I was so excited when my new external monitor arrived last Wednesday, enabling me to see the music on my iPad clearly. I was doubly excited when I finally figured out (after having my iPad for three years already!) how to display landscape music which filled out the entire display.
Things were going swimmingly in the service at St. Mark’s this morning, until we got to SINE NOMINE (“For all the saints”), number 287 in the Episcopal hymnal, where everything was fine until the page turn for verses 7 and 8. I clicked my Flic button right on cue, a little ahead of the end of the page since there is a slight delay —but instead of clicking it once, I inexplicably clicked it TWICE, which instead of moving forward a page, moved it BACK a page. Instead of reading verses 7 and 8, my eyes were looking at the Offertory proper! However, I kept playing while I frantically touched the iPad screen to advance to the correct page. I wonder how many people noticed? Luckily that hymn is one which I’ve played my whole life, so I don’t think I missed a beat.
However, at the end of the service, there needed to be a quick transition after the last hymn 618, LASST UNS ERFREUN, so that the postlude (Bach’s “Komm heiliger Geist”) would follow immediately. Instead of clicking the Flic button (which I should have done), I swiped the iPad, hoping to bring up the menu to switch the display back from a two-page view to a one-page view. But the iPad was frozen, and refused to display the menu. After several attempts to bring up the music correctly, in desperation I had the printed music on the bench, luckily turned to the correct page. I threw the music up on the rack but the air conditioner behind me started blowing the pages.
And that’s when soprano Yuko Nakagawa Dupre flew into action! She raced around to the organ console and held my music in place until the postlude was mercifully finished. It wasn’t so easy — that piece takes 3 pages, and I had pasted a photocopy of the third page onto the second page and it was “blowing in the wind” precariously, due to the air conditioner behind me. Luckily it’s also a piece which I’ve played for decades!
What a disastrous morning! Part technical glitch, part human error.
It’s one of the reasons I’m still using printed scores when I conduct (many younger—and some my age or older conductor’s use iPads), but I don’t have the eye issues you do! However, my eyes are not what they were when I was younger, either.
The first time I conducted the Bach Mass in B Minor and the St. Matthew Passion I used miniature scores, something I wouldn’t remotely consider now!
I’ve also watched a string quartet, for example, use iPads for a concert, using a foot pedal to turn pages. I wondered if they’ve ever had the issue you described.
But the day may well come—possibly sooner!—when I need a similar device to see my scores. As with you, despite issues, it could be a life saver.