L'Attente

L'Attente: Waiting, biding, expectancy, suspense

"L'Attente" is both the name of a song that I have prepared for my upcoming recital and the feeling that I have been experiencing all month. Within a span of eight days I will undergo what are arguably the three biggest events in my entire nine-year collegiate career: my performance prelim (today @ 2:50), my oral exam (Monday @ 11:30), and my first dissertation recital (Saturday night @ 8:00). Here's a run-down on each:

Performance Prelim (aka "Exam-in-Field"): I have prepared a list of 45 minutes worth of music in four languages to perform for the entire vocal faculty. I am allowed to choose my first piece, after that the faculty will pick additional pieces from the list for me to perform. I will perform 20 minutes worth of music total. Pass/Fail.

Oral Exams: I have compiled an exhaustive "Repertoire List" in 20 different categories, amounting to more than two hundred pieces of music from the 16th century to the 21st century. For my orals, I will meet with the five members of my dissertation committee for two hours while they ask me questions about anything that is on that list. Questions about vocal anatomy and vocal pedagogy are also fair game.

First Dissertation Recital: A 45-minute recital (the same music as the performance prelim) with my pianist Emily Lai. The recital is called "A Novel Approach" and all of the songs are settings of texts by great novelists from four different languages (German = Goethe, French = Hugo, Italian = Manzoni, English = Hardy). (Thanks to my sister Amy for the poster design.)

At the beginning of January I was feeling some hardcore "attente." The second I woke up in the morning I would feel anxious - "It's coming!" As I noted in an earlier post, I spent last semester learning a full program of entirely new songs an I barely had a chance to coach them all before the Christmas break and I had almost nothing memorized.

However, since the semester started my pianist has met with me twice a week for coachings and I have had two lessons and a studio class with my private teacher. I have had a lot of opportunities to run through all of my music, and I now feel comfortable with all my music. And thanks to the iPod Nano that I got for Christmas (thanks Mom and Dad!), I have been able to listen to my recital rep non-stop, plus record my coachings and lessons, and even take videos of me performing the music.

I had a coaching at 11:00 this morning and I feel confident going into the performance prelim today. Too often when I have a performance I just sit around for hours beforehand obsessing about it, but today I decided to take my mind off of it by blogging. I trust my preparation and I'm going to go in there and do my best and not freak out about it.

I've got about an hour before showtime, so I should go change into my suit and run over a few things one last time. Wish me luck!

*****

Update: I just got off the phone with my voice teacher - he said that I passed the performance prelim. I was a little skeptical actually - the faculty really caught me off guard with their song choices, and I applied the cut-and-paste method to the lyrics in the Fauré song - but my teacher just told me that I received unanimous "pass" scores from each faculty member, including "high pass" scores from two faculty members. He also told me that I should relax a little bit and "have a drink" before gearing up for orals on Monday. I'll take one of those suggestions.

P.S. - In my original post I forgot to mention one factor that greatly contributed to my positive mood before my performance: the amazing, buzzer-beating win by the Jazz over LeBron and the Cavs last night. I was disciplined and DVR-ed the game rather than staying up all night, and this morning when I saw the end of the game I got a major jolt of confidence. GO JAZZ!!!