Have a seat. Rest your feet.

Well, I was planning to go straight to sleep when I got home tonight, and write this tomorrow, but it's all whizzing round in my head, so I thought I'd better write it down so I can get to sleep!

The title of this post is not a quote, although I wish it was. Wanting to sit down - and being unable to - was a bit of a theme of the evening. On two separate occasions during the first half of the concert, the men on the front row (who lead our sitting and standing) didn't sit when they should have, resulting in us having to stand up for considerable amounts of time. Grrr. I must admit, I've always hated the sitting/standing system in this choir. Every other choir I've been in, if the conductor wants us to sit at a particular bar number, it's everyone's responsibility to do just that, so we all sit together. But in the Hallé, the tradition is that one person (in the middle of the front row) is responsible for the stands and sits, and everyone else follows him (it's usually a him). The reason I detest this system (quite apart from it causing situations like tonight's, if he makes a mistake) is that I think it looks awful - a kind of double Mexican wave ensues. It's a pretty fast wave, sure, but it's by no means all the choir standing up simultaneously. I'll be very amazed if this system is ever changed, though (and yes, I will be attempting to see that it is, although I'm not holding out much hope).

Anyway, opinions of tonight's Messiah gig seem to vary greatly. My mum loved it, and she was in the audience, so that's the main thing. And quite a few choir members seemed to think it all went pretty well. My opinion? The second half was great. The first half was adequate (in that there were no wrong notes or anything like that) but it was by no means great. And this is very frustrating, because it was great in rehearsal. I felt really sorry for Paul Daniel, because he was so clear about what he wanted (whether or not we agreed with him), and he was delighted when we did everything he asked in rehearsal, but he must have been disappointed that it didn't appear in the concert (at least in the first half). To be fair, Paul did grin all the way through, and appeared to be really pleased, but I do wonder how much of that was just showmanship. Personally I was in a foul mood when I came offstage for the interval, and I hear Jamie was too. Can't say I blame him. All that hard work, wasted!

My theory as to why I, personally, didn't sing very well in the first half (I have no idea what other people might chalk their own performances up to): I couldn't concentrate properly on the music because of things winding me up. And after a while this became a bit of a vicious circle, because I was annoyed with myself for getting so annoyed over such minor things. Argh - I hate my mind! What was winding me up, you ask? Let's see... Sore feet due to not sitting down when we should have (see above). Anticipation of whether or not the men would sit down at the next possible place, so that the rest of us could. Annoyance with myself for not singing as well as I know I can. Annoyance with others for totally ignoring markings that we'd rehearsed at length. Full bladder caused by having no time to go to the toilet before the concert, due to the assembly time being shifted 15 minutes earlier (I am sure the powers that be don't realise what a difference to a tightly-planned day 15 minutes can make, if we are only given a few hours' notice of the change). Annoyance that we stood around in the wings for over 10 minutes waiting to go on, after having been sent down in such a hurry that I barely had time to get changed, let alone go to the toilet. Residual annoyance towards certain people who I was annoyed with this morning because they kept talking during the rehearsal. ... I'm sure I could come up with more, but those are the main ones!

All went swimmingly in the second half, though, so at least I left the hall in a much better mood. I was almost convinced by the pp start to Hallelujah, but unfortunately he made things worse by inviting the audience to stand. I can see why he did, but my favourite thing in the whole piece is the way the audience stand up at that point! It's not the same if they're directed! Sorry, Paul, I loved everything else you did (I didn't even mind the grunting, although that distracted a few people!), but I like my Hallelujah traditional.

A few other things, not all from the actual concert:

I noticed that the figured bass (and probably therefore the tasto solo stuff) is not printed in the newest editions of the score. So that post will have been totally confusing to lots of people!

The soloists were all pretty good (we liked the bass best, I think, particularly in Why do the nations when Paul had to put in "a bit of a pause for a Pavarotti moment"), although I'm not a fan of counter-tenors, personally. It's the principle of the thing I object to - there are so few alto solos as it is, it seems particularly unfair to give them to a man! There was a bit of confusion over this particular counter-tenor, too - we thought it was due to be Michael Chance, but the guy who turned up looked really, really young, and we didn't think Michael Chance was that young. So I googled him and found that he's 50. This was baffling, until Alison pointed out that the counter-tenor we got was not in fact Michael Chance!

A couple of quotes. Firstly, from Jamie, during the warmup:

"and your attitude... which is one of fun... and sheep..."

"Please don't squeak. We have a no squeaking policy in this choir."

And from Paul:

"Surprise the rest of the choir with your crescendos. You should be thinking 'bloody hell, what was that from the sopranos?' "
[Rest of choir: "We always think that!"]

"Don't sing Hallelujah like it's frothy cream. Sing it like it's... a rapier... wait, you can't eat a rapier... Chilli! As if you've just eaten a chilli!"

"You know, I only found out last night that in The Lord Gave the Word, the original had no preachers. It was the women who were doing all the chattering."

(The chattering was really annoying me this morning. It's bad enough during a normal rehearsal, but to do it during the conductor's orchestral rehearsal seems incredibly unprofessional to me. Unfortunately there are a few people - mainly altos, sadly - who seem oblivious to the fact that most people want to hear what the conductor says (even if it's not directed at them specifically). I often glance round to see if I'm getting unjustly annoyed with these people, but no - they are the only ones talking.)

Finally... a few more recent amusing searches! I was pleased that someone found us by searching for "gerontius hard g or soft". And I was extremely amused to discover that, due to this post, this blog is now the number one Google search result for "discordant noise"! But the most baffling one was the person who got here by searching for "I'll put you over my knee"... turned out to be because of Maggie that they found us :p