fox | oh, hector.

The subject line is actually misleading; what I'm amused by tonight isn't Hector's fault, because I'm more or less resigned to the Overt Frenchness of the Berlioz Te Deum by now. No, what's got me rolling my eyes and sighing is the amount of time we spent this evening just marking rehearsal numbers in the score. You wouldn't think that would take ages, would you? Start at 1 and carry on every system (or, at a minimum, every page) until you get to the next movement, and then reset. Yeah, except that we had additional instructions like "and then bar 36, where your score has B, is actually G in a square, and also circle-18A." There are, in short, no fewer than four ways to refer to particular spots in this score: the measure number, the rehearsal figure printed in the damn thing, a different letter in a box, or a number in a ring -- and the number in a ring sometimes has two or three subsections before moving on to the next one (e.g. 17, 18, 18A, 18B, 19).

It's nights like this that I'm especially glad to be a first soprano, because as long as what I'm singing is at the top of the page, I'm golden. (Better yet, also the top of the chord -- but I don't get too grabby. [g])