A week and a half ago I hurt myself, in a couple of arguably avoidable ways, and I’m still kind of mad about it. One was grabbing a handful of poison ivy. I know, know. After I grabbed it I thought “uh-oh, leaves of three let it be, this might not be good” but it was a thought that came about thirty seconds too late. And then some life stress has been happening, and while I was on the phone with my sister talking about arrangements to put our dad in hospice, I bit a ragged cuticle on my right pinky…so severely that it was too painful to play for OVER A WEEK. You might think it would be better to react to stress with self-destructive behavior that ruins, say, my liver, instead of my hand, but I guess we don’t pick our vices. I say this not as a bid for sympathy, but to comment that it’s amazing how all-consuming physical inconveniences can be. Yesterday was the first day I could really practice without my finger hurting intensely, and I’m still waking up in the middle of the night because I have to cover myself with anti-itch cream again. I can’t help but think that Agnes must have felt like this for so much of the time—with all of these exciting musical ideas and projects, but unable to play, unable to tour, unable to sing, because her body was getting in the way. Of course her ailments were much worse than mine. But as an example of how focused I’ve been on my hurting finger and itchy skin, I forgot to tell you:
Oh, by the way, I’m in Brno. Agnes’s hometown. I’m playing a concert of her music tomorrow at JAMU, the main performing arts university here. I have no idea if anyone will come—apparently they’re in final exams right now and high concert season, and everyone is exhausted from going to so many concerts. I hope the people who don’t feel like sitting through one more concert will just stay home—it’s dispiriting to play for people who don’t want to be there. And I hope I play well. The last week of practice really wasn’t good because of my finger, and I’m taking three of the etudes (5, 7,12) off the program because of it. No one will mind, I’m sure, but I’m disappointed that I’m not playing them all yet. Two of the ones I’m leaving out are going to be my favorites, too, when I can play them well—but if I play them in their current state people will only hear that they’re hard, not that they’re great. Once I made that call yesterday I had a joyful practice, and I had another good practice today. Tomorrow won’t be as polished as I want it to be, but part of the way you get to polished performances is by playing some less polished performances along the way.
I’ll report about the concert (and link to video when it’s available).
Meanwhile, I got to spend yesterday at the archive in the Department of History of Music. It was so good to be back there. I love handling her actual pages—I’ve been so happy to play from photos on my iPad, but I forgot that her pages are actually much bigger than my screen. There’s one missing page in a set of short pieces, and I really hope I can find it in her collection of fragments and homework, but I didn’t find it yet, and it might not be there. I took photos of all the pages—more than 500–of her opera, and that’s going to be an exciting project: she didn’t make a piano reduction, so I’m going to make one. (That will probably have to wait till my next sabbatical). I also took photos of the libretto, by Franz Keim, and I’ve already started looking at AI translations of the last couple of pages. AI can read handwriting, but it has trouble reading handwriting in lyrics, because it tries to read the music notation too. So it’s great that the libretto is written out separately. I don’t know how the opera will be…it’s called, and about, Bertran of Born, a troubadour who revolted against a couple of kings. I’m fuzzy in the details but it’s definitely a tragedy—the final scene has a king crying out for his dead son. So that will be a cheerful project. But I actually do think it could be really exciting. I’ll have to figure out how to stage it…but that’s a project way, way, way down the road.
I also took photos of Agnes’s poems, which I’ll have AI read and translate, and of her letters. She mostly writes in German, but she was fluent in English and occasionally added a phrase or two in English. The first one I saw was disappointing but not surprising: it was an account of being harassed. Her music is so full of joy and good humor, so fun, that I think of her as being cheerful and not stressed out by anything—but of course she had so much stress in her life. I’m going to have AI read her letters, so I’ll know her better soon. I’m curious how her poems and letters will match the personality of the music. I feel like I know her so well, and in some ways I think I do, but in other ways of course I don’t know her at all.
And now I’m itching again, and it’s all I can think about.