Urhoin or yö?

I can't decide which is my favourite Finnish word. It's one of these two. "Urhoin" means "hero" or "brave" or something like that, and has what was described as a "character-giving r". "Yö" means "night" and is the sound everyone seemed to most enjoy making - I certainly did!

We finally met our Finnish language coach on Wednesday, you see, and she was very nice. Sadly I've forgotten her name - can anyone remind me? She spent the second half of the rehearsal telling us how to pronounce the words of Oma Maa. It's not actually as hard as it looks - once it had all been explained, I found it much harder to find the words on the page (see last post for explanation) than to remember how to say them. Anyway, it's nice to be able to add another language to the list of those I can claim to be able to read. That's quite a long list - must write it down sometime! (With the proviso, of course, that I may not actually REMEMBER how to pronounce, say, Hungarian, even though we only did it a year ago.)

That was just the second half of the rehearsal - the first half was spent in sectionals, with the ladies learning Holst's 8-part Ave Maria with David while the men went off to polish the Brahms with Jamie. The Holst was very lovely - and not that hard - although I got more and more irritated by the fact that a large number of people didn't seem to know the meaning of pp, sotto voce or senza crescendo. Argh. But no doubt they'll catch on eventually.

And I've just realised I haven't posted since our first gig of the season, the Eric Chadwick Memorial Concert in Salford. That went really well despite our numbers being very depleted - Komm Jesu Komm was possibly the best it's ever been, although the audience (predictably) seemed to prefer the Hallelujah Chorus. But that was good too :-) Plus, I was excited to notice that the tenor part of Onward Christian Soldiers starts the same as the tune, except with the two phrases reversed. I've never spotted that before! Sadly no-one else seemed as interested as me :p

Anyway, I seem to have accumulated a load of links I've been saving to post. That'll teach me to leave it for nearly two weeks! These aren't in any particular order....

Lucky Voice Pods in Tiger Tiger - the new variation on karaoke. Has anyone tried this?

G sharp is the hardest note to identify, allegedly. I'm not convinced by the explanation either.

An interesting article about how they get the fireworks to explode in time with the music at outdoor gigs.

An article about a choir of Russian monks.

A very strange set of Gilbert and Sullivan comics.

It seems Mozart wrote something very rude. I'd never heard of this before.

A useful A-Z guide to Wagner's Ring cycle.

Iggy Pop's extremely long and detailed (and funny) rider (i.e. what his requirements are when he comes to do a concert).

A review of the opening Hallé concert of the season. (I'm quite taken by the reference to the Elder Wand! But you know I love Harry Potter.)

Talking of Harry Potter, Fred and George Weasley are coming to the Bridgewater Hall!

An article investigating why Sibelius wrote nothing in the last 30 years of his life.

Is there anyone else who's baffled about why they're having swimming championships in the MEN Arena next year, when we have a perfectly good Olympic-standard pool at the Manchester Aquatics Centre?

Some of you might be interested by this video on writing fugues. The narration is irritating, because they did THAT like a fugue too, which means that for most of it you can't understand a word... but the fugue itself is clever, and the only one I've ever seen that's based on a Britney Spears song! If you don't really understand how a fugue works, this might help. (The "Der Saure Weg" section of Komm Jesu Komm is the most recent fugue we've sung, in case you were wondering. Also, the Sanctus and Libera Me sections of Verdi's Requiem both have fugues.)

Sadly Manchester Cathedral has had a stained-glass window smashed by vandals. I just can't begin to understand the mindset of someone who would do that.

English National Opera's new production of Carmen is not receiving as much praise as they might have hoped.

An interesting story about what the Hallé marketing director does at concerts!

An analysis of the theme from Some Mothers Do 'Ave "em. I never realised it was based on Morse code!

And, finally, more details on the Manchester Boys Choir story that I mentioned last time.

Oh, and I almost forgot... the Finnish word that's the one most commonly used in English is indeed SAUNA. Well done, the anonymous person who guessed that (or looked it up on Wikipedia like I did!)

Deep-voiced men 'have more kids', allegedly

What? You don't believe me? I read it in the news! Now, I just need someone to work out whether or not the Hallé men prove or disprove this statement...

Oh, and also, there's a story on Manchester Confidential about defectors from the Manchester Boys' Choir. What I want to know here is which choir they've defected to!

Anyway, currently I have a really sore throat as a result of tonight's choir rehearsal. Yes, yes, I *know* that means I was doing something wrong! It's because we spent most of it singing just vowels - that always causes me pain (for reasons I don't fully understand - must ask Maggie). Whatever the reason, I think I need to try not to speak tomorrow. It's probably a good thing that I'd already decided not to go to choir, because I thinking singing again would probably make it worse, and I want to be able to sing on Friday, particularly as hardly any of the elusive 2nd altos can make it! Tomorrow night, instead, I'm off to see United. I did try to get rid of my ticket, but no-one was interested, so it would have been wasted if I didn't go. (Cup games cost extra to the season ticket, but it's one of the conditions of having a season ticket that you have to buy a ticket for every home cup game.)

You may be thinking that going to a football match is possibly not the best course of action with a sore throat, but I actually don't make that much noise, apart from frequent squeaks and gasps of alarm, which greatly amuse the guys who own the seats on either side of me :-)

Tonight at choir, in case you were wondering, we only did one piece - Oma Maa. It's nice enough, and has some good chords, but it's not wildly exciting. (Not like the Verdi, which was also scheduled for tonight but which we didn't actually do! I was outraged! Just watch him do a bit of it tomorrow....) We still don't know much about the Finnish words, but we had a bit of a go at them anyway. (Note: I'm sure I've read somewhere that Sibelius himself wasn't very good at Finnish, because he was brought up in a Swedish-speaking family. I'll look it up when I'm less tired.) And we discovered that the altos and basses are going to have a very difficult time. You see, the words are printed in Finnish and Swedish. For most of the piece, the Finnish words are under the soprano and tenor lines, and the Swedish words are under the alto and bass lines. Which is a pain, because we're so used to reading words under notes, it's a real strain to have to read them from elsewhere. (This is, of course, at its worst in hymns and Christmas carols, where the words aren't even printed anywhere near the music except for verse 1. Fine for the sops who just have the tune, but not for the rest of us!)

However, it was worse than that. For SOME parts of the piece, both the Finnish and Swedish words were under every line. Great. Except that it switched between mode 1 and mode 2 totally randomly, almost always on line changes and page turns. And, needless to say, there's no space to write the words in the right place (and in any case I can never read them when I do that!), so I was reduced to a system of crossing out all the Swedish bits and putting arrows and rings all over the place. And all of this is before we've even been taught by a Finnish language coach! Things will go downhill from here, I imagine...

I'll end on a quiz question. Which Finnish word is the one most commonly used in English? Answer in my next post :-)

"Let the 2nd tenors have their moment of glory!"

I was incredibly tempted to just do a post that repeated "I love it I love it I love it!" lots of times. Have I mentioned that the Verdi Requiem is my absolute favourite work and I love it more than all the other things we've ever done ALL PUT TOGETHER? Well, I do :-)

And last night we sang the whole thing. It was extremely wonderful. Can't wait to do it in more detail and get it even better! (Mind you, it'll immediately improve when everyone realises that the dynamics are there for a REASON. There were far too many people who seemed to think pppp didn't apply to them, and didn't sing below mf until TOLD they were too loud. Why would he have wasted ink writing pppp if he didn't mean it?!) We had the lovely David Lawrence guiding us through the experience, and he did a brilliant job - apart from anything else, he managed to time things so that we finished the last note at 9.15! Impressive!

The 2nd tenors quote isn't from last night - it's something I already had written in my score, although I can't remember who said it. It's from page 67 in the Rex tremendae bit of the Dies Irae, and in that bar the 2nd tenors go up to a top B flat while the 1st tenors stay on middle C. I presume someone must have asked whether it would make more sense to switch the parts round, and the answer above is the one that was given! (Seems fair enough to me - our current 2nd tenors are really rather brilliant.) Wish I could remember who/when it was - I've done the Requiem several times, but I'm told the last time was in 2001. (If anyone can remember who it was with etc. I'd love to know!)

Anyway, I thought I'd post a few other things I discovered scribbled in my score. I know there are a few of you who like to know random bits of information about the music! Note that I don't know who any of these quotes are from, sorry - but none of them are mine. I suspect a lot are Stuart Beer (Manchester Cathedral) - the first time I did the Requiem properly was with him. (I don't count the first time I *actually* did it, which was a "Verdi Requiem from scratch" alumni day at my old university. As is often the case on this occasions, I sang 1st tenor that day.)

Requiem/Kyrie

p.7 last bar: "Like a door opening into a world of light"

p.8-9: In this section the soloists "dance across the stage one by one, like ballerinas making their first entrance and saying 'hi!'"

Dies Irae

p.22: Watch the audience (obviously!)

p.23: Note the difference between the first bar of the bottom line and the first bar of the previous page.... the MOST FAMOUS BASS DRUM IN ALL MUSIC. Just wait till you hear it live. (Oh, and also, this is the first time it plays in the piece, and the direction in the score is "le corde ben tese onde questo contrattempo riesca secco e molto forte". Which I'm having a bit of trouble translating, but I think it's something to do with making the snares tight so that the sound is dry and very loud (I'm sure you got that last bit!))

p.31: "Sing as if you're too nervous to sing legato, but also too nervous to breathe in the gaps." "DON'T LOOK DOWN."

P.32-7: Trumpets! The score shows which bits are played by the trumpets in the distance. But it doesn't show that the "afar" bits switch from side to side (e.g. the entry in the 3rd bar might be on the right, and the octave echo on the left). All the trumpets join in one by one, and get louder, till they're joined by the rest of the orchestra at letter D. But if you thought the trumpet bit ended at letter D, read on! After the men try to drown out the orchestra with their "tuba mirum" entry, the trumpets play arpeggios all over the place, and they echo each other. Plus, I've done the piece at least once when the distant trumpets were asked to move closer to the stage every few bars, until in the bar before E, when it says "trumpets afar", they were actually onstage. The effect was electric.

(On pages 36 and 37, everything I have written - which is a lot - is in much, much bigger writing than I usually use. I suspect this is probably because I'm always so excited in this section!)

(For the last chord in this section - on "omnes" - in one performance I did, we were instructed to sing the highest note in that chord that we could manage, regardless of what our part said...)

p.37-8: Look at all the notes marked "con 8va sotto" on the last beat of each bar. That means "with the octave below", and it's that bass drum again (just a BIT quieter than its previous entry) along with a pizzicato double bass note (that's where the octave comes in). The bass players have to work hard here, because (unlike the bass drum) they have to play the rest of the bar too, but the first three beats each time are marked arco. Always fun to watch! Will this be the year one of them drops their bow? Also, watch out for the 2-bar-long F sharp halfway down p.38. This is a unison note played by all the oboes, clarinets, bassoons (did I mention there are 4 bassoons in this piece? I'll mention them again later) and horns. But the horns always stand out, because (a) they're marked frizzante (sparkling), and (b) they're horns! And I'm an oboist... but I love horns doing stuff like this.

p.46: The top line is in 4. The rest of the page is in 2. So, although it looks at first as if there are fewer notes, it actually goes from groups of 6 to groups of 8. ("Lo stesso movimento tra le sei e le otte note" means, more or less, that the six notes ('sei note' and the eight notes ('otte note') are the same speed as each other - i.e. the beat stays the same despite changing from 4 to 2.) On the bottom line I have written "Scream!" I *think* that was an actual instruction....

p.50-55: The bass line of the accompaniment here is a virtuoso bassoon solo. The two clarinets play the first bar and similar bits (until the violins steal it from them beautifully at the start of p.54), and the strings do very subtle backing chords, but otherwise it's the 1st bassoon all the way. Oh, and page 51 starts with a Neapolitan chord - you know how I love those!

p.56: Lots of instruments play along with the basses, but it's the trombones that usually make their presence most felt. Then the horns double the tenors. Just in case you were wondering.

p.63: I love the last bar of this page, where (although it's shown in the vocal score) a solo horn doubles the mezzo solo. It's yummy! You'll see.

p.66-7: A quadruple-dotted note! I don't remember ever seeing one of those anywhere else. And actually, in my miniature score, the preceding three phrases have quadruple dots too, and I think we've usually been asked to do them all like that. Then on p.67 is the famous 2nd tenor glory bit. And, not to be outdone, the 1st sops were asked to sing along with the soprano soloist last time we did this....

p.76-9: Last bar of page 76 is the start of another mega bassoon solo. I think Verdi liked bassoons. Whereas the top line of page 78 is a lovely *oboe* solo. About time. And the last line of page 79 is a *very* Verdi-ish operatic tenor bit.

p.80: The second bar of the bass solo has lots of instruments joining in, but it's the timps that always grab my attention. Also in this section I really like the double bass/bassoon (again!) octave bit on the bottom line of page 80, and the wildness (with the piccolo leading the attack) in the last bar of page 81.

p.84: It's watch the audience time again! And for utmost shock value, we've usually been instructed to only stand when the moment actually arrives. My score says "STAND IN TERROR!"

p.88: Bottom line... Officer Krupke bit. Or is that just me?

p.91: "Light at the end of the tunnel."

p.92-4: The trombones, timps and bass drum play a ppp oom-cha-cha type accompaniment. You'll never notice it unless you're watching out for it, especially because we all have a good tune to sing at the same time.

p.96: I *love* the descending bass line here (cellos and - guess what - bassoons). The basses in the choir join in halfway through, but the orchestral basses have already done a full octave scale before that. Similarly, the 2nd basses have another good line on page 100.

Domine Jesu

p.106: Lovely cello solo that goes on till the bottom of the next page, when - shock horror - the 1st bassoon joins in.

p.112-3: The semiquaver arpeggios here are much more complicated than they look. The piccolo goes down one octave then up again; the 1st flute goes down *two* octaves then up again (so they're only going the same way at the start and end of each bar); the 1st clarinet goes up two octaves *then* down; and the 2nd violins split themselves into 4 parts and play on alternate semiquavers while going down one octave then up again. No, I'm not making this up. (Oh, and of COURSE the bassoon joins in when the violins stop.)

p.121: The first bar of this page, in the soprano line, is a hint of the Agnus Dei tune that we've not yet heard.

p.127: I like the ppp string quavers on the top line.

Sanctus

p.131: This is a double fugue, which means two subjects (= main tunes) that fit together even after they've developed themselves. The first subject is the one that the 1st sops lead off with; the countersubject is the one that the 2nd sops lead off with. Everything different is just filler. (In particular, the violins start to get a bit clever on pages 140-1, but the last three bars of p.141 are the ones I usually notice - just after the soprano soloist blasts out her top B flat. p.144 onwards is a similarly pretty bit of accompaniment.)

p.149: The chromatic scales start in the last bar of the page, and continue for 3 pages... the high instruments get one first, then the bass instruments (yes, the bassoons again) and then in the last bar of page 151 the whole orchestra joins in (usually drowned by the trombones, but in a good way!) and we get a WOW moment.

p.153: My score says "preposterous!!!" I wish I could remember who said that!

Agnus Dei

p.155: "Like an Italian monastery."

p.156-7: Flute and clarinet have a nice almost-counter-melody in octaves. And I really like the chord progression at the top of page 157.

p.159: The accompaniment here is a flute trio (and nothing else). Lovely.

Lux Aeterna

p.163: The demisemiquavers in the vocal score are actually a double timp roll - 2 different players both rolling at the same time, one on a B flat and one on an F. This goes on for ten bars, and for large parts of those ten bars it's the only accompaniment. I also like the bit that I've got annotated as the "very requiemish trombone bit" on the top line, and the flute solo (the A to B flat) on the bottom line is much more impressive than it looks!

p.168: Good flute and clarinet bit on bottom line. (They do it again on the last page of the movement, and this time the flute gets the last word.)

Libera me

p.175: "Like priests at the far end of a cathedral."

p.176: Remember those 4 bassoons? As if they haven't had enough flashy bits earlier, halfway down this page they get a quartet all to themselves! The last two notes before letter A are the first time all four of them are in unison, and it's a weird sound. It's followed immediately by the flutes playing chromatic crotchets while the violins dance around them.

p.177: On the second line, the 1st violins continue their semiquavers and the flutes move to a unison low trill. But the fun bits are in the 2nd violins and violas, who swoop up and down as if they're chasing each other. (The viola swoops are in the vocal score, but the 2nd violin ones aren't shown - they come in between the viola ones.)

p.178: Watch the audience again :-) This bit has different words to before - it makes it much harder for some reason.

p.189-192: THIS is my favourite bit of the whole piece. It occurred to me the other night that when I said "the a cappella bit in the last movement", you might have thought I meant the chanting at the start of it - but no. The last four bars are my VERY favourite (they finish on a pppp top B flat! Imagine!), but I do love the rest of it too - especially the Neapolitan-with-extra-bass-note at the bottom of page 191. Mmmmmmmm.

p.193: And then, not satisfied with showing off her quiet top notes, she continues with another dramatic bit! But this one's even better than the first one, because it leads to another funky fugue, and this time THE ALTOS START IT. Clearly Verdi realised that it was safest to give it to the best people in the choir - things could go horribly wrong horribly soon if this bit wasn't right :p I also like the fact that it's totally a cappella apart from the cadential chords from the ENTIRE ORCHESTRA. Whee!

p.196: Last bar top line, the tenors are the last of the four parts to finish the fugue subject, so at this point the development starts and the whole orchestra joins in with the voices.

p.203: The soprano soloist gets bored with being out of the limelight, and interrupts to change the mood. However, the choir sops are on the warpath by now, and they battle for top note supremacy with her. I suspect this upsets her, so she drops out again at the end of page 207.

p.208: The fugue gets going again, this time in a stretto section (that means the subject comes in much sooner so the tunes overlap more) accompanied by a woodpecker motif thrown round the upper woodwind. (The quavers shown in the vocal score in (e.g.) the last-but-one bar of the page are part of this motif, but the vocal score is very misleading - there are actually 6 quavers in almost every bar of these couple of pages.)

p.211: I have "WATCH!" and "READY!" etc. written all over this page. Last time we did it, it slowed down dramatically in the last two bars of the page... then it was a tempo AND subito ppp immediately after the page turn. You can imagine the carnage until people got the hang of this :p

p.215: "STEADY, then... VOOM!" The sops were distraught to learn, last time, that the small notes that lead them up to the top C are an editorial addition, and nothing to do with Verdi at all! Just as well, because if they sang that, we'd probably never hear the repeated quavers the trumpets are blasting out at that point, and I like that bit :-)

p.217: Unbelievably, every time I've sung this, on this page there's always been someone who either hasn't come in, or sang the wrong line. This suggests to me that they were too lazy to mark their score. It's bad enough that they sang it the first time without having looked ahead to see which line they were singing - but every time I've performed the piece, people have still got this page wrong in the orchestral rehearsal. Hopefully the choir is enlightened enough these days that it won't happen this time!

p.218 (last page): I can't remember who said this, but I have a feeling it might have been Mark.... "Verdi was agnostic. So the end has to be uncertain... but hopeful." The octave semiquavers on the bottom line are actually a timp roll (not in octaves at all - that's just to make it easier on the piano), which is the only accompaniment that continues under the whole of the last line.

That ended up rather longer than I'd expected. If you read this far, I hope at least some of it was interesting and/or useful!

---

Oh, and before I forget, Man Utd are at home on Wednesday (when the choir are rehearsing in Salford, not far from the ground). You may wish to plan your travel accordingly. (I may yet go to the match instead of the rehearsal - depends on whether or not I can get anyone to use my ticket.)

Go go Adam and Chris :-)

Well, I spent a large part of the weekend in Southport watching the 24-hour race. I only found out at the last minute that my sailing instructor, the lovely Adam McGovern, was attempting something unprecedented in aid of Sail4Cancer. If you want to sponsor him, even though the race is now over, I'm sure he'd be thrilled - there are links at both of the sites. I didn't actually see the end of the race - I left at 8.30 a.m. in order to get the first train home, having been outside all night - but he (with his crew, Chris) did finish, and in 2nd place too! (83 laps means they sailed more than 100 miles, in case you were wondering.) The picture at the end of this post is of him just before I left.

Thanks to those who responded to my query about mp3s sounding wonky. It seems as if it might be just Graham and I who have the problem, so I won't worry about it too much for now! That being the case, I'm going ahead and posting Verdi Requiem stuff.

I was a little surprised to find that a lot of the choir have never sung it, and don't know about its EXTREME AWESOMENESS, so I will introduce it a bit! This is possibly my favourite piece. I could explain why, in detail (and maybe I will, nearer the time), but a short version will do for now: All of it is amazing, but the most entertaining part when we do it live is the start of the second movement. I have, written in my score at that point, "WATCH THE AUDIENCE!!!!" Because the first movement ends very quietly (like this), and the second movement starts with one of the loudest noises you'll ever hear in a concert (this one). (The start of the second movement is of course the bit that everyone knows, although a surprising number of people don't know what it's from.) It always amuses me a LOT when half the audience literally jump out of their seats :-)

(Oh, and the bass drum in that bit has been described as the most famous bass drum in all of music. Often a specially large bass drum is used - one that is never used in any other piece - and they even do special Verdi Requiem mallets (scroll down) "for maximum volume".)

(And, and, and, the offstage trumpets! They appear later in the second movement. Take That used a bit of this section at the start of Never Forget", but that doesn't give anything like the live effect of all the trumpets surrounding you, and the buildup from one solo trumpet to the entire orchestra playing ff. (In theory there are 4 onstage and 4 offstage, but they sometimes add players if they can.) That's always spinetingling in the Bridgewater Hall - I think that in St Paul's it will make the hardest backbone melt.)

Those are by no means my favourite parts of the music - I love all of it, but my favourite part is the a cappella bit in the last movement. Mmmmmmmm. (I even once wrote a song based on the last line of that section... not that anyone who heard it realised that!) But the whole piece is one of those pieces that just isn't the same unless you experience it live. And I can't wait to hear how it works in St Paul's.

Anyway, Verdi Requiem mp3s:

1. Requiem & Kyrie Eleison
2. Dies Irae
3. Tuba Mirum
4. Mors Stupebit
5. Liber Scriptus
6. Quid Sum Miser *
7. Rex Tremendae
8. Recordare *
9. Ingemisco *
10. Confutatis
11. Lacrymosa
12. Domine Jesu (Offertorio) *
13. Sanctus
14. Agnus Dei *
15. Lux Aeterna *
16. Libera Me

(These don't quite all fit on one CD (at least, not if you do it in standard audio format), so it may be helpful to know that the tracks marked * don't involve the choir.)

And finally, I thought you might like to hear my current favourite song. It's by Mika (the Grace Kelly guy) and is called Happy Ending. I love the backing vocals, but the whole song just puts a smile on my face. Enjoy!

EDIT: If you're not a fan of the Wheel of Time books, this will mean nothing to you, but if you are, you will be as distraught as I am to learn that Robert Jordan died yesterday :-(

Twirling trumpets!

I hope you all remembered to watch the Proms thing last night with the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra. I'm annoyed because I meant to post earlier to remind people, but I totally forgot. Oh well. (I was a bit worried that BBC1 wasn't going to show the encore, but they did, right at the end. Whee!)

Those who missed Wednesday's rehearsal may be wondering what we did. Well, the plan had been to have sectionals with Fanny and David, but unfortunately Fanny was ill, so David saved the day by taking the whole rehearsal himself. This meant we couldn't do the Holst, which I'd been looking forward to (because the intention had been for the ladies to do that while the men did the Brahms), but we did do the middle section of Komm Jesu Komm and then spent the rest of the time on a new bit of Sibelius (Oma Maa) before the ladies went home early and the men started on the Brahms.

Oma Maa wasn't too hard (although the fact that we had no accompaniment or cues AT ALL in our scores didn't help - we all hate scores like that!) I think it'll be much improved by adding the orchestra though. The Bach wasn't great, despite our familiarity with it - I don't know why, although I suspect it's a combination of three things: We didn't sit in 2 choirs, so that might have put some people off. Lots of people were late (at the start of the rehearsal there were only two 2nd altos to battle the eighteen 1st altos, but by the time we'd finished the Bach our numbers were more respectable... not that the 2nd altos did anything wrong, mind you!) But mostly, not enough people had practised the bit they'd been asked to. I'm sure it'll be fine by the time we do it in the memorial concert - which, by the way, we now know more about: the only thing we're singing OTHER than the Bach is the Hallelujah Chorus, so anyone who doesn't know that from memory should dig out their Messiah score ASAP. Also, the concert will be over pretty early (8.45 was mentioned, and it might be even earlier) and there will be food for us afterwards!

Now, I was going to post some more mp3s, but before I do, I need to solve a problem. Can you please tell me whether the mp3s I included in my last post sound OK to you or not? The reason I ask is that (for example) Saarella sounds very buzzy to me, whereas the Alto Rhapsody sounds fine. But Graham says Saarella sounds fine to him, while the Alto Rhapsody is crackly. I haven't done anything differently, but before I can work out what the problem is, it would be helpful to find out whether it's just me. Could you all have a listen and let me know please?

Finally, I hope you're all loving Heroes. If you've missed any, this weekend is your chance to catch up - BBC2 are repeating the whole series from the start, from 9pm tomorrow (Saturday). 6 episodes on Saturday and 3 on Sunday, and then you're up to date in time for episode 10 on Wednesday!

Oh, and if you're up to date on Heroes and want a trip out this weekend, it's the 24-hour Race on the Marine Lake at Southport. It starts at noon tomorrow and finishes at noon on Sunday. Currently the weather forecast predicts that it will be much windier on Sunday, so that'll be better. But if you do come, try to come so that you see at least some of the night sailing. You don't often get the chance to see a yacht race under floodlights!

Beschaffenheit, tust du butch?

I was very amused to notice that someone found my blog by searching for a German translation of "Tenors, do you do butch?" ... which is a Fannyism from a couple of years ago. (I have no idea if the above is an accurate title of the phrase - can anyone whose German is less rusty than mine tell us, please?)

Anyway, I'm off out to an interview (woo!) in a few minutes, but I thought I'd post some mp3s before I go. Oh, and also tell you that due to the whole Sibelius anniversary thing (Thursday 20th is the actual day), he's composer of the week on Radio 3 next week (17th - 21st September), and there are also a couple of Classic FM evening concerts devoted to him on Wednesday and Thursday (19th/20th). And you may be interested in a lot of background info about his choral music.

Sibelius - Saarella
Sibelius - Venematka
Sibelius - Min Rastas
Sibelius - Oma Maa
Brahms - Alto Rhapsody
Holst - Ave Maria

More later!

EDIT: (9pm Thu) I've just replaced Venematka and Oma Maa with slightly better versions, so if you listened earlier, do try again. I know Saarella is still a bit buzzy but Graham says he will look into this for me. (Thanks Graham - and Terry!)

Il nome suo nessun saprà... e noi dovrem, ahimè, morir, morir!

Hands up how many Hallé Choir ladies still have those words imprinted on their brains, years after we were last asked to sing them? (Translation is roughly "no-one will know his name, and we, alas, must die". Now you know.)

If this means nothing to you, I should explain that we used to do the Classical Spectacular every year, and Nessun Dorma was always on the programme, and that line is the only line that the choir sing, and we always had to do it with no lights on us, so we had to memorise it. Some ladies found the words impossible to remember and had various strategies for getting round this, mainly involving luminous marker pens!

I mention all of this because, in case you haven't seen the news, Luciano Pavarotti died today. (There's all sorts of information about him on Wikipedia, of course, in case you're interested. I also saw an interesting description about how Nessun Dorma came to be a football anthem, and Thomas Allen describing what it was like to work with Pavarotti.)

I wanted to remind you all to watch the Proms highlights on BBC1 later tonight, when the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra from Venezuela was due to be featured, but when I looked up the link I found that it's not on any more - it's been replaced with a Pavarotti programme. Pavarotti shared my birthday, so I've always felt a bit of a connection with him, but I wish they'd picked a different timeslot to show his tribute! That's just me being unreasonable, though, because he does deserve a tribute, and the Proms slot is the obvious one. Plus, it looks as if the Proms thing is being shown next Thursday night instead. I'll try to remind you then.

Choir started back last night after a gap of what seems like several years, and it was good to see everyone - and to sing properly again! We did a couple of the Sibelius a cappella songs (one about a fire on an island, and one about a surly fellow with a boat (!) - the rest of the Sibelius hasn't been given out yet) - very easy, although we haven't attempted the Finnish yet - and also revisited Komm Jesu Komm, which we'll be doing in a memorial concert in a few weeks' time. (No word yet on what else is in that concert.) Next week is sectionals (on Brahms and Holst) with Fanny and David, and a look at more of the Sibelius, if the music's arrived by then; the week after is Verdi with David Lawrence. It's no longer an official open rehearsal, but guests are still welcome. The following week, Schola Cantorum are back from China, and it's all hands to the pump for the memorial concert.

Oh, and we were pleased to learn that a to-be-confirmed a cappella gig has been added to our diary for 27th April, so that we can perform some of the stuff we did at the choir weekend, together with maybe a with-organ version of the Harty piece which we're doing with the orchestra a few days later. (My online schedule has been updated to include everything I've just said.)

Finally... Schoenberg's Friede auf Erden was mentioned again last night, so some of you may like to know that the mp3 that I put online last time it came up is still there. Plus, anyone who still hasn't got a recording of Komm Jesu Komm... that's still online too. But if anyone's got (or gets) a recording of any of the Sibelius stuff, I'd appreciate some mp3s (and I'll put them online for everyone else, unless you ask me not to) because I still don't have a job, so I'm broker than ever so iTunes is not an option!

El Sistema

Have you all been watching the Proms? I love the fact that the combination of BBC4 and Sky+ means that I can see all the ones that are televised (which is not all, but lots of them) without having to remember. This year's season has definitely been the one I've enjoyed watching the most. I was disappointed, though, that the one involving the Hallé wasn't on TV, but at least we saw Mark conducting the National Youth Orchestra. However, neither of those was my favourite. I know a few people who were looking forward to the one with Rhapsody in Blue with an additional jazz trio, but it left me a bit unmoved. Mind you, I wasn't exactly looking forward to it - it would be more accurate to say that I was intrigued to see how it would work, but I expected to hate it. This is because although I have no problem with improvisation in general, I get very uncomfortable when things that I know really well are changed slightly. As it turned out it wasn't as bad as I'd feared - they played most of the piece 'properly', and interspersed improvised bits. The only bits that I didn't like were those where the jazz trio altered the really well-known bits - boring of me, I know, but there you are!

My favourite Prom until a few days ago was from the very first weekend of the festival - in fact I heard part of it on my way home from the last day of the choir weekend. Seems ages ago now! It was a concert that on paper sounds extremely unlikely to have ever happened - it featured Sir John Eliot Gardiner, the English Baroque Soloists, the Monterverdi Choir, a load of soloists... plus a South African string ensemble and a load of French and South African dancers... performing Rameau! I'd love to know whose idea it was in the first place, and how it came about. [EDIT: This Telegraph story gives some idea.] But however it happened, it was fabulous - just full of joy from beginning to end. Well, I assume it was - I only actually saw the last fifteen minutes, and was annoyed that I missed the rest, because it was so wonderful. Particular highlights were the tenor soloist who sang brilliantly while dancers whirled round him (you'd have to see it to see how impressive he was - sadly I don't know which of the listed soloists he was), and the very cute little boy who brough the house down when he appeared to lift the ballerina with the false nose :-)

I raved about this concert for weeks to anyone who would listen, and didn't expect to see a more enjoyable one this year. But then last Sunday (19th) there was one that I enjoyed far more - so much so that I actually cried with joy, and I can't remember the last time I did that. (Well, actually, yes I can - it was while reading Harry Potter 7!) It was the one featuring the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, which is the pinnacle of a music education system whose correct full title is "Fundación del Estado para el Sistema de Orquesta Juvenil e Infantil de Venezuela", but is usually just called "El Sistema" for short. Now, I'd already seen Proms featuring the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (under Mark) and the European Union Youth Orchestra (under Sir Colin Davis), but I think the Venezuelan one was better, and I just hadn't expected that. I knew nothing about them before this concert, but when I looked them up afterwards I found that not only had there been all sorts of articles about them, but many of these articles were on websites that I read every day! I even remembered reading some of them, but I just hadn't realised how very good the orchestra actually is until I'd seen them, so the articles didn't stick in my mind.

I'll link to some of the articles (and reviews) in a second, but first I must explain why I loved this concert so much. Many reasons!

• All the music was fabulous in its own right, even if it wasn't a conventional programme by any means... and given the pieces that were played, I doubt most orchestras would have played them in the order this one did. They started with Shostakovich 10, just as a bit of a light warmup (ha!) before a second half that started with Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story and ended with some Latin American music by composers I'd never heard of.

• The orchestra was absolutely huge, and sounded amazing. This is particularly impressive given the background of the kids who are in it (see later). All the section leaders who played solos were excellent, but I think my favourite was the principal horn, if only because he had the best grin when he took his bow! The strings, in particular, had a gorgeously rich sound; the brass were just spectacular; the woodwind were full of individual character yet blended beautifully too; and the extremely energetic percussion section raised the excitement level several notches higher.

• The conductor - Gustavo Dudamel - is only 26 years old, and he was the most enthusiastic conductor I've ever seen. (Simon Rattle describes him as "the most astonishingly gifted conductor I've ever come across". He also says "If anyone asked me where anything really important is happening for the future of classical music, I would simply say here in Venezuela.") Not only was he extremely competent and enthusiastic, but he also had two more good points: he didn't wear one of those awful black smocks that all the top conductors these days seem to love so much, and when he was receiving applause, he didn't stand on his podium but in the middle of the orchestra with his arms round the players.

• I'm never seen an orchestra enjoy themselves so much. They were clearly having a whale of a time the whole way through, but when it came to the encores they took it to a whole new level: they all (including the conductor) put on jackets made out of the Venezuelan flag, and they added movement to their performance! They stamped their feet, held their instruments in the air, did Mexican waves while taking applause... the double bass players twirled their instruments... then, not to be outdone, so did the trumpeters. They swayed in their seats. They stood up and danced WHILE STILL PLAYING. And throughout all this they SMILED. It was great :-)

I believe the second half of the concert is to be shown on BBC1 at some point (it hasn't been on yet, and it's not in the listings for the next week), and I'm sure BBC4 will repeat the whole thing eventually (which would be great, because if you don't see them playing the Shostakovich in the first half, you won't realise how good they really are). But if you want to see what I'm talking about, someone has helpfully put my favourite encore on YouTube. Not great picture quality, but it'll give you the idea. And if you're quick you can still catch the whole concert on Radio 3's Listen Again, but of course you won't be able to see the twirling trumpets there...

In case you want a second opinion, here are lots of reviews, many of which have many pictures: a lengthy one from Londonist that captures the atmosphere brilliantly; one from Alan Coady's blog; one from the Intermezzo blog; a 5-star one from the Guardian; a 5-star one from the Times (strictly this is a review of the orchestra's Edinburgh gig a few days earlier, but it was the same programme); a 5-star one from the Independent; one from the FT; and finally one from the Telegraph that suggests it was the "greatest Prom of all time". EDIT: Here's a review by Rob at "Eine Kleine Nichtmusik" which tends to agree! Again, this is of the Edinburgh gig, but he watched it again on TV when they did it in London.

If you're interested in background info on the orchestra and the conductor, here's a Guardian article from last November; a Times article from this February; an Observer article from last month; an Independent article from earlier this month; and another Independent article from a few days ago. (I should point out, in fairness, that there are some people who don't entirely agree with all this euphoria - see On An Overgrown Path for some food for thought.)

Most importantly, though, make sure that if you didn't see this concert when it was on BBC4, that you move heaven and earth to see it if it's ever repeated, or at least catch the second half on BBC1 (presumably soon). And in the meantime pray that we all eventually get the chance to see them live!

To the Barbican box office, driver, and don't spare the horses

Sheena is, as ever, much more on the ball than me, and has spotted that tickets are now on sale for our Verdi gig at St Paul's Cathedral. Whee!

Warning: no musical content in this post! Mainly astronomy....

Just a couple of quick updates.... things which you may or may not have wanted to know, but I felt the urge to tell you anyway!

1. I had a job interview yesterday - my first one in months of trying, and as a bonus it involves music! It seemed to go OK, but I won't know the result until next week. Please all keep your fingers crossed!

2. The football season starts today, and Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink, this blog's favourite player, has already scored a goal! Sadly he doesn't seem to have his full triple-barrelled surname on his shirt any more, which was my favourite thing about him, but never mind. I was also very amused by a story about the unfortunate Leeds United (ha!), in which they talk to a painter/decorator who "refuses to paint red (Manchester United) and will paint the first layer of white over red for free". Oh, and "The thing that riles him most is that Leeds are to be sponsored by a company called Red Kite this season, and a splash of red has been introduced into the shirt." Hee!

3. The Fastnet yacht race starts tomorrow morning, and the weather forecast for the race route suggests that it might be pretty exciting. I'm quite amazed that there seems to have been no mention of it anywhere, and even Sky Sports (who quite often show sailing) seem to be ignoring it. Bizarre. Anyway, I just wanted to draw people's attention to it. If you want to follow it, try the official site. EDIT: The start has been delayed for 25 hours due to the extreme weather forecast. The race now starts on Monday morning.

4. More relevantly, probably, for most people, is the fact that this weekend is the Perseid meteor maximum. Which I'm sure you all knew (it's been in the news, unlike the Fastnet), but I just wanted to urge you all to go out and have a look at the sky at some point this weekend. I still regularly meet people who tell me they've never seen a meteor (a.k.a. shooting star), which amazes me. I have a theory that it's just because they never look at the sky for more than a few seconds at a time. In my experience, if you stare at the sky for 10 minutes at any time or place (well, assuming it's night-time and not overcast), you're quite likely to see a random meteor, but there are several ways in which you can improve your chances.

The first is to look during a known meteor shower, of which the Perseid shower is the best and most reliable. What's a meteor shower? Well, meteors in general are caused by specks of dust or tiny stones hitting the Earth's atmosphere and burning up. This can obviously happen at any time, because the galaxy is full of dust and small rocks just floating around. Meteors caused by one of these are known as "sporadic". (Oh, and while we're on definitions... the rocks are called "meteoroids" while they are floating in space. When they hit the atmosphere they become either "meteors" or "meteorites". The difference? Meteorites are bigger, so they reach the ground without burning up entirely. Meteors are so small that they totally vanish on the way down.)

However, there are certain places in the Earth's orbit where there are clouds of dust etc., probably caused by comets shedding parts of themselves when they approach the Sun. These clouds of stuff are in specific, predictable places, which means that the Earth always passes through them on the same date each year. For the Perseid meteor shower, the Earth passes through the relevant cloud on about 12th August.

Other ways of seeing more meteors (other than looking THIS WEEKEND):

- Go somewhere dark if you can (or at least darker - e.g. I have street lights near me, but if I go to the bottom of my garden, the lights are hidden by the trees and I can see the sky much better).

- Go out when the moon isn't in the sky, as the moon is so bright that it makes other things much harder to see. Ideally you want your meteor shower to occur during a new moon, and - very helpfully - this year it does!

- If you are wandering round in the dark, don't use a normal torch to stop you falling over - you'll lose your night vision and it will be quite a while before you can see in the dark again. Use a torch with a red bulb (or a normal torch with a piece of red cloth etc. tied over it) - that's what astronomers do.

- Try and look after midnight rather than before. After midnight, your side of the Earth is turning towards the Sun rather than away from it, and that means that anything that's hitting the atmosphere is more likely to do so. (For the same reason, bugs tend to accumulate on a car's front windscreen far more than the rear one.)

If you don't read this till Monday, you've missed the best of the Perseids, but do still go out and look - there are still Perseids around for several days before and after the maximum, so you should still see one or two. Enjoy!

It must ever be that we dwell in our dreaming, and our singing, a little apart...

Just a few links I need to share...

You must read this extremely interesting review of the final concert of the Chester Summer Music Festival. I think you'll feel pleased and proud :-)

In slightly less good musical news, the On An Overgrown Path blog tells us about a really alarming idea called Proms Idol, and the Guardian tells us of ENO's plans for an interactive version of Carmen.

And finally, in non-musical news, Harry Potter fans will find these two interviews with J.K. Rowling VERY interesting: Harry Potter: The Final Chapter and Wild about Harry. Needless to say they are very full of spoilers for book 7! But if you're a fan and you haven't seen this news, you will be excited to discover stuff like what the original last line was (you know how she said for years the last word of the last book would be 'scar' and changed her mind at the last minute?) and lots of information that she could have included in the epilogue and didn't. Also which character she meant to kill and reprieved, and which characters she didn't mean to kill but did! EDIT: And there's even more news in today's interview, and yet more in this webchat. Thanks, as ever, to The Leaky Cauldron for all these updates.

And some very exciting news for Buffy fans (I know there are others apart from me!), who don't expect to get new news these days, seeing as the series ended in 2003... it looks as if Joss Whedon is going to make the long-rumoured Ripper film, which tells the story of Giles before he met Buffy. Whee!

Back to musical news next time, I promise :-)

Save the cheerleader, save the world

I have a T shirt with this phrase on, which some people have asked me about. But soon everyone will know what it means, for tonight Heroes finally arrives on BBC2! It's on at 9 pm, repeated tomorrow (Thu) at 11.20 pm, and again on Sunday at 10.55 pm. It's also featured on the front of this week's Radio Times. I suspect I may have begged you all to watch it when it was on the Sc-Fi Channel, but if you didn't, now's your chance. It's the best TV in years, and my favourite thing since Buffy finished. Don't miss out!

That's my main reason for posting today, but while I'm here I may as well clear a few more links I've been saving. In no particular order....

I had no idea that the Manchester Jazz Festival was on, until I wandered through St Ann's Square yesterday and discovered a fabulous band playing, who turned out to be Tango Siempre. I'll definitely be buying their CD if I ever get a job. (I do have an interview in a couple of weeks for a job I'd really like, so there is finally hope!)

I am now on my second reading of the last Harry Potter book, and I have now seen the most recent film 3 times (no, I can't afford it, but luckily friends insisted on paying for me, because on each occasion they had no-one else to go with). I managed to avoid almost all spoilers beforehand, by staying away from most of the internet. However, those who have read all the books may be interested in the information in this interview, which reveals some minor additional details and some exciting future news from JKR.

I hope you all managed to catch at least some of the Manchester International Festival. I didn't see as much as I would have liked, due to lack of cash, but Alison and I did go to see the Monkey opera, and thoroughly enjoyed it. If you ever get the chance to see it live, do (I'm not sure where it's going, but I think it was due to go to Paris at some point later this year, if it's not already there) - there were things in it that, if I hadn't seen them with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed possible. (Here's a very interesting interview with Damon Albarn about the musical side of it.

Midomi is a website that lets you identify music just by singing it into your computer. In my experience such things usually don't work too well, but this one does! The only restriction is that it can only identify music that's already been added to its database. So it didn't recognise the first few things I tried, but when I checked, they weren't in the database. When I sang something that was in the database, it identified it immediately. I assume it will work better and better as more songs are added. If you're bored, you can add some yourself :-)

I forgot to mention that when I updated my online choir schedule, I noticed two things I hadn't previously known, so maybe others didn't know them either. Both are about the Verdi Requiem gigs - firstly, Mikhail Petrenko (one of our favourite basses) is the bass soloist. And secondly, the London gig is billed as a Royal Gala Performance. Exciting! (Oh, and tickets will be available from the Barbican box office - they don't seem to be on sale yet, though.)

Some guy at Manchester University wants to create an internet choir. (Thanks to ChoralBlog for both this story and the Midomi one.)

Those who remember Kent Nagano (fondly or otherwise - personally I thought he was fabulous) may be interested in this article about his time in Montreal. I like the idea of him gazing down from billboards and bus stops!

And, finally... if you know the song "Torn" by Natalie Imbruglia, yet didn't see the Secret Policeman's Ball last December, you will be very amused indeed by this version of it. I saw it at the time, but was reminded of it again recently, and it wasn't till then that it occurred to me to look it up on YouTube.

Meet Edie!

Edie is Rachel's brand-new daughter, born on 5th July. I met her for the first time yesterday, when Claire and Alison and I popped round during the lunch break of the choir course. Isn't she lovely?

I'm sure I'm not the only one who still feels totally exhausted after the weekend, and I haven't even had to go to work today! It was good, though. Those who couldn't be there missed a lot of stuff, including: Maggie repeating her "Surfing USA" warmup; Maggie leading us in a great version of Abba's "Thank you for the music"; Paul's guinea pig impression; David's face when he arrived on Saturday morning to find Maggie demonstrating the Funky Gibbon exercise with Paul's help; the meaning of the word overdight (no, I didn't know either, I looked it up on my phone because I was curious. So, those who were impressed when the question was asked and I knew the answer - don't be!); Dimitri helping us to perfect our Russian pronunciation (my favourite was when he said "I hear a mixture of sh and sh"...); various group games designed to help people improve their rhythmic skills; lots of brain-twisting activities with chords and Kodaly method hand signals; and of course lots of singing!

All the pieces we did were great, and I hope we do them again. Well, I know we're doing Komm Jesu Komm again at the memorial concert in September, and one of the Vespers (no. 8, the one with the Aida bit) in the carol concerts. (The altos and basses have the tune in Vespers 8, and it was only when the sops and tenors sat down - so that we could be seen - that I noticed exactly how many more 1st altos there were than 2nd! There were almost three times as many!) We did perform everything at the end of the course, and we got an impressive audience of friends and family - about 30-40 people turned up, and they seemed to enjoy it. We warmed up in front of them, which we hadn't been warned about, but we lost all shame years ago :-) We also did the thing where we all sing any note, and then move until we make a chord as if by magic. (I'm always amazed when that works!) That was followed by a demonstration of the "choral chord progression" thing, which I love doing - except that on this occasion it took a while to get going. I think that that's because we were told that our starting chord was Db major, yet I'm fairly sure it was nothing of the sort.

(I was very pleased that such a lot of time this weekend was spent on the choral chords and the Kodaly method stuff, because both of these techniques are invaluable for my method of sight reading. In fact, I thought of a couple more things to add to what I wrote, so I plan to edit it slightly and then turn it into a downloadable or emailable (or printable) document, because I've had quite a few requests for that - although they've all been people from different choirs!)

Two things to finish. Firstly, my online choir schedule now has all the new season stuff on it (and football clashes). It's not Googleable (try and see, if you don't believe me), so you won't be able to find it unless you know the address. Choir members, email me if you want it. I promise it will be kept up to date (as it always has been).

And finally, for those who were curious about Marvin Suggs - here's his Muppaphone!

Will it EVER stop raining?

Well, of the 17 songs that my ex-boss asked me to find for his last ever assembly, he only used 6 of them! This might have been annoying, but I was expecting it - him asking me to produce music that he didn't subsequently use was a weekly feature during the 10 years I worked for him, so it was kind of endearing. Anyway, the school has now closed forever. I spent most of the afternoon in floods of tears - so did most of the rest of the staff (plus many of the kids), to be fair, but I left a year ago and I thought I got all my crying done at the time! It's hard to explain what a special place that school was, though, to anyone who didn't experience it.

To take my mind off it, the first session of the intensive choir weekend was tonight. We didn't sing through all the music, but we did a fair bit of it. Tonight we did O Clap Your Hands (in which the 1st altos go down to a bottom E flat and the 2nd altos are nowhere near as low! What's that about?), one of the Rachmaninov Vespers (the first one), and Faire is the Heaven. It was all very lovely, particularly the yummy chords and key changes in Faire is the Heaven. As usual I felt that the 2nd altos (only 6 of us tonight! Quality rather than quantity, as we always say...) won the sight reading contest, although the rest of the choir did much better than they usually do. Anyone who wants some hints, see my sight reading instructions that I wrote earlier this year :-)

Only one more thing to add: Rachmaninov had big hands!

Just when you thought I'd gone...

... here are some mp3s for your delectation :-)

Faire is the Heaven (Harris)
O Clap Your Hands (Gibbons)
Komm Jesu Komm (Bach) - part 1
Komm Jesu Komm (Bach) - part 2
Komm Jesu Komm (Bach) - part 3
Komm Jesu Komm (Bach) - part 4
Vespers (Rachmaninov) - no. 1
Vespers (Rachmaninov) - no. 3
Vespers (Rachmaninov) - no. 7
Vespers (Rachmaninov) - no. 8

I've spent the last hour or so doing a favour for my ex-boss, which involved (as so many of my favours for him do!) finding a load of songs for him. I always used to do this for his weekly assemblies, but tomorrow the school closes down forever, so it's his last ever assembly. It'll be an emotional occasion. And one of the few benefits of being still unable to get a job is that at least I can attend :-)

Anyway, while faffing around with mp3s, I realised that I hadn't got round to putting mp3s online of this weekend's music, and I had meant to. So, here you are.

(As a matter of fact, I spent an hour this afternoon doing something else (not online) that hopefully lots of people in the choir will find helpful this weekend. I'll be interested to see how many of them notice!)

Thanks again for all the comments and emails in response to my last post. They are much appreciated. As for the future of this blog, I'll make a decision after the weekend. Hopefully I'll be able to keep it going in some form, although it will be necessarily different to how it has been in the past. We'll see.

Quick update

It's been a while since I've written anything here lately, for various reasons. But I thought I'd do a post, if only to list a load of links I've been saving, before they get REALLY out of date....

Here's the Guardian review of The Kingdom. And the Independent review of the Elgar events in Birmingham. And a slightly alarming rumour about them demolishing the Briton's Protection! (scroll down...)

You'll have seen the big row between Sony and Manchester Cathedral, which doesn't yet seem to have been resolved. The strange part about it is that I'd assumed, when the story hit the news, that the game in question must have just been released, but it actually came out in March!

I enjoyed watching the Cardiff Singer of the World, as, no doubt, many of you did too. I'm not sure I would have picked the same winner, although he was very good. I was pleased Elizabeth Watts (the English soprano) won the song prize, and I think I would have given her the main prize too. I'd hoped Maria Isabel Vera (the Chilean mezzo) would win, but I agree with the commentators that she wasn't as impressive in the final as she was in the heat. But my favourite of the whole competition was actually David DQ Lee (the Canadian/Korean countertenor). He won his round but wasn't selected for the final. Normally I hate countertenors - partly on principle (as if there aren't too few alto opportunities out there already, without men taking them!) and partly because I just don't like the sound of any I've heard before. But he was the only competitor that made me sit up and watch him properly, rather than just have the singing on in the background while I was actually concentrating on something else.

This past weekend I have watched an awful lot of Glastonbury on the BBC (official site here). There were lots of bands and singers I really like (and for those who don't know me, I should maybe clarify that I listen to all this sort of music much more than the stuff on Cardiff Singer of the World - although I listen to that too!). I think my favourite performances were from the Arctic Monkeys and the Fratellis. Neither performance was perfect - lots of the Arctic Monkeys' singing was incredibly out of tune, in particular - but both bands made up for their flaws in other ways. I also loved The Who and Shirley Bassey - always great to hear historic songs performed live by the original artists. Hard to believe that Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey are both in their sixties - and Shirley Bassey is seventy. And they all still sound fabulous! Good news for those who worry about losing their voices as they get older.

Other acts I liked: Amy Whitehouse, The Coral, Dirty Pretty Things, the Kaiser Chiefs, the Killers, the Kooks, Lily Allen, and Maximo Park. I was a bit disappointed with Bjork and Rufus Wainwright, though. I do usually like Bjork (I did even before we were in a concert with her - remember that? In Verbier many years ago?), but on this occasion I was unmoved (although the commentators kept saying how great her show was). Maybe Dr Liz can tell us whether or not Bjork was better live - she was there (rather her than me! I like watching from the comfort of my armchair, but the last standing gig I went to, a couple of years ago - Red Hot Chili Peppers, since you ask - was enough to convince me never to go to one again, let alone one with mud!). And Rufus Wainwright was fine for most of the time, but he and his sister absolutely RUINED Hallelujah. He kept playing the wrong chords, and the singing (from both of them) was no better. It sounded as if they hadn't actually rehearsed it. (Rufus Wainwright is one of those people - like Jeff Buckley - who seems to be regarded as a bit of a god by his fans... they seem unable to admit that he could possibly not be perfect.)

Anyway, I need to go and do yet more job hunting. But first... Some of you have already noticed that my unofficial choir website has gone (and there is a note in its place to explain why). I may have to stop this blog too, but I'm not sure yet. If I do keep it going, it will probably be slightly different. I don't want to go into any more detail here, but I appreciate the supportive emails, and I will reply to them all ASAP.

"We don't do diction here... we do words."

A quick post, because I don't have very much to say, plus I'm in the middle of tidying my spare room in an effort to find my CRB certificate. But I thought I'd better write something so that no more people will obligated to send me links to reviews! (I'm very grateful, and please don't stop doing it, because I do miss stuff occasionally - but lots of people have emailed to point these out to me, and I feel a bit guilty because I'd already seen them but just not summoned the energy to post!)

The M.E.N. gives us 4 stars but the only thing they say about the choir is that we were sometimes overpowered by the orchestra. (Graham E says that this was indeed the case.) I suppose we should be grateful that we were mentioned at all - we're not always!

The Times gives 5 stars and says the Hallé sounded like the best orchestra in the world. Sadly this review is of Saturday's concert rather than Sunday's, but still!

Talking of Graham E, he very kindly sent me some proper photos of Mark getting his present - they're on my choir photo page, as are a few pics from the Hilton party on Sunday afternoon. This is the view through the floor, for those who didn't dare stand over the window!



The concert went well, anyway. The bit I've had on the brain ever since is my favourite bit, which is the men's "this is he which sat for alms" on page 130. That just sounded fabulous every single time they did it! Although I also loved the 2nd bass bottom C near the end (this was the point about which we got the only Jamieism of the day (apart from the one in the title): "What I think you need to do is be a little more ambitious pitchwise..." - I don't think he meant the 2nd basses though, they sounded great!)

Oh, and I did get a chance to speak to the lovely Andrew. He told me that he's only back for this weekend - they also asked him to do a recording of L'Après-midi d'un faune, but he wasn't free for that. But he will be playing with them again in the Prom that they're doing. So you can watch him on TV :-)

And finally - if you feel like a water fight this Saturday, Platt Fields is the place to be!

"To all the 59-year-olds... it's all right!"

Well, today was Mark Elder's 60th birthday - and Elgar's 150th. (Annoyingly the BBC news story about the Elgar anniversary doesn't mention us!) There was a banner up inside the Bridgewater Hall auditorium saying "Happy birthday Maestro!" for both of them. Hopefully you can just about make it out on the second of these pictures:





(There are bigger versions on my choir pictures page but the ones in the hall aren't any clearer, I'm afraid! I know lots of other people were taking pictures with proper cameras - if anyone would like to send me any, I'll put them online.)

For those who weren't there: the first photo is of Mark getting his birthday present from the choir, which he said was "Brilliant!" (it was a hand-carved tabletop music stand - he said he could take it all over the world, subject of course to airline luggage restrictions... this, needless to say, prompted a wry chuckle!) He also told us that not only is it a gloriously sunny day (honestly, it was so hot in Manchester today I thought I might faint) but that "The four soloists advertised in the programme ARE ALL HERE!" This is very rare for Mark, he seems to have a curse on soloists, as I'm sure I've mentioned before - invariably one or more of them is ill and has to be replaced. (The second picture is of Mark speaking to the audience - this was an open rehearsal, and an impressive number of people sat through the whole thing. And the third is of Mark presenting 30- and 40-year choir service awards to lots of people.)

A bonus birthday present, which I'm ashamed to admit I didn't notice immediately, was that we have a guest principal flautist - Andrew is back! And I didn't even see him till he waved to me! I didn't get a chance to speak to him - hopefully tomorrow - so I don't know how long he's here. Presumably just for the weekend. But I was amazed that none of the people around me seemed to remember him at all. I mean, he's an old friend of mine (I know him from Chet's) so I'd remember him more, but still! I couldn't actually remember when it was that he left the Hallé for the RPO, but this list of orchestral principal flautists tells me he was with us from 1999 to 2004. (Yes, I know the page says 'flutists' but that word always looks wrong to me, even though I know it's the American version!)

The rehearsal wasn't too bad, I suppose - we almost got all the way through (we were 5 pages from the end when the orchestral manager came on to stop the rehearsal). I have to say I wasn't too inspired by the soloists - the bass was a bit slapdash with his rhythm, the tenor swooped, the soprano pronounced lots of words very strangely (e.g. 'shill' instead of 'shall')... and the alto was fine, but annoyed me by being a mezzo when the part is labelled 'contralto'! (It doesn't take much to annoy me at the moment!) As for the choir, those alto bits are still wrong (although there are slightly fewer people singing the F-when-it's-supposed-to-be-G), and the other sections have their own stumbling blocks. There are too many people who can't sing quietly, and FAR too many people who think that singing quieter automatically means slower (this is a very common choral problem but it drives me UP THE WALL). There are also a lot of people who seem to think that in parts where we've been asked - for very well-explained reasons - to be absolutely still, that it doesn't apply to them, and it won't make any difference if they choose that moment to start flicking through their score. ARGH.

As ever when we do a piece with the orchestra for the first time, I noticed a couple of interesting bits. For example, there are some chords on page 81 that have a square bracket under them for no apparent reason - does anyone know why? I must investigate. And there was a fabulous twiddly bit on the bottom of page 138 - I think it was a horn, but I only became aware of it as it ended. Must listen out tomorrow.

I felt a bit fount-of-all-knowledgey today, actually. At various points during the morning, I was asked: is there a breath on page 28? (answer: there was once, but it was removed); what's a good place to take parents for lunch tomorrow? (answer: there are loads of places, but I suggested Felicini); who had a number one hit with Frankie in 1985? (answer: Sister Sledge); what do I do if I didn't put my name down for the party at Cloud 23? (answer: officially, nothing, because the numbers have already been finalised with the hotel; unofficially... well, I told the person who asked!); and, who writes the Upbeat choir newsletter? (answer: this was the only question I didn't know the answer to, but I later found out that it's actually Tom Parnell - who tells me that the use of the word 'Poulank' was deliberate, and he'd hoped people would understand if they'd read the newsletter!) (I haven't read it myself in quite a while, I must say - ever since that Christmas issue that I mentioned at the time - but maybe I should.)

Unfortunately I seem unable to convince any non-choir people of my usefulness - my job hunting is not going at all well, and the other day I was turned away from a temp agency by the RECEPTIONIST, who told me that because I have no actual office or admin experience (because of course I've never had to do anything administrative in my life, have I?!) there was no point me even trying to get a temp job doing anything administrative. How encouraging. (She didn't even get to the part of my CV where I listed some of the things I can do - apparently my employment history was the only thing that counted.) I do have a few other ideas to try, but I hope one of them works soon, as money is becoming a real issue.

Hope some of you made it to a Whit Friday event. Sadly I didn't - the friends I'd been due to go with cancelled at the last minute, and I didn't want to go on my own. So I stayed home and watched David Beckham. But lots of people seem to be coming here looking for results, so for them: Saddleworth results are here and Tameside results are here.

Oh, and I seem to have made quite a few people very excited indeed by my mention of Alan Rickman - lots of people have arrived here from the Alan Rickman Download Haven, and it sounds as if large numbers of Rickman fans will come to see the Hallé just because of him. So, an excellent marketing decision there :-)

It's Whit Friday today!

So I'm going to start by ignoring choirs and talking about brass bands :-)

EDIT: To all the people coming here looking for Whit Friday 2007 results, Saddleworth results are here and Tameside results are here.

I'm always quite surprised that many musical people who live in Greater Manchester have never heard of the Whit Friday band contests, so today I feel the need to tell people about them. Then, if you're intrigued, you can go and watch tonight! (This is a slightly updated version of an article I wrote for a Mensa music magazine many years ago, but as far I know the details are all still true. (I apologise for the number of exclamation marks. Not sure what I was thinking...)

(I do have a few comments from last night's piano rehearsal of The Kingdom, but I'll get to them at the end of this post.)

The whole Whit Friday thing will make a lot more sense if I explain about brass bands first. Brass bands are commonly perceived as being a typically Northern phenomenon, but, although I was born and raised in Manchester, I knew practically nothing about them until I started work in Rochdale. The whole system is so unique that I find it fascinating.

There are more rules concerning brass bands than those covering all other areas of music put together. The reason for this is that the brass band world is primarily geared towards competition rather than entertainment (many bands do no concerts at all, in fact). The contests, however (invariably taking place on a Sunday, starting at a ridiculously early hour like 8 a.m. and continuing until the bar closes at midnight or so) are very bitter, hard-fought affairs, with the results being discussed for weeks afterwards.

For the purposes of contests, bands are divided into five sections (Championship, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th). There is a fixed number of bands in each section, but I’m not sure what it is (something like 30 in the Championship or “top section” and rather more in the others). At each contest, bands score points according to their placing (so many for a win, 2nd place, etc.) and at the end of the year there are promotions and relegations, just like in football. In addition to the five sections, there is also a Youth Section, which is just as competitive - the only limit is that players must be under 19. (Young players can, of course, play for “section bands” too.)

The actual contests are amazing. I thought someone was pulling my leg when I was told what happens, but I’ve seen it for myself and can assure you that this is all perfectly true! The actual admin stuff for the contest starts several weeks earlier, when the band’s secretary checks that each player’s registration card is in order. These cards have (amongst other things) the player’s photograph and signature, and they are amended at Head Office (wherever that is) if a player is transferred between bands. No-one can be registered with more than one band. At the same time, the secretary will get each player to sign the contest registration form, and this will be sent off so that the band is officially entered. The band will have been practising the test piece for weeks - in each section, there is only one test piece, so if there are 20 entries (common) then the audience will hear the same piece 20 times!

The contest day begins very early for youth and lower section bands (the top section usually starts at a much more reasonable hour). The first thing that happens is the draw, which is often at 8 a.m., so a band may have had to set off at 6 a.m. if they have any distance to travel. At the draw, each band’s manager has to be present while a draw is made for the order of play. When this has been done, the band knows whether it has time to rehearse or whether it has to proceed to registration. The band drawn first also has to play the National Anthem (or “The Queen”, as they call it), so they will find a few minutes to practise it - they don’t get judged on it, in theory, but most conductors are of the opinion that it’s not a good idea to play it badly!

Even when the draw is known, there is not a fixed time at which the band knows it will be playing - they have to guess what time to tell the players to meet. Eventually, though, it will be their turn to “proceed to registration”. This takes place in a backstage room. The contest controllers sit at a desk. One has all the registration cards (which were handed in at the draw) and the other has the contest registration sheet. The players file past, and each one is compared with his/her photo on the card, and then signs the registration sheet (right next to where they signed it the first time). After this signature has been compared with the first signature, and both have been compared with the one on the card, the player is allowed to play - or not, if there are any discrepancies!

Now you may be thinking “this doesn’t sound much like any music I’ve ever taken part in!” - but bear with me! It gets even stranger! When the band, having passed through registration, finally get on stage, they will be announced simply as “Band number 5” (or whatever) and there will be two notice boards on the stage, saying something like “Draw number 5” and “Programme number 9”. Why? Because the adjudicator is not allowed to know which band is which! Before the contest began, he will have been taken to his “box” (and it usually is just that - a box (with sides but no roof) constructed right in the middle of the hall) by a steward who will have ensured that no-one speaks to him (they might tell him the results of the draw!). The adjudicator stays in this box all day - I believe there is a bucket in there in case he needs to relieve himself.

The audience, however, know which band is which, because they’ve all bought a programme, in which the bands are listed in alphabetical order, and they’ve all written down the draw, which is posted outside the contest hall as soon as it’s known. In addition, the audience will quite happily sit through 20 or 30 performances of the same piece - some even take a score with them to follow! Most of these test pieces are especially written for this purpose and are fiendishly difficult (more so in higher sections!)

After all the bands have played, there will be a long, tense wait until the adjudicator blows his whistle for the last time. He will already have used it to let each band know he’s ready for them to start - now he uses it to say he’s ready to be let out of his box. He goes on stage and delivers some general comments, but nothing specific. Then there are lots more speeches in which everyone thanks everyone else. Eventually the contest controller reads out the results - usually only the top 3 or 4 places, and always in reverse order. Often the bands are only separated by one point - I’m not sure how the adjudicators fiddle it to be so close. Finally, everyone goes to the bar to celebrate or drown their sorrows.

A variation on this theme is “entertainment contests”. These mainly involve youth bands - there are very few for section bands. In an entertainment contest, there is no test piece - bands can play whatever they like, and they have a rigidly enforced time limit (penalty points are deducted for each minute they are outside the allotted range). The music is supposed to be “entertaining”, and most of it is - but there are still many conductors who feel that a brass band programme is incomplete if it doesn’t include a march, a hymn tune and a solo feature (usually for the top cornet or euphonium, and often a theme followed by lots of twiddly variations - yawn!). There will be at least one very silly item (e.g. Nellie the Elephant done as a tuba feature, with the players wearing tutus and elephant ears - I kid you not!) and probably something by Andrew Lloyd Webber (The Old Gumbie Cat is a particular favourite).

Entertainment contests have two adjudicators - one for the music and one for the entertainment. At the end the marks from both sections are added together (usually the music is given marks out of 200 and the entertainment out of 100, or a similar ratio). The music adjudicator sits in a box and operates just as he would at a traditional contest. The entertainment adjudicator watches, however. But each band’s compère has strict instructions not to mention the name of the band, or indeed to say anything that could give a clue to which band is playing.

The instrumentation, by the way, is as follows. A standard brass band has only 25 players plus drummers (although there may be more in concerts, particularly for youth bands). These will be: 1 soprano cornet, 9 cornets, 1 flugel horn, 3 tenor horns, 2 baritones, 2 euphoniums, 3 trombones, 4 tubas. There are no trumpets or French horns in a brass band, surprisingly.

Anyway, I’ll finish by telling you about Whit Friday. It’s the Friday after Whit Sunday each year (this year that means it’s today). On this day each year, bands from all over the country (and elsewhere too) converge on the Saddleworth area of Oldham, just to the east of Manchester. More than 100 bands take part, and each of the 20 or so villages involved basically stops work for the day (except the pubs!). Each village runs its own contest, and the prize money is not to be sniffed at! The contest starts at about 4.30 p.m. and runs till 10 or 11 p.m. The bands play on a “first come, first served” basis - sections are irrelevant at this stage. They arrive on coaches, and as each coach arrives, the band’s “runner” (usually the band manager) leaps off while the coach is still moving and races to the registration point. The order of play is determined solely by the order of registration, regardless of where the coach is in the queue - this can make the traffic policeman’s job interesting! It is to the band’s advantage to play as soon as possible, because the sooner they play, the sooner they can leave to go somewhere else and enter another contest. Anyway, depending on how busy the contest is, the players may well have a 30-40 minute wait before they play, which they will spend in the pub.

When it’s their turn to play, the band will get ready to march. Usually trombones are at the front (they need more room) and cornets at the back, with the bass drummer and one or two side drummers in the middle. Some bands also have a mace-bearer at the front. At a signal from the steward, the conductor (or band manager) will tell the band to “take the street”. At this point they line up in perfect order. In theory no-one speaks or moves, because from this moment on they are being judged on their “deportment” - uniform, discipline, straight lines etc. The youth bands are much better at this than the section bands, in my experience - the top bands don’t take it too seriously, because they know that the real money for them is in the music prizes.

Eventually the steward tells the band to march. The mace-bearer, if present, will do a complicated set of actions at this point. Then the bass drum does a two-bar rhythm, after which he is joined by the side drummers for two bars, and the band raise their instruments for the next two bars. Then they start to play, and after a fixed length of time (the first phrase, usually), they all start to march - left foot first. They march along the street, following a child with a sign with the name of the band chalked on it. He leads them to the bandstand or contest field or wherever. As soon as they are reasonably near to it (but still out of earshot) they are given a signal, at which the bass drummer will do a “double tap”, and the band stops playing at the end of the phrase in which this occurs. (If they finish the piece before this signal, they start again at the beginning.) They continue to march until the side drummers do a two-beat roll to stop them. When they are told to leave the street, they are no longer being judged on deportment - they walk to the bandstand and play their contest march (this will be much more difficult than the street march). The adjudicator will be told nothing about them apart from which section they are to be judged under, and he will be somewhere from where he can hear them but not see them (often in an upstairs room of a nearby pub, with the window open but the curtains shut).

After the band has played its contest march, the players race back to the coach and set off for the next village. Ten contests during the course of the night is a reasonable average - many do more, many do less. The results of the contests are available the same night if you wait around till the end, or online or in the local newspaper over the next couple of days.

If you have never experienced Whit Friday, I feel that your life will be incomplete until you have - so tonight is your big chance! There are only two good ways to “do” Whit Friday - either arrange to be on a coach with a band, or pick one spot and stay there all evening. Following a coach in a car doesn’t work very well, because the parking is horrendous and the roads frequently close while a band marches down them. But, assuming you don’t know any bands who’ll let you join them, a good first visit is to go to Uppermill and sit in front of one of the pubs on the High Street. Last year 57 bands went through Uppermill between 5 and 10 p.m., including most of the top section bands. This page gives you an idea of the scale of the thing (and it doesn’t include all the contests). (If you want somewhere a bit quieter than Uppermill, try Friezland - the top section bands don't go there, so it's a bit more laid back, and there are slightly fewer drunken people due to there not being an actual pub there.)

Anyway - I should probably talk about choir, shouldn't I? As previously mentioned, last night was the piano rehearsal for The Kingdom (i.e. with Mark Elder but not the orchestra - we see them on Saturday). It went reasonably well - needless to say there was lots of dragging due to people not watching, and a few bits where the basses seemed to have no clue what notes to sing, but apart from that it was OK, I thought. And we did get through the whole thing and only finished 5 minutes late. Not bad. (Did you know, by the way, that CBSO & C are having a bit of an insane weekend? They're doing Gerontius tonight, The Apostles tomorrow night and The Kingdom on Sunday afternoon! I dread to think when they started rehearsing... or how long it will take them to recover! Nice thing in the M.E.N. about our weekend though.)

Mark, as usual, inspired everyone, including those who weren't entirely convinced about how good the piece is. (Am I the only one that hadn't previously realised that it tells the story of what the apostles got up to after the Ascension? It all makes so much more sense now!) There weren't many classic Markisms though - maybe he's saving them for his birthday. (He did start talking about a recent disturbing Australian film at one point - I thought he said "Jitterbug" but there hasn't been a film called that for many years. EDIT: Apparently it was Jindabyne. THanks, Libby!) I think the best one was when he was telling us about the priest who comes to all the Hallé concerts and sends critiques afterwards: "He has a parish right over the other side of the country. In Yorkshire!" ... This seemed funnier at the time than it does now :p

Oh, and finally - you know I told you about the things the orchestra are doing for the Festival? Well, now they've got Alan Rickman with them for one of them!