Some guarded chirping

 

Every now and then, after fate has trodden on your favourite chocolate brownies* you go to the corner store for loo rolls and find that they're having a half-price sale on Taittinger's.**  Today's voice lesson was really kind of exciting in a little tiny down-here-among-the-wood-lice*** way. 

            I've been toiling and thudding on with Sebben Crudele, convinced, among other things, that I'm getting nowhere†.  Oh, Italian.  Oh . . . Italian.  I am the woman who still sounds (nearly) as American as she did when she stepped off the plane twenty years ago to stay.  Linguistic adaptability is not my forte.  Which may help to explain why my Italian remains staunchly as it might be spoken in . . . southern Montana.†  I even seemed to be going backwards:  those of you with the fortitude to be paying attention to my encounters with Nadia may remember that I claimed to have figured out that it's all about vowels, and you tack the occasional brief consonantal hiatus at the edges of syllables occasionally.  And then I frelling lost this again, and languiiiiiiir†† in particular was coming out languirrrrrrrr.  As I am known to say:  arrrrrrrrgh.  I'm fond of rrrrrs.  Dangerously fond, evidently.

            Meanwhile another song that Blondel had flung at me had begun intruding on my practise sessions.  Sebben crudele, I would begin . . . Caro mio ben.  Wait.  Wrong song.  Go away.  But it kept humming itself in the back of my mind while I was singing Suzanne and Gypsy Rover.†††  So eventually I fished it out and had another look at it.  Hmmm.‡ 

            I don't know, maybe being overwhelmed by Italian by adding on a second frelling song sort of loosened the grip of the 'no-no-no-can't-can't-can't'.  It's not that my Italian got better, exactly‡‡, but it did start becoming less of a frelling barrier.  Match up the funny syllables with the notes and just get on, okay? 

            Meanwhile I had been carefully sparing myself endless morale-diminishing re-hearings of that amazing young woman on YouTube singing Sebben Crudele, but when the languirrrrrr started ruining my day I decided drastic measures were called for—and I listened to her three times straight through, like taking your cod liver oil in one big gulp‡‡‡.  And—languuuuuuiiiir!  Of course!  How could I not have got that—!

            I went to my lesson today feeling, if anything, a bit sheepish.  The mountain strained and produced a mouse§ and all that.  And one of the stupidly frustrating things about learning to do anything is that as soon as you do start learning it . . . you develop something to lose.  Frell.  I used to go into Nadia merely looking forward to forty-five minutes of teacher-magic.  Now, while she still gets noises out of me I can't get out of myself at home, I want the work I'm doing to show.  And I'm not at all convinced that it does.§§

            Today was, furthermore, complicated by the fact that—it's school hols or something—I was Nadia's only student, and she'd come out without most of her music . . . including her Italian Arias book.  So I had to sing without the piano.  Good, she'd say.  Do it again, and sound like you mean it.§§§

            And you know . . . I did, a little.  I'm not ready to sell tickets or anything but . . . I was a person singing a song today, for Nadia. 

* * *

* Read = quarter peal

** I wish I had a corner store like this. 

*** What?  You don't know Cantata for 1,007 Wood Lice, Two Organs, and a Squirrel?

† Ie, normal sort of week's practise.  The other things include that I am a prat, that poor Nadia really needs the money to go on giving me lessons, and that the reason Chaos comes and stares at me when I sing is that he knows he could do it better.^

^ Or possibly that he longs to alleviate the terrible pain I am clearly in. 

† And if there is a large Italian-American community in southern Montana, my apologies. 

†† The basic translation that you find everywhere for Sebben Crudele, which appears to be one of those songs that everyone sings, is dire^.  I don't know if a proper poet has ever tackled it—or if he/she has, if the result is under copyright somewhere—or if the original Italian is also dire, and it's just a bunch of syllables to hang some tuneful anguish on and never mind.  But this translation, while no more graceful, lets you see what the words you're singing mean, and I agree that you want to know this.^^  http://www.wikihow.com/Sing-the-Italian-Art-Song-Sebben-Crudele

            You have to scroll down a ways.  This is your tiny on-line Nadia.   Although in the pronunciation guide you need to cut that first 'b' on Sebben.  Seh-behn.  Speaking of consonants. 

^ 'with the patience of my serving'?  What?  

^^ . . . Good grief. 

††† Suzanne because it's all on about three and a half notes, the way Leonard Cohen songs usually are, bless the boy.  And I love his lyrics^, speaking of real poets.  Gypsy Rover . . . well, because I've loved it for pushing fifty years and because it turns out to be surprisingly easy to fool around with when your teacher has started nagging you about dynamics.  Don't know why Gypsy Rover particularly.  But of the dozen or twenty or so songs I sing more or less regularly when I'm not practising for my lesson^^, it's the one that I can most easily twiddle so the individual lines not only feel like they have some shape and (cough cough) direction, but I can make the verses differ one from another—without feeling that I'm just jerking some poor innocent song around.  This may be nonsense—I may be just jerking a poor innocent song around—but at least it gives me a chance to think about this stuff. 

^ Even if he is perhaps just a trifle obsessed with sex.  At least his sex is interesting, says the woman who has just thrown another urban fantasy against the wall for having a long detailed graphic sex scene without naming any embarrassing body parts.  'He was heavy and thick'.  Really?  Don't you want an intelligent one? 

^^ The Voice Is A Muscle and Needs Exercise Like Any Other Muscle 

‡ Do any of you real singers out there, or any of you attentive art-song listeners, think that the standard piano accompaniment to Caro mio ben makes the rather plinkety-plonk piano of the notorious Italian Art Song book—where Sebben Crudele appears with twenty-odd of its mates—sound like Chopin? 

‡‡ Or for that matter, inexactly 

‡‡‡ It amuses me a lot that when I was a kid I was the only one I knew who was still forced to take cod liver oil . . . and now fifty years later cod liver oil is totally hot and trendy among the nutrition mafia.  Yes, I take it—again.   

§ Or possibly a wood louse 

§§ Yes. Normal, says Nadia briskly. 

§§§ There was also a terrifying conversation about how a C# may be more than a C#.  Oh gods!  I said.  You're going to try to talk to me about equal temperament tuning!  Yes, she said.  The voice is not a tuned instrument.  We do not have to compromise.  We can adjust to each individual note. 

            The funny thing is that away from the piano I could hear that there was something wrong with my C#.  I thought I was just going flat.  Well, you are, a little, said Nadia.  But that's because that C# needs to be a little sharp.  Which, since you're singing it, you can do.

            AAAAAAAUGH.  —So much of this, as I have said before, said to Nadia today, and will say again to both of you, is that there's so frelling much to remember.  As soon as I remember one thing six others go to the wall.  Sixteen.  Sixty.  Just singing frelling exercises, as soon as I'm trying to loosen/balance/ground one thing something else stiffens up/refuses to play/flies away.  Remembering and managing:  the whole your instrument is your body thing . . . does everything make my voice seize up?  Well, yes, more or less.  Could I absolutely not sing last night after our failed quarter attempt?  You bet.  Was it only that I was tired?  No.  I'd like to say yes, but . . . no.