His buUuUuUuUuUurthen is light

So, tonight we attempted to do trills in various bits of Messiah. We've occasionally been asked to do this in the past, but this year's version has trills all over the place - and this greatly amused the altos, because we discovered that we are REALLY bad at trills! Most of us can only do them by shaking our heads, and we were told not to do that, so there was choral chaos every time a trill appeared (not helped, of course, by the fact that lots of people know Messiah well enough not to look at the score, so the trills often didn't get noticed until they'd flown by!)

We did the whole of part 1 of Messiah tonight - that meant a couple of the runny movements, which are a lot slower than usual. Odd how this makes the runs more difficult rather than less - or is that just me? In fact, it may be worth me pasting a few links I've included before: here are mp3s of the five most difficult movements, for those who are unfamiliar with the work.

And He Shall Purify
For Unto Us a Child is Born
His Yoke is Bloomin' Difficult
All we like sheep have gone astray... a LOT
Let us break their bonds

And, actually, while I'm being useful, I suppose there are likely to be a few people in the choir who haven't done Fauré's Requiem before and are worrying about having to perform it a week on Monday with hardly any rehearsal (most of the choir knows it well enough that we don't need much rehearsal), so here are some mp3s for those people.

Introit and Kyrie
Offertoire
Sanctus
Pie Jesu
Agnus Dei
Libera Me
In Paradisum

(Yes, I know there's no choir in the Pie Jesu, I just didn't like to leave it out!)

We did a bit of Fauré tonight (the Agnus Dei) but other than Messiah it was mainly the World AIDS Day commissions. Some are much easier than others! I do like the one in E minor that mentions the hokey cokey (I could tell you what it's called but that would involve getting out of my chair!) I'll be interested to see what the audience makes of them - the poems are very cleverly comic and morbid at the same time, and it's quite hard not to laugh on first hearing them, even though you immediately realise that you probably shouldn't have... I think the whole endeavour is a great idea, and I just hope it gets a large (and appreciative) audience.

And, as usual, a few links for you: No more pop concerts at Manchester City's ground because they don't need the money! Which reminds me... I mentioned about the football-related chaos that's likely on 30th November. Since then, it's been decided that United will play their Carling Cup quarter final (at home) on Wednesday 3rd December, despite City also being at home that night. The police don't normally allow both teams to play at home on the same day but they have agreed in this case - I'm not sure why! So there will be TWO whole sets of traffic chaos. And to make matters worse, United's game is against Blackburn, so that means even more local traffic...

Sadly, though, the B of the Bang is to be scrapped. I'm disappointed - I really like that statue!

The Lost and Found Orchestra.

Elgar's effect on elephants.

Great article by Roseanne Cash about songwriting.

Slightly more info about the Royal Opera House's move to Manchester.

And finally, a fabulous classical music rollercoaster from an ad for the Zurich Chamber Orchestra.