compound that with the fact that there won't be choir practices until after the dreadful eoys take their leave, considering that tuesday is labour day, and you get a perfect formula to put michelle into total misery. [gosh, i sound really depressed. haha. but actually the bit about 'withdrawal symptoms' is more than accurate, although 'total misery' may not fully apply to this scenario.]
ohwell, maybe typing a detailed syf post would help matters? i sincerely hope so, though even if getting part of the emotions out of my system would help get me out of this state of (ahem) moodiness - including a newfound ability to stone convincingly in class - i seriously doubt that the memories can ever be taken away from where it truly belongs.
O.o okay overly lengthy introduction, almost worthy for narrative / recount hmm? [haha by sounding happy here i can probably pass off as schizophrenic, but nevermind.] anyway, let's just start the actual thing, here.
i think what struck me as most poignant in this entire syf journey, from start to triumphant finish, was how we managed to emote, and how we truly opened up on stage at vch. it truly felt as if that whole stage was ours, and solely ours, for that whole 10 minutes, and that we were not singing merely for the sake of producing melodious pitched air, but because we believed that there was a message that our combined voices could bring across, that there was something in our music that needed to be heard, that needed to be absorbed by our audience. oft-quoted, but msloo's famous line of bring across humanity - or something to that effect - without regard for the colour we end up getting, inspired us as a whole greatly. as in, it helped us to transcend the idea that awards, honours, the 'glory' was all there was to music-making, singing and what-not; knowing that we had a much higher purpose in doing what we were doing brought us away from mere technicalities to truly feeling for the music. coming to think of it, that's what matters. so a choir can sing every note perfectly in pitch, have a harmonious blend, but without injecting their own emotions, their own feeling about the music which they are producing, there'll always be that something special missing from it all.
the bells, the jubilance, the transition from helplessness to bright-eyed optimism and the many other facets of 'everyone sang' make this year's set piece unique in its very own way. granted, it's technically less demanding than the other 2 pieces, but to capture the spirit of joy, so precious in light of all the negative emotions that flood us oh-so-often, is indeed demanding in its own manner. i can vividly remember msloo asking us to make the 'delight' sound truly delightful, and getting us to transform our ostriches into swooping birds at the 'on, on, and out of sight' section. and perhaps because i was (very fortunately) granted the opportunity to play the piano part for this song, the entire experience with this song became particularly memorable for me. sometimes i seriously wonder whether msloo got frustrated with my inability to keep my pulse, to open up and just make the accompaniment sound as dance-like and joget-ish as possible, and whether the rest of RGSChoir got tired / irritated / angry waiting for me to decide to get my rhythms right - not that i don't want to get them right, but somehow my brain enjoys defying orders. there was once when msloo actually knelt down and sort of 'begged' me to get my tempo correct, and i daresay that would be the most traumatizing time i ever had, because i felt awfully guilty for making msloo go to such lengths just to get me do things right. hopefully my at least decent playing at vch made up for it, even though i still have a nagging suspicion that i wasn't exactly on-the-dot accurate at some parts of the song. O.o
on another note, i've learnt to appreciate the importance of a sense of attachment to the group in any ensemble setting. not to say that i was particularly excellent (or even good for that matter), but i guess the accompaniment when played by pianists not directly involved with the choir just didn't agree with me. stolid, in every sense of the word - calm and dependable (and not prone to sudden tempo deviations like mine), but then again lacking emotion and animation. granted i might have succumbed to swaying too much with the music; still i would have preferred something exaggerated (of course, not to the extent of a complete distortion of the composer's intentions) to a politically correct, detached reading of the music. but then again, you couldn't have attributed this to the accompanists in any way, because accompanying this one school probably didn't feel any different from accompanying the next, unlike if you were part of the group and felt directly responsible for your contribution to the music as a whole. just my opinion though, not saying that the other pianists weren't professional or anything, 'cos seriously they are, terribly, professional.
de spiritu sancto! the oldest piece in our entire syf repertoire, but every rendition of the piece is as good as a whole new voyage of discovery. i daresay the ending chord sounded like an emajor at vch, but then again i wouldn't be so sure, for it sounded like (or at least, close to) emajor at prague as well, but the judges flatly disagreed. [haha something to the effect of 'what happened to the e major chord?' O.o] i still marvel over how eben depicts so wonderfully, the lyrics through his music. and yes, not forgetting the diversity and yet also the unity of koreans, japanese, mexicans for the portion about differences in language; also, acting as announcers for the 'congregasti' version. though i guess i wish it was more polished in a sense; there's always a feeling of it being neither here nor there - not pathetic, but not particularly outstanding either.
last but definitely not the least, the crowning glory - itsuki. :D i cannot fully express how much i love this piece, because it just cannot be put in words. the harmonies are just so heartwrenching –even on the piano – and the story behind it all gives the entire piece a whole new dimension. [sidetracking, but nevermind. well, that’s why i like programmatic music; sounds are just so abstract at times, but with a story tying all the sounds together, it gives so much more definition to the individual tones.] it started off as, well, the most worrisome piece amongst the three, what with an inability to empathize with the persona, waiting for Bon to come so that she can go home to her parents, and being unable to encapsulate her sorrows, her sudden bursts of hopes, her profound sadness, and meld them into our own set of feelings. merely bringing out the dynamics wouldn’t work, and because our level of involvement with the song fluctuated rather badly, it was truly a rollercoaster ride of emotions. but at vch the gates to the heart were unlocked, and the effect really blew me away. coming to think of it, i don’t exactly recall what i did there and then, because passion overrode all rationality then, and the only thing, if i were forced to mention at least one thing i knew consciously, would be how good it felt when we came to the regretful bit (g-aflat-g, ku-ryu-kya) – the entire hall was filled with the ring, the echo of our voices, and somehow it just gave me a sense of liberation, finally letting go all my pent-up emotions. [well, the ending was where the girl really got exasperated, could take it no longer, and just burst out into tears.] and when the instinct to look at the judges’ reactions after a performance brought my eyes up to the circle seats, seeing ko matsushita clap his hands high up in the air, and hearing his two ‘bravo’s, the sense of satisfaction was immense. it was as if beethoven came up to you while you were playing one of his piano sonatas, and said, ‘that’s the way i would have done it myself’; getting the approval, or at least the heartfelt appreciation, of the composer for your rendition of one of his pieces is truly hard to come by. and msloo once read from the preface of his collection of compositions that he had conducted a performance of an arrangement of itsuki for a male’s chorus before, and got an intensity that he wasn’t so sure a female’s chorus could achieve – to have him give us some sort of a standing ovation means we must have done something good, nevermind if it wasn’t entirely perfect.
seriously, i will now concur wholeheartedly with msloo when she says that singing itsuki will dramatically change your life. because it really does.
and there went the 10 minutes we had on stage. call it delayed reaction or truly letting go pent-up emotions, but i blubbered very badly immediately after we got off stage. mixed emotions: the feeling of having had a great weight lifted off our shoulders; knowing that no matter the award at the end of the day, we'd achieved our goals; a tinge of sadness that all this singing, all this fervour for music-making had just concluded so abruptly; entertaining thoughts of 'hey-i-want-to-do-this-again-and-again'; tears for the beauty of itsuki; how we still managed to pull it off, regardless of the many distractions, the many disappointments that came before...the list was endless. composing ourselves before we entered the hall to listen to other choirs was a must, though i must say my emotions never really settled.
listening to other choirs, seeing their conductors conduct showed me how wonderful, fantabulous and absolutely awesome msloo is. how she demanded us to spit out our consonants, work on our vowels; how she told us to feel for the music spontaneously, and not just move and emote on command; how she told us to start smiling, and stop looking academic - her intentions became even more crystal clear. we don't need someone who's well-known in the conducting circle; all we need is someone inspiring like msloo, someone who knows us well, and somehow who can bring out the best in us. i think what makes msloo different from the rest is how she goes beyond vocal technique, and how she connects with you on a personal level, with all her pep talks and stuff. and well, i still marvel at how she thinks up of different stuff to make us understand what she wants to hear from us, like uhm, thinking of looking down from an ascending lift and seeing the increasing depth beneath us as we move up in pitch (haha somehow this reminds me of the glass elevator :D). somehow, it has always occured to me that choir practices with some other conductor, and not msloo, wouldn't be half as enjoyable or interesting. ahh msloo is much, much love. (:
and well, i must say that RGSChoir is a fantastic bunch of people. :D like cheering insanely on the bus for msloo and for our syf performance, singing itsuki in some absolutely warped manner, and just breaking out into song outside the choir room (which garnered us many O.o looks from the people inside), this is something that probably doesn't happen elsewhere. plus the wonders of voice! because it comes directly from within you, because you are your instrument, and you don't need some other medium through which you express what you feel, it makes the entire music-making process much more immediate, and much closer to the heart. it also means you can just burst out singing at any random place in school. x)
hee okay i shall go write post-syf notes now for people. and yuck, i'll have to post them via class trays, due to the absence of choir practices in the next 2 weeks. grawr.
(1 out of the 10 out of the 130. :D)