Beware the Ides of March!

I am not a composer and I was never very good a music theory when I was at university. However, I seem to be giving students advice in these two areas quite a bit, and I�m not really sure why. After Latin today I met one of my husband�s composition students in the lunch place as I was waiting for my skim-milk latt� with froth (I don�t even have to say anything now, the ladies just see me and start steaming milk), and asked her if she would like to join me while she ate her sandwich and I sipped my coffee. She told me she needs to write a string quartet for the artists-in-residence coming at the end of the month to play, which doesn�t give her much time. I suggested she write a fugue; it means a minimum of actual material to be composed, and the rest is assembly. She thought that was a great idea. Then she pondered the different tempi she should have in it, so once more I suggested something: a slow fugue subject with a fast countersubject. When I saw her later she told me she had already been at work on it.

My annoying student, now that her recital is over, was much calmer today. We worked on a simple Irish folk song, something I gave her the very first lesson last fall, and she is actually starting to sound reasonably good. After she left, my next voice-as-a-second-instrument student confessed that she had forgotten her music. I replied, �This means we have to go for a beer.� She was in full agreement. So we took off in my car, first to The Lion (which was closed, upstairs and down), then to the bar at the local motel (lights were on and music was playing, but there was no bartender in sight), and finally ended up at the steakhouse, a restaurant which specializes in beef (obviously if it�s a steakhouse) and has blatant cowboy paraphernalia for decor and plays country music over the muzak system. I�ve eaten there once before when I was desperate (it�s a long story which I�d sooner forget, thank you), but it was a very pleasant place to have a draft Rickard�s Red in the afternoon, and we talked about many things, only some of them having anything to do with actual singing. But still, it was great to play hooky.

This evening Hubby needed my services as a papparazzi to photograph the chamber orchestra for the advertising for their upcoming concert, and as a soprano to sing the solo in a piece they are doing from his cycle for SATB choir, soprano solo and strings. We�re only doing the one solo movement, which is rather short but very beautiful, and hopefully they will eventually play the right notes in tune and it will be quite nice. I, at least, sounded mahvelous.

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