Jamie: "OK, let's sing it." [basses groan] Jamie: "It's ONE NOTE!"

(apologies for taking so long to finish this post - I seem to be exhausted all the time at the moment)

Well, I ended up with 3 American guests in the end, and they were lovely. They gave me a model of a lighthouse that's near where they live - apparently there are hundreds of (working) lighthouses all along the shore of Lake Michigan!

My guests, along with several other members of the Battle Creek group, watched the second half of our rehearsal tonight, when Jamie picked out the most showy-off bits of Gerontius for us to do. (Well, it might have been a coincidence that he picked those bits when we had an audience, but we don't think so!) Just as well they weren't there for the first half, when we had another attempt to make the Fire Chorus sound like Verdi...

The title of this post comes from rehearsing the comedy bass line "l'ultimo guizzo lampeggia e muor" - this comes at the end of a page in which the other parts all have very short easy phrases. It seemed to be the words that were the problem (the notes are all bottom Bs) so Jamie made us all say it repeatedly. I don't think the basses were really alarmed at the prospect of singing it after that, it's just a knee-jerk choral singer's reaction :p

There was lots of singing each other's parts tonight, in order to consolidate some of the notes. I was particularly amused at the tenor and bass "movono intorno mutando stuol" - turns out that this line, which has been dire every time, sounds great if the men are instructed to ignore the pitches - and the words - and the dynamics...

Other bits I liked:

The fact that I now have "Haka Dalek bit" written in my score (on the "fuga la notte col suo splendor" scale up)

Jamie: Do you feel your tummy going "What are you DOING?!?"

Jamie: Did you just SWOOP?!? (it was the accompanying eyebrows here!) But David almost outdid this with his eyebrows when he heard Jamie give the instruction "Tune into David FM" (i.e. listen to the accompaniment so you don't speed up).

After break (with an audience, as already mentioned): Gerontius: p41-54 (end of part 1); Demons p70-91; Praise p125-147. Less to note here, but let's see: there was the "Haka Who" on the bottom of p78; Jamie's F face on "feet", p81 (you had to see it...); the fact that the basses are (as I have pointed out!) wrongly singing in harmony on p90 for the last "ha! ha!"; and the experimentation on how to sing "hosts" on p79 - Noel Coward? Russian? I'm not sure what the final verdict was!