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Early Morning Schubert

I slept fitfully last night, periodically waking in a kind of panic, my head pounding and my jaw aching. I do not like where my life is right now--not personally, not spiritually, not professionally. I'm just very unhappy, and I don't know if it's legitimate unhappiness or if a cloud of capital-D Depression has descended on me, coloring everything. It could quite possibly be legit unhappiness: It seems that every day I see or hear an announcement that someone I know has died, including a number of people who have died tragically young. So this cloud of sadness won't seem to go away, and I think music is serving as kind of a coping tool, or maybe an escape, for me these days.

This morning I woke up with a sense of dread. On top of the emotional stuff, I have too much to do, I'm behind in work after a couple of days off, and I've taken on far too many volunteer responsibilities than I can handle. I really feel like I'm heading for some kind of a mental breakdown. I just can't handle things.

But Schubert. I got out of bed, went downstairs to the kitchen, poured myself some coffee, and went to the music room. It was maybe 6:30. I normally start my practices with scales, but this morning I started on the music that was open on my piano from last night: Schubert.

I've been working on the antepenultimate page of the Schubert, on the measures in the late 190s/early 200s. A couple of days ago, I worked on measures 212 and following. Yesterday, I worked on measures 204 to 211. It's a challenging little section for me. The hard part is not so much finding the notes (though C-flat and E-double-flat are always tricky) but holding what needs to be held--and remembering when to let go of a note. This is a challenge in both the RH and the LH, but here are a few examples of where the 5 finger (pinky) is holding on to a note while the rest of the fingers keep playing:

The circled notes get held until the end of the measure.
At least I think that's how that's supposed to work. In the left hand, you can see the held notes and the rests and perhaps get a sense of how it can be tricky. In the end, the LH is to sound smooth and mostly unbroken while the high note in each measure of the RH sounds like a high little bell ringing above the rushing stream of the notes below. I may be wrong on that, but I'm going on what I see in the music and what I've heard in recordings.

This morning I worked on measures 193 to 203, or thereabouts. This section is a little easier than the one I worked on yesterday, so I ended up playing through more measures. It features the same high held notes as the section above, but the stretches are easier, and the chords fall more naturally under the hands.


The next step? Enter the metronome! Now that I have the notes figured out and am getting the hand of when to hold notes and when to pick them up, it's time to begin the ... s ... l ... o ... w ... drilling that has worked so well for me elsewhere.

I don't know how much time I'll have for all of this, now that I'm back at work and staring at an overstuffed calendar for the next few weeks. I do know that piano is a great escape, though ... so perhaps I'll get more practice time in that I'm anticipating.
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