(no subject)

[verbminx]

Afternoon spent almost exactly as planned, for once. Went out to Panera, had a salad and endless refills of hazelnut coffee, clattered away on Little Boy while listening to music. (CD-rom on laptop computer = fantastic; negates need to carry separate cd player.) Drove to Target, rather across town in rush-hour traffic, to return the two pairs of shoes I bought last week. I kept the black pointy Danton flats but got them in a different size. Again, photos forthcoming.

Decided to make a stop at the music store on the way home. I've been meaning to go there for a while to look for a few specific songbooks (The Singer's Musical Theater Anthology, Vol 1, Soprano - if you're curious), but it's out of the way, only accessible from one direction because of a weird triangular traffic island in front of it. I happened to be going in the proper direction, so I stopped - forgetting that school started this week and the store was chock full of junior high kids buying used cellos. They did not have the book I was looking for, but had another which looked interesting, particularly when I found a song I thought I was looking for. "Go, Lovely Rose." Except it wasn't. The song I found was actually "The Last Rose of Summer" and was a different song about roses that I sang a solo in when I was around sixteen years old. They sort of run together in my memory, except that one is a standard and the other is a sort of melancholy modernist madrigal. I went in with no intention of buying anything, and keeping to my intention was easy.

Also, picked up brownie mix (that's what momster wants for her birthday tomorrow instead of a cake). I believe we are going to eat a pot-roast tomorrow (sorry, vegan friends!) and paint ceramics.

Now I'm just waiting for it to be late enough for me to go to sleep. (Again, when did I become an 80-year-old man?)

Comments

[monkeyman.livejournal.com]

heh, bet there's a lot of Rogers & Hammerstein in that book.

ewwww, pot roast. ;)

[verbminx.livejournal.com]

there's a moderate amount. also a good deal of Lerner & Loewe. I think most of my "Signature Audition Songs" are in it, and my copy vanished at Baccalaureate about 9 years ago - I lent it to my choral director so that she could accompany me on "You'll Never Walk Alone." there's also, let me see... "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "The Simple Joys of Maidenhood" (a SAS), "Where or When" (a SAS), "Till There Was You" etc. I feel like I ought to have a copy so that I can stay in practice and have songs ready if I ever feel like auditioning for anything again. Though I haven't in like ten years. Partly because I haven't had my damned sheet music.

Also, I love the feel of dead cow in my tummy! :D

[coconuthead.livejournal.com]

I thought that "Who'll buy my lavender sweet" song was the only one written for sopranos---that's all the sopranos at my high school ever got to sing.

[verbminx.livejournal.com]

augh. you know, i never sang that one, and it wasn't popular around here. what WAS popular was a purely awful old song called "the lass with the delicate air" and another called "cockles and mussels". also "caro mio ben" from Schirmer's infamous and inescapable 24 Italian Songs and Arias of the 17th and 18th Centuries.

I avoided them all like the plague.

Also avoided: "My Heart Ever Faithful" by Bach, "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth" by Handel, etc. My best classical songs were by Bach ("Quia Respexit" from Magnificat), Handel ("O Sleep, Why Dost Thou Leave Me?") and Purcell, though, especially the latter ("When I Am Laid In Earth" and "Music For A While" being the best).

[coconuthead.livejournal.com]

Oh, I might not have escaped 24 Italian songs. I had to do one called "Nel Cor Piu Non Mi Cento" or something like that. My teacher didn't have a clue about Italian pronunciation, so I caught hell for that at contest.

I didn't have a best. My teacher decided I should be a soprano, but I didn't feel very well suited to it, because past a certain point it all went squawky. You must actually have a nice voice.

[verbminx.livejournal.com]

I spent my entire adolescence in opera training. Which did wonders for my popularity, I'm sure you can imagine. I almost became an opera singer, but I just... meh. Completely lost interest a year or two after graduating. I sound a lot like Joan Sutherland or June Anderson.

Most high school choirs seem to be: girls who don't go too offkey in upper ranges go to soprano, girls who can barely hold a tune and have a 5-note range go to alto. There are sopranos who can't sing (argh, i used to have to stand next to them), and altos who can, but the arbitrary division seems to be that the people who have developed a range go into soprano and the people who haven't go into alto.

and yep, I know "Nel Cor Piu..."! "Mi pizzichi, mi stuzzichi! Mi pungichi, mi mastichi! Che cosa e questo ahime! Pieta, pieta! pieta!" But the song I was always better at from that particular book was, um, "Se tu m'ami." It's really flirty. It's about a girl telling the simple shepherd boy who's in love with her that, well, he's cute and all, but he's not the ONLY cute boy out there, and...

wow!

[coconuthead.livejournal.com]

I'm not an opera fan, but I am impressed that you had the ability and the discipline to train for it.

I vaguely remember the shepherd boy one. I think Mrs. D showed it to me but then decided on Nel Cor.

Re: wow!

[verbminx.livejournal.com]

... it may not be the same one. that damned book is FULL of songs about shepherd boys. ;)