Did You Not See My Lady

 

Tonight was one of those so, I hear scrimshaw is nice this time of year*, bell practises.  It was at South Desuetude, whose bells are also possessed by demons, although a different family of demons than Old Eden's.  Also the ropes appear to be made out of some strange, floppy, un-rope-like substance, more resembling old socks you have donated to the cause of hellhound amusement than rope.  This does not add to either pleasure or accuracy.  We will note, however, before we pass gracefully on to other topics, that the rest of the band didn't seem to be having much trouble.

            However this afternoon Nadia did manage to convince me not to give up singing forever**, not that she's aware that that was what she was doing.  But I went in and whinged and moaned about my non-future in the Muddlehamptons and she suggested that as a way to think about the next few months when I know I'm not going to be in the concert, and do I bother to go to practise or not?, that I should go with the aim of their really wanting me to come back in the spring.  Which means yes, I not merely go, I sing with energy and conviction.  Now if only I had a voice. ***  Well, we're working on that.  Energy.  Conviction.   And . . . um . . .

            Because I've been feeling so let down by the Muddlehampton situation—and because secretly I already know I don't want to give up singing forever, I just wanted someone else to tell me that—I decided that the Only Thing to Do was learn a new song.  So I chose another one, which Cecilia Bartoli also sings†, out of my Everyone Starts Here Italian Songbook and asked Nadia to unglue the Italian for me.  Which brought up Silent Worship which I'm supposed to be learning in the Italian.  I had thought I was doing reasonably well with it.   Oops.††    But my eye will keep skipping back up to the English.†††  Okay, this week I'll be good. . . .‡

 * * *

* All those red maples . . . uh . . . all right, a slight confusion of milieu.  But I think of scrimshaw^ as being totally the product of the New England whaling industry, and of course it isn't.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrimshaw  Common sense will tell you that some cousin of the Lascaux lot, not to be outdone, would have tried drawing on teeth and bones because they were there like cave walls are there.  At most the New England whalers reinvented it at a time that it would finally get itself noticed by the art crowd.^^  I grew up knowing it existed and thinking it was cool^^^, but also knowing that I am a klutz, and that I dislike the sight of blood, especially my own.  I'm also surprised to read how late (new) ivory was made illegal:  it was certainly already an issue when I was a teenager and suffering from unpremeditated leftie eco idealism.~  But . . . camel bone?  Anyone know why camels (and giraffes)?  But if I needed another time sink which, you know, somehow I don't, I could totally see buying some camel bone and a lot of teeny digging tools.~~ 

^ Thank you, Aaron

^^ http://www.hopscrimshaw.com/about/scrimhistory.htm 

^^^ Possibly assisted by reading MOBY-DICK at an impressionable age.  While LOTR is my desert island book and I've only read MOBY-DICK two or three times, I have  somewhat similar feelings about both in that I (mostly) understand what readers who don't like one or the other are complaining about—but I feel sorry for them.  MOBY-DICK is fabulous.  It's wholly nuts, especially toward the end, as what started as a discursive but still more or less recognizable narrative disintegrates (perhaps) under the weight of Ahab's increasing madness, but—amazing.+  Don't give me any lip about long.  Hellooo:  JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR NORRELL?  THE NAME OF THE WIND++? PERDIDO STREET STATION?  Yes, MOBY-DICK is long.  So?

+ I admit it's a guy book.  Not a lot of women on your average 19th century whaler.   

++ And isn't the sequel longer?  Don't know if  THE SCAR counts as a sequel to PERDIDO?  Or how long it is.  

~ I still suffer from leftie eco idealism, but it's no longer unpremeditated.

~~ Very very slightly seriously—it's too late at night to be serious—one of the reasons I enjoy doodling^ is that I've always been fascinated by line.  When I was drawing semi-seriously—there's that dratted word again—I always began with line.  I mean yes, of course, you have to start with line:  you have to get some kind of mark on the page.  But to me line remained preeminent even after all the other stuff went in.  So I'm not being entirely flippant when I say I'd probably enjoy learning scrimshaw.  I'm better with sharp objects than I used to be too.^^  

^ Note:  there will (finally) be an important announcement.  Probably tomorrow.

^^ See:  cutting up chicken for hellhounds.  Maybe I'm just better at pain.

** And take up scrimshaw

*** Harpergray wrote:  The choir leader said (or, rather, emailed), Thank you, you have a lovely voice

::jealousy::  SIGH.  I know, I know.  But you always want what you haven't got, right?  I'm horribly jealous of good pianists too.  I don't have to be Mitsuko Ushida!  But I'd like to be able to play the accompaniment of the frelling songs I'm singing!  I don't even require that I be able to play and sing at the same time! 

Diane in MN wrote:  What puzzles me is that no one in the Muddlehamptons goes to see the Met Live? Here we are, thirty or so dedicated classical vocal music lovers and no one^ is an opera freak?

A friend of mine is a pianist/organist and choir singer (church and civic choirs), and a lover of classical music, and she doesn't go for opera in the slightest. Not even for the choruses. Maybe your Muddlehampton choristers are of the same mindset.

Yes, but all of them?  That's what surprises me.  I know there are lots of people who like classical music, including classical vocal music, who wouldn't touch opera with tongs.  But out of a group of thirty classical singers yes, I would expect at least three or four or five to like opera.  But Nadia suggested that the operatically inclined may merely not go to the Met Live—which is, after all, a relatively recent development—they may prefer to go to London twice a year, or Glyndebourne once, or stay at home and watch it on Sky. 

to my ear sung French doesn't flow anything like as fluidly as Italian, fellow Romance language or not.

Ah well, ears are idiosyncratic, after all. To my ear, it doesn't get much more fluid than Carmen's Habanera.

Ears are very idiocyncratic.  It's also how the music matches up with the words, isn't it?  I'm amazed at how supple and lush RUSALKA sounds in Czech.  And while I mostly think (sung) German is a ratbag, and for example contributes to the force, not necessarily in a good way, to Wagner's frelling Ring (although it's certainly a matching of words and music), it is absolutely golden in the mouth of a good lieder singer.  You would (ahem) hardly know it was German.  I was thinking that the reason my ear catches on French when it doesn't catch on Italian is that French simply has more vowels.  As Nadia has been trying to beat into my cranky, angular, irremediably American voice, Italian only has five basic vowels.   Stop making it hard for myself.  Er.  Or rather, eh.   

† I know.  Why don't I just hit myself over the head with a plank and be done with it? 

†† Granted it doesn't make a lot of sense for me to be singing 'Did you not hear my lady Go down the garden singing?' but then again . . . why not?  I can easily imagine falling in love with a lady who can sing and has a glory of golden hair, although I'd be a little old for her.  One of the things I've always liked about classical vocal music (which it shares with folk, as I think about it) is that it's mostly gender-blind^:  there are lots of trouser roles for women in opera and especially recently more and more women are singing standard male lieder.  Yaaay.  So I'll sing Did you not hear my lady if I want to, just as I've been singing Che Faro Senza Eurydice. 

^ At least in the woman-favouring direction.  Although the relatively new and still growing fashion for countertenors and male sopranos is pushing it back the other way too.  And was there ever anything more scary than Philip Langridge as the witch in Hansel and Gretel?! +

+ . . . oh dear.  I'm trying to decide if this looks like a brush-off of gayness and/or other non-standard- or non-hetero-nesses.  It's not meant to be.  I think pretty much everything that blurs the gender/sexual boundaries is a good thing toward acceptance of the variety of human character.  So women singing love songs to other women , whether either of them is in trousers and/or pretending to be a bloke or not, makes women falling in love with other women that much more ordinary and within bounds.   I'm waiting for the full staging of a (say) Handel opera where the male soprano playing the heroine is wearing a dress.  Has anyone seen this yet?

††† I'm using a borrowed copy at the moment.  Nadia suggested pink highlighter when I get my own.  

‡ Ah, eh, ee, oh, ooh.  Five.  Vowels.