"Relax on the men, and altos... do it with me"

(I know, I know, I have a filthy mind! But the title IS an actual Jamieism from this afternoon. What can I say? It amused me :p )

So, those who didn't do tonight's pre-concert concert will be wondering how it went and what we sang. The second question is easier to answer:

Mihi autem nimis
Salvator mundi
Christe qui lux
Loquebantur
O nata lux
Hymn - O God our help...
Lord, thou hast been our refuge (1st part only)
Hymn - How shall I sing that majesty
Nunc Dimittis

The more eagle-eyed among you will have spotted that there are two items on that list that we hadn't rehearsed before today. They weren't hard, though (although when Jamie invited the audience to join in those two items - they were given the same sheets we had - I don't know how many of them did, but I couldn't hear any of them) (but then again, there were probably only about 40 people there). A good idea to do them, I think - "O God our help in ages past" is of course quoted in "Lord, thou hast been our refuge", and the other hymn is, it turns out, the Tallis theme that the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis is a fantasia on :-) (The fact that the orchestra were playing this in what Jamie described as "the post-concert event" is the whole reason for the Vaughan Williams/Tallis programme, if you recall.) So both these hymns were good for illustrative purposes, and in particular the Tallis one - that I, at least, had never heard before - was fascinating. (I arrived 5 minutes late at the rehearsal this afternoon, having been unable to change my plans at such short notice to include the extra time it takes to get to WHGS, and they were singing it when I got there. It took me a minute to work out what it was and why they were singing it, but when I did I was delighted!) If you click the link above, it should take you to a web page that plays an audio file of the hymn. There are a couple of wrong notes, but it's close enough that you should recognise the tune.

There were a few more Jamieisms from this afternoon, but before all of them was a quote from Ken that worried some of us after the first few words, because he looked so serious! "Due to all the hurtful comments about the inadequacy of my little bell, I haven't brought it today." This caused Jamie to play a brief burst of If I were a bell (from Guys and Dolls) on the piano, and he spend several minutes improvising on this theme in the break...

Jamieisms included: "Was that a rant?" (after a bit of a rant about the fact that no-one knows any hymn tunes any more); "Can you do it like the French man? Dieu!" (this referred to the start of the word 'generation'); "Bit more goo. I haven't used that word in ages! I've missed it!"; "Release with Jamie - the aerobics video..."; "Ladies, put a ring round the gentlemen's quavers there."; "Let's have no aitches in this choir... apart from at the beginning of the Hallelujah Chorus, once a year."

He got a bit annoyed at the end - with good reason - when we ran through the things we'd rehearsed on Thursday, and several of the problems that we'd fixed then seem to have unfixed themselves. I suspect there are still a few dimwits in the choir who think their memories are so good they don't need to write stuff down. Or something. ARGH.

Then followed a very quick dash into town to find refreshment and get changed in the hour we had. A far-too-long proportion of my hour was spent queuing in Starbucks with Lisa and Libby. The Mount Street one (nearest to the B Hall) was closed for some reason, so I went to the one the other side of the town hall, where there turned out to be a very long queue and some very slow staff. But I got my coffee in the end.

And then, the concert. I suppose it wasn't really too bad, but it was nowhere near as good as it should have been. Main problem: everything went flat. Secondary problem: not everyone was paying attention, so when Jamie asked sections of the choir to sing their part alone for demonstration purposes (which he'd said he was going to), it didn't always work, because of people not using their brains. For example: in Salvator Mundi he asked the sops to sing their opening phrase. No problem. Then he asked the altos and the basses to sing their opening phrases, to illustrate that THEY ARE THE SAME AS THE SOPRANO PHRASE BUT IN DIFFERENT OCTAVES. Now, to be fair, he said "altos" when he meant "2nd altos"... but surely any 1st alto who was paying attention would notice that their part is NOT the same as the sopranos? So the 1st altos sang when they shouldn't have, and the point of the demonstration was lost as a result. Sorry, 1st altos, I love you all dearly, but you weren't very switched on there!

That was by no means the only mistake though. The men managed to sing the whole of the second line of Christe qui lux a tone apart instead of in unison, when asked to demonstrate it. (It was perfect when they sang it again though.) There were quite a few mistakes in the semi-chorus too. (They were still at the note-bashing stage this afternoon... you'd think they would have done some work at home if they knew they didn't know it... Sorry, I'm still incredibly bitter about the whole semi-chorus thing! I'll get over it eventually... although probably not any time soon, because I'm still distraught about not being picked for that English Rhapsody CD, and that was YEARS ago. But just the mention of anything to do with that CD sets my teeth grinding.)

But oh, the flatness. While I'm upsetting all and sundry, I may as well say that I'm sure it's the sopranos who are the main cause of the pitch problems. Sorry, sops. It sounds to me as if they START slightly flat, and they get flatter bar by bar. You can hear their lines sag. (In the concert, Jamie stopped O nata lux half way through. It was probably because we were running out of time, but I was so relieved, because it had gone so incredibly flat in the previous few bars, I couldn't see how it could recover. (The other horror moment is that "so passeth it away and we are gone" bit in the VW. I dread it every time, because it ends on a unison E flat, and I can always hear the sops going lower and lower as they approach it, so there's no way it'll end with us and them on the same note.)

(Oh, and btw, to correct an urban legend - I do NOT have perfect pitch. But I do have a good memory for pitch, good enough that I can usually give a pretty good approximation of any note I'm asked for. But you know when we do exercises in the warmup, and they go up by a semitone each time? I never have any clue what notes I'm singing then, because it takes me a few seconds to decide what pitch it feels like, but the pitch changes before I can work it out.)

I suspect that there are some sopranos (I know it's not all of them - some of them are really musical) who don't actually listen to the rest of the choir - they are so used to having the tune that they expect everyone else to follow them. Of course they usually have an orchestra to keep them on track, but whenever there's an a cappella bit it's almost always the sops who drag the pitch down. The frustrating thing, of course, is that everyone in the choir knows (a) what we need to DO to stay in tune, and (b) that we CAN stay in tune. For example, on Thursday we sang Loquebantur for about 15-20 minutes, and when Jamie played the chord at the end, it was exactly the same as at the start. And that's by no means an isolated example - we all know that during a rehearsal when we're on a roll, which we have been quite a few times lately, the pitch stays spot on. So when it doesn't, it's doubly frustrating!

OK, that was a rant :-)