Early Music Camp 2010

Sorry that I have been incommunicado - I am attending Early Music Camp this week and barely have time to sleep, never mind blog. Just now I spent an hour and a half watching four guys in suits singing on stage: fourteenth century barbershop! The Ars Nova stuff is fascinating, but definitely an acquired taste, and way too melismatic. (Why does it take them 235 notes to sing a two-syllable word like "Amen"? Those wacky Medieval composers!) The earlier tunes are so catchy that I wonder why they ever fell out of favor. Maybe I will have to write new words for one and make a video of it. Maybe it would make a decent hip hop song... once it is translated out of Middle English, anyway.

Anyway, the point is that it was all in just intonation, which of course is the superior way to do things. Everyone talks about readjusting to "modern music" after Early Music Camp, and I am pretty sure what they mean is going back to the horrors of equal temperament. Personally I am not looking forward to that; my first moment back, Sunday morning, the organ will undoubtedly sound completely out of tune. But it does every year.

This year I am being "lazy" and taking a history class and the lecture series, neither of which require any practice. Other people are taking notes, but I just sit there and listen. Hey, no tests! It's all for my own personal edification. I also inadvertently took basically the same early music notation class as last year, adding to the laziness factor. My one performance class is a rebec technique class - might as well use that rebec I bought a couple of years back! (I tried to use it in a Mideastern band, but they told me to go back to the violin.) Then the big choir is singing a number of things, including a 19-part piece by a Scottish dude named Carver, and the big Tallis 40-part motet "Spem in Alium." In case you are curious, I am a soprano in choir #7 (out of 8). Just call me Seven of Eight!

Anyway, I am writing this after the concert because it was the only time the computer kiosk was free. I will try to write more at a later point this week, in case anyone (Hardingfele?) is actually reading this. Maybe Rich will correct my Latin too - here I've been singing this song for four days, and I still can't remember if maybe it's Spem in Alia. (My excuse: Choir Seven does not sing those particular words.) And why are we hoping in garlic, anyway?

Famous Hat

(in Ars Nova, Fa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-mo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ous Ha-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-at)