Second Semester- and Masterworks

What a dreary day out... rain and clouds.

But, it is the first day of second semester! My class schedule feels so strange- as none of my classes start before 1 PM on any given day. I feel guilty about this, almost. This means that I wake up in the morning (sleeping in until 7:30 AM, else I would not make it to 10 PM at night) and do my typical evening activities in the morning. So this morning, after I woke up, I did laundry, practiced conducting for an hour, wrote my rehearsal plan for women's choir, caught up on e-mails, made my dinner, put together my backpack, and took care of some other small details. No run today- I need a day off sometimes, and what a better day to take off than a rainy one? Oh yes, and I did the important task of creating additional ring tones this morning.

I thought I would sit down and write a quick post before I finished preparing for my day. I will leave fairly soon for school. I do not start until 3 PM today, but I want to be there early to finish prepping for women's choir tonight and see if there are any other last minute details to take care of. If I am all ready, I will start research on my "Masterworks" list. Last night I created a list of all the "choral masterworks" in the Choral Masterworks book by Michael Steinberg and divided them into three sections. I have a time line to study these songs from this semester through the end of next winter break. 45 large works. Is it possible? I think I might be tested on all of these at the end of my program here, so I would like to start researching and listening. Of course, I need to clarify this all with my teacher, which I should be able to do this week.

I conducted the first 75% of Belshazzar's Feast for the first time this morning. Took me an hour (the piece in it's performance entirety is about 35 minutes). My goal for the first couple of times conducting is to understand the direction of the tempo and why. There are a lot of tempos written in the score, as well as tempo directions (speed up, slow down type of stuff). And of course, some of this is sprinkled with dynamics. I am only looking at the voices right now, unless they are not singing. Once I get comfortable with them, I will spend some more time on the instruments. I think I need a music stand to conduct, not just my bathroom counter. I have one of the cheap metal stands from middle/high school band, but it doesn't go up high enough.

Here I go!