"So when we sing, in a very different musical style from grabbing a giraffe..."

Not for the first time, the most time-consuming part of writing a choir blog entry is deciding which of the Jamieisms should be the title :-) The one above is probably my second favourite of last night's rehearsal, but my favourite is a bit too visual to work here. (It was "Sopranos, you've got to go ^^^^. Basses, you've got to go >>>>. And tenors, you've got a G natural." And the ^^^^ and >>>> are fizzy gestures. ... You probably had to be there!)

Another great rehearsal, made even better by the return of both Liz L (with comfy cushion) and Dr Liz (who brought me a fabulous pink T shirt from Egypt!). The only negative part was that a couple of altos were upset by the behaviour of some other altos - and when they told me why, I was horrified; I didn't know stuff like this was still going on, I thought all the unfriendly people had left years ago. Been racking my brains since, trying to think of a solution, but I have already started discussions with other committee members about it, and I won't let it just drop, I promise.

But, let's talk about something nice. We started with Mihi autem nimis, which I don't think we'd tried till last night. It's not too difficult, but as ever it's difficult to do it really well. The 2nd altos were on a bit of a roll, though - Jamie got very excited by the harmonics we were apparently producing on the last note, and held us up as a shining example to the rest of the choir. (Which is as it should be, of course!) He didn't just like the last note... we got "By the way, the Alto 2s are winning for the best E vowel at the beginning." And "This is talent!" somewhere in the middle. I don't know about anyone else, but it had the effect of making me concentrate extra hard on how I was singing, so that I could do it the same way again in the future. And it put me in a really good mood too! Self-esteem is a wonderful thing :-)

Other Jamieisms during this part of the rehearsal: "You don't need to look like some possessed advertisement for chocolate!" (I forget what that was referring to), and "60 million Smarties are awarded immediately." (to the bass who spotted a misprint)

Then we did the first half of Laudibus in sanctis. It's getting pretty good. Bit more meaningful now, as well, because Jamie pointed out the meanings of the words. This produced "If you are imaginative and talented in this respect, draw a trumpet." - and "These people are happy! So was Byrd! He just didn't have a tambourine!"

We finished by doing some work on Lord, Thou hast been our refuge, followed by a quick sight-read through Holst's Nunc Dimittis, which was handed out at the start of the rehearsal. Never heard it before, but it's really lovely. Just managed to find an mp3 on the iTMS:

Nunc Dimittis (Holst) (3.8 MB)

Other stuff: Most people know about Ed Gardner's new job, but here's a link for those who missed it. (He was the Hallé's Assistant Conductor a couple of years ago and is very lovely.) There's a related story about ENO here.

Bit more news about the Manchester Passion: we now know a few of the people who are going to be involved. They include Keith Allen, Darren Morfitt, Tim Booth, Nicholas Bailey and Bez.

An interesting story about conductors and performers who sing along - we've had a few of those over the years!

And finally a couple of recent searches: someone searched for "the dissonance at the end of Tallis O nata lux" (I couldn't remember which one, but I just looked, and I presume they mean the false relation in bar 80, when the tenors have an F natural while the sops have an F sharp). And there was also a search for "how to seat choir members according to part they sing". I felt unreasonably guilty to realise that none of the results on the search page (including my blog) told this person the answer to this, so here it is:

Every choir I have ever sung in, including the Hallé, has had the men in the middle, with sopranos (S1 and S2) on the left (from the conductor/audience's point of view) and altos (A1 and A2) on the right. (I know there are choirs that arrange themselves differently, but I have never encountered one.) Usually the tenors (T1 and T2) are on the left of the centre line (next to the sopranos) and the basses (B1 and B2) on the right (next to the altos), but if there are particularly few tenors they may well be put across the front, with all the basses behind them.

We usually stay in this arrangement when the parts divide, and in the Hallé the order (from left to right) is: S1, S2, T2, T1, B1, B2, A2, A1. Sometimes this is varied to have, say, A2 at the front and A1 behind them, and similarly for other parts, if the 2nd parts have much smaller numbers.

Currently we are sitting "in two choirs", and this always means S1/A1/T1/B1 on the left and S2/A2/T2/B2 on the right. The arrangement within the two choirs varies, but for this concert we have A1, T1, T2, A2 at the front and S1, B1, B2, S2 at the back.

Hope that helps :-)