DICHTERLIEBE DIARY 13

If you're just tuning in, check the archives for Dichterliebe Diary 1, etc.
It's cheaper than Xanax.

Today Ben announced that we need to schedule an actual date to have at least a run through in front of an audience.

I said, who do we hate enough? He said it's only twenty minutes and I'll make a cake.
But its still a few weeks off thanks be to God.
At today's rehearsal we did the entire work straight through.
We'll need to do this several times per week, or at least I will--for the stamina.
Rule #1 don't jump a two foot wall before you can jump a one foot wall.
In my case, my tummy gets in the way of my looking at my feet so the height of the wall doesn't matter but you get my drift.
The gift of this cycle remains with me. Everytime I turn a page I'm astonished and thrilled all over again. Ben is good at micro details.
Hold that note three beats, as Schumann wrote. This is not the palce to get artsy.
I play a chord on the second beat dissonant with what you are doing and we have to bring that out. Stop putting umlauts on every vowel except the ones that have umlauts.

For myself, I notice that my German often has a faux French or Italain accent.
I was pretty shocked when stoped at the first word: "IM wunderschoenen monnat Mai...
since I was singing "EEM wunderschoenen..." Other great words like 'stumm' and 'fluss'get the same treatment. About the only accent I can't muster, besides German is Boston Irish, and you'd think at least that I'd get right.

I was looking for an experience from which to learn and grow and boy have I found one. An honest and lengthy study of the lied forces introspection and self examination, in addition to developing musicianship. Since I am often asked to help young singers I'm getting a real idea of what I ask them to do, how difficult and exhausting it is, and how they need to be loved a bit more.
The problem is still to do the music and text as written while being a musician, linguist, actor interpreter and techniian. Sometimes I can manage one or two together, but no more so far. It is an exhausting challenge, and I suspect even the greatest artists, when they finally felt they were getting it right, had sung themselves out!

But its a helluva great way to go!