A better day - 7/9

7/20 -
It appears that Oxford is now letting me post!  Not quite sure what was preventing my earlier posts.
Indeed, July 9 was much better.  The first conducting session was a taking apart of all my conducting structures internally and externally.  I cried but I also realized that I had to get to the extreme fundamentals and it doesn't include conducting patterns! :-)


Some of my notes from that day include:

1. When you pull music from context, you pull it out by its roots.
   This is a difficult one because, in the case of chant, we are not monastics.  We are not the ones, as James Whitbourn said, who have sacrificed their lives for the sake of a monastic life. How do we contextualize something of which we are NOT a part?  Of a time that is different from ours?  We have to seek the universal, the timelessness, the eternity of the music. We will not always understand, but we can bring our imagination and our humanity to it!
2. Worry pulls attention to that which you are worried about. Are you expecting something to go wrong?  When it goes wrong, do you try to fix it?  Most often you will make it worse.  Encourage the singers, look beyond the elements that worry you.  Trust them to fix it.
3. Stay in the music.This is a corollary to the worry.  Don't let incidents pull you out of the music, as it disconnects you very quickly!
4. Get out of the way of the music; let it carry you.
5. Do not manipulate the sound; it is a cheap trick and makes the music dishonest.
6. Let go.