I had originally envisioned modern  dance uses odd rhythmical divisions in the rhythm of the music instead of irregular phrase lengths. It most probably does in performance. But dance class is a different animal than performances emphasizing exercises called “combinations” which allow the development of small bits of technique.

Anyway I walked home and balanced my checkbook and paid bills. I was joining in a discussion on Facebook about Catholic hymn singing when I looked up and it was time to rush back for my second class of the day and the last class of the camp.

For some reason I felt mentally fatigued at this class. I managed to continue to make up music to fit the needs of the teacher. But I didn’t feel like I was coming up with musical material as good as usual.

This feeling seem to continue as the class went on. Near the end of the class I had that horrifying moment when the teacher uses dance lingo and I have no idea what she means.  At first she murmured her instructions from across the floor in an aside. (This is the usual approach. An instructor will be concentrating primarily on her/his instructions to the students. Embedded in them, not necessarily verbalized, is the information I need to provide music for the exercise. A good rehearsal pianist is one that does not need directions but can intuit what is needed. Usually I can do this pretty well.)

At her murmuring (which my old deaf ears didn’t quite pick up) I did what I usually do and simply start up some music and let the teacher correct me if it’s not what is needed. She did not correct me. But later in between stopping and giving more information to the dancers and then restarting up the exercise, she came to the piano and requested that I play a “Coda.”

Yikes.

Here I am in the last few minutes of my work, exhausted mentally and physically. I know that she means something specific. But what? I did what I usually do when baffled in this situation. Instead of requesting an explanation (time is of the essence in this work) I asked her to sing what she needed. She did and I patterned my improvisation on her singing.

I continued to feel like my musical ideas were pretty crappy for the rest of the class. It was not a great way to end what was for me a pretty good week.

I came home and looked up “Coda” in my dance dictionary.

Here’s what it said.

Coda
(1) The finale of a classical ballet in which all the principal dancers appear separately or with their partners.

(2) The final dance of the classic pas de deux, pas de trois or pas de quatre.

from Technical Manual and Dictionary of Classical Ballet by Gail Grant. I found the same definition online here.

This is not extremely helpful, but I think I get the idea. What threw me off was of course that in music the word “Coda” has a slightly different meaning.

1. The closing few measures of a composition, usually not a part of the main theme groups of the standard form of a composition, but a finishing theme added to the end to give the composition closure; in sonata form, the coda is anything that occurs after the recapitulation. The coda is sometimes indicated with the notation of a “0” with two intersecting lines (as shown below). This is typically used in compositions that employ a da capo (D.C.) or dal segno (D.S.). Often the terms “D.S. al coda” or “D.C. al coda” are also used which indicate that the performer is to perform the coda portion of the composition after repeating to either the sign (D.S.) or to the beginning of the composition (D.C.).

2. Anything after the last entry of the theme or subject in a fugue.

from Virgina Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary

The rest of the day my head continued to spin.

Thank goodness I have today off.

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Little-Known Dutch Sports Experience a Revival – NYTimes.com

And the best part is this stuff is all for real.

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The Endless Summer – NYTimes.com

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A couple of the instructors seem very different to me this year. Where before in past years they were tense and driven, now they are relaxed and friendly. I see a couple instructors actually smiling with their eyes as well as their lips (all ballet people can smile, just not necessarily also with their eyes).  This is a pleasant change. It could be that I am simply seeing the same people differently. But I do suspect that it’s not all my subjectivity and usual over sensitive interpretation of events.

This ballet camp has not taken the toll on my energy and health that I feared it might. At the beginning of the summer I was feeling very drained from my schedule of combined church work and ballet accompaniment. The contractor for the ballet camp caught me in a weak moment just before my California vacation and I accepted the work despite misgivings.

I came home from California less stressed than last year.

I do enjoy coming up with improvisations that fit ballet exercises and also have some musical merit in my own eyes. So even though the camp gave me a lot of work, it didn’t turn out to be so much that I am back where I was at the beginning of the summer.

In addition to this, I am finding my church work more and more meaningful as I double down on improving and honing my organ skills. Each week I look forward to preparing and performing at least one piece for Sunday morning.

This week I have enjoyed learning and delving into a setting by Ennis Fruhauf called “Intermezzo on Sicilian Mariners.”

This piece strikes me as very well written.

WARNING! MUSIC ANALYSIS FOLLOWS! DANGER! DANGER! WILL ROBINSON!

When I think of “intermezzi” I think of Brahms. I’m not sure if that’s what Fruhauf had in mind, but I still see a ton of skill in this setting.

Note the four measures marked Andantino above that follow a gentle introduction (not entirely shown). I think these measures are elegantly written. They are deceptively simple. But with repeated rehearsing I begin to hear some lovely subtlety, especially regarding the articulation, and melodic unity.

Then note how he proceeds with the melody in long note values developing the Andantino rhythm and tempo.

This returns in the restatement of this section with a duple descant.

I remember the first time I played through the piece thinking that the materials at the beginning were good but didn’t warrant an entire repetition. Then when he added the little descant, I was charmed.

In between, in the middle section, he changes key and does some clever stuff with the meter.

He sets up a very regular set of afterbeats in the lower voice with miniature lush chords floating over it on beats one and three. Then as a piece de resistance he delays the melody one beat.  This works very nicely.

Good writing.

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