Funding Frustration

It's been awhile since I have posted.  I might make it a New Years resolution to post more often.  

But certainly, the semester is finished.  I have one semester of course work left before I begin the bulk of my dissertation.  I say "the bulk" because I have already started my dissertation research.  I will do more over this January to put together my preliminary research.  I will have at least one presentation to put together.  I will prep my recital music and write my recital paper.  I have a few funding agencies I'm sending in applications to, and of course, I'd like to read a book for fun.  About conducting.

I will talk more about my dissertation later, but suffice it to say that I'm quite excited and I'm ready to get to work.  Except that I have another semester of course work.

I would like to circle back to a topic I brought up earlier: funding.  It is very difficult to find funding to go do research in another country.  I have had two meetings with our graduate college about finding funding.  I have done a lot of research myself.  I have made lists of potential grants and fellowships.  Then I have crossed most of them off my list because (and here is the kicker): I'm not eligible.  Most of it has to do with the fact I am not getting a PhD, but a DMA.  And apparently nobody wants to fund the research of a performance degree student.  There is an impression out there that the academic research requirements are not as high.  However, at my school?  The requirements are high, rigorous, and intense.  I will be lucky to finish my dissertation in just over a year (at least, that's what I'm told).  Also, a lot of the funding agencies that would have been able to fund me have lost their funding and closed applications until they get funding back (from the government).  On top of needing a PhD, some of the grants/fellowships require a two year commitment.  I can't/won't do that.  It's too long to spend away from family in the States.

Every time I look for funding, I end up frustrated.  My situation is certainly unique, it seems, for a person who wants funding.

So needless to say, I'm looking for agencies to fund my unique research.  Any suggestions?

 

Merry Christmas!

Vacation in between course work years

I finished my German translation course.  I am not sure how well I scored in the class, but I am pretty sure I passed.  And I acquired the knowledge.  That is what matters.  So that means my summer can begin!

For the rest of my summer, I have a few applications for grants to finish, Russian to study (much more time needs to be spent on this), an All-State prep camp to help with, a recital to plan, a community choir concert to plan, an octavo review to write, and a paper to write.  This may not sound like "summer," but trust me, it's much less stressful than my summer thus far.  I love listening to music, skimming octavos, sight reading octavos at the piano, and selecting pieces for concerts.

I am narrowing down my recital pieces and should be making decisions in the next few days.  At that point, I may share what I am conducting.  I also am preparing my women's chorus on Mozart's Requiem.  I am quite excited about preparing this large work as well.

There is something very thrilling about marking up a new score.  And this upcoming week is full of that.  And Russian.  And... a massage!

30 Seconds

Yesterday I took ten minutes to play the piano.  I played through a few simple piano pieces and read a choral octavo by Rachmaninoff.

So let me take a moment to talk about how I initially begin to look at choral pieces.  I don't mean the entire process, but rather the initial searching.  I glance through the piece and get a "feel" for it.  However, I have never really taken the time to document what I'm actually doing.  Many times I think I'm just going off of gut feeling.  But that's not true.  This is my attempt to verbalize what happens in the thirty seconds I first look at a piece of music.

I often skim through pieces with my eyes and make sure it's not too boring- is all the rhythm similar?  Are the ranges limited throughout the entirety of the piece?  Yawn.  Nobody wants to hear that.  Although to be fair, I don't mind strophic pieces- as long as each verse gives me something different (textually) so I can shape the music and build the story.  Do the alto parts sit extremely low the entire time?  I don't do that to my alto section, which is often at least half comprised of sopranos.  If it's modern, I look at dynamics and articulation.  If the composer has something in mind- a story, a feeling... the music must wrap around something.  Unless of course, it's Arvo Pärt or something similar.  Then it requires more like three minutes for the initial "look through" so I can plunk out a few sections and see how the composer creates tension and growth.  I automatically throw out pieces that are clearly over edited and makes the primary language English when it was clearly written in a different language.  In those cases, if the music itself looks interesting, I'll look for another edition.  If it's an early music piece or uses counterpoint, I look at how the voice parts interact with each other, what might be difficult and determine if my particular group has the independence for it or if they can reach that particular level of independence before the performance.  I also look for where the music goes.  If it's there pages of the same three motives without much variation, it's probably going to be boring.  It needs to flirt with other tonal areas, have exchanges between voices, and moments that are important, and the music needs to be working it's way toward those moments, not just wandering aimlessly.  Unless, of course, the music is trying to make a philosophical point about... something.  But then I probably won't program it.

And then I put the music into three piles: 1) No.  Should probably throw the music.  I mean recycle.  2) Maybe.  I'm not sold, but I want to hear what it sounds like when I play it.  (My internal hearing is not as developed as I would like it to be.  That's a whole other blog post- I used to think I was lucky because I was a conductor that played the piano.  I wondered what my colleagues did who didn't play the piano.  Now I almost wish I didn't play the piano, because it's easy to rely on that instead of my inner ear to "hear" a piece).  3) This piece is a yes.  Maybe not this concert (but maybe), but certainly someday.  Remember it.

The Rachmaninoff piece?  It's now in the third pile.  I have plans for it.

Revision Process

This is my writing story.

When I was younger, I loved to write.  From the time I was in second grade, I wrote poetry.  Then somewhere in 5th or 6th grade, I decided I wanted to write a book.  Not just a book though, a novel.  I wrote two and started many others.  I still wrote poetry, and in 7th grade I started writing lyrics that I could put to music.  I always received positive feedback in high school, too.  I was creative and I loved to focus on interactions between people when I wrote.  I wanted to write things that made people feel like they weren't alone, that people had similar experiences.  

At some point in college, my love for writing changed.  To be honest, I recall the exact moment.  I wrote a paper for a course I was in, and I received a "B" on it.  But I didn't know why.  I asked my professor what I could do, and he suggested I outline and revise.  I only did "bare bones" outlines, so I knew I could improve on that.  I always revised- for the extent to which I knew how.  I wrote three papers in that class and on the last two I received better grades.  Those were my first "real" academic papers.  I think I had to write papers for my first year Paideia class, but I don't remember.  If I did, I received positive feedback.

Skip ahead to senior year of undergrad, and I wrote a senior paper.  It was only about 12 pages long, because I had actually completed a senior project.

That was the writing I recall during my undergrad career.  Except for my education classes, but those papers were fun to write.  It was easy to know exactly what I wanted to say, because so much I wrote was about my personal education philosophy.

Then next big paper I wrote was my project report for my masters degree.  It was not actually a thesis, but a project report, which was a shorter version of a thesis.  

Now how do I feel about writing?  It depends.  I'm revising essays for a grant application right now, and I hate it.  The writing feels so impersonal, but yet it's addressing things I feel very strongly about.  I read the short essays and they feel dull and boring.  The idea of writing a dissertation is daunting.  

I'm "in the middle" of the revision process for these essays.  Many people have read my essays and will continue to read these essays.  I'm extremely grateful for that.  Thankfully for these essays, I have managed to avoid asking for revisions from people that don't give helpful comments.  Also, writing, even academic writing, is very subjective.  I'm now at a point in my writing where sometimes, there are comments I ignore (although I NEVER ignore comments about clarification... if a person has had to reread a sentence multiple times or restates one of my ideas incorrectly).  

I have to be honest, however... I think my most recent draft of these essays (I'm officially on revision #4) is worse than #2 and #3.  

In conclusion, revisions are frustrating.  I would rather write a fiction story.

What does all this have to do with music?  Good question... My time has been so consumed with languages and writing this summer, I've had very little time to practice or listen or learn music.  Although twice last week I played piano for fun, and it was amazing.  About halfway through the first practice session, I realized I was unknowingly smiling.  I definitely got teary mid-practice both days.  Yes... how lucky am I, that making music and educating people is my real vocation?  Very lucky indeed!

Audience and Purpose

I had intended to blog a lot more this summer.  I realized I am faced with multiple considerations when I blog: 1) Who is my audience of my blog and am I writing things of interest to them?  Or am I writing things of interest to anyone?  2) How personal do I want to be on this blog?  How many success and failures do I actually want to share with internet-land?  3) How much time do I want to take to blog?

I know these are all questions I should have answered before I started my blog.  And I did answer them, to some extent.  But as time has went on, some of my answers have changed or it has become difficult to execute.  For example, my audience.  Is it simply for family and friends?  Perhaps, but that is not my sole intention.  But if it is meant for a larger audience, it seems quite presumptuous of me to think I would have anything of value to share with someone who does not know me.  So, I end up riding the fence of the above three questions.

Today, a friend from SoCal wrote me a note, and in response to me telling her that the normal three years of course work at my school were put into two years (just for the DMA choral conducting students), she said, "How lucky you get to be done with coursework in only two years."  It made me pause.  Lucky?  I have thought many things over the past year about the amount of coursework I have, but "lucky" was not one of those words that has popped into my mind.  However, I suppose I can see it from that perspective.  Instead of three years, like the majority of DMA and PhD music students, we must take the same amount of credits in two years.  This creates a very busy and unbalanced two years.  But it gets me to my dissertation a year earlier.  A year closer to finally being able to get a job working in the profession I have wanted to work in since I have been thirteen years old.  So, yes, perhaps there is some positive aspects about having three years of coursework put into two years.

But the real purpose of this blog entry... a little over a week ago, a friend of mine passed away while singing under the direction of his fiancé, also a friend of mine, in Italy.  I have thought a lot of about my friend in the past week.  Two things, really: We were supposed to be better friends.  I thought that once I was done with coursework, I would cultivate my friendship with him.  It seemed natural we would be friends.  Also, he was such a wonderful person- kind and passionate.  My heart is broken for those that love him and for myself- for a friendship I "put off" until a more convenient time.

I still have not fully processed this.

Languages and Dissertation

Sitting in a coffee shop almost a week after finals finished.  This is how I know my life is less busy: While at this coffee shop, I did about an hour and a half of work on German.  In a few moments, I may review some Russian.  But I have felt at leisure to read the news, make changes to my fantasy baseball team, look up information about Russia, and check Facebook.

Why Russia?  You may ask.  I am hesitant to talk about it too much, but I think my dissertation topic will be about a Russian composer.  So I am learning the language (two tutoring sessions down) and doing research on my topic and the country itself, since I would like to travel there when my coursework is done.  The length of time I would spend in Russia has yet to be determined and would depend on many outside factors, the least of which includes funding.  At any rate, for me to do my dissertation topic justice, I really should travel to Russia.  It's very exciting, but I wish things would chill out.  My tutor has reassured me that Russia is actually a very hospitable place. 

This summer I am also planning two recitals.  Of course, the second recital will not be completely planned.  My first one of the school year, with the women's choir, will be planned, however, and this includes the paper I will write.  I have a lot of ideas and just need to make a decision on which direction I want to take the choir.  My second recital, which happens in the spring, is with one of the other mixed groups on campus, and I likewise have many ideas for them.  However, that is less important. 

I am taking an online German course about how to read in German.  My hope is to finish the course before August.  I don't think this will be a problem, unless, of course, the instructor doesn't get back to me after I submit an assignment.  Like this past week.  I have to wait to turn in the next assignment before I can turn in the next one.  If I don't hear back from him by Wednesday morning, I will send him an e-mail.  At that point, it would have been over a week.  I will not get done in time if it takes a week to turn around assignments.  However, the first two assignments I submitted he returned to me the day I submitted them.  Perhaps I did not hit submit or it got lost in the shuffle of the end-of-the-year emails. 

Well, this is a boring post.  Perhaps something more stimulating next time.

It's too early to think about a dissertation... right?

It seems that way... "too early" to think about a dissertation.  But it's not. 

So, here is what I have done so far for my dissertation: Some preliminary research on what has already been done on the topic I want; e-mailed people who know more than I do (and received an extremely helpful and encouraging response from someone important- who offered to share their personal library with me); made an appointment with my thesis advisor to help narrow my topic; discussed my topic with my primary advisor who said, "This sounds like a great topic."; Made a list of possible grants to help me do overseas research; scheduled an appointment with a grant specialist to help me find funding; made a preliminary appointment with the graduate advisor who can also give me guidance; bought many recordings of the composer whose music I want to research; created room in my schedule to take language courses next year I need to take to help me research.

With the list above, it is apparent to me I have already thought about a lot.  I often think I have not done enough, I am behind, and I'm not "on top of my game."  But to be sure, I feel I have not dedicated much time to this, and I have already gotten the ball rolling on so much.  I am very excited about my potential topic (to be discussed at a later date). 

In the meantime, I still have a semester to finish.  And six Italian composers to present on.  And Stravinsky to memorize.  And a music philosophy paper to revise and present on.  And a Jesu Meine Freude double fugue to conduct. 

Calm Down for my Research

This will be brief, because I am doing reading and taking notes on rhetoric and German 17th century music theory, but I need to say this somewhere. 

I need Russia to calm down.  For sake of my potential future research, I need Russia's leadership to chill out.  Researching over there would become much more difficult if they don't calm down.  I'm not saying I wouldn't go, but it would be more difficult. 

I register for classes in about a week.  Guess what?  Still need to take 15 credits next semester.

Handel

I conducted in a masterclass last Monday.  We had a visiting conductor from China and another doctoral student and myself had the opportunity to conduct for her and get feedback.  The feedback was fine- she wanted me to be more dramatic in my gesture.  I had practiced keeping it more confined so as not to overstate the line.  In my head, I have a very clear picture of what I want to hear, and if I get too big too quickly, I will have nowhere to go with my gesture.  On top of that, I was conducting "For Unto Us" from Handel's Messiah.

The most difficult part of the class was being unable to transfer what my own mentor wanted into my gesture.  Intellectually I knew what he wanted and I heard that in my head as well.  But I could not seem to create the manifestation of that intellectualization in my gesture.  So frustrating.  I am going to run through it again in front of the lab choir on Monday.  I have been working on creating the change in my gesture since Wednesday, and it is a very difficult process to physically unlearn this gesture I had put in my body from when I was younger.  It has to do with the phrasing of the sixteenth note runs on the phrase "For unto us a child is born."  The emphasis is not on beats 1 and 3.  I don't hear it on 1 and 3.  But that's what my gesture wants to show.  Or wanted to.  I suppose there has been some progress made.  I only hope I can demonstrate SOME improvement on Monday.  Yeesh!

Some of my colleagues are taking comprehensive exams this upcoming week.  This will be me in a year.  I definitely can see how comprehensive exams will take over my life the month before they happen.  I should start studying this summer...

Speaking of next year, I looked at my schedule.  It seems that I will have to take 15 credits next semester as well.  And probably 14 or 15 my last semester.  I really thought I could take 15 credits (max load) this semester and the next two would be less.  This program is designed so that I cannot get through it in two years (even though that's the "time" allotment) unless I transfer in credits.  How silly is it, then, that my school denied my request to apply my graduate theory class from my masters.  Still a bit put off by that.

To Get There...

It's been awhile, but only because this semester is so busy.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday.  I'm giving up stress, pessimism, and chai lattes for Lent.  The stress and the pessimism go hand-in-hand. 

What I am about to say may be a little controversial, since there are those of you that read this blog that will be attending my first recital.  This is the first time I have ever conducted a concert in which I do not feel ready- either me or the singers.  Now, they can sing through all their pieces.  That's not the issue.  But I hear so much more in my head, I want so much more shape, expression, contrast in color, etc.  In a way I feel like I have failed the group I am conducting, because I have not been able to get them there.  At least yet.  It's an odd feeling and I'm trying not to do too much reflection until after the concert.  After all, I still have a job to do and we still have two more rehearsals (although, they are dress rehearsals).  And the more reflection I do, the more I will lament what I *could have* done instead of what I did do.  Either way, that type of reflection should probably wait until after the concert. 

Yet, there is still a part of me that hopes... I hope that tomorrow I will say something or will move my baton in the right way or be clearer about an entrance which will suddenly allow the singers to create beauty out of something currently stale.  I hope tomorrow I will wake up with fresh ears.  And I hope that whatever we don't shape and love tomorrow will become alive on Thursday. 

I have plans in place for tomorrow.  I know what I want to accomplish.  I know what I want to show.  I know how I want us to take the next step... but can we do it? 

So yes... I still hope the music will "come together" (as much as I despise that phrase). 

I have learned a lot in this process.  And I am sure I will continue to learn a lot in the next four days.  And I am grateful to be at this school and conducting these singers and learning from this teacher. 

Let me tell you about Ravel's Trois Chanson.  Briefly.  There is no textual relation between the three pieces.  Or is there?  There does not seem to be, although perhaps I could make some abstract case for one.  The first piece, "Nicolette," is a fairy tale of sorts.  "Trois Beaux" is about a girl who dreamed of three birds, visiting her and bringing her a gift reminding her of her love.  "Ronde" is about old men and women trying to scare the young boys and girls away from the Forest of Ormonde, telling them about the scary creatures in the forest.  These are stories.  And all three are very different in affect.  Even the color between the three pieces is slightly different.  It's a difficult set, not the least of which is the French.  There is so much technical work to be done that it is easy to forget the story of each piece.  And that is where we are in this process.  The story.

Magnificat- Pärt

I have really enjoyed spending time preparing Magnificat by Arvo Pärt.  I'm not completely ready yet, but my paper about him is just about ready to be revised.  The following is not my paper, but rather a very unscholarly free-style writing about Pärt and his music.

Arvo Pärt was born in 1935 in Estonia.  His earliest works were mainly for piano and were neoclassical.  He also composed using serial technique, which he learned from a handful of scores and textbooks that happen to find their way into the USSR.  He did not study early music during this time, and certainly did not study sacred music.  While he was a student, he supplemented his income with being a sound engineer and by writing music for theater and films.  From 1968-1976, he begin a period of compositional silence, during which he attempted to find his own voice.

When he started composing again, he wrote using the tintinnabuli technique.  This is the technique in which my recital piece, Magnificat, was written.  Tintinnabuli technique is (and this is a simplification) two voices- one voice generally stays static on a central pitch (often, but not always, tonic), the other voice moves stepwise around the static note.  There is a way to determine how many pitches the moving voices moves away from the central pitch (normally determined by syllables in word or phrase), but that's a bit more complicated.  It requires things such as graphs and charts to understand (or at least for me to understand).

Magnificat was written in 1989 and premiered in 1990.  The piece has no solid, single bar lines.  It has double bar lines with a breath mark, double bar lines without a breath mark, and dotted bar lines.  The dotted bar lines simple delineate between words.  Truly, this piece is shaped by the text and phrase stress.  Double bar lines normally denote the end of an idea, and double bar lines with a breath (which I give the most of amount of silence to) normally denote the end of a text phrase.  The entire piece alternates between two-voice tintinnabuli and three voice tintinnabuli (a melodic voice moving, while the other two voices only sound chords in a given triad).  The final phrase ends in augmentation of the opening rhythm, and the final chord, Ab flat major with added 4th (or Db major seventh in second inversion) gives it a feeling that the music continues, the music is timeless.  Due to the "crunchiness" of some of the intervals (many seconds), intonation has to be of the utmost important.  In Magnificat, he gives relatively few dynamic or expressive markings.  This is more than he gives many of his other pieces.  He seems determined to encourage the conductor to make musical decisions.

Speaking of encouraging others to make decisions about his music, he also rarely grants interviews and does not speak about his own music.  He said he "prefers to leave that to the musicologists and theorists."  Additionally, he said, "You have to have good musicians who are conscious that they are really giving birth to music, who invest as much in the music as I do when composing it..."  There is a certain dedication the singers must feel to the serene energy of the piece.  It has to feel and be transcendental, otherwise it's simply 7 minutes of long, boring notes.

He has been credited with influencing Björk, Keith Jarrett, Radiohead, and Lupe Fiasco.  He also wrote film music most recently for Fahrenheit 9/11 and There Will be Blood.

Burn-Out

Tonight I received an e-mail from a friend talking about burn-out.  The e-mail prompted me to think pretty intensely about burn-out in previous jobs.  It then caused me to re-evaluate how I'm treating myself now.

I thought about the things I had done to prevent burn-out before (specifically in response to feeling less-than-inspired in one of my previous jobs).  The first thing I did was recommit to being the best music educator I could be.  My entire focus became my students and their musical education.  I had less time for administrative pettiness, complaining parents, and pointless paperwork.  I did not let negativity from others permeate my home life- I did not carry it around with me.  I made it clear I was there to be the best educator I could be- to give the students the best musical education in the safest, most encouraging environment possible.  I quickly learned that grumpy administration and complaining parents could not argue with a teacher who was focused solely on what was best for that student/their child.  And yes, I brought other work to professional development.  I paid attention to the meetings and I asked questions that were relevant to me, but I was not going to waste 8 hours of my day talking about paperwork or trying to be convinced that standards should apply to all subjects. Of course standards should be applied!  So let me work on being better at teaching so my students can achieve higher levels.

I also gave myself time to do things outside of work.  I kept work at work.  Outside of work, I explored the area, spent time with friends, and planned vacations.

And it worked!

But that leads me to now.  I need to recommit to a few things.  I need to keep work and school outside of my home as much as possible.  I will have to do some things at home, but I have an office, a library, a coffee shop to go to do work.  I will recommit to inspiring conversations.  I will take time to watch a video that gets me excited about conducting and I will not feel guilty for spending that time on my passion.  I will not worry that taking time for myself (doing things such as eating, working out, or reading) is a waste of time.  Well, maybe I will, but I will fight it.

I am inspired.

Upcoming two weeks

It is so cold.  But tomorrow I will venture to the library to begin the important things I need to complete in the next two weeks.  This includes a paper and a presentation.  With that being said, I'm going to warn you that the next few posts will probably be bits and pieces of my recital paper or portions of things I learn during my presentation research.  

I'm a little nervous I won't get it all done.  But I have to.  So no worries.  I'm bringing hot chocolate mix and a mug with me to the library tomorrow.  It's too cold to be missing a warm drink in my hands.