"Reduced to notebashing! Oh, the shame!"

I expected to do just Tippett tonight, with the gig being on Saturday and the piano rehearsal tomorrow, but we started with the Elgar. Spent some time on the middle bit. (We might have got further if certain sections of the choir had actually written "enlisTID" and "resisTID" in their copies when it was first mentioned... I really hope that doesn't have to be mentioned again!) I was slightly distracted by wondering what I meant by "bb", which I seem to have written in several places in my score. It was a while before I realised it stood for "big breath". (Most of my abbreviations are ones I've been writing for years, such as LTYT, HTYT, FTYT, STYT, IO, IM, IB, IT, IS, SN; people who've sat near me will know what some of those stand for! But "bb" was a new one.) (Oh, and also I like the bit on p. 54 where everyone's holding a long loud Eb and in the middle of it the altos go up the octave. "Such a great idea! And it's probably a misprint!" was Jamie's comment.)

Distraction of a different kind after the break, when a lovely beanie-clad guy came and sat next to David to page-turn for the Ritual Dances, while Naomi was taking someone to catch a tram. Couldn't work out who on earth he was, but very much enjoyed looking at him ;-) We did wonder (with a certain degree of hopefulness!) whether he was going to be involved in the promised "perpetual copulation" :p (we'd been given a synopsis of the plot of The Midsummer Marriage which mentioned this; Gill, typically, spotted the interesting bit immediately... but we were disappointed when we realised that it didn't mention the fate of the little bird! We're worried!)

Turned out that the mysterious yummy guy was the tenor soloist for the spirituals - I didn't recognise him due to the beanie, which I'm pretty sure he wasn't wearing last time. Great voice though. (Well, all four of them are great. The bass was missing tonight because he was singing elsewhere, but we'll see him soon enough, I guess.) The spirituals were mostly OK, but they need to be better by Saturday; today's falling-apart-at-the-seams bit was the link between the first two movements (G major to C minor - shouldn't be that hard, but (a) it took many people by surprise, and (b) it relies on the MEN to start on the right note!), but hopefully that will be OK next time, after Jamie rehearsed it pretty thoroughly. I've given up on the BFBABTEIGW. It'll just have to be wrong on the night - I've tried my best. "Nobody Knows" is mostly correct now, though, so at least some progress has been made!

Tomorrow night: same time, same place, different conductor - it's the Tippett piano rehearsal with Mark. He's usually pretty good at inspiring the choir to make that extra effort that gets the performance from "good" to "great" - let's hope this time is no different.