsing Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" tonight. Finally! I've glanced over the first part, numbers one through twenty-nine, and if we get beyond that I'll be very surprised.

I still need to look over the commission piece one more time before tonight, to speed along the semi-memorization of text that makes everything so much easier. (It works best for me to think in phrases, so I only have to glance at the words every few measures. Since at the same time I'm also watching the notes on the staff, the instructions above the staff, the conductor, and my own penciled notes. While listening to the other parts. And my own section, of course.)

I went home last night and wrote nothing, which I think has helped to alleviate my frustrated knot of Monday. I read more of L.M. Montgomery's PAT OF SILVER BUSH instead. Nothing like a little flowery, sentimental prose to make one feel better about one's own writing. I fantasized about Lucy Maud with pencil in hand, or typewriter or whatever, mentally counting up her pay by the word and then carefully adding in the word "dear" as a descriptive adjective five more times. Ahem.