Hope this finds everyone well this morning. Judging by last night's patchy rehearsal attendance, there are lots of folks who aren't feeling well this wet Edinburgh morning. Take echinacea, vitamin C and sleep lots - my suggestions. Anyways... the lowdown on all things Rudsambee is here -- the perfect cure!
We began last night with an African round ably led by Maestro boy Ol. This after a small group rehearsal of Noel Nouvelet, a tunelet we did last year as a small group and this year are singing as a slightly larger group. With the additions (John, Susan and Claire 2) the whole thing sounded much brighter and less 'light on top', as Helen put it. The previous year Helen, Jen and I had battled against 5 boys in a sort of musical gladiators. Adding a couple more women (and John of course) has helped a great deal. We then bashed through the 'Bog off' again, a piece that is sounding better now we are getting the Russian into our heads.
Then, despite Maestro boy's protestations to the contrary last week, we began to note bash 'Deck the Hall'. Note the singular 'hall' here which shows it is a carol for our credit crunch age. Btw I really had to concentrate not to put an 's' on the end of hall - surely we can do more than one hall? We have tinsel, I can fetch more holly from the garden, all the basses can dress up as Santa - we can have four grottos! Anyways, it is a jolly version with some of the funniest notations I have ever read. At one point the sopranos are meant to be 'teasing' (I'll leave that to your imagination, discretion being the better part of valour), the altos 'inviting' (as always), the tenors 'persuasive' (?) and the basses 'bullying' (which is entirely out of character may I say). Later the altos have to be 'hysterical' which, to be honest, was worryingly easy for Jen, Claire 2 and Anne, though it is only supposed to be a bar of hystericalness (is that even a word?) - it's stopping them that is the problem! At present we haven't done the final page and finishing abruptly on a 'la' is perhaps fun for Rudsambee, but less satisfactory for an audience. Apparently the cadenza can be omitted or the conductor can write his own. Come on Maestro boy, I want an interesting piece of wackiness (with at least four key changes and the addition of panpipes) for our finale!
We moved on the a new bit of Tallis which just means you have to count... a lot! It will be lovely at St Giles. It has a long bit of plainchant which we did at double quick time with Anne as plainchant is pretty dull to rehearse though, hopefully, nice to hear.
Our final conversations focused on the CD (as always, though a decision has now been made and I'm sure fans will be suitably impressed by the artistic wonderment), promoting the Canongate concert (it is in Edinburgh, has nice acoustics and, most importantly, it is a darn sight warmer that Roslin) and Ecclefechan tart which is like an Eccles cake except, well, 'fechaned'. Anyways, we finished with a rousing rendition of Little Green Frog and Alice the Camel, and chatted about the importance of a work/life balance. And with that serious, self-helpy final suggestion, I bow out for the week.
Alice the Camel:
DISCLAIMER: This is not us, nor do we sound like this!
Keep feeling Christmassy folks!
CSW
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