May 17, 2004 at 8:19 PM

Finally my history exam is over! YAY! I really did not enjoy that exam much. The trivia stuff I think went quite well and I was pretty pleased with that overall (we'll see if the marks reflect that), I actually laughed out loud on one question because it was a really strange question to be asked and I knew the answer. For composition outlines, plots, and musical styles I had the choice of outlining Westside Story, Madama Butterfly or Carmen. I went for Carmen. For composers compositional styles and contributions I had to do two from Debussy, Stravinksy, and Louie. I went for Stravinksy and Louie. For complete biography, education, musical stlyes, contributions, and compositions I could pick from Chopin or Haydn. With a complete brain freeze on both, I chose Haydn. I can tell you what years and what Bach did in Eisenach, Orhdruf, Arnstadt, Mulhausen (and Maria), Weimer, Cothen and Leipzeg, but do you think I could remeber what year Haydn or Chopin died? No. Oh well. I did remember a few things, despite my brain freeze about what Haydn's father did, that he recieved an honourary doctorate from Oxford, and a few other little key things. I'm going to guess I'll get about 2 out of 10 though on that part of the exam. We'll find out soon enough though I suppose, 6-8 weeks until I get my results in the mail and probably within about 4-6 weeks I can get the mark on the internet. But it's done! YAY! Now it's onto history 4 and harmony 4 for the December session.

Practicing for my audition is coming along alright. I'm still a fair wase under tempo on the Schumann symphony, but I have 1 week, so hopefully I'll have it down by then. Luckily it's not a huge amount of audition stuff, just four symphonies. With a week and a half total to learn everything it's definetly enough though. I hope I can get in but time will tell! It would be nice to have a "job" to go to all next concert season if possible.

Not too much is new and exciting. I ordered a bunch of strings on Saturday after breaking a string and putting on a few new strings since my d and g were starting to lose a great deal of their sound quality. Sadly, when I went to pick up my violin and tighten up my bow to practice *SNAP* the mechanism inside the bow stripped all the little grooves, so now my bow is just a pile of floppy hair and wood. Good thing I have another bow. It's taking a bit of getting used to how it reacts to the strings though, and how it bounces in things like my Paganini and in faster sections with awkward string crossings for how it handles on the strings. So hopefully I'll be able to get the screw and eye replaced in my usual bow soon, or will be able to grow accustomed to my beloved old bow which I am now using. There isn't a whole lot of difference, sound wise between the two, just my usual bow was a little heavier and I found controlled better on this violin then my other bow did. Ah the joys of playing a stringed instrument!

Back to the practice room now.

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May 17, 2004 at 8:19 PM

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