Aaaauuuggghh!!!

Today’s rehearsal saw the arrival of our long-awaited clarinetist, Mary Anne -  who seems to be making a name for herself not as a clarinetist (which she majored in during college), but as a violist.

First, let me say that I am now committed to getting someone to play clarinet in The Orchestra on a permanent basis (two clarinetists would be most excellent) – Mary Anne’s playing has convinced me it is a must. Fureai just sounded so…wretchedly good(!!!)…it was like getting shot through the heart again!

Alas, the first violins snapped – mass amnesia seemed to be the theme today, with everyone forgetting entrances, positions, completely ignoring key signatures, and coming down with intense deafness – very unusual behavior, if you ask me. It took quite a bit of effort on my part to stop from latching onto someone’s head and gnawing their brains out in a fit. It was quite embarrassing.

Excuse me. I need to go hurt something.

Dice, Mince, Puree.

Mid-week rehearsals really are a case study in patience and consideration. This is the time when the excuses come out of the woodwork at the last minute, fast and thick. The excuses range from “Sir-I’ve-chosen-to-be-involved-in-too-many-school-organizations-and-activities-and-now-they’re-all-making-urgent-demands-of-me-at-the-same-time” to “I forgot!”

I’m actually starting to notice a pattern in excuse-delivery: wait until I’m to caught-up in the actual rehearsal before popping the excuse in front of a lot of people so that I will be to flustered to argue and therefore am obliged to give-in. A rather elegant methodology, I must say so.

But yesterday, I decided to be as positive about it as possible. Only one violist? Hey, I’m glad you’re here. Two cellists? Definitely better than one cellist. Four 2nd Violins? Not bad! Two 1st violins? Oh, I’ve worked with worse.

All in all, rehearsal wasn’t too bad: the flutes were out in force, and the Principal Flute amazed Principal Percussionist with her vacuum cleaner lungs. Intonation was still a bit dodgy, but that wasn’t too much of a problem. I did learn something new about the fine art of blending.

Here in the Philippines, the term blending is often used to mean singing or playing in harmony. But that’s not how I’m using the word now. I’m referring to the blending of sonorities; how actual timbres, not pitches, combine. I discovered that two people can actually play the same note in tune and in time, yet still fail to blend. I’m not sure how exactly that works (it could be because it takes at least 3 violins to sound like a group of violins – two violins sound like…well…two violins), but it does provide some very interesting food for thought.

I do hope someone would like to take-up conducting next school year so I can put in some time playing in The Orchestra…to see what it’s like among the rank and file…gain an appreciation for what they have to deal with in regards to the instrument they play, the music in front of them, and the quirky fellow waving that baton around.

Hearts and Minds

DISCLAIMER: The following post describes events that occured yesterday – but since I couldn’t get to a computer, I had to wait until now to write about it.

I tried – I really did. I got to school early, prayed about it, tried to get my attitude ready…and it all just came tumbling down.

First, the pianist/singer pops in only to tell me he can’t make it – he even brought his dad along, most likely for leverage. Refusing to be completely intimidated, I told him he should have told me ahead of time, since I had already hauled out the piano for him by the time he arrived – I also told him (his dad looked bewildered, for some reason) that I wouldn’t let him off the hook next rehearsal – I couldn’t afford to be lenient anymore.

Most of the orchestra actually arrived late – supposedly, the downbeat is at 9AM. It actually came down at 10.

Most of The Orchestra had forgotten how to play most of the songs – intonation was shoddy, tempo was ad libitum, dynamics were laissez faire. The Concertmaster had forgotten how to play her solos and was soundly trounced by a sectionmate that few people in the orchestra took seriously. All in all, results were dismally mediocre.

What made the whole fiasco unbearable was the fact that I knew things could be so much better – when these kids decide to do something well, the sound they produce will shock you. As it was, it was as if everyone just wanted to play the notes and get the whole thing over with.

I admit, my temper wore thin – very thin. I tried to get antidote on my tongue, but I’m afraid an acerbic word or two slipped out – which, although not aimed at any one person, likely had a demoralizing effect all the same.

I dismissed the orchestra one hour after our scheduled dismissal time. There was some groaning and whining, but not as much as in previous rehearsals; the usual whiners knew I was in no mood to so much as hear their verbalizations of self-imposed misery, so they tried to resort to visual forms of expression…which I shot down just the same.

My irritability lasted long into the day, all the way until a dinner performance for a church dinner fellowship smack in the middle of a military base – I snapped at a few people whom I felt (wrongly) were criticizing the way I was spending my valentines day (oh yeah, it was valentines day). Of course I felt awful immediately afterwards, and desperately apologized.

That was when I realized it was high-time I took the whole mess to God. In the resulting conversation, I realized that throughout the year, I had been praying for the skill of The Orchestra; it was time for me to pray about their attitude.

The skill part, I realized, God had poured out in abundance, almost without my realizing it – but I guess sometime during the year, I forgot the The Orchestra’s raison d’etre: our music is but a means to an end, and our end is that hearts and minds may be pointed upward, God-ward.

Of course, excellence is important – mediocrity is still the devil’s handiwork, but excellence without the proper perspective is hollow and empty – lasting only a moment, and no-less the devil’s handiwork compared to mediocrity.

I am reminded of my father’s words to my mother, back when I was floundering in The Darkness: “I am not interested in my son’s comfort – I am interested in his character.”

The Breath of God

Yesterday I found myself in Baguio City, a good 6-hour bus ride from Manila, to attend and perform at the wedding of two college friends.

It really was a weekend of firsts: I’ve never left the house at 10PM to return 48 hours later (at least, that’s how long I predict it will be for me to get back), I’ve never caught a bus to got out of Manila at 12 midnight. I’ve never arrived in Baguio City (the coldest city in the Philippines, climate-wise, as far as I’m concerned) at 530AM – believe me, it is COLD. I’ve never unwittingly convinced so many people that I’m actually a good violinist – I really have to shake my head at that one. I’ve never allowed myself to voluntarily dance at any social event, let alone at a wedding – it’s still very awkward for me (I’m still stuck-up when it comes to how I appear in public), but it’s not entirely unpleasant…I could probably do it again, under the right circumstances.

But perhaps the most important first for me is that this is the first wedding that just seemed undeniably, inexorably (I really like that word) holy. Nevermind that I don’t really know the couple all that well, and that 70% of the time I felt like an outsider who had been invited mainly because he plays the violin – you had this real sense that the whole thing had been abundantly blessed by God – in public. The perfect weather (late afternoon), the music that was performed better than had been practiced, the huge outpouring of love for the couple from family and friends (some of whom came from abroad just for this) – but more importantly, the testimony that both bride and groom brought to the altar: the unchanging emphasis on how God was, and still is, first in their lives, even with regards to one another, and how keeping Him as their “first, greatest love” was the only way for bride and groom to continue loving one another through the years (that really struck a chord in me – in ways I’m still ruminating over). It also helped that at key points in the ceremony, a fair gust would blow across the hills and through the pines, and, would speak, as one of the pianists pointed out. I would like to see it as the Breath of God.

I had prepared myself for some hilarity to break out at some point, given how the ground where we stood sloped downhill (if you leaned in the wrong direction, well…you get the idea), how the musicians took so long to come to decisions about a certain number, how the wind would blow our sheet music and lead sheets into our faces right when we were busy playing them – but I have to take all that back. It was an amazing wedding…easily the best I’ve ever attended/performed at – and I think it will be an amazing marriage.

I look back, and have to say that feeling left out of the loop was but a small price to pay to witness something like this – something that the world gets so wrong so often, but in this instance God Himself made right. As the lessons witnessed in these past 36 hours are made more clear to me, expect more posts about this.

In the meantime, I now leave the city of Baguio thinking that if and when my own time comes (and I do pray it’s more a question of when and not if), I’d like God to breathe on my wedding, too – and now commit myself to doing my part to allow Him to do so.

One more lungful of the cool, pine-scented air…and we are off.

Music and Lyrics

At youth group last Sunday, I talked about how music and lyrics, once married together, are next to impossible to divorce – even separated, the music will inevitably remind you of the lyrics, and the lyrics will inexorably bring to mind the music.

Many writers before me have written of how the marriage of words and music is one, if not the artistic masterstroke ofthe human race. They go so well together, it is altogether impossible (at least for me) to conceive of a time when they were not together.

I write this because I’ve recently read the lyrics to that BBC Proms staple, Jerusalem by Hubert Parry – this after hearing it for over a year or so. I have a DVD of the last night of the 2000 Proms, and popping it into a portable DVD player, I discovered the thing had subtitles (yes, yes, I hear the laughter).

The disc got to the singing of Jerusalem, and I discovered these lyrics, first penned by the poet William Blake:

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire.

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.

Nevermind that the first lines speak of the Kabbalistic tradition (which is unbiblical) of Jesus Christ  journeying to England – there’s something about the idea of building the City of God among “dark, satanic mills” that I find undeniably stirring in the most profound way – building a godly life atop (and here I must use a stronger word than Blake used: atop and not among - one must tear down the old city before a new one can be built) the dark machinations of a sensuous one.

Ah, I wish I could write something like that. I don’t think I can hear that tune again and those words not come to mind.