"This wild, discordant noise proclaims our peril!"

It turns out that this is the translation of the words on page 69. Jamie didn't mention this until Gill asked him. I suspect he didn't want to discourage us any more than we already were... for tonight was somewhat dispiriting. I think the people who've missed loads of rehearsals (and not looked at the music in between) have finally registered that the concert is in just over TWO WEEKS, and before then we've got an AGM (which will occupy half a rehearsal) and a recording session (which would help if we were recording "The Bells", because recording sessions are always great for getting the notes firmly embedded - usually too late, but still! - but we're not). I doubt they'll do anything about it, but at least they've realised there's a problem. (But not that it's in any way their fault, of course.)

Jamie was again pretty calm and positive for the most part, but even he couldn't help show his frustration a few times. But we did get a lot done. (If only it sticks!) We actually sang the whole piece apart from the 1st movement. We even did pages 51-55! At last! I must admit I felt kind of smug when the music totally fell apart at that point... It was right near the end by the time we got to it, so there wasn't really time to do it properly, but at least people were alerted to the fact that they need to have a good look at that bit, and I'm sure the conscientious ones actually will.

The altos actually had a pretty good night, probably because we were following our "loud and wrong" philosophy. We were even held up as an example to the others, and you know how we love it when that happens! "There's lots of mistakes, but by God it means something!" was Jamie's description of our singing :-)

We also got "Good recovery - thank you, altos" after we had yet again saved the choir from grinding to a halt, by actually watching. (Revolutionary concept, I know!) But there are still things that many of the altos are getting wrong every time, and I really wish some of them would actually notice. The E natural on page 71 is one that Jamie nagged us about, but he was quite right - most people were singing an E flat. This contrasts ironically with the last bar of the top line of page 64, where the altos should be singing an E flat but most of them are singing E natural. (To be fair, there is an E natural a few bars earlier, and many people haven't noticed the key signature, I think.) Oh, and there are two places where the last note on the top line and the first note on the bottom line are THE SAME NOTE, but people are changing note between the lines and therefore getting the whole of the following music wrong too. This happens on page 67 with an F sharp, and on page 41 with a G. Argh! And that's not even mentioning the people who are still behind the beat and/or flat ALL THE TIME. Arrrrggghh! But still - on the whole we're still clearly the best section, so we can cope with a few imperfections from time to time :p

By way of contrast to our fantasticness, the sopranos weren't on form at all tonight. Maybe they had some key people missing, because they've normally sounded great recently. But tonight I actually wrote "don't rely on sops" on page 66 (by which I mean "be sure to follow the conductor rather than them") and I haven't had to write that for ages. They did sound very nice once they got the hang of the bit at the very end of the last movement, though. And the men sounded wonderful on their long low chord on page 81. I wrote "GB" in my score :-)

Not so many Jamieisms tonight. We did have "It was a very loud mistake, which I encourage all the time - but not here!" (on page 76). But other than that there was just the start of the 2nd movement, where he went into a little solilioquy about seductive triplets and clashing duplets and "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus". You probably had to be there :p

Other stuff: A few links I've been meaning to include. Did you know that Freddie Flintoff likes singing? Let's get him in the choir! (I found out about this through one of the many Jon Christos searches that leads people here. Apparently Flintoff has employed Jon Christos as his vocal coach!) Also, this story about a choir singing with Kate Bush is interesting, as is this one about dolphins being taught to sing the 'Batman' theme. And finally, if you can read German you might enjoy this blog, which I think is written by a German singer. It definitely has a link to this blog, anyway. (My German is very rusty, so I tried running the page through the automatic Google translator, but there were many words that Google couldn't cope with!)

And finally, the latest searches that have led people here include the following:

"girls bottom parts"

"jamie quiver" (which led to this post)

"casualty theme mp3"

"sleigh ride lyrics sopranos and second sopranos"

and, last but not least,

"sin and pleasure" ... which baffled me until I remembered this post!