Fain would I be eaten

I enjoyed last night's rehearsal far more than last week's, because it involved singing The Hymn of Jesus for a large part of it, a bit of Beethoven, and no Elgar (I've listened to The Apostles all the way through now, and I can't see myself becoming unbored with it any time soon!) I've done Beethoven 9 several times before from memory, so it's quite firmly ingrained, and I was a bit put off to discover that there's one bar in the edition that is being used this time (Bärenreiter) that's DIFFERENT to the edition I've got (Novello). It's not very different - just the underlay of the words - but I don't think I'll ever remember to do the new version!

I was telling Fanny about The Hymn of Jesus being my very favourite piece, and she told me that the recording she's been listening to has at least one glaring mistake on it. I realised that I've never actually heard a commercial recording of the piece, because I have a live recording of my last ever Chet's concert (in which The Hymn of Jesus was the finale), so I always just listen to that! If you want to hear it, there's a link on my mp3 page. This performance took place in the RNCM concert hall on 9th July 1982, and involves the Chetham's School of Music Symphony Orchestra and Senior Choir, with the Manchester Cathedral Choristers doing the boys' choir bits. I think the conductor must have been Mike Brewer, because he was certainly Director of Music throughout my time at Chet's, and usually conducted the choral parts of the end-of-year concerts.

Manchester Cathedral also played a major part in my memories of leaving Chet's, so I was sad to learn that not only did they have a valuable silver cross stolen the other day, but they have been burgled so many times that they can no longer claim on their insurance.

Here's a lovely Telegraph article about Kathleen Ferrier. (Although, it says that the contralto voice is 'out of fashion'. I think it's more accurate to say that fewer singers seem to be referring to themselves as that - they all seem to want to be mezzo-sopranos!)

The Guardian tells us what it's like to be in an opera chorus.

Have you recorded your Virtual Choir submission yet? I did mine tonight. I do hope that his next project involves a fast piece though - all the three Virtual Choir pieces so far have been very slow, and this is not good with my breathing!

Eric Whitacre mentioned online the other day how much he liked the music of John Williams, and - predictably - some people told him that John Williams is a hack. So Eric posted a defence of him, which I think is great. It really irritates me when people make sweepingly condescending statements like this, regarding popular composers such as John Williams or Andrew Lloyd Webber or John Rutter. There's a reason they're popular!

Did you know that there's going to be a thousand-boat flotilla on the Thames on 3rd June, for the Queen's diamond jubilee? And there's new music being composed specially for it, a la Water Music. Should be fun!

Via the Guardian: the fifty most quoted lines of poetry. I was trying to think what mine would be, and realised that I don't actually quote poetry regularly - must rectify that :-)

And finally... my favourite new word: skeuomorph.