If he delight in him

More Messiah this week, plus we tried a couple of things for the carol concerts. I actually quite like the sense of panic at this time of year (you know, the "so many concerts, so little rehearsal time" thing). And, just to be clear, I do love Messiah - that is, the piece itself. I like performing it - I just hate the rehearsals for it! I could write a long list of my favourite things about the actual piece. Top of that list would be the start of the Hallelujah Chorus, IF the audience stands uninvited (I hate it when the conductor patronisingly stands them!). (I realised last night that I like this SO much that I actually get a thrill when I turn a page in my score and see that we've reached "Thou shalt break them", because I know that "Hallelujah" is next!)

Also high on my favourites would be: 2. "He trusted in God", if done properly (i.e. with a true Lucius Malfoy sneer); 3. the bass part on the last page of the Amen Chorus; 4. the chords at the beginning of "Thy rebuke"; 5. the fast bit in "But who may abide" (unless they've annoyed me by getting a countertenor instead of a female alto, which seems to happen most years now). (I have no problem with the EXISTENCE of countertenors - although I've never heard one whose voice I've really liked - but it annoys me that there are already fewer opportunities for alto soloists than sopranos, so it doesn't help if countertenors take some of them. I realise this is a bit unfair of me, but I can't help it.)

But that's all in the performance, which isn't until a week on Saturday. My favourite bit of this week's REHEARSAL was right at the end, when we sight-read a bit of the Christmas Oratorio that was new to me - I do love sight reading, and sight reading Bach is more fun than most. Hint to people who find sight reading difficult - well, I've given lots of hints before (you can download some of them from the link on the right), but the single top tip would be: LOOK AHEAD MORE. I was HUGELY amused to see that there was an alto entry immediately after a page turn, and a large number of altos didn't come in because they didn't turn their page until the first barline on the page had already happened. But then I have to admit that when I get bored in a rehearsal because it's a bit where I'm not singing, I like to watch the rest of the choir to see which people turn their pages early and which people turn very late. I find it VERY illuminating.

It turns out that the Manchester Evening News did have a review of our Nocturnes gig - they just took ages to put it on their website.

From a website I've only just discovered - Muso - here's an article about routes into conducting. It includes comments from our ex-choral director. (Pity that the Muso website doesn't seem to have any RSS feeds - that's remiss of them. It means I won't look at it unless I remember, unlike all the sites that DO have RSS feeds, so that I automatically know when they're updated.)

From Tom Service, here's an all-too-rare article about the impact that performing has on the performers.

Many of you will have heard of HC Robbins Landon. I feel slightly guilty that I hadn't actually realised he was still alive until I heard that he'd died. Anyway, Tom Service writes about him.

Talking of things I hadn't realised, another is that Elgar played the trombone - badly (and again Tom Service has more to say about this). If it hadn't been for this story, I wouldn't have paid much attention to the reviews of the recent period instrument performance of The Dream of Gerontius, featuring Elgar's own trombone. As it is, I can tell you that neither the Guardian nor the FT thought much of it, and that apparently (according to the FT review) Elgar is out of fashion in most of England.

I think I linked to a video of a "complaints choir" ages ago, but I've only just discovered that this is apparently now a worldwide phenomenon.

From The Chorister, a really great post about how upset we can get when we get a poor reaction to our singing. I can identify VERY strongly with this.

Via ChoralNet, an article about why everyone in the choir needs to attend rehearsals, however good they are.

Did you know that Halifax is now a minster town? If you've never visited the church in question, I recommend it - it's lovely.

National Geographic had a photography contest, and The Big Picture has some of the entries. Spectacular pictures.

I feel oddly angry that from December the Circle Line will no longer be a circle. (The Times is calling it a tadpole.) It just seems so wrong!

Lovers of the Yorkshire Dales will be delighted to learn that Grassington Moor and Malham Cove will both feature in the final Harry Potter films.

And, finally - I can't seem to make myself read this article properly, because it includes several words that automatically make me glaze over and start skimming, but I find myself fascinated by the table halfway down the page, which compares our use of TV to our use of the internet.

While Luzar and Jim have tea

Brownie points to anyone who knows what famous Christmas song contains the line above (without googling!) It's one of several for which I was working out chords yesterday.

It's Messiah season for the next two weeks, which makes lots of the choir very happy. I'm enjoying it about as much as usual (i.e. not very much at all), but at least it will soon be over. (It's a great piece - I just hate the rehearsals for it, for reasons I've explained in the past and don't plan to go into again. Sorry if you don't agree with me - I know I'm in a minority!)

For choir members that haven't sung it before, I've put mp3s of all the choruses online for you on my mp3 page.

I'm much more excited about Christmas carols and Christmas pop songs. I'm rehearsing with my band tomorrow, and I have four new songs (well, new only in that we haven't tried them before) to give them in addition to the fifty-five Christmas songs already in our repertoire. As usual the main problem will be deciding what to miss out!

Anyway, here's some stuff I've seen online recently. A few musical items, and then lots of Manchester-related news!

Over on ChoralNet, Allen H Simon wrote this article about candy music. I particularly liked the description of Bruckner and Mendelssohn as well-prepared vegetables.

I've mentioned the vuvuzela in the past - that's that trumpet that's very popular in South Africa. Well, it seems that Japan as asked for them to be banned from the World Cup! FIFA's comment is That would mean one would have to take away the cow bells from Swiss fans and ban English fans from singing. I like that they seem to consider our national instrument to be the voice.

Peter Phillips, in the Spectator, gives us an article about music expressing moods that is well worth reading but hard to describe briefly!

I'm amused to discover that Stairway to Heaven was popular with DJs because it's the perfect length for a cigarette break. And there are also toilet tracks.

From Intermezzo, news that a German chamber music group is to give a recital in a brothel.

This might be nice for any amateur guitarists among you: a guitar lesson based on Happy Xmas (War is Over) (another song I wrote out yesterday).

This will mean nothing to people who weren't at tonight's rehearsal, but I wanted to look up a couple of things that were mentioned. To save you doing the same, here's Ralph Allwood's website and his Wikipedia page, and a page about St Peter's Ancoats, and the newspaper article about it.

I'm sure you've all seen the news that Manchester Victoria, the station in which I've probably spent more time in my life than all other stations combined, has been named as the worst station in the UK. (More on this story here, here and here.)

Did you also see that we won the battle over the National Football Museum? And it turns out that the 2012 Olympics could actually start in Manchester. (The Londonist blog mocked us a bit for getting excited by this. I suspect they're probably just a bit jealous.)

Via the J-Walk Blog, fifteen Google interview questions to make you feel stupid. See if you can get ANY of them. I got three, which I was quite proud of. (There were several that I didn't even understand when I saw the ANSWER.)

And finally, here's a place I really want to visit: Galloway Forest Park.

Those duplets and triplets'll get them every time...

Busy few weeks, hence the very long gap between posts - sorry about that. I unexpectedly got three weeks of full-time work (back at RNID, covering for someone who was off sick) which happened to coincide with a busy time for the choir AND several of my part-time things all happening at once. The money is very helpful, and will allow me to pay a bit towards some bills that have been overdue for months, but it's been a very exhausting three weeks. Last night, with it finally over, I slept for seventeen hours nonstop, and now I feel great! Time to get back to all my other stuff. (Things have gradually started to improve lately - I'll explain at some point what I'm actually doing, but not now because this post will be long enough as it is!)

My to-do list for tonight includes a new a cappella arrangement of a Christmas song that I've had in my head all week, but I wanted to do a blog post first, if only because I realised I had more than fifty links to share with you! I'll get to them in a minute. But first, what's been happening with the choir? Well, I know I said I was looking forward to the new Matthews piece, but this positive attitude didn't last very long - it's really quite dreary so far. But we've only got the first part of it, so maybe it will get a bit more exciting in the bit we haven't seen yet.

We've also done a very small amount of Messiah, but mainly the last few weeks has been ladies only, rehearsing Debussy's Nocturnes, which we performed on Thursday night. I haven't seen any reviews yet, but I will post any that appear. (I was a bit outraged to find that the orchestra was repeating the Nocturnes in Nottingham last night, without us, until I noticed that they were only playing the first two movements, which we're not in. Pity though - I would have gone to Nottingham!)

I've done this piece a few times before, and it's always exciting because we are part of the orchestra (rather than being a separate entity) and actually sit on stage next to the instruments. In the past we've sat scattered around the stage, in pairs. I think I sat next to the clarinets last time. This time, there were too many of us for that to work, so we sat in two rows at the back of the stage. We did still sing seated, though, so it felt more as if we were orchestral players rather than a choir that stood up when it was about to sing. I sat behind the clarinets and bassoons, and enjoyed following their parts in the bits before we sang - we used to be able to do that in the Free Trade Hall, when I was usually behind the trumpets or trombones, but in the Bridgewater Hall choir seats we're much further away from the orchestra.

The always-few-in-number 2nd alto section did itself proud. Not that we don't always, but we felt very good about ourselves during this project! There were only eight of us, compared to the twenty-six 1st altos (although only twenty of them were there at the concert), but we kept drowning out the 1sts :-) And there was a bit where we had to sing stupidly high notes, while the 1st sopranos had two bars' rest, and plan B was for us to drop out and let the sops do it. But Plan A was the one that was used in the concert.

Our movement is called "Sirens", and there was much discussion of sirens during the rehearsals. (The Starbucks logo, often seen as a mermaid, is actually a siren - here's an article about how it's changed.) David (the guest choral director) had invented a very convincing (and useful) story about what the Sirens were actually doing in each phrase of the movement. It seems that the consensus is that sirens don't do what you might expect with the sailors once they've lured them - they actually eat them! However, the Wikipedia article suggests a few alternative versions of the legend.

Oh, and I almost forgot - Gianandrea Noseda was at the concert! We were very excited to see him with our principal conductor at the interval. I'm not sure I've EVER seen them in the same place at the same time before - it's great to see that they're friends, and even greater that he was at our concert when he wasn't even conducting it!

Debussy is over now (although I think I'll have that harp-and-muted-trumpet bit from the 2nd movement in my head for a while yet) and next week is Messiah and carols. Also I'm rehearsing Christmas stuff with my band on Thursday. Which reminds me - latest news on the Henry Watson Music Library is that Manchester City Council has changed its plans, and the library is currently NOT going to close in December. The closure has been put back to some unconfirmed date in 2010, probably June. So the library COULD have had their Christmas music day after all, but the librarians told me that the plans have changed so many times that it's still possible that anything might happen! They did also mention that when the new library reopens, in four years' time, it's likely that the music library will be on the ground floor. You heard it here first.

Anyway, are you ready for about a million links? (Well, fifty, anyway...)

First, a great 20-minute video from Itay Talgam about how conductors do what they do. My favourite bit is right at the end, when he shows Leonard Bernstein conducting with just his face, but it's all good stuff. (In fact, if you've never seen any other TED talks, I recommend you explore the site a bit - there's loads of good talks on there.)

One of the most useful sites I've found recently - Chordbook. It's mainly useful for guitarists, but I'm not a guitarist and I've found it invaluable, mainly when I've been working WITH a guitarist and I wanted him to play a chord he didn't know. This site tells you the guitar fingering for every chord you can think of, with or without capo.

Another site that some of you may find useful - mp3 accompanist. I offer mp3 accompaniments as a service myself, so I found this while I was researching the competition. Looks like a very handy site. (They have lots of mp3s ready to sell, whereas I currently only have a few, and I only do them as a sideline, because they take quite a long time to create. So I'm happy to promote this site.)

Here's a story about two churches whose congregations sing too loudly!

And I'm sure you saw the story about the shop assistant who was told she couldn't sing while working unless she had a licence.

From Tom Service, a heartwarming story about Cape Town Opera.

From Intermezzo, news that stagehands at Carnegie Hall get paid more than performers.

A Cappella News tells us that the Vienna Boys' Choir is to admit girls. (EDIT: Allen H Simon, the webmaster of ChoralNet, says this is not true. I must admit I thought it was odd that A Cappella News didn't include a link to their source...)

BBC Music Magazine points people towards downloadable resources for the Sing Hallelujah project.

I've never heard of the Gold Badge awards before, have you? They're for music professionals other than performers.

ChoralNet tells us about a singing teacher who gives lessons using Skype. A great idea - I must try it sometime.

I'm intrigued by the ramifications of this Electronic Rock Guitar T Shirt from ThinkGeek. They also have a Personal Soundtrack T Shirt and a Drum Kit T Shirt. I can see the latter being a bit painful if your friends get carried away!

Talking of geeky things (as you know I love to), someone's found a way to play Guitar Hero without any guitars (plastic or otherwise!)

Also from ChoralNet, news that Leonard Bernstein's annotated scores are to released online.

Thought-provoking article about youth orchestras from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra blog.

Tom Service writes about Classic FM's recent list of the top 10 classical works loved by children, and a rival (and much more interesting) list from Radio 3. The Radio 3 blog has more about this.

4 Bars Rest is one of the best sites for brass band news, and they often have bits of non-brass musical news I haven't seen anywhere else. Recently they had two stories about anti-brass snobbishness in the musical world.

Haven't seen this anywhere else, but apparently Leonard Slatkin recently had a heart attack while conducting.

From ChoralNet, news of a Philharmonia Orchestra project that lets people experience being part of an orchestra from the inside. As part of the choir, we get to do this all the time (although not often quite so thoroughly as we did on Thursday), and I often grin to myself when I think of how privileged we are.

Here's a guy who tells us about how singing has helped his cystic fibrosis.

Remember that thing about the ENO Messiah project? The Radio 3 blog brings us an update, with a link to the backstage blog, which has stories from the participants.

An interesting article from The Chorister about whether or not choirs should have auditions.

Equally thought-provoking, From the Front of the Choir discusses the use of the word "choir".

The Guardian wonders whether or not Christmas songs can ever be cool.

Those of you not on Twitter yet may not be aware that not only is the world's best orchestra on Twitter, they also tell us useful bits of news there, such as the fact that the Mahler series is to be recorded and broadcast on Radio 3.

The Guardian has some suggestions about how to write a family-friendly opera.

The Spectator has a great article about Murray Perahia.

Here's a great article about artistic masterpieces in English cathedrals.

Manchester Confidential, one of my favourite sites, tells us about the ice rink in Spinningfields, and several other attractions in Manchester city centre this Christmas. They also have some interesting thoughts about the decline of King Street, which was once Manchester's top shopping street.

The Guardian has some thoughts about Manchester's literary renaissance.

BBC news has an amusing story about the difference between the sexes when it comes to gadget-related problems. I'm most amused by the news that "64% of male callers and 24% of female callers had not read the instruction manual before ringing up for technical support". RTFM, people!

The Man in Seat 61 tells us, again, why travelling to European destinations can be better by train than by air. (And members of my choir may be interested to see his explanation of how to get to Prague by train. There has been mention of a possible choir trip to Prague next year, and if it goes ahead I'll almost certainly be doing it this way!)

I haven't tried this yet, but it looks useful - a site that lets you do online optical character recognition i.e. you upload a photo that has text on it, and the site converts the text to a document which you could then edit.

In astronomical news, I'm quite intrigued to hear that there is water on the Moon! And also that NASA's Martian polar lander has survived. Now if only they'd find Beagle 2!

(And, since people often ask me about this: the extremely bright "star" that's currently visible low in the south west sky until about 10pm is Jupiter, and the pinkish (but not quite as bright) one that's visible low in the north-east at 10pm (and increasingly higher in the sky throughout the rest of the night, until it's due south at 6am) is Mars. You can also see Saturn low in the south-east from 3am to sunrise, but it's nowhere near as bright as Jupiter or Mars so it doesn't stand out so much. The brightest of all is Venus, visible low in the south-east just before sunrise.)

Finally, three fabulous recent photo collections from the ever-excellent Big Picture. The one depicting Kazakhstan's nuclear legacy is sobering and rather depressing, but the Berlin Wall collection is great, and the Martian landscape pictures are amazing. But still no Beagle 2!