"Tenors, do you do butch?"

Jamie was stuck in Holland tonight (long story) so we had Fanny. Nice to see her again - it's been a while - and it meant I could finally complete my photo sheets for the noticeboard :-)

We discovered the programme for the carol concerts. The first of these huge, probably-sold-out-months-ago concerts (of which there are 4) is a week on Saturday, and tonight was the first rehearsal. This being the case, it's probably a wise decision on Jamie's part to have chosen mainly stuff we've sung before, and none of it amazingly difficult notewise (although of course singing apparently simple stuff really well is a skill in itself). I knew this, yet I must admit I was still a little disappointed when I saw the list. However, it does have Sleigh Ride, which is the most important one! Which reminds me - I need to speak to the new altos about tinsel and glitter (and clapping in Sleigh Ride). Must remember to do that next week.

We spent a large part of the rehearsal on a couple of movements of Bach's Christmas Oratorio, which were not the most exciting thing ever, but I'm sure they'll grow on me, because, well, Bach! There was also a brief foray into the Sussex Carol (which we've done lots of times but is still fun) and A Spotless Rose (which will be very lovely). (I'm pretty sure Graham Worth did the bass solo last time we did this, and it was fabulous - mind you, I could listen to Graham sing all day! But the youth choir boys are doing that part this year, which will be interesting.)

Talking of men sounding fabulous, I must say that my favourite moment of the night was the bit in Stille Nacht when the men went into 4 part harmony, just after the start. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. A glorious sound, it was! Made up for our disappointment of a few minutes earlier... It's Jamie's own arrangement of Stille Nacht, and it's scored for ATB only - no sopranos. We were thrilled to notice this. "What a good idea!" we thought. "The sopranos get the tune in every single piece we do at Christmas - well, in fact EVER - so it's about time there was a piece where they didn't sing! And this makes so much sense - if we had all the sops on the A1 line and all the altos on the A2 line, the thing would never balance, with the men divided throughout, so that can't be the plan... How lovely it'll be to sing something with just lower voices!"

So you can guess what the plan turned out to be :p Oh well.

Anyway, I should probably explain the title of this post. It related to something in the Bach chorale. Fanny asked the altos to sing it in a more butch manner. So we did.

Fanny: That, I like. Tenors, do you do butch?
Choir, after hearing them sing their phrase: No!
Fanny: That was quite butch. It was a bit too butch, actually.

Is this the time to mention that it seems (as a result of a search today that led someone here) that this blog is the number one search result for "choir porn star"... but only if you search on MSN? (There's a reason Google's the most popular search engine, you know!) As ever, I'd really love to know what the person was ACTUALLY looking for!