"If I was changing from a natural to a sharp, I'd be more excited about it than you are."

Oops, I seem to have broken the first rule of blogging again! Sorry about that. January has, on the whole, been not just dreich (I use the word in honour of Burns Night!) but pretty horrible in every way. But I won't bore you with why, because choir has successfully managed to cheer me up \o/ And although I didn't make it to the first rehearsal of the year (which is very rare for me, but that was a nightmare week) I have accumulated many Jamieisms from the subsequent ones, so I thought I'd send them your way.

For those not in the choir, I should explain that we're currently rehearsing Mozart's C Minor Mass, which we'll be performing on 11th February. This is a fabulous piece, which I know pretty well, having done it two or three times before, although not for quite a few years. But I'm finding it slightly confusing, because I have the Breitkopf edition, bought the first time I did it. It is a complete version of the mass setting - Mozart didn't finish the C minor mass himself, so the editors of this version have filled in the missing bits with relevant movements from other (lesser-known) Mozart masses. So it's all proper Mozart, and hence wonderful, and that's the version I first performed. However, I've never been able to find a recording of this full version - all the recordings I've ever seen have just the actual C minor mass bits, i.e. the Credo stops after a couple of movements and there's no Agnus Dei. And the other problem - currently much more of an issue - is that we're using a different edition for this performance, and quite a few of the movements have different parts. For example, in the Osanna, the 2nd alto part that I know is almost entirely in the 1st alto line, and some bits of it don't appear at all. The line that everyone else has as the 2nd alto line is the 1st alto line in my copy, apart from a few bars where I've had to write stuff in, because those notes don't appear in any part at all in my copy. It's really offputting. And you're probably wondering why I don't just use a borrowed choir copy... well, I do like to have my own copies of things, because I write loads of stuff in, and it's a big help when I come to do the same work again years later. And, being a bit broke at the moment, I couldn't justify buying a new copy when I already had one. Oh well.

Anyway, Jamieisms! Some of these are from last Wednesday. Some are from the ladies' sectional this Tuesday. And some are from the open rehearsal in Wythenshawe this Wednesday. (I think the one in the title was from then, actually.)

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During a warmup, Jamie was doing facial stretches, along the lines of "Can you look shifty? Can you look amused? Can you look startled?" And when he got to "Can you do The Scream?" I was highly amused that almost half the ladies (for this was at the sectional) actually screamed :p

"Just think of this as foreign music. It was written in a weird place, by a weirdo."

"The microphone's going to be about here. Live relay. Just so you know."

"It's got to sound like music somewhere near the edge of what it's reasonable to ask."

"Altos, this is the reason you come to choir." (This was, sadly, the 1st altos, but referred to the "qui sedes" in bar 38 of Qui Tollis.)

"I'm going to stand on that chair." (This preceded a spell of Jamie in fact standing on several chairs in an effort to listen to individual rows of singers...)

"Tenors, listen to more pop music. I prescribe 20 Hail Marys and an album of popular music. Your rhythm SUCKS."

"It's so funky!"

"It's a little bit like a one-legged sparrow. A sad sight." (This referred to the alto jumpy bit bar at bar 177+ of Cum Sancto Spiritu, and was followed by a demonstration of how one-legged sparrows move...)

"Graffiti yourself over the music." (2nd sops bar 98 of Credo)

"Invisibilium - that well-known town near Chester."

"Can you do those two chords again... but with tremolo?" (This was to David, and was intended to illustrate how bar 50 of the Credo is actually Hammer Horror music!)

"Look slightly evangelical for a moment." (This was accompanied by wild hand gestures, in an effort to get a particular tone quality!)

After several minutes of exercises involving everyone singing repeated chords on a D consonant... "We have a first note!"

And, my personal favourite (which possibly had to be heard to be understood) came in bar 67 of the Credo... "Altos - wohhhh! ... That's not a specific instruction, but you might know what I mean." His grin, a minute later, when we showed that we knew EXACTLY what he meant, was very satisfying :-)