The Final Push
Towards the inevitable committee meeting, which is only about 12 hours away. I think that I am pretty much as prepared as I will ever be at this moment. Have gone through my slides once again, fixed the text and worked on the figures per EHD's suggestion and try to brush up on all the things that I think the committee (particularly DJA) will ask me. EHD tells me to not throw them a bone, and I would think I am doing that, but I would leave in a figure that is less than perfect. So it was in general good to have talked to him before the meeting. He made a remark "that I shouldn't be like some of my labmates and say that I want to graduate even if the project isn't completed." Now obviously he was refering to T (and C?) in this case. T has become increasingly bitter over not being able to graduate over the past few months. I am not entirely sure of what happened between him and EHD, but EHD and I seem in agreement with what I need to do to finish. But perhaps if I had been in grad school for 8 years like T (though not all spent in the lab) I might think the same way too.
On a much lighter note, I have been scoping out singing options in the summer when the choir is on hiatus. Some people in the choir are thinking about starting a chamber group that sings mostly 20th century secular music, which sounds really interesting. But since it will start off as an informal group I'm not sure if there will be performances this year. Another group is recruiting singers for Puccini's Tosca, which seems like an interesting project. I'm still looking around, but at least we've got the Beethoven 9th gig with the Korean American Symphony in July and a Mahler 2nd gig with the American Youth Symphony in September.
Having listened to way too much Verdi Requiem (and at too high a volume) for the past couple of weeks I have decided that it is my favorite of the requiems. Verdi's idea of death is certainly not like Brahms, whose Ein Deutsches Requiem envisioned death as a more peaceful event. In Verdi's Requiem eternal damnation (judged by the very long Dies Irae and Libera Me sections) is a very real possibility. Perhaps it's not quite a beautiful as Mozart's Requiem, but there is just so much passion in Verdi's version! In the Libera Me where the soprano goes up to the high C singing "Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna, in die ila tremenda", meaning "Deliver me, O Lord, from eternal death on that dreadful day" was absolutely amazing! Now people who know me well know that I am not even remotely religious (or spiritual for that matter), but at that moment there was no doubt in my mind as to the sincerity of her pleas.
On a much lighter note, I have been scoping out singing options in the summer when the choir is on hiatus. Some people in the choir are thinking about starting a chamber group that sings mostly 20th century secular music, which sounds really interesting. But since it will start off as an informal group I'm not sure if there will be performances this year. Another group is recruiting singers for Puccini's Tosca, which seems like an interesting project. I'm still looking around, but at least we've got the Beethoven 9th gig with the Korean American Symphony in July and a Mahler 2nd gig with the American Youth Symphony in September.
Having listened to way too much Verdi Requiem (and at too high a volume) for the past couple of weeks I have decided that it is my favorite of the requiems. Verdi's idea of death is certainly not like Brahms, whose Ein Deutsches Requiem envisioned death as a more peaceful event. In Verdi's Requiem eternal damnation (judged by the very long Dies Irae and Libera Me sections) is a very real possibility. Perhaps it's not quite a beautiful as Mozart's Requiem, but there is just so much passion in Verdi's version! In the Libera Me where the soprano goes up to the high C singing "Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna, in die ila tremenda", meaning "Deliver me, O Lord, from eternal death on that dreadful day" was absolutely amazing! Now people who know me well know that I am not even remotely religious (or spiritual for that matter), but at that moment there was no doubt in my mind as to the sincerity of her pleas.
posted by La Nuage at 12:47 AM
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