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

I have my re-audition for choir on Friday, which means I need to pick something to sing for it Real Soon Now. Like, today.

I don't want to. I'm in a post-concert letdown funk, and I don't want to do anything. Or rather, everything I try to do is not satisfactory to me. Hopefully, this will pass soon.

Stearns gave us a good review for the concert, by the way. Except he said the chorus "audibly tired" in the second half. I don't know if it was being tired so much as being hot. As in, actually sweating, kept awake mostly by the spikes of pain from sore feet and knees. If it hadn't been for the intermission...well. I always think it's a matter of endurance, but it isn't, really. Concert conditions just aren't as comfortable as rehearsal conditions, ever, unless you get a lot of breaks where you sit down.

It's the adrenaline and joy in the music that carries you through.

This morning, I was dreaming about being in a rehearsal, for which I'd flown to Poland--feklar had gone with me. We were in a living room or something, rehearsing, but not everyone had shown up (lj user="feklar">, you were upstairs in our room, not singing, but apparently you were supposed to be singing. I bet you didn't know you could sing). It looked like we were maybe four on a part, a capella. We were rehearsing Verdi's Requiem.

The joke here is that Verdi's Requiem is best with a large choir, or at least a very robust one. Also, I've never sung it, though jensouschef has.

I was back to Bach on the brain radio again as soon as I woke up.

Last night was my night off! I had written during my lunch hour, as I did for three days in a row--total was almost 2000 words, not bad for a concert week. So that meant I could go home and not write. Instead I washed several days' worth of dishes, not that there were a lot, did laundry, changed bedsheets, that sort of thing, and attempted better memorization of the "Confiteor" because that one movement has little accompaniment and is very, very exposed with some difficult harmonics. I feel solid on it now, which is excellent. Then I slept. Oh, glorious sleep.

Dress rehearsal tonight. It's our first and only time to rehearse with the soloists and orchestra.

Tonight is my one night off from rehearsal and I plan to spend it doing laundry and resting. Dress rehearsal is tomorrow night, performance Sunday afternoon.

Last night in rehearsal, I was sleepy, but kept reminding myself to enjoy every minute, because there's only so much time with this piece left. And we had some great minutes. The music has shape now, and flows light and swift, surge and retreat. It's like flying.

I love Bach and I love singing and I love this piece especially, but a little break is lovely. I think I will try to listen to some non-Bach today, to temporarily push the endless Bach soundtrack out of my head.

Bach Fest To End In B Minor Mass, an article about my choir concert this weekend.

My brain radio is glued onto "Cum sancto spiritu" from Bach's B minor mass, the last thing we sang last night.

We're working "Credo" to the end tonight, so perhaps that will be replaced by something else then.

I am sleep deprived.

The rest of this week will be given to Bach, though I'm going to try and do a little writing at lunch time each day.

The final choir rehearsals are tonight and tomorrow night, dress rehearsal on Friday night. Performance of Bach's B Minor Mass on Saturday. Woo!

I should walk around all the time with a Bach soundtrack. I listened to choruses on my walk home yesterday--the first "Kyrie" lasted all the way from my office to the bridge--and on the bus this morning. I get an amazing uplift from the beginning of "Et expecto," and the segue into "Sanctus" is so glorious, so heavenly, so joyful. Perhaps it's that "Sanctus" is when suddenly the chorus goes into six parts, and to set it off, it's all swirling, soaring, spiraling threes.

I've come to realize that while singing is a somatic experience for me, listening is a somatic experience, too.

I went into rehearsal tired, irritable, distracted. I left bouyant. That happens a lot.

I'm still not perfect on certain bits in some of the bat-out-of-hell-speed movements--need to figure out the best place to breathe in some of those long runs, for example, and check at home and make sure I have them clean. And then memorize as much as possible.

Last night we worked on "Et resurrexit" then ran "Qui tollis," one of the slow, dark choruses which apparently sounded great. We then worked on and ran the "Sanctus" and "Osanna" sequence, then we ran the first "Kyrie," which opens the entire piece.

I have loved the opening of Bach's B minor mass since I first heard it on cd, and singing it is extraordinary. I actually got a rush of happy adrenaline right before we started the movement. I was still flying when I went home at ten.

La la la. No news on the proposal, I don't think it got looked at yesterday after all. Have written nothing, partly by design to give myself a rest, partly because I just don't feel like it, partly because why work on a novel that might not get bought?

Rehearsal was fun last night. We finally read through the only section we hadn't yet worked on. We also learned "Et resurrexit" is going to go like a bat out of hell, whee! There's irony in that sentence somewhere.

I need to spend a little time on the Bach now, making sure I have a few little tricky bits down cold. I think I know them, but they go by so fast I may be wrong. Now is the time to check.

Some of the fugues in the Bach B min Mass are so lacework-intricate, I feel as if I could stare at them for hours, trapped in contemplation--not that you can stare at the sounds of music, of course, but...oh, never mind. Fugues with the intricacy of lacework, though, that part's true. Not just one line with all the frills and furbelows, changing off with the next, but several lines, all frilled and furbelowed, each tiny piece interacting with each other tiny piece, and gone in an instant, quicker than mayflies.

We got word last night that we'd received a grant of 47K, which will pay for two of our concerts next year. This is hugely needed for a small, non-profit choir like ours. One of the concerts will include Arvo Part's Te Deum (ecstatic sigh) performed with the Chamber Orchestra, with whom we recently did Brahms' Requiem. The other, scheduled for October, will focus on two Scots composers, one a little-known monk from the Renaissance named Robert Carver, and the other contemporary, James MacMillan. It's an Ultimate Choir Geek program. I am really, really excited about this concert, too; we performed a couple of MacMillan's large works years ago, and I've been hoping to do more ever since.

We began rehearsals last night for Bach's B Minor Mass, which is essentially a collection of his best work redone as a Latin mass. I've been desperate to sing this for years, and finally, finally, it is here!

We sightread last night, and as usual, sightreading Bach is like rediscovering something long forgotten; the music is so logical, except when it isn't, and it sounds like, well, Bach, so there's an added instinctual feeling. Three hours went through in an eyeblink.

So now I've read through the "Dona nobis pacem" and the first couple sections of the "Credo."

It's glorious.