(My new companion, C.P.E. Bach!)

Since the pandemic, my daily life has started with a 2-1/2 mile walk (during which I listened to Spanish podcasts), 45 minutes of Spanish practice with Duolingo, a one-hour online Spanish class “Cada Dia Spanish”, a 45-minute Zoom conversation in Spanish with Vreni Griffith and/or Cindy Scheinert, two local friends, and then an evening of watching telenovelas (soap operas in Spanish).

I think you probably see a pattern here … learning Spanish has been my primary focus! Only on Fridays did I add in organ practice for the Sunday service, and an organ lesson, and of course, playing for the service on Sunday mornings.

Last Friday, I received a phone call from Scott Fikse, the music director at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu, my former parish, who asked me whether I would be interested and/or willing to play in the First Mondays concert on September 6. Of course I immediately said “yes,” then realized that I have an Early Music Hawaii concert on September 11, an all-Josquin Desprez concert celebrating 500 years since his death. Well, Scott is conducting and singing in that concert, too.

The reason my life has changed is that I’ve just received the music for the September 6th concert, and no question about it, I’m going to have to learn a whole bunch of new (and challenging!) music.

The program includes a trio sonata by Arcangelo Corelli, solo works by C.P.E. Bach and J. S. Bach, a two-organ piece by Henry Purcell, a sonata by Antonio Lotti, and a violin and harpsichord piece by C.P.E. Bach. Luckily at least half of the music is on organ (my stronger instrument), with the remaining on harpsichord.

However, there’s no way can I spend hours and hours studying Spanish! Not only that, most of the repertoire is notated in figured bass — a musical shorthand which for me takes a lot more preparation.

Last Sunday, as I have done for several years, I received the weekly blog of Noa Kageyama, “The Bulletproof Musician,” and this week’s post was titled: “A simple practicing hack that couldn’t possibly be effective as it seems.” He begins by asking a few questions:

Let’s say that you could practice 2 hours a day for the next week. Would it be better to do 2 hours in the morning? Or 2 hours in the evening? Or 1 in the morning and 1 in the evening? Or does it even matter?

Kageyama cited a study in which two groups of French participants were asked to learn 16 Swahili words. Both groups had two sessions per day, with one group learning for the first time in the morning, and reviewing at night; with the other group doing just the opposite, learning for the first time at night and reviewing the next morning.

The results were impressive: the evening group did significantly better by learning new material at night, going to sleep, and then reviewing the next morning.

The sleep group got to perfect recall in about half the time that it took the wake group (3.05 cycles through the list vs. 5.80 cycles). Plus, every single participant in the sleep group got a perfect score within 5 attempts, whereas 75% of the wake group needed more practice.

How could this be applied to my needing to learn a lot of music in a short amount of time? To be honest, I’ve almost never practiced at night. Throughout my life, I’ve always been a morning person and have done all my studying and practice in the mornings.

I certainly can try reading the music for the first time at night, now that I have an organ and harpsichord at home to practice. Still, it will almost be a shock to my system to spend a major part of the day practicing music rather than Spanish.

One more thing I just remembered: I’ll be having houseguests from September 6-12, the same week as both concerts! Luckily it’s my sister Doris and her husband, Alan, so I probably won’t have to play full-time tour director. Most likely I’ll have night-time rehearsals so I have to learn the music NOW!

El español tendrá que esperar (Spanish will have to wait.)

In the meantime, you can have a sneak peek of the Early Music Hawaii season brochure which I just finished designing.