Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

Happy Birthday, Tiny Tim!

Thursday, Mar. 17, 2005
10:31 p.m.
In honour of the feast of Saint Patrick, in whom I do not believe nor whose feastday do I celebrate, I wore my emerald pendant and green hair barettes. The Latin test was rather breezy, until after I handed it in and realized that I had mistranslated the word discunt as �they teach� instead of �they learn�, because the Greek word for teacher is the same as the one we get our word didactic from. Damn. Otherwise I believe I did rather well. Patsy played for us a video of the Victor Borge skit where he reads a story and vocalizes the punctuation. It was hilarious. I actually saw him do that live a very long time ago at Ontario Place when I was still living at home. He was a very great performer.

I had an absolute riot during my tenor�s voice lesson today. He is learning Die Forelle by Schubert and having a helluva time getting his mouth around the German. The line so dacht ich nicht gebricht proved impossible for him to pronounce. I didn�t know whether I should roll on the floor in laughter or bang my head against the piano in frustration. One instant he would say it perfectly, the next it would be in shambles again. He couldn�t differentiate between the hard �ch� of dacht and the softer one of ich, they both came out with a �k� sound, or a �sh�, which is even worse. Then I would tell him to just close his eyes and repeat after me the sounds just as he heard them, and he could not. This took way too much time. We might not be doing Schubert on his jury at this rate.

The choir concert is shaping up. Today we had sectionals on the more �choral� pieces, putting them together with the whole group and even trying them from memory. When people put down their scores, suddenly they are forced to look at the conductor. The difference is amazing. For me this is not an issue since I have been trained to always look at the director and just glance down at my music. But most others always have their faces buried in their binders and have no idea what Jamie is doing in front of them. He was actually able to get some interesting dynamic contrasts and for once we were together on cutoffs. I�m not a big advocate of memorization, but I can see where it makes a difference with this group.

I�m sleepy now. Good night.

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