Foto: Don't Try This at Home--L'Orgue Mystique, Communion (L'Ascension)
Dear Giac,
° The wedding countdown is going about as expected. The caterer hasn’t declared bankruptcy, the seamstress hasn’t cut up the gown irreparably, and the church hasn’t fallen into a black hole, but otherwise . . . .
° And then there was that late call, and I found myself playing Sunday, times 2. I felt a little stupefied that morning. But everything went pretty well until I got to the offertory in the 11:00 service. I didn’t push the piston. So after the 2 clarinets started and it was time for me to come in there was no sound. I had the wrong number in mind and pushed the piston for the sortie (loud trumpet blast) instead of the quiet accompaniment I should have pushed. But I still had that number in mind and just thought that I’d mispushed. Another push of Gen. 8 elicited the same trumpet blast, and finally I looked at my notes. By that time I was so aghast I hardly knew what I was doing. Fortunately the choir sang faithfully along and the clarinets were undeterred, and we got through it somehow. Believe me, I didn’t listen to the tape of that service!
° Well here comes the bride, clarinets by her side, the choristers hide, the organist’s fried.
° Ingemisco tamquam reus, culpa rubet vultus meus, Lettye.
° Ah that could never have happened to me.
° Once upon a time I was unwisely selected to turn pages for Laine’s graduate recital. And no, I didn’t turn two or three at once during the 50page 5/4 vivace. She was still officially in warmup, the sprightly opener was yielding to the lyric mood piece. Peeters. A mountain evocation, mists, shepherds’ horns, bleating. I set the music on the stand. She gazed upon it. She pressed the correct general piston.
° And I stood in wonder as the Tuba Mirabilis popped out on the Choir. Surely the Cor de Nuit, said I to myself. What can she have been thinking? But who am I to interfere?
° Now the Oxy Wesley Tuba Mirabilis is not one of these modern lavenderpantied English Tubas, nor one of those pale pansyassed French trompettes en chamade. Oxy Wesley’s Tuba Mirabilis was in fact the discarded prototype for the Last Trump of the Apocalypse, discarded on account of the harshness of its tone.
° Well the effect was just astonishing, kind of cleared up the mists with one blast. Laine handregistered.
° And ever since then, so have I.--Giac.
