Elijah

This week my score for Elijah came in the mail. The Tabernacle Choir sang selections from Elijah regularly, so I am not starting completely from scratch on this one. The symphony is doing this concert Easter weekend, and lest you think that three months is plenty of time to learn a piece of this size, let me just add that we are doing it memorized, and in German.

Now, in general I think languages are good, and have made a career of teaching them. But German has always stymied me.  Memorizing Beethoven’s 9th last summer was excruciating , and I only succeeded in memorizing it with about a thousand circuits of Lincoln Woods and my Ipod. Elijah is four times as long. Couldn’t we do something in Latin or Italian or something? At least then you can tell what it’s talking about and that helps solidify the word memorization. With German it’s just gibberish, lovely though it may be. 
We are doing three performances of Elijah (or I guess I should say Elias, let’s just begin the torture now)  in Symphony Hall and one in Carnegie Hall. I have never sung there before and have never actually been to New York City, so it is exciting. It petrifies me, though, that I might get there and totally flub the German on stage in Carnegie Hall!!! I suppose there are worse things, but that one is one of my worst nightmares. Potential embarrassment is a HUGE motivator for me, so it’s time to get to work.
Pages of German memorized: 0
Pages to go: 204
Ich muss helfen.