Brahmsed out

You know how it is when you've got a whole, huge cheesecake or other similarly decadent dessert in your fridge? The first piece is amazing. Maybe you have a piece after dinner for the next 3-4 days, and it's still tasting really good. But by day 5 your taste for it starts to wane; your taste buds are saturated with the flavor and it's no longer as orgasmic as that explosively delicious first piece.

That's how the Brahms Festival has been for me. The first week was blissful - in part because we hadn't done Brahms in a while and my musical palate was clean, and also because I was more familiar with the repertoire than I am this week since we'd performed a lot of it since I've been here.

Tonight's concert was less familiar. It was very good and I played well, but it involved a lot of mental acrobatics. I'm sitting here at the computer desk unwinding with a big glass of Chianti and some Wisconsin Havarti cheese slices before I go to bed.

I love Brahms, but man is it hard. You wouldn't think it was this hard to listen to it. Or maybe you would. The horns are in a different key in every movement, and because it's all Brahms and we've been doing nothing but Brahms for the past 2 weeks, it's all starting to sound the same and blur together. This is extremely dangerous because you're always wondering, "am I in the right key?" "What key am I in now?" or if you have a long block of rests, you find yourself forgetting what key you were in before the rests, which is really dangerous.

Here are the keys I have had to transpose into for this festival:

• Bb Basso (down a 5th)
• C (down a 4th)
• D (down a minor 3rd)
• E (down a half step)
• B (down a tri-tone - this key is the biggest pain-in-the-brain and by far sucks the most of all of the transpositions)
• Eb (down a major 2nd)

I think I'm in three different keys for the last movement of Brahms 1, which closes our festival tomorrow afternoon.

The third horn parts have been harder than I ever thought they would be in practice, and I've really studied them. That's the thing that's blowing my mind. They're completely different from the 1st and 2nd parts. A lot of my parts involve sitting around for over 25 bars rest and then coming in confidently with a forte passage. I was sweating bullets in tonight's performance. It's just so easy to second-guess that you know where you are, when to come in, and what key you're actually supposed to be playing in at any given time.

So the next time you listen to anything orchestral by Brahms, think of the horns and appreciate them. They're working their asses off, frying their brains. I actually think that Mahler, Strauss, and Bruckner are somewhat easier than Brahms in some ways, because there's no transposing and the horns have the melody a lot more.

In any case, the performance went well tonight, as did all of my solos. It wasn't that fun for me because I was such a stress puppy but it was still successful. We played for a packed house and we got a standing ovation.

XO Love,
Darcy

Auditions suck the life out of you

Hello ever-ee-bodeeeeeee! (Thank you, Grover.) How have you all been? I'm been MIA lately because I've been:

• recuperating from my audition physically
• feeling completely drained from my audition emotionally and mentally
• playing computer games (my latest is www.bigfishgames.com 's "Plantasia" - highly addictive) to try to decompress from the audition
• unfortunately eating more sweet things than I should be to try to cope with the rejection after so much blood sweat and tears invested into the audition, so as a result I've been feeling crappy physically. I know, I know, if carbs are demons, sugar is their AntiChrist, but I just can't seem to stay away from it. And damn it if it doesn't work to make you feel better in the extended short term...
• playing the Brahms festival at work, which has been incredibly intense. We're doing ALL of the Symphonies and ALL of the concertos in a two week span. That means 6 concerts over the span of two weeks, each one a different program. Not a lot of rehearsal time for any one piece and the constant change of program keeps you counting like a crazy person and trying to shift gears quickly. This is completely exhausting and a bit stressful mentally, and as a result I am just wiped out.

But it's Brahms, and Brahms is luscious, beautiful, and chock full of great horn parts. Even I, the lowly third horn player, get really nice extended solos. Last week was Brahms 3, Brahms 4, the Vln. Concerto, and the 1st Piano Concerto. This week is Brahms 1 and 2, the 2nd Piano Concerto, and the Concerto for Violin and Cello (which I've never played). This week is even harder than last week. And though I've played all the Symphonies and both Piano Concertos, I've never played the 3rd horn parts to any of these pieces before. So that's kind of scary, because they're completely different. *sigh*

I have another audition - hopefully the last one in a while - scheduled for the end of April. I am seriously debating whether I even want to take it. Best case scenario, do I even want this job I'm auditioning for? It's a ton more work, a lot more pressure, and I know for certain that I much prefer Milwaukee as a city (for zillions of reasons) to the city it's in.

I am just so exhausted and burnt out. I want to enjoy my life. I want to compose and arrange music for my brass quintet. I want to spend more time with my friends and to get much more involved with my church. I want to pick up where I left off on my weight loss journey (auditions pretty much eclipse anything else in your life that requires any amount of focus or effort, so my goal was just to maintain my weight loss these past months while I prepared, which I did, thank god). I want to get more physically fit. I want to really get into my yoga routine and try to meditate again. I want to be creative, to draw and paint again.

I'm very conflicted with these yearnings. I worry that if I decide to cancel my audition, I will regret not having taken it. I worry that I will wonder, later in life, whether I gave up or threw in the towel too soon, that I never realized my full musical potential.

Ugh. I think what I really need is a silent retreat of some kind, to just go inward and let the dust settle and really listen to and honor what my higher self tells me I need.

Other than that, things here are great. David was gone for 10 days last week for an NACC conference in Columbus, Ohio and to visit friends/family afterwards. I'll be honest - at first I loved having the house to myself. Other than the freedoms to eat and sleep whenever I wanted and to park my car smack in the middle of the garage, it wasn't that different from when he's here. But toward day 7 of his absence I started getting lonesome. I really started missing him, our conversations especially. So I was thrilled when he came home.

Next week I am going to visit my friends and family in the NE Ohio/Buffalo area. I'll drive into Cleveland on Wednesday afternoon, then out to Buffalo on Friday and back to Cleveland again on Sunday. Monday I'll leave from Cleveland to come back to Milwaukee. I'm really looking forward to the retreat. I'm debating whether I even want to bring my horn or not. Right now it feels like an unwelcome appendage that I'd like to have amputated for a while.

I guess this is more of a heart-on-my-sleeve post, but there you have it.

XO Darcy

Phew....recovering from audition

Hey blogmeisters. I just got back from Pittsburgh today; I didn't get out of the prelims, but I learned a lot from taking this audition. They asked an excerpt that I hadn't banked on them asking, and it caught me off guard. Worst of all, I didn't have it copied into my practice book for this audition, so I couldn't practice it in the warm-up room before I had to play. I think it would have made a difference if I had had the music for that excerpt with me. Ah well. You practice, you spend money and energy and sweat and time on auditions, and you learn. You pick yourself up, dust yourself off, recover emotionally and mentally, and then start practicing for the next audition (in my case, it's in late April).

The biggest thing I learned is that if they ask the whole part to something, like Till for instance, bring the whole damn part with you. You have to pick and choose what you practice because there's no way you can have everything they ask downpat; they requested we know a hell of a list of excerpts for this audition and there were a few new ones that I didn't know. One of them, the Schoenberg Chamber Symphony, was a total bitch and a half and took me forever to learn. And I didn't even get to play it. No one from my group advanced out of the preliminary round.

Oh well. I'm glad I took the audition. It gave me something to work toward, something to practice for. I had to learn two new excerpts that I had never played before, and really polished and fixed several other excerpts that I knew needed lots of work. All of that work is still mine, I still gained all of that added excellence from the practicing. It is an investment and while it didn't help me win this audition, it will definitely help me in the next one. That's how it goes!

Tomorrow we start rehearsals for the Brahms Festival - Brahms is known for his gorgeous horn writing and it should be a fun few weeks ahead.

Lots of love from your tired traveler,

Darcy

Why sometimes spellcheck just isn't enough

My Clevelander friend Eric noticed this rather glaring typo published for all the Cleveland world to see. He has since alerted the Earth Day Coalition, but not before they had plastered their unintentionally lewd signs all over every bus, billboard and bulletin board in the Cleveland area.

Look closely at the "Ride a free" line.

The typo gives the whole event a rather different kind of appeal, now doesn't it?

My version of "Daughter of the Regiment"

Well, the opera is over now and it's my day off (Monday, yay!). The pit work was very pleasant, actually; not much to do, but what we did have to do was relatively interesting. I even had a few solos {gasp!} which was a very nice surprise.

I was seated at the edge of the pit closest to the audience and furthest from the edge of the stage (not under the lip of the stage, as much of the orchestra was), so I could actually see some of what was going on. I also was fluent in french at one point, so I could pick up bits and pieces of what was going on from the dialogue. I wasn't wearing my glasses (I only wear them to drive, to the movies, or the theater) so I couldn't read the supertitles. But I came up with my own story line in my head based on what I could see and hear, which was amusing.

Basically, there's this colloratura soprano named Marie, the daughter of some army general and has been adopted by the whole regiment. There's a lot of pomp and miltary hubris which of course translates well into fluffy, marchy, frilly opera choruses. There is much nasal french laughing (honh honh HONH!) and women shrieking as cannons go off in the distance. Marie, being a soprano, has a lot to sing about, and she does so loudly and at the top of her lungs, often singing notes that are surprisingly notes that both dogs and humans can hear.

So Marie eventually carries on extensively about some guy who has saved her life in the war. I'm not sure of the guy's name. Paul (4th horn) and I named him Mickey Mouse because of how he sounded when he was singing really really ultra-high. (Note: Mickey Mouse's part is supposed to be sung by a countertenor, so it is by default stratospherically high. Knowing this, however, doesn't make it sound any more natural or less nasal when you listen to it.)

So anyway, Marie and Mickey Mouse sing a very heartfelt duet together in which they figure out (surprise surprise) that they are both in love with eachother. Somehow, though, something goes wrong. I'm not quite sure what, because I had a lot to play after they fell in love, but it's bad. My theory is that Mickey Mouse started singing way too high as to be physically reasonable, and Marie is concerned that his undies are too tight and pose a threat to his future reproductive health.

So then there is a very sad long aria, during which I had a lot of solos with the english horn, so again, I'm not really all that sure what was going on. It was mostly Marie singing. I postulate that Marie is mourning the loss of all the children she will never have because of Mickey Mouse's insistence on wearing "Nutcracker Panties" in order to sing all of his high notes.

At some point, Marie is told that she is the niece of a larger woman who sings alto. But in the beginning, you get the feeling from the way this larger woman acts that Marie is really her daughter, not her niece. But of course she wouldn't do anything sensible like tell her daughter this, so Marie meets this larger woman thinking she's her aunt. Marie leaves the regiment to become part of her aunt's aristocratic family, much to her dismay. The 2nd act opens with Marie trying to take voice lessons and screaming loud arias in her "aunt's" ear. The "aunt" is dramatically whining that Marie isn't refined and is curses like a sailor from all her years living with the men in the regiment. I enjoyed the cursing part. :)

Now at this point in the opera, I had entire movements that were tacet, and so I took that opportunity to get some major reading done. I finished several magazines and made a dent in a great book I've been reading. So I literally have no idea what happens during this time frame. But at around the time I have to start paying attention and getting ready to come back in, it's clear that Marie's "aunt" has arranged a marriage for her to this Duke of "Crackendooooorrrrrffff" (that's what it sounded like, anyway).

Marie, of course, is still in love with Mickey Mouse, despite his fetish for unusually restrictive undergarments; and the Duke she's supposed to marry is a bumbling idiot who has absolutely no social graces and doesn't even sing at all. (There's a lot of spoken dialogue in this opera.)

Anyway, it all ends happily; the "aunt" finally confesses that Marie is her daughter before it's too late, Marie gets to marry Mickey Mouse who thankfully has traded in his control-top (control-bottom?) thongs for boxers and is singing in a much more reasonable range by the end of the opera. Marie's mother the alto snags a bonus husband as well. Everyone's happy and gets married, which is the typical ending for a comic opera (as opposed to the typical ending for a tragic opera, where everybody dies some horrible and violent death involving long swords, poisons, or huge fires).

So that's my version of the opera. I'm sure it's nowhere near the actual libretto, but it was at least amusing and passed the time quite nicely. ;)

XO Darcy

Notice from the Department of Transposition

Great news - my foot is feeling much better! I discovered this new kind of ACE bandage at Walgreens that has latex in it and doesn't require any fasteners; it adheres to itself! Ah, technology! It's very elastic, doesn't take up very much shoe space so I can wear all of my normal shoes, and makes my foot feel almost normal!

So to celebrate, today I am going to break my yoga fast and try to do some gentle poses - YAY! I have so missed my yoga routine both physically and especially mentally. As far as activity, I am now going to try to intentionally incorporate more walking into my daily routine.

Thanks so much to all of you who wrote comments, sent emails, and called...you're wonderful, and I love you for it.

Warning: Remainder of this post is nothing but impossibly nerdy horn geek writing, and is not recommended for the well-adjusted, emotionally mature, or mentally sane.

This week we're doing Donizetti's "Daughter of the Regiment". It's refreshingly fluffy and light after that gluttonous Tchaikovsky smorgasborg, and I am just loving it. The weird thing about a lot of opera horn parts is the transposition. See, when most operas were written, horns didn't have valves. You had to switch different lengthed slides, known as "crooks", that pitched the horn's overtones into a certain key so you could play in different keys. So, if you, the jolly horn player, saw in your part that the upcoming tenor aria was in the key of A Basso, you'd get your A Basso crook out of your crook bag and stick it on your valveless horn and bingo, your horn would be pitched in A Basso.

Here's what a Natural Horn looks like with crooks; these crooks attach to the top of the horn and each have their own "lead pipe" (the end the mouthpiece goes in, the end you blow into):

Well now, of course, all of this crooked silliness (groan) is unnecessary, since modern horns have valves and can switch between crooks just by pressing a lever (instead of having to disembowel the thing to slap on another crook). Here's what my fancy ultra-valved triple horn looks like again:



The problem is, the opera parts haven't changed to reflect this. So we have to transpose.

Here's how it works. The modern horn of today lives in Hornland, otherwise known as the Republic of the Key of F. So the Key of F is our home base; we always travel from this key to get to the other keys requested of us. When an aria is in a key other than F, the poor horn player has to travel from F up or down to get to the key requested.

For instance, if the key is G, then the horn player only has to travel up one step to be in the key necessary. So if the piece is in G, s/he will have to play every single printed pitch up one full step in order to be in the foreign key. Does this make sense? If the piece is in Eb, everything will be down one full step since traveling from Hornland (the key of F) to Eb is one full step.

What gets hairy is when the distance between Hornland and the requested key is very large and not a "perfect" interval like a 4th or 5th. A Basso is a pain in the ass because you have to play every damn note down a minor 6th. That's a brain scrambler.

Thankfully some blessed soul wrote in a lot of my A Basso transpositions! Dude/tte, whoever you are, thanks a mil! Seriously! Fortunately this is not at all distracting since the original note is so far above the note you'll actually be playing that there's plenty of staff room below to write things in.

Anyway, so there's much more I'm sure than you ever wanted to know about horn playing, transposing, and other totally horn-geek related issues.

XO Darcy the Horn Nerd