Tag: choir

I Love Choir!!

I had forgotten how much I loved choir. I had even almost dreaded rehearsal. I was already so tired, and making music can take a lot out of you. Ya, I was excited to see my friends…but I see most of them anyways outside of choir. But then we were given out music. Ok, you need some background here: my school employs a becoming-well-known and brilliant composer. He taught me theory last year, and it was the best semester of Theory I had ever had (and you already know how much I love Theory). Well, my choir is going to be premiering one of his new pieces. I always knew he wrote good stuff. He picks great poems to set and he does a great job with them. But I wasn’t prepared for what I heard. The music…made me move. It was like it entered my ears and took control of me. It was wonderful. That is why I love music.

In my music history class we are studying the Romantic era. Composers of that day revered instrumental music over vocal music because, they said, words limit. In wordless music the listener is free to interpret it as he will. But while I love the Romantic period with all my heart, I must disagree with the Romantics here: when the text and music fit each other the result is more powerful than either could achieve apart.

I have returned!!

Ok, so I need to start looking up more “I’m back” quotes. Because with my track record, I’m going to need them. But I have an excuse for not posting, I really do!! This entire past week I’ve not been at home or at school. I was with my choir in the North “on tour” as we call it. We were traveling through the north giving concerts at churches and Christian schools (remember, I go to a Christian college). It was great fun! We spent several hours a day driving around on a university bus. A good friend of mine used the extra down time to introduce me to the show “Dr. Who.” I had never heard of it before this trip, but it is vastly entertaining. Plus, it’s a BBC production, so I get to hear people speaking in British accents, which has in turn, helped my own impersonations of the British.

In other news, NaNoWriMo has officially started!! I’m so excited!! I started writing my novel Tuesday morning, and I’m currently at 3,916 words. So, back to the writing!!

Music is my life

As I’ve said before, I love performing. Tomorrow evening my choir is presenting a recital of largely sacred works. I am so excited to have this opportunity to perform as a group with fellow musicians. That is something I miss a lot in my solo work. Musicians are some of the awesomest people on earth in my humble (but slightly biased) opinion. I love how a person or group of people can take some words and some dots on a page and transform them into a beautiful work of art. And then when it’s done, we can do it again and it will be completely new and different every single time. Music is like the visual arts in many ways, but this is one of their differences. Whereas a painting or sculpture can be finished and hung on a wall or placed in a museum as a memorial to the artist forever, music is created again and again, and a duplicate portrayal can never exist. Maybe that’s what I love about music. I can run out of landscapes to paint, but music will never be the same.