Walk out with me toward the unknown region

Sorry for the long delay. It's all very well to have 10 concerts in a month, but all that singing doesn't leave much time for writing about it! And although it's true that it's a week and a half since the last concert, I seem to have spent most of that time either asleep or grumpy. I may still rant about choir-related stuff at some point, but not today - I want to get caught up with all the positive stuff!

First, before I forget, let me give you a couple of mp3s:

Vaughan Williams - Toward the Unknown Region
Shostakovich - Festive Overture

(and, since I haven't mentioned it for a while: if you still don't know how to save mp3s to your own computer, you need to right-click on the link (i.e. the underlined bit) and select "Save Target As..." (or "Download Linked File As..." or something else similar - depends which operating system you have) and then navigate to wherever on your computer you want to save it (in just the same way as you would save a word processing file).) (If you have a Mac with only one mouse button, you can right-click by holding down the "ctrl" key while clicking.)

Oh, and in other topical news, my online choir schedule is up to date. (Email me for the link if you don't have it.) Don't know whether the official one is - I haven't looked for ages.

I include the Shostakovich because it was such a fantastic intro to each of the carol concerts. I also have the Dance of the Tumblers but I need to convert the file before I can post it. But does anyone have an mp3 of the Walton "Winter Journey"?

As for the Vaughan Williams, that's what we'll be singing in our next concert, and I can't wait - we sang it briefly (but never performed it) during the last-but-one set of chorus master auditions (can that really be more than 10 years ago?!?), and I've been dying to do it properly ever since. Roll on next Wednesday! But first, back to Messiah....

The concert went well and there were a few bits I did really enjoy (I do invariably enjoy the *performances* of Messiah, it's the rehearsal period I can't stand). My highlight was of course "Hallelujah", which has always been my favourite bit, and this year (the first in a while) I was thrilled that the conductor DID allow the audience to choose for themselves whether to stand up, resulting in me being unable to sing the first couple of pages because of the lump in my throat. I also loved (as usual) all the trumpet bits, particularly Gareth's extra twiddles in the top octave, which I don't remember him doing before. Wow.

After Messiah we were into carols. A great programme this year, and I was particularly pleased that only *one* of the carols that always makes me angry was included, and it was the very last thing in each concert so I didn't spend much concert time being grumpy as a result. (Somewhat predictably, the bits of "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" that are wrong every year were STILL wrong, but it's unlikely they'll ever be right while the people who are singing the wrong notes do so from memory... If you're an alto who would like to get it right next year, though, please compare bars 13-16 with bars 45-48. They're not the same... but most people sing them as if they are! Argh!)

Highlight of the carol concerts was probably the Holst "Ave Maria", at least for me. I got quite angry at the 1st sops in choir 2 who seemed totally unable to get their last lead right. It wasn't the fact that they got it wrong that annoyed me so much as the fact that they got it wrong *so many times* - it wasn't exactly hard, and it just seemed that none of them cared enough to spend 2 minutes at home practising it. But they did get it in the end, and it was lovely by the last concert. My favorite bit, though, was a couple of bars later when the sops in choir 1 came in on a C and Eb... mmmmmmm. (Lots of the men said nice things about the Ave Maria - I wish I'd heard it as well as sung it!)

I did manage to make it to both Sunday concerts *and* go to the match at Old Trafford that finished at 1.55. I did have to miss the choir photo as a result, but it'll probably be more photogenic without me on it! I had to miss the warmup too - I'd thought I could get there for most of it, but that's before it was moved half an hour earlier. I felt quite warm enough after speed-walking from the ground to the hall, though, especially as I did a few tractors while walking along :-)

But I've missed a bit... the week before the carol concerts, we had a couple of Pleiades gigs, the highlight of which (for me) was when we sang Slade's "Merry Xmas Everybody" in the Henry Watson Music Library, and I got to shout "IT'S CHRISTMAS!" at the top of my voice. I always do that bit, but it was only just before we got to it on that occasion that I realised I was going to have to shout in a library. This amused me far more than it should have! The previous day, we'd sung in the RNID offices, and we witnessed the sign language for both "ringa linga linga ding dong ding" and "you scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot" - both of which were funny, but neither of which came close to shouting in a library :p



(Oh, and that reminds me - did you all remember to check isitchristmas.com on Christmas day? Because I did, and I wasn't disappointed!)

Also, a few days before the carol concerts, I went back to Halifax to attend the carol service of the school I left at Easter. They have it in Halifax Parish Church, and it's a lovely occasion. I hadn't been back since I left, so this seemed like a good opportunity. (I'm annoyed now that I didn't get round to blogging at the time, because the concert was recorded by BBC Radio Leeds and broadcast on Christmas Eve, but it's a bit late to tell you that now!) I had a good sing - always satisfying to sing very confidently from the middle of a large congregation (don't worry, I was very well-behaved and didn't overdo it - in particular, I didn't attempt any of the descants, which is probably just as well considering the looks I got from the people in front of me when I gave into temptation at the end of the last carol concert and turned into a soprano for "Sing Choirs of Angels"!) But the most interesting part was their version of "The First Nowell". When it started, it sounded remarkably like Pachelbel's Canon, and it soon became apparent that we were to be treated to a 4/4 version of more or less the usual tune of "The First Nowell", amended very slightly so that it fitted the Pachelbel harmony. I groaned inwardly - but by the end I was totally sold. Not so much by the tune itself, but by the arrangement, which built very convincingly until all 4 parts were singing different tunes and the two solo violins were still playing the canon. It was lovely, and I'm cross that I totally missed my chance to record it from the radio.

They did at least sing all the proper descants - I wouldn't have sung them even if I'd known they were going to do that (this post is quite correct to warn of the dangers of singing descants if you're not in the choir) - but I'm glad they did. I really can't see the point of reinventing descants - they just sound wrong, and I have yet to hear one that was an improvement on the "traditional" one. That's the one feature of the King's College Service that I'd change. And, for that matter, does anyone know why the version they show on TV is never quite the same as the live version they play on the radio? As in, most of the readings and several of the carols are different? I don't get it. My highlight this year, though, was in both versions - John Rutter's "Dormi Jesu". I don't think I'd heard it before, and it was lovely. (Does anyone have an mp3 of it? EDIT: Terry sent me one - thanks, Terry!)

Anyway, I think that's all the Christmas-related comments for now. So, to finish, a few links I've been meaning to post:

Weird stories from the classical music world from 2007.

Wii Music is coming! If you've not tried a Wii, I do recommend it, it's great fun. But I'm not sure how this will work!

Reasons to sing - from The Sun of all places (via A Cappella News, though).

A plea to let people other than choirs sing carols.

Notes on Messiah from Harry Christophers (who was part of a recent Radio 4 programme in which he said many of the same things). Interesting.

Story of a row between two classical music groups.

And, non-musically: an addictive geography game. I could only get to level 10 but I was restrained and only tried once!