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.