Cold choir

It’s got much colder here over the last couple of days. I’m sitting here in our house in several layers of clothes,  plus blanket and fingerless gloves. One of my colleagues was wearing her coat in the office this afternoon. At least we haven’t had floods like elsewhere in the UK. 

I’ve just got back from choir practice.  We have a concert  on Saturday,  in a church,  and we rehearsed there tonight.  It was quite cold in there as well.

The rehearsal went alright, apart from the odd bit we almost always get wrong. I think the cause of our repeated errors might be at least partly psychological,  because now,  when we know those bits are coming up in the piece,  we get tense and are therefore more  likely to get them wrong. We’re  singing quite a lot of  songs – about 20 – and some other people are doing solos and things,  so it might be a long concert. 

Sorry this isn’t a very interesting post!

Choir & Other Choir

Yes, it’s that time of year again. At Choir we are singing the usual mixture of Christmas and random songs, as well as working on the Les Miserables medley. It is fun, but sometimes I’d like to try some different music. Other Choir is no more. Well, a form of it still exists, and I went to the first few rehearsals but have decided not to go anymore, for several reasons, none of which are probably very good. I won’t tell you about them here because if I did this post would turn into a rant about various things, including incompetent conductors and rude students. I used to love Other Choir, but on Wednesday I found myself counting down the minutes until the end of the rehearsal, and at that point I decided it was time to give it up. I feel a bit sad about it, but such is life. I might find something else to do on a Wednesday night…or I might just stay in and knit. I expect you can guess which one of these scenarios is more likely.

Things I’ve been singing recently

Since the Mozart and Jenkins concert back in March, there have only been a couple of Other Choir rehearsals, and I had to miss one of those as I was working late. In the one I did go to, we learned Paul Patterson‘s Magnificat. I’d never heard of Mr Patterson before, but I quite liked his Magnificat – it’s very joyful.  The choir participated in a workshop with the man himself a few days later, but I was unable to go. We have a new conductor, which is quite strange, and there were not many people at the rehearsal I went to, which was also quite strange, as usually you have to get to the rehearsal ridiculously early if you want a seat. It’s coursework hand-in/exam time for students now, though, which probably explains most of the absences.

(Photo credit: Ryan Franklin via Wikipedia)

At Choir, we’re continuing to  massacre rehearse the Les Miserables medley, among other things. I really enjoy singing it, although I wish we had the tune more often, as there are lots of good tunes in there but we (altos) mainly get to ‘ooo’ and ‘ahhh’ some rather less exciting harmonies underneath! The most difficult bit for us is  Do You Hear The People Sing, because we all know the tune. We actually have quite a good harmony in this bit (with words, and everything!) but we can’t quite find our notes when the other two-thirds of the choir are singing the tune! Hopefully we will get it right one day.

Mozart & Jenkins: the finale

I’m currently experiencing that slightly odd after-concert time. The days when you don’t quite know what to do with your spare time because you’d spent so much of it trying to learn the music, and when it’s a novelty to have to decide what to listen to on your music player of choice, because you’ve spent so many months listening to the concert pieces on repeat. The nights when the songs are still going round your head at silly o’clock, even though you don’t really need them to be in your head anymore.

Thankfully, there are also memories of a concert that went very well, on the whole, and was a great experience. There were a few dodgy moments, but nothing too major in the scheme of things. My mum came to stay for a couple of days, so she could come to the concert. I don’t think she’s been to see me in a concert for about 15 years, and it was really nice to have her there. She said she enjoyed it a lot and didn’t hear any mistakes (she knows the pieces quite well as she has sung them before) – but then she is my mum, so perhaps she would say that! The Armed Man went better than expected, and the Requiem slightly less well than it went the other week.

It was exhausting, particularly as we had almost a whole day of rehearsal beforehand  - I felt like I’d run a marathon the next day (not that I’ve ever run a marathon)! I don’t know how people can possibly have the energy to dance and/or act and sing at the same time!

However, my overriding thought about the concert is what a joy and privilege it is to sing in a choir. We sang in the cathedral on Saturday, which is an amazing place to sing in, in terms of the acoustics and otherwise, but it doesn’t matter about the setting: It’s the singing, the physical act of the production of sound, the harmonies, the blending, the listening, the sense of one-ness, the moments when it all fits together and something beautiful and unique is created – those things (and more that I can’t adequately describe) are what make singing in a choir such a joy, and so – quite literally on occasion – awesome.

Mozart by the sea

On Sunday, Other Choir went to a town on the coast to perform Mozart’s Requiem. The first challenge for the singing librarians (not to be confused with the Singing Librarian) was to get to the church on time. Unfortunately, having got to the town without any real problems, we then took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in a village just along the coast. Thinking we were in the right place, we walked along the road until we realised we weren’t where we thought we were and asked a lady for assistance. After we found out where we actually were, we thought we had no choice but to keep walking (despite the fact that it would have taken us at least half an hour (not to mention up a steep hill) to get there and we only had 25 minutes left until the rehearsal started!). However, we saw a bus stop and decided to ask someone who was waiting for the bus if one was likely to be along soon. She said one was, and lo and behold, it appeared round the corner. Fortunately for us, said bus was going where we wanted to go to, so we got on, and, even more fortunately, the nice person on the bus said she’d point the way to our destination once we got to the town. To cut a long story short, we arrived in the nick of time. Not the most conducive start to the afternoon, but never mind!

We had a short rehearsal before the performance, which was OK, although I was sat right at the back of a lot of people, so I couldn’t really hear anyone apart from the lady next to me. Fortunately, she knows what she’s doing! It was actually quite liberating, being so far back, and so spaced out (physically, not mentally!), as we’re usually really crammed in to our rehearsal room. The church we sang in is really lovely. There were lots of frescos on the walls, and a lot of intricately carved wood all over the place. There’s also an art installation consisting of lots of models of ships hanging from the ceiling in there at the moment, which was intriguing, but also rather distracting!

We had a short break for some food (or a trip to the pub!) and then the concert began. We were now gathered round the piano (as much as you can gather 100-or-so people around a piano), and I ensconced myself next to my usual choir neighbour, somewhere at the back. I’m just about tall enough to get away with this, thankfully.

We sang the Requiem through without any real break, apart from a short pause after the Lacrimosa. I have to admit I hadn’t been looking forward to the performance, but I enjoyed it – although ‘enjoyed’ seems like a bit of an insipid word to use in this context. It was exhausting, but in a good way. I was so tired when I got home that I didn’t even have the energy to knit!  And we have to do it all again on Saturday – as well as singing The Armed Man! Eek.

Mozart & Jenkins

A bit of Mozart's Requiem. Image via Wikipedia

…might make a good name for a detective duo. However, this post is not about detection, but about our continuing efforts to learn Mozart’s Requiem and Jenkins’s The Armed Man. I’m trying to listen to both pieces on a regular basis, which is helping me learn them to a certain extent,  but it would all be a lot easier if I was singing the soprano part, because that’s the one that’s usually the easiest to pick out. I find it quite hard to pick out the alto line. I probably need to sit down and listen to the pieces with the score in front of me – that might help.

As I’ve said before, The Armed Man is growing on me. A lot of it sounds deceptively simple, but actually some of those bits are unexpectedly difficult to sing. It’s also been quite interesting, now having the score, to see where the words come from. Some of them are quotations from Le Morte D’Arthur, there’s a poem by Kipling and ‘the Armed Man’ theme itself has quite an interesting history. The pieces as a whole is quite repetitive in places, but that’s good in terms of us trying to learn it all in time for the concert, although it also does that thing where you think it’s going to be the same again but then there’s just a slight difference that throws you off. That was a badly constructed sentence.

Anyway, I’m enjoying the rehearsals, I’m just worried about the performance, but this is not unusual. Still, we have a few weeks to go yet, so maybe (hopefully) I’ll be feeling better about it all by the time of the concerts.

La, la, la, croak

It’s choir time again, but I haven’t gone to choir practice tonight, and I didn’t go to Other Choir practice last night, either, because I have some sort of virus. It’s like a cold, but it only seems to be affecting my throat. I feel (and sound) a bit croaky, so it’s a bit difficult to sing. There is also an annoying cough to go with the croakyness. I’m only feeling slightly off-colour, but off-colour enough to miss a colleague’s sort-of-leaving do. She’s going on secondment, so we’ll still see her, although we’ll miss not having her around the library for the next 18 months.

Last week at choir we started practising a Les Misérables medley. I’ve never seen Les Misérables, or heard many of the songs all the way through, and I only know some of the tunes of the songs from having to play a (different) Les Misérables medley in an orchestra. I think I was playing the bass guitar at the time (a long time ago). The men of the choir requested this piece of music because (I suspect) they now have the chance to belt out ‘Do You Hear the People Sing‘ at full volume on a regular basis.

In Other Choir, we’ve started rehearsing The Armed Man. I’ve been listening to it a lot, to try and get at least some of it in my head. Some of it’s quite repetitive, which is good from the point of view of having to learn it. I think it’s growing on me, which is just as well really, as I’ll probably have to listen to it and sing it lots of times for the next couple of months.

At work, I’m continuing to catalogue the hundreds of music scores. Six large boxes of them arrived on Monday. I wonder how long it’s going to take me to finish them all…

 

Carols

We had our church carol service last night. It was in the traditional Nine Lessons and Carols format. We had candles all over the church and it was actually warm in there, for once. We had a sort of scratch choir, eight of us, and we sang Shepherds! Shake Off Your Drowsy Sleep, in which the shepherds are exhorted to leave their “silly sheep”. Poor sheep. There was no need to insult them really, was there? Anyway, our singing of it didn’t go very well. We had to stop and start again. We also sang  Darke’s setting of In the Bleak Mid-Winter, in which I made a mess of the alto part, which was not really surprising as I’d only rehearsed it once, apart from playing through it on my flute. I would like to sing it again one day, so I can do it properly, as it’s a really nice setting and a rare interesting alto part. Oh, well.

Singing and knitting (not at the same time)

Well, the singing hasn’t really happened at all, despite it being Advent, which is usually when the most singing of the year is…sung? This year, due to the Cold, I have not been able to attend most of the things I would usually have gone to sing at. I managed to go to the school Christmas concert thing (see previous post), but I missed the university’s carol service, in which Other Choir sang some of Vivaldi’s Magnificat. I also missed the Choir’s  (as opposed to Other Choir’s) concert last Thursday and their stint at the school’s carol service on Tuesday. Hopefully, I’ll be able to go to the church carol service on Sunday, and finally sing some carols! I like carols – well, most of them. We’re supposed to be doing Darke’s version of In the Bleak Midwinter, but I have no idea how the alto part goes, so that could be interesting.

The knitting is going slightly better than the singing. I’ve nearly finished a scarf for my sister-in-law (having lost count of the number of times I’ve had to undo it all and start again), and some gloves for my sort-of sister-in-law, and then I have to make another pair of gloves for my other sister-in-law. I’ve done some knitting on the train, when there’s been enough room, and it was easier than I thought it would be.

Concert number one

The concert went quite well, all things considered. I managed to get some words muddled up, several times, which is not something I normally do, so that was a bit annoying. On the other hand, some bits we always seem to get wrong in rehearsal went alright on the night, which was good.  The students from the school were excellent, and put us to shame, as usual! They are so polite, helpful and sensible and some of them are very talented indeed. If people think today’s youth are nothing but trouble, they should meet these young people and have their minds changed.

In other news, I had my pacemaker checked today, and it is behaving very well, apparently. It was, as it always is, disconcerting to have my heart manipulated remotely. I tried to find a video of a pacemaker being checked, so I could show you what happens, but (perhaps unsurprisingly) I couldn’t find one! When the technician tested the pacemaker by slowing my heart-beat right down I felt very light-headed and weird and I was glad when he put it back to its normal setting!  Anyway, it’s all OK. I have to go back in another six months, when I will also be seeing the cardiologist.