Audience of One

My first (real) A level

Trembling with trepidation, I traversed the turbulent turmoiled terrifying (bear with me while I think of a noun beginning with T…) troubled teeming turbulent (nuts) terrestrial plane (yes!) towards my techniques test. (Composition Techniques, 3 hours, worth 7.5% of my A level.) You can possibly tell that I dropped English.

Anyhoo (and again…) I was reasonably nervous about this exam. It got off to a good start by starting quarter of an hour late (a period we whiled away by sitting on the exam desks talking about anything but music), so I was slightly more relaxed once exam conditions began, but still couldn’t quite believe I was actually sitting an A level exam.

In this exam I’d chosen to complete a chorale (think German hymn with complicated different parts) in the style of J.S.Bach (genius composer who knew his own rules of harmony so well he broke them all the time, making it very very difficult to really write in his style). I was desperately hoping they wouldn’t give us something in a minor key (I’d only practised major ones).

The exam started, and I opened up the booklet. The chorale was not only in a major key, it was in C major – the easiest of all. The exam carried on at the same kind of level for the whole hour and a half I was there (C major being so easy I finished in half the time). So quite encouraging then.

Matthew @ 08:59, May 27, 2005 to Diary | Comments (2)