GPS - the final week

March 7: Perpetua and her Companions (T minus 9)

Mondays and Thursdays are my days off. I try to observe Thursday as a Sabbath; Monday is a working day at home, for grocering, errands, personal and household tasks. With a late night Sunday, I am late in arising on Monday, and early to bed at the end of the day.

March 8: Shrove Tuesday (T minus 8)

I begin with Sunday's postlude, a Stanley Voluntary, fingering it and giving it a First Workout. I am left with about two hours for Franck, enough to work through the first two movements and half of the third. I consider staying another hour after the church pancake supper to go further; that would leave me only five hours for sleep. I choose the sixth hour of sleep, and take the bus home.

March 9: Ash Wednesday (T minus 7)

Each year, this day reminds me how much time and energy I devote to Food – grocery shopping, cooking, dishwashing, and most of all, eating. Freed from all of it for a day, I have lots of extra time. I need it; this is the day in which I must get the Franck well settled and secure on the concert instrument. I work from 8:30 until 2:00 at the Congregational Church, beginning where I had left off in the scherzo, on to the end, back to the beginning of the piece, through the middle movements and up to the transition to F sharp Major in the finale.

My long preparations of fingering and First Workout are bearing fruit; by the end of the session, the piece is shaping up. It is only my third time through it, and only a week remains. But, Lord willing, it may be enough.

It is a luxury to have so much time on the performance instrument, and I am grateful for all of it. The pedal geometry differs from the Pilcher enough to make large intervals chancy; the pedal action is stiffer, so that for the first hour I am sometimes not playing the notes firmly enough for them to sound; stop changes require practice, for I am unfamiliar with the locations of the stop tabs.

March 10: Thursday (T minus 6)

A day of rest.

March 11: Friday (T minus 5)

I had hopes for a solid day of practice, but administrative work keeps me at my desk for most of the day. As the news from Japan trickles in, I grow increasingly distracted.

At Youth Choir this week, we began the Kyrie Orbis Factor, S-84 in the Hymnal 1982. It is a full page, a ninefold Kyrie. I was waiting for a chorister to ask “Why so much?” No one asked, and it is just as well, for I did not have the answer until today.

It is a song for a day such as this, when words fail and all we can do is to cry for mercy.

Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.

The Franck gets a mere ninety minutes today, completing the finale that I had left unfinished on Wednesday. But I spend an hour or two working through the Pièce d'Orgue for the wedding; it is in good condition, and I will lay it aside now until next Wednesday afternoon – after the recital.

March 12: Gregory the Great (T minus 4)

Today is even shorter as a work day than usual; it is Time Change Saturday. Many years ago, I committed to Ben Franklin's adage “Early to bed, early to rise.” I expect neither health, wealth, nor wisdom from this habit, but I do expect that I be at my best at the hour of 8:45 on Sunday mornings. I must adjust the rest of my life, especially Saturdays, accordingly.

I work for two hours on Franck, covering the first two movements.

March 13: The First Sunday in Lent (T minus 3)

This is my final opportunity for extensive work on the Franck, but there is much else to do. I spend about an hour and a half preparing a songsheet for next Sunday's bulletin with LilyPond – this is much less time than it sometimes takes, but time I can hardly afford today. And I do the First Workout on next Sunday's voluntaries, two movements from Messiaen's Livre du Saint-Sacrement. One goes smoothly; one does not.

Bookended around this is work on the Franck. I work through the final three movements in the mid-afternoon, do my other work, practice the Messiaen, and start again at the beginning of the Franck, working all the way through to the end. It is hard work, for the piece is playing mind-games on me now. I sometimes quote an old football saying to the choirs: "Drill for skill, because under stress we regress." I am making mistakes today that I have never made, stupid and frustrating mistakes, and I know that they come from stress, the stress of knowing that the recital is at hand. I feel as if I cannot possibly play the piece, ever, and most certainly not three days from now. The slow play-throughs as I complete my work on each movement help -- but there are mistakes even in these. I make it to the end of the piece shortly before midnight.

There will be no more updates until after the recital. On Tuesday, I have three hours in the afternoon at the Congregational Church, and then what work I wish to do on it Wednesday morning – probably some work on two or three spots that remain troublesome, finishing with a slow play-through.