Speaking of orchestra, Thursday's rehearsal went well, although it was divided into sectionals ... and not the strings/winds variety, but rather the firsts/seconds/violas/cellos/winds variety. Ugh, my least favorite, because there's no faking it when there are only 15 people or so and the section professor is staring you down! I'm in the second violins, and my professor is Diana Cazabbas or something like that. She's incredibly talented, and you can tell when you watch her just by how graceful she makes it look. Gives me something to aspire to, that's for sure!
Rehearsals are always exhausting though, because I can't let my mind wander for even a minute or I'll be totally lost. It's not entirely my fault -- the French music terminology bears no resemblance to the American. Notably, they use solfege instead of letters to describe the notes. AHHHHHHHH! And for once American English is the most logical, as we say things like quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, and French uses things like croches and noirs and blancs. Gross. I forgot how hard it really is, but it's worth it, I love being able to play.
This morning I went to see my friend Emma near Gare de Lyon (she was on her way to Lyon for a sustainable development conference). She has been my pen pal since the very first French class I took at Binghamton, when my teacher made us sign up on some website. She's a year older than I am, and she worked as a French assistant in Germany for awhile, not unlike what I'm doing now! Her family lives an hour-ish outside of Paris, and when I came to visit last time they invited me to stay with them, which was wonderful!
On the way to meet I saw this ad in the metro; it's one of my favorites. It might be a bit difficult to read, but in the little box on the bottom part it says "Arrêtez de massacrer l'anglais!" ("Stop massacring English!") which follows in its general theme with the guy looking all busted up. I've seen it before, and it always cracks me up.
This is part of Gare de Lyon, it's a train station in the Southeast quadrant of Paris. I think it's one of the prettiest ones (of course Orsay is now a museum, so I guess there's some stiff competition)!
So hopefully next week I can go pick up my European credit card (woohooooo!), which they had said would be ready today but wasn't, and I'll be told which schools I'm working in, and I can start my observations! If I'm lucky of course. Orchestra rehearsal again tomorrow morning, so hopefully I get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight ... ish.
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I need to find one of those English Massacre posters for my French prof. He's very tough on our writing. All formalities and proper usage must be observed at all times.
ReplyDeleteDo the French names of notes correspond with the British English ones somehow? Or are they completely unrelated breeds of nonsense?
The French and British terms for quarter, eighth, etc. don't line up either. It seems like everyone just decided to do their own thing, although I believe the Germans might match the Americans. You might ask your friend in Germany for a crash course? I'm curious to know how various languages handle this now.
ReplyDeleteWhereas we do the A-G thing, the French use Do Re Mi (etc.), and my only experience with that has been while singing at music camp, so I'm pretty much at a loss. Between the strange words for note length and the solfege, it's great when the conductor (Chef de l'orchestre) is telling us specific instructions rapidly... that can be challenging even in English!