After what I hope turns out to be a far more than ‘typically busy’ week, here is another post in the previously mentioned series!

Undergraduate Studies - Mr. Fehleisen

Of all the classes in my current semester, this is, with the exception of Introduction to Humanities, the least directly related to music performance. So far as I can tell it is probably the beginning of what will later turn into a Music History course, which I believe begins next year.

The work up to this point has consisted of listening assignments and class discussions about various forms and genres of music. The syllabus indicates that we will continue along this direction for the rest of the semester, though there is a an interesting note in week 12 about a Concert Review, which apparently will be a report written in the style of what one would find in a newspaper. Should be intriguing!

I’m going to write a series of posts about the classes I’m taking the semester, so I’ll start in order from Monday morning and go through the week, one at a time!

Ear Training II - Ms. Aaron

I managed to test out of the first level of this class (and actually every class except Music Theory) but this is nothing unusual for pianists here – several placed directly into third-year. The idea behind this course is to familiarize ourselves with reading and hearing written music, ideally without studying it first. As a pianist, my goal at the end of four years is theoretically to be able to play, at the piano, a symphonic work from the original score. Obviously this will involve knowing multiple clefs, being able to transpose from one key to another (to play on the piano, for example, a french horn part, which is written not only in another clef but also in another key with different accidentals), and being able to instantly the harmonic structure of the music so I can decide, while playing, which notes can be left out.

Of course this is far from where we are currently. At the moment, I am working hard to relearn solfége using the fixed do system, and learning to read music in the alto, tenor, and soprano clefs. For those of you not familiar with solfége, it is a alternate way of naming notes - used in a modified version by The Sound of Music. Basically, instead of calling pitches by A, A#, Bb, B, C, C#, etc., they are instead named do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si (not ti), and do again at the top. In ‘fixed do’, the note named do is always equal to C. In ‘moveable do’, do is always the first note of whatever key the piece is written in. I always used the latter version previously, but, according to all the professors here, this presents significant issues when dealing with more advanced concepts. Most classes at Mannes use solfége and standard note names simultaneously and interchangeably (which presents some issues, especially since ’si’ and ‘C’ are homonyms), but Ear Training is strictly in solfége.

Our exercises at the moment consist of mental, at the piano, and singing drills to force us to really LEARN where the notes are on the staff in any clef. It’s quite similar to learning a new spoken language, and definitely one of the more difficult classes for me. At the moment I’m in a standard level two class, but it is quite a large group (too large, according to the professor) and she wants to move me to an accelerated class. I’m not sure if I can handle this – I am not yet fluent in all the prerequisite knowledge – but I’ll defer to her professional opinion in this!

I live my life in three places at the moment – four, if you count the subway. Number one is the dorm. The second is Mannes college itself, and the final location is the Mannes practice center.

The Practice Center
I’m limited to three hours per day here. The place is located on the third floor of an office building one block down from Juilliard, in purpose-built ‘practicing cubicles’ which are almost completely sound-proof. We are encouraged to schedule rooms in advance, but it’s not required and if I time visits correctly there are usually rooms available anyway.

Mannes College
I have the right to practice here for an hour a day, which is usually all the time I can find anyway. Mannes has a very cramped facility, even for its small size, so rooms are ALWAYS in use and must almost invariably be booked in advance.

92nd Street Y
This is actually a YWHA - Young Women’s Hebrew Association. In practice this affects us only in the timing of office closures (Friday evening through Sunday morning instead of Saturday and Sunday) and certain food restrictions (no pork or shellfish allowed in the building, for example.) The complex is large, in two different towers. There are only about 30 of us total from the college, but the college was a little late in booking rooms so we’ve ended up on different floors, one in each of the towers. Not exactly an ideal arrangement. There are no provided meals - everything must be bought and/or cooked, and bathrooms are shared between the entire floor (one floor is for guys, the other for girls.) Things are not perfect, but it is a reasonably nice place to live.

I finally made it off the island of Manhattan for the first time last night! It was very pleasant to actually see trees and grass again, which I hadn’t noticed until this point don’t really exist in Manhattan. The inner city is almost the ultimate caricature of an urban landscape…it’s like nothing one can find anywhere in Colorado. Strangely I don’t exactly feel out of place here, even though I’ve obviously never lived in a city like this before.

Supposedly Tropical Storm Hanna visited us yesterday, but all I saw was some rain not even worthy of a Coloradoan thunder storm. Apparently Long Island had a much worse time of it but the city was spared. For now.