Well I guess you're wondering what it is that's made me so excited? To be perfectly honest, I can never be sure myself, however I'll give you an overview of my week and hopefully you can see why. Either that or you'll just think I'm a bit batty (which is also true).
Now to start off the week I was dreading the 9am Monday morning lecture of Musical Studies. My least favourite lecture at the worst time of the week. Last year we learnt about motets and madrigals and Renaissance music played mostly by men in posh company at banquets. Quite frankly, most weeks I was pretty close to hitting my head against the desk with my eyes closed. To my delight, this year we have progressed to the Classical era and Beethoven is the starting point - what a wonderfully strange man he is. Learning about his portrayal to us in the modern day and his struggle to create the infamous motif of his 5th symphony (which you MUST listen to if you haven't already), is so interesting, enormously improved by the engaging teaching of my new lecturer! In case anyone doesn't know, Beethoven started going deaf aged 28 and was totally deaf for the last 10 years of his life - how on earth did he still compose?! We've now jumped ahead 90 years to Mahler to compare his 5th symphony with Beethoven's. Again, an amazing symphony which you ought to listen to, even if only for the magnificent trumpet solo at the start, which I have just started to learn!
So that was my first Monday back at Conservatoire... yes, I only had one lesson. Wooo welcome to uni life! Oh wait, it's a bit different here because we actually all play instruments. And we're supposed to practice them so yeah I did go home but I still did 2 more hours "work", essentially. Then I did some "proper work" (as in, I got paid) by teaching piano to my two lovely pupils!
Tuesday came round quickly and although there were no lessons scheduled, my quintet decided to have a rehearsal, which is always good fun! We're currently practising a West End Medley arranged for us by a friend and next week we'll hopefully have some tuition from a professional to help us improve it even more. Tip for ensembles - an outside pair of ears are incredibly helpful, especially if they know what they're talking about in terms of music. Here comes the super exciting bit... Tuesday evening was the EPIC concert of the RPO Brass Section with special guest Allen Vizzutti!! They played some pretty awesome repertoire (including Bach's Toccata and Fugue and a few of Vizzutti's own compositions) and this soloist never ceases to amaze me, as well as making everyone else wonder why they even bother playing the trumpet... I met him afterwards and was first in queue for a picture with the legend, possibly fangirled a little bit, don't judge me.
Back to earth the next day with another 9am start, this time it was Applied Musicianship. Things like harmony, chords, intervals, score reading, improvising and conducting are all covered in here so it literally is applying your musicianship and it can be quite fun really. We have a funky software to download which plays chords and intervals to us so we can practice at home as well, not that anyone particularly enjoys doing that in their spare time! (If you do and it's secretly your hobby, I apologise)
Now on to Thursday and Friday - Brass Band! I have no shame in saying this is my favourite large ensemble which is no surprise really as I grew up with brass banding. The two concerts we performed last week were simply lovely and my Dad was able to attend one of them and he thoroughly enjoyed listening to it. If anyone is interested, the concert at Charlton house is always recorded and uploaded to YouTube so have a search for "Royal Greenwich Brass Band".
That concludes my first week back at Conservatoire! Can you see why I love it so much? Some people may say it's a bit sad but we all have the things we love and I'm proud to share my experiences with others so that they might be inspired too. Hope you all had a great week too, "let music never die in us!" (A great quote I learnt from a friend last week)
S x
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| Young Beethoven - not nearly as grumpy as we think! |
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| Old Beethoven - portrayed as a really grumpy old man |
Tuesday came round quickly and although there were no lessons scheduled, my quintet decided to have a rehearsal, which is always good fun! We're currently practising a West End Medley arranged for us by a friend and next week we'll hopefully have some tuition from a professional to help us improve it even more. Tip for ensembles - an outside pair of ears are incredibly helpful, especially if they know what they're talking about in terms of music. Here comes the super exciting bit... Tuesday evening was the EPIC concert of the RPO Brass Section with special guest Allen Vizzutti!! They played some pretty awesome repertoire (including Bach's Toccata and Fugue and a few of Vizzutti's own compositions) and this soloist never ceases to amaze me, as well as making everyone else wonder why they even bother playing the trumpet... I met him afterwards and was first in queue for a picture with the legend, possibly fangirled a little bit, don't judge me.
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| Picture with Allen Vizzutti! |
Now on to Thursday and Friday - Brass Band! I have no shame in saying this is my favourite large ensemble which is no surprise really as I grew up with brass banding. The two concerts we performed last week were simply lovely and my Dad was able to attend one of them and he thoroughly enjoyed listening to it. If anyone is interested, the concert at Charlton house is always recorded and uploaded to YouTube so have a search for "Royal Greenwich Brass Band".
That concludes my first week back at Conservatoire! Can you see why I love it so much? Some people may say it's a bit sad but we all have the things we love and I'm proud to share my experiences with others so that they might be inspired too. Hope you all had a great week too, "let music never die in us!" (A great quote I learnt from a friend last week)
S x
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