xmas eve in helland

I had planned to make blueberry pies for the neighbors. But I think I better delay that effort to a day when I have less on my plate. Often on Christmas eve, I’m not too pressed. I feel confident that the evening will easily go well. Unfortunately, I have been challenging myself more in my church music and this now is holding true for this evening’s upcoming music at the later service. Part of this also has been the spotty attendance in my tiny choir. So that yesterday I began putting an anthem into Finale to enable me to better play and conduct it tonight.

Sometimes playing and conducting involves doubling weak voice parts in the accompaniment. One of our anthems this evening, “Masters of this hall,” is really a pretty easy anthem. But the choir seems to have had weird trouble learning it. So I have been doubling their parts until recently. When I added the “tarantella” piano part, the men pretty much fell apart. In order to feel at ease, playing both the piano “tarantella” figure and the men’s parts, it will help me to have the piano part above the men’s part in the score. This is not the way it’s laid out, but is how I am doing it in my nearly finished redone score.

And this isn’t even the hardest anthem for the evening. In addition to “For Unto Us” by Handel, the choir seemed shaky on what I thought were more easy anthems. Doing Handel well is always a challenge. Playing and conducting this movement is something I have been practicing daily for weeks. This evening I am facing the fact that choristers will likely arrive late to rehearsal and be under-prepared to sing the scheduled anthems. This will require some cleverness on my part to enable their best performance. Cleverness and energy.

And then there’s the postlude which ends the evening. I have scheduled a new movement from a Handel organ concerto to sort of match our big anthem. Again I have been working on this for weeks, but it’s not quite together. I will rehearse it today and it will be fine this evening. But I can’t count on being able to take it up to a quick tempo and hit every note. Sigh.

So no blueberry pies today. I will just make sure I’m rested and prepared for this evening plus drop in to check on Mom and visit some friends to drop off gifts.

I may make a quiche, however. That way Eileen and I will have some food for today. I can also heat it up for Mom to join us in a Christmas breakfast if I can convince to do that tomorrow.

1. Leave These Southwest Ruins Alone – NYTimes.com

GPS and web sites are enabling people to reach and destroy Pueblo ruins. Ay yi yi.

2. Bits and Barbarism – NYTimes.com

Krugman makes some points about currencies including pointing out the waste involved in the bit-coin. It’s counterintuitive to think of how much energy the cyber world requires to run.

3. Hugh Nissenson, Who Pushed the Novel’s Boundaries, Dies at 80 – NYTimes.com