Don’t spend your time just lookin’ around for something you want that can’t be found

I've got The Bare Necessities on the brain, which is probably just as well since I'm trying to memorise it. (If any other members of my choir are having trouble getting it to stick, there is an mp3 on my download page that might help. I recorded it at tonight's rehearsal.) We finished the last three rehearsals with it (and that's in quite a short time - there have been MANY rehearsals in the past week). I think that's one reason why I've come away feeling as if I've enjoyed these rehearsals a lot more than some of the previous ones, but actually almost all the music we're singing at the moment is fun to do.

The wedding on Saturday (at which six of us sang an a cappella "I Was Glad" and Bruckner's "Ave Maria") went very well, although the priest got a bit confused and actually forgot to do the wedding vows - he'd done the next bit of the mass before he realised, and had to go back! Although he might have decided to ignore the order of service - it had dozens of mistakes in it. Most of them were very minor, but among the more significant errors were: the fact that it said we were going to sing "Amazing Grace" in addition to our other three songs (this was a total invention on the part of the printer as far as I can tell!); the spelling of "hymn" as "hymm"; and (my favourite) "deliver us FOR evil" (instead of FROM evil) in the Lord's Prayer. Changes the message somewhat!

Popstar to Operastar finished on Friday, and Darius won, although only by a very narrow margin (the votes are here if you're interested). You can see all the performances from all six weeks on the official website, or download mp3s of them (in a handy zip file) from my my download page. I thoroughly enjoyed the series (although there were many things about it that annoyed me) and it actually inspired me to practise! I don't do that often enough!

I was telling Ralph on Sunday about Eric Whitacre's blog, which is always interesting. Specifically, you may be interested in the post where he had an idea about an internet performance of "Sleep", and the post where he shares the surprisingly successful results of this idea. (Read the posts in between to find out how he solved the logistical problems - it's all interesting.) He's currently in the middle of another similar project, this time involving my favourite work of his, "Lux Aurumque". (I would LOVE to sing that.)

The Mahler in Manchester series is almost halfway through. Mahler 4 was last Thursday, conducted by the lovely Markus Stenz. The Guardian and the Times both seemed to like it - I haven't seen any other reviews yet.

I've been keeping a mental checklist of which of my "12 days of musical terminology" terms have come up in rehearsals in 2010 so far. I think I've only heard four of them actually mentioned by name, but more than that have come up in the music, even if they weren't pointed out at the time! For those of you who missed the series, here are links to the posts, with notes to say where the current examples are:

1. Dominant pedal - there's a sort-of dominant pedal in the Rachmaninov, in the 2nd bass part on the last line (all the repeated Gs). It's only "sort of" because although it seems fairly clear to me that the music IS in C major at that point (so that the G is the dominant), the piece actually ends on a G major chord, so you could argue that it's in G major. (You'd be wrong, though!)
2. Hemiola - I was about to admit defeat on this one, until I remembered bars 60 and 61 of "Faire is the Heaven" \o/
3. Suspension - "Lay a garland" has a suspension in just about every bar.
4. Ornaments - the Schubert has a few ornaments in the soprano part, although most of them are turns, which I didn't specifically write about.
5. Diminished chords - if you ignore the 2nd bass note, there's a great diminished chord in bar 11 of the Bruckner, but there are several in the Mahler too.
6. Neapolitan chords - the sf in the fourth bar of figure 41 in the Mahler feels like a Neapolitan, and sounds like one too, until you realise that the basses of the orchestra are all playing a B. Close enough, though.
7. Melisma - all the music we're doing has lots of these, but the Bainton has some particularly good examples, e.g. soprano five bars from the end.
8. Antiphonal - I already mentioned "I was glad" in the original post.
9. False relation - "Hear My Prayer" has loads of these, e.g. 1st soprano in bar 4.
10. Whole tone scale - soprano part (choir 2) three bars before figure 88 in the Mahler.
11. Recapitulation - Mahler 8, figure 15 in Part 1 (and other places too, but that was the one that was mentioned in rehearsal).
12. Fugue - none of the a cappella pieces are long enough to have a proper recapitulation, and the same goes for fugues, so it's Mahler again. Although there isn't a fugue in the strictest sense, the second half of part 1 (from figure 38 to the end of the movement) is often described as a double fugue.

(Next time you hear any of these twelve terms mentioned by a conductor, you will realise why I have a slightly smug grin on my face!)

Talking of me feeling slightly smug, at tonight's rehearsal it was decided that the 1st sopranos were drowning out the 2nds, and some of them were asked to move across so that there were equal numbers. However, there were (as usual) more than three times as many 1st altos as 2nds, but none of THEM were asked to move \o/

Anyway, a few links. Gareth Malone's next TV project sees him being an opera chorus master for a youth opera at Glyndebourne, and the Spectator has a great article describing what's been going on.

Hakan Hardenberger was busking outside the Bridgewater Hall on Tuesday, as publicity for his concert with the BBC Phil this Saturday.

On an Overgrown Path has a nice article about the death of St Francis of Assisi, who apparently died singing. I never knew that! It's a lovely story - do go and read it.

Here's another lovely story - I have no idea whether or not it's true, but I'm choosing to believe it is. It's called The Night I Met Einstein, and describes how Einstein encouraged a stranger to listen to Bach.

BBC News has a feature about the current popularity of the ukulele, and Tom Service talks about bagpipes.

Via ChoralNet, Jeffrey Tucker describes five great things about polyphony. I like this post - all five things are obvious when you think about them, but I hadn't really thought about them! (Scroll down a bit - there are a load of links at the top of the page that make it look as if there's no story there, but there is.)

Londonist and the Guardian report that seven out of ten Brits "said they'd like a Nessun Dorma-style theme tune for London 2012, played by a British orchestra". They're asking for suggestions - anyone have any?

BBC News tells us that teaching stroke patients to sing "rewires" their brains, helping them recover their speech.

I missed any mention of this at the time, but I would have loved to have been at this concert: Ex Cathedra celebrated their 40th anniversary by performing not just Spem in Alium, but a concert FILLED with 40-part choral works!

Here's a short but intriguing Spectator article about how to pronounce "Wednesday", and related topics!

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that there was part of an episode of "Shameless" set in the foyer of William Hulme's Grammar School. Well, the most recent episode took place partly in the WHGS car park and on the roof of one of the buildings. It was on E4 on Tuesday, but won't be on Channel 4 till next Tuesday night, after which you'll be able to watch it online. (It's not there yet - it's episode 6.) The scene in question is again right at the end of the episode - in the last ten minutes.

More Manchester news: it seems that this year there will be a big Manchester Day Parade! Hands up who never knew there was a Manchester Day? Yeah, me too. But the parade is on Sunday 20th June, and the theme is "Out of this World". If you want to get involved, here's the official website.

The MEN has a fascinating article about tunnels under the city centre.

I enjoyed the recent BBC series of The Virtual Revolution (which I think you can still watch via iPlayer - you should, it's very good), so I took the test on their website (it's HARD!) to find out what sort of web animal I am. I was a bit put out at first to be told I was a web elephant, until I realised that it wasn't entirely bad - I like to think I'm fast at doing stuff online, but the test results suggest I'm slower than I thought, but that it's because I'm thorough. Have a look at the descriptions and see what you think you are, then try taking the test!

And finally, it's rare that a week goes by without me discovering a new clever thing that Google can do. This week: the Winter Olympics on Google Maps. Great fun to play with! (Oh, and by the way, I'd never heard of skeleton or ski cross before a week ago, but now I'm a huge fan of both, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I'm just sad that I managed to completely miss the luge!)