2023, Gatherings, Kids, Music, Uncategorized

Musical Challenges

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We have a new church Worship and Music director, who also directs the choir. She is our son’s age, and we have known her since we first saw her at her infant baptism 35 years ago. She was an elementary music teacher and has a lovely mezzo voice. She has purchased lots of new, challenging music for us. We had got pretty entrenched with the same pieces with the former director.

Our church choir is pretty small with about ten regular singers. We are often short on sopranos, which we were yesterday on Reformation Sunday. This is a big day for Lutherans, and there was a display of Luther’s 95 Theses in the front of the church. Our choir director planned big, and we sang three very challenging choral pieces, and recruited the high school band director to play timpani, a college trombone student, a high school trumpet player, and three sopranos who sing in the Badlands Opera organization. Ironically, four of our visiting musicians were Roman Catholics, but they sat cheerfully through two services and sang “A Mighty Fortress” with gusto. They even took communion!

Our bell choir director is also the organist. She has been taking the choir director’s lead and giving us very challenging music, too. It is fun, but sort of daunting to try new things and stretch ourselves in ways we haven’t had to before. The congregation is very happy with our efforts. I believe it was Gustav Holst who said in reference to small church choirs attempting difficult musical pieces that “anything worth doing is worth doing badly”, which I take as encouragement to keep performing these challenging works even if we don’t do them perfectly.

What are some of the positive challenges you have had lately? Have you been part of an organization where positive “shake ups” have happened? What is the most challenging musical work you ever performed?

25 thoughts on “Musical Challenges”

  2. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Today is Lou’s 80th birthday, a laudable milestone, I think.

    Positive Challenges?: Bringing a puppy into the household and getting her to doggie adulthood is a challenge, especially after her spaying on Wednesday. Keeping her quiet is a laughable goal. We can keep her more confined to the house and reduce opportunity for too much activity. But quiet? I don’t think so. She seems completely happy and healthy though.

    Shake ups?: Working in bureaucracies, they were constant, and often just an Executive Director’s vanity. Nuff Said. Otherwise I could go on for days about this.

    Challenging Musical Piece?: As a college sophomore I played Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Minor. Mozart was not a clarinetist, he was a pianist,so he often inserted nearly impossible technical challenges into this work (as he did with most of his instrumental pieces). The entire piece is in three movements that total about 35 minutes. I did not have an orchestra available for accompaniment, so I had an outstanding pianist for the occasion. We practiced relentlessly. My uncle, who just died on Friday, brought an entire reel-to-reel tape recorder to the recital and recorded my part of the recital. This occurred in 1973, so the recording technology was relatively crude. The recording will probably be unearthed by his children in the coming months as they clean out his very cluttered house as they prepare it for the next chapter. That house will be a be challenge that dwarfs Mozart.

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    1. Bravo to you playing the Mozart concerto! Yesterday we sang Randall Thompson’s The Last Words of King David, which was very difficult with key modulations and dramatic dynamics.

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  3. What are some of the positive challenges you have had lately? Have you been part of an organization where positive “shake ups” have happened? What is the most challenging musical work you ever performed

    In my early 20s I sang in the concert choir and the chamber choir at a community college in Los Angeles. There were “district wide” choir festivals, (9 colleges), and I really enjoyed being part of those, which were held at the Los Angeles Music Center (where the Oscars are done). I think the greatest part was being on the stage there. Sort of like “I sang at Carnegie Hall” would be in New York City. 5 decades are a long time. I don’t recall the music, but that stage was !!!!

    I’m the “tool librarian” at the neighborhood tool library. About 18 months ago the “tool activists” realized that we were not being led by anyone, so we organized ourselves and got a budget from the association that owns the place. Now we run it, and they pay. We’ve learned to work together, and things go well.

    In a move to create an anti-racism statement at a local church, we’ve been reading lots of books. One focused on concrete actions to take, including “support minority-owned businesses.” I was imagining myself exempt from that, when I realized that the little Mexican grocery stores around town are minority owned. So some of my shopping will shift. There was a food-truck event last week at the civic center. That principle also guided which truck I patronized. All it takes is paying attention and giving it a little thought.

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  4. 1. Trying to stay positive about an upcoming trip to Oman & the UAE (this trip has been cancelled twice due to Covid, once due to medical situation). We are supposed to go in February but with the Israeli-Gaza war, we are uncertain as to whether or not the trip will occur (so far the tour company says they are monitoring the situation and trips are currently still operating) and whether or not we would be comfortable with going.
    2. During the last 10 years or so of my hospital nursing career there were many “positive changes” which actually turned out to be quite challenging (and continue to be so today). Examples: Cutting back on support staff which meant more work for the nurses; Changing the computer charting systems twice – more time consuming than paper charting.
    3. Most piano music I play is challenging because I have very small hands/short fingers and can barely reach an octave. My best piano teacher would get frustrated trying to find music which would challenge me but also be “reachable”. Over the years I have learned to “fudge” – playing a sixth instead of an octave or leaving out the top or bottom note of an octave chord. I have found my niche in accompanying school or children’s choirs. The most challenging musical work? There were two. In high school I was one of two keyboard accompanists for a combined community choir performance of “The Messiah”. The other accompanist was a piano teacher. She and I divvied up the pieces so that she got the really difficult ones. Many years later I purchased a simplified version of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”. It wasn’t all that simplified and there were at least 4 out of 33 pages that I couldn’t figure out at all. I can play most of it relatively well but there are a lot of notes left out due to the above noted hand issues.

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    1. I work for a long time to master the glissando at the beginning of Rhapsody… Very challenging. Coordinating the fingers to do that was a really delicate operation. Jacque

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      1. Don’t ask me why or how I know this but the clarinetist with Paul Whiteman’s orchestra that introduced the glissando to Rhapsody was named Ross Gorman and it originally was added to the opening as a sort of joke.

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  6. What are some of the positive challenges you have had lately?

    My writers marketing group, Midwest Mystery Works (5 of us), is attempting to write a novella featuring our five main protagonists (one per writer). We all start with a short story where our character gets involved in the main mystery, and then we’ll bring the five protags together to bring down the Uber-bad guy. I don’t think I’m good at short stories, and I hate collaborating, but it’s forcing me out of my comfort zone to make me a better writer . . . or give it up altogether! 🙂

    Have you been part of an organization where positive “shake ups” have happened?

    No

    What is the most challenging musical work you ever performed?

    So many to consider. My senior trumpet recital main piece at the U of M was a concerto by Arutunian that was quite difficult. “Variations on ‘Carnival of Venice'” in my Arban-Clarke trumpet method book was possibly the most individually challenging piece I ever attempted (never performed it in public, thank God!). To get an idea of its difficulty, you can track down recordings of it on YouTube. The best I’ve ever heard play it is Wynton Marsalis with the U of Michigan Wind Ensemble (a great CD for trumpet lovers and WM fans.).

    I also remember being in the U of MN Jazz Ensemble when Dizzy Gillespie was our guest artist. He brought in a bunch of tunes that were handwritten charts in terrible chicken scratch, and we had, I think, one rehearsal to decipher them. Next to impossible. We even brought in a pro to help the trumpet section at the performance, Steven Wright, because even our lead trumpet player, Dave Jensen, was pushed to his limit.

    I faked my way through the performance the best I could, but I’m sure the audience wasn’t blown away by the trumpet section that night. Hopefully, they were so focused on Dizzy that they didn’t notice. ;-(

    Chris in Owatonna

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      1. Agreed, although his “Moto Perpetuo” on the same recording is pretty damned impressive too. All done in “one breath” thanks to circular breathing. A technique I never mastered but really wanted to.

        Chris

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  7. Actually, you’re all impressive – what challenges y’all have undertaken!

    1. UU anomalies keep showing up, just when I think I’m on top of everything. I could go on for pages, but to time – have to go to a meeting about one of them.

    2. The school system was trying hard to change in the 70s, but I left because it was happening too slowly.

    3. I played a not-that-difficult piece by Grieg, Anitra’s Dance, for a piano recital – being “on stage” was the hardest part, but I survived with no major screw-ups.

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  9. OT – Today is National Checklist Day. I also understand that tomorrow’s the date that Aldi’s annual advent calendars drop. I trust that VS has it on her one of her lists to drive to Wisconsin tomorrow to purchase a couple. (This is PlainJane – it looks as if WP is not going to let me log in.)

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  10. 1. I’m not sure about positive challenges but I’ve been quite busy lately. I’ve been getting a lot done around my house and it will have had almost an entire makeover when I’m done.
    2. The most memorable positive shake-up for a work group I was part of was when my former supervisor (at DNR in Waterville) was fired. (Yay!)
    3. I used to have a very high singing voice. My voice teacher at St. Olaf told me I sang in the “coloratura” range. She had me performing some high voice pieces. I can’t remember the names of all of them but one was the Norwegian Echo Song. https://youtu.be/cMjBmsto3GI?si=xm6LXb93y41u1KIa

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