folk choir in Campo San Fantin

On the way home tonight, I passed through Campo San Fantin, in front of the Fenice.  Gathered at the restaurant just to the right of the theater was a men’s choir in black capes and hats, mostly tyrolean, singing an Italian song honoring war dead.  Turns out they are a folk choir from Bassano del Grappa.  Once a year they come into Venice to perform — come to think of it, I don’t know if they had a concert or just wandered the city singing.  But they were very happy to talk about who they are and what they’re doing.  I tried acting as translator for another interested bystander, an American woman.  Upon learning that the song we’d heard was in honor of recently fallen war dead (19 Italians killed in Iraq), she asked me to tell our interlocutor that she/many Americans think that Bush is a mass-murderer and to apologize for the war and for their loss.  I tried, but it’s not a vocabulary I’m really familiar with, and I was more interested in talking music with the guys.  In a bid to push my street cred, I asked if they knew “Marietta monta in gondola” — and then had a nice chat with Maurizio, the choir member with the video camera.  Very cool.

Complesso Vocale and my complexes

Choir rehearsal tonight. I was again declared a “monster” sight-reader, because I read (rather flawlessly) the Vivaldi pieces the choir worked up for a concert last fall. I am a total sucker for this kind of praise. It elates me. Makes my day. Never mind that 1) I know it’s not magic, 2) I’m highly trained, 3) I’ve taught aural skills, 4) I’m far from the best sight reader I know, 5) Vivaldi is super easy to sight read. Of course, I demure and am gracious. It intrigues, though, that despite the fact I can contextualize the praise, it still makes me swoon. Do I need the ego boost that much? I think it’s another indication that deep down I prefer being a big fish in a small pond — even if, objectively, I would do just fine among bigger fish, should I so choose. (It’s awfully hard to pit easy endorphins against…whatever it is that is produced by doggedly challenging yourself.)

Here’s a link to the concert the Complesso performed last fall.

performing at a scuola grande

Thanks to my sight-singing abilities and the great hospitality of my new Venetian friends, I’ve been invited to sing with two wonderful local choirs. One of these, the Complesso Vocale “Antonio Lotti” just happened — just happened — to be working on a 16c program, which we performed yesterday (20 Jan) at the Scuola Grande San Teodoro. Here’s the program:

• Arcadelt, Il bianco e dolce cigno
• Rore, Ancor che col partire
• Donato, Chi la gagliarda
• Lasso, Matona, mia cara
• Banchieri, excerpts from Festino nella sera del giovedi grasso avanti cena

Wow! What a treat! They’re such a jovial bunch of people, and it’s so great to sing this music with them!

This concert was my fourth since arriving here. The first three were with two permutations of a women’s choir formed from voice students at the Scuola di Musica “Giuseppe Verdi.” The big Christmas concert was held in Santa Maria Formosa. The two smaller concerts were held at the Waldensian hostel here in town (which is in a large, old palazzo at the end of the Calle Lunga S Maria Formosa) and, of all places, a small parish church in Ca’ Savio (a small resort town by the Adriatic…deserted in winter). Rehearsals were held in the parish building of S. Maria Formosa and in an old convent, now high school in Cannareggio. The Lotti choir meets in the parish building of S. Maria dell’Orto — which means I get to the other side of town at least twice a week.

I said I’m in two local choirs. The other is Coro Murianum (or some such…I’ve never seen it written). Most of the members are from Murano or Burano, but rehearsals are right in my back yard (at the parish meeting room for S. Salvator). Severe illness in the family of the director has kept this choir in limbo for much of the last two months, but they have a great repertoire of more modern fare (Bruckner, Poulenc, and even composers who are still with us). There are a couple of other women who go from the Lotti rehearsal on Thursday directly to the Murianum rehearsal — so I’m hooked up with some of the city’s hard-core choristers. There is a LOT of dialect used in rehearsals, so they are fantastic practice for me.

Happy New Year, by the way. Will see if I can’t post a little more often.

choral culture shock

I unwittingly disrupted my rehearsal tonight, in a very subversive and eggheaded way.

I noticed that in a particular section we were singing in unison — and that “unison” didn’t match my part.   Look over one shoulder. Look over another.  Yep, we should be singing harmony.  I ask my fellow singers if we’re supposed to be singing unison.  Yes.  I clumsily point out that the music says otherwise.  Confusion results.  We check with the conductor, and, yes, they had made a change.  Nobody made a note of it, because they’re going by ear and memory (and keep their music in sheet protectors).  Now… they were doing just fine before I asked the question, but once I’d pointed out the discrepancy, many took the time to write in the correct notes (which were all just a third below our part and which, furthermore, they obviously didn’t need since they’d been singing the unison correctly all along).

Aside from feeling guilty about raising needless cain, I came away realizing that I’d underestimated the degree to which this choir is working on a purely aural basis.  From now on, I’m keeping all my fancy-pants questions to myself.  But I will  track down a four-hole punch so I can jettison the sheet protectors and write all over my music.

Singing in choir

Thanks to my friend N., I’m now singing in a local choir and am having a blast.  The music is easy: a handful of contemporary Italian Christmas pieces and Britten’s Ceremony of Carols.  The singers are all adult women studying voice at a local music school.  Most of them don’t have much musical experience and several brought recorders to the rehearsal so they can practice at home with the recording.  A smaller group of more experienced singers is performing the Britten.  From a social and cultural standpoint, this is great stuff.  I’ve met some really interesting women, and it’s fun to sing modern, everyday Italian.  It’s also great to hear an entire rehearsal run in Italian.  I never thought of all the musical words I *don’t* know in Italian — especially the terms for note values.  And it’s fascinating that they use a “fixed-do” system of solfege to navigate the music, even in an ensemble of inexperienced singers.  Note names (C, D, E, etc.) aren’t used, only solfege syllables (do, re, mi, etc.).  Interesting.  I smiled to myself when I realized the conductor wasn’t saying C-flat but “si”-flat, i.e. B-flat.

I knew the Britten was in English, and was looking forward to being a mother tongue speakers in the group, for once.  My choir in Chicago always has a ringer or two every year — a visiting German or French person who becomes the pronunciation authority for works in those languages.  Not knowing the Britten, I didn’t realize that the texts are old — medieval and renaissance English.  Now, I’ve studied Chaucer in Middle English and have had my share of experience with choral pronunciation issues…but do we even want to TRY to be “authentic?”  The whole pronunciation can ‘o’ worms opened up yet again, and I’m left shrugging my shoulders when the other women nudge me and ask how to pronounce X.  Rats.

one long-planned event and two surprises

Tuesday I heard the Consulate General of Belgium speak about his country at a gathering of the Associazione Europa Amica di Venezia (a group that promotes cultural understanding among EU member states). The wonderful Mamma G invited me some time ago to come to these talks, and I’m so thrilled. I was probably the only non-Venetian in the room, save the Honorable speaker himself, oh and one lady from Bassano del Grappa. It was a very convivial group of about thirty people — including a documentary filmmaker (who invited me to a screening this Friday) and an architectural engineer (who offered me a photocopy of the original elevation of the Palazzo Pisani, now the Conservatory, which he helped to restructure recently). They also had a classic Venetian spread for the reception, complete with prosecco, thank-you-ma’am. What a treat to be invited into this large circle of friendly and interesting people!

I’d been looking forward to that for a long time. Meanwhile, on Sunday, I got another invitation to go with my friend N. to a book talk on Monday at the Ateneo Veneto – a discussion of Daria Perocco’s recent edition of Poesie per regate (poems for regattas, Venetian texts from the 16th to the 19th century) . Really interesting talk, and an unforeseen opportunity to encounter some of Venice’s literary scholars. I had a nice little chat with Prof. Perocco… and delivered Stella’s greetings.

Then today by pure luck, on the way home from the library, I saw a poster for a seminar this week at the Levi Foundation: La nascita della storiografia musicale in Europa nel XIX secolo: gli orientamenti nazionali (the birth of musical historiography in Europe in the 19th century: the national orientations). The idea of coming across a poster for so esoteric a musicological meeting is strange enough — outside the confines of, say, a large research-oriented university in Chicago. But this was one huge poster. No, two: one right next to the other. Posted, moreover, in a tiny, back-alley sottoportego (underpass) hidden between Piazza San Marco and the Fenice. I just happened to pass that way as I experimented with a new long-cut home (to skirt foot traffic). “Did I really just see ’storiografia musicale’ out of the corner of my eye?” Yep. And the Fondazione Levi is two minutes from my house. Cool.

L’Amfiparnaso at Ca’ Rezzonico! But I’m one for two.

Why is Orazio Vecchi’s L’Amfiparnaso being performed the very day I have to go to Rome? Why?

I shouldn’t complain. I did hear a very nice performance of some Monteverdi selections at Palazzo Franchetti last night. (We heard bits of Orfeo, Il ballo delle ingrate, and Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, if you must know.) After the first wave of geeky pleasure — as in, “I’m in Venice…and I’m listening to Monteverdi!” — I was most charmed by the vaporetti passing by the windows. What can I say…. It was dark out, and the vaporetti were well-lit. Hardly anyone was aboard, and the empty to-ing and fro-ing looked strangely disembodied and Hopper-esque seen through the wall of handblown glass windows.

jetlag or what?

I don’t know if it’s jetlag catching up with me, but I’ve slept for most of the last 48 hours. Did have a nice long lunch on Friday, despite wanting to wretch that morning (and thus forgoing the early morning meeting with Gio to go over my permesso di soggiorno papers). Went this morning to meet my research supervisor — successfully found the building, thank-you-very-much — only to find I’d missed him by 3 minutes.

Recent small triumphs…. Every cup of coffee is a small triumph. Buying a cell phone and learning to text message is cool. But even better are these two:

• Successfully pointing out at the copy shop that I was there first, when someone pressed ahead of me in line.
• Being asked on two separate occasions for directions, and being able to answer (all in Italian). Apparently I seem plausibly local to visitors.

I may still have time tonight to check a concert tonight. L’Amfiparnaso is being performed somewhere, I just have to re-find that info on the web. Otherwise it’ll be another early night for me as I fight off whatever it is I have or am getting. (NB, both mamma and baby have colds now, so I’m quite sure I’m doomed to follow suit….)