The Sleeping Blogetteer

I was going to write this in rhyme as the title seemed to demand it somehow but it’s far too much effort and so you’ll have to wait for another time for the privilege of reading my astounding versifications. Pure doggerel, you know, but quite amusing when I’m on form, if I may be allowed to claim so.
You can believe that if you wish though I wouldn’t recommend it.

I really do seem to have missed a great deal of what went on last night. I’m ashamed to say I think I was laughing too much (when we weren’t singing, of course. Well mostly. I did splutter my way through a good few lines of Une Puce but that was Anne’s fault as I shall reveal later) to notice what was happening elsewhere. I can’t even remember what I was laughing at, though - obviously – it had something to do with Jenny. Really – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I am a disgrace of a blogger. I hardly ever pay sufficient attention to the evening’s proceedings and many a joyous daftness is lost for ever due to my negligence.

Yesterday I was particularly inattentive, it seems. Chris – unusually - sent me a little email to remind me of some of the evening’s bons mots and I have to admit that I could make nothing of two of them at all. I’m sure that a comment on the basses ‘interesting parts’ was extremely amusing and that a ‘freestyle robin’ is something well worth seeing (and hearing) but why such comments were made, or when, or by whom, I couldn’t say. I feel I missed out on a good deal of fun. Was I asleep? If so, why didn’t someone prod me? Or sing very loudly in my shell-like? I wake very easily…only a small amount of effort would have been required. Did Christopher notice me napping and thus the reminder? So many questions and no answers at all.

I do remember that the evening began with a discussion about lifts to and from Wigtown for next weekend. It was all sorted much more easily than I had feared it would be when I read the list of drivers and what they could and could not do – principally could not as far as I could see. However, we all have transport now and all seem to be leaving from somewhere not too far away from home so a 9 o’clock in the morning start will not be overly painful. Where we will be staying when we get there is anybody’s guess but we have been promised accommodation with the locals, who are a generous bunch, so no doubt everyone will have a bed for the night who requires it and with a bit of luck no one will have to share their pillow with another who has no desire to do so. As to the concert itself, we are singing Cloudburst again (with a little more help from the locals) and the Five Hebrew Love Songs so whatever else it is it will be a delight to perform. Yey!

When, eventually, we got around to singing we sang arpeggios to ‘Jenny is pretty today’, which had her blushing. When Ollie suggested we change the words to ‘Jenny is ugly today’ because ‘pretty’ is hard to sing on the top notes there was an understandable outcry which resulted in ‘Jenny is happy today’ instead which, if nothing else, must have had the neighbours wondering who the hell Jenny is and why we feel the need to sing about her, happy and pretty though she may well be. After this we spent a little time teaching Anne and Elaine, who missed last week’s rehearsal, how to make over-tonal noises for Desh which Anne said “sounds like a sitar,” a miracle as this, after all, is exactly what we were trying to sound like. Wonders will never etc etc.

Then, revisiting a few old pieces to sing along with the above-mentioned glories next weekend we had a go at En une seule fleur – a Rainer Maria Rilke oddity set to matching music by Morten Lauridsen. Neither Luke nor Heather has ever set eyes on this before but they seemed to be getting the hang of it without too much difficulty – quite remarkable, considering… We sang once – and rather beautifully – through Dormi, Jesu which, again, Heather was viewing for the first time. There are several other pieces which she will see for the first time next Wednesday and then sing with us on Saturday and I am much impressed by the calm with which she seems to be approaching this event. I remember my first concert and how at sea I felt and how sick and I think I’d had a month or two to prepare for it. With habitual generosity Ollie has promised that we will sing through everything Luke and Heather don’t yet know before the concert. The Boy Wonder is a hero, pure and simple. What would we do without him?

We whooped and yelled (tunefully, mind you) our way through Monateng Kapele and we practised Une Puce. How Heather managed the latter I don’t know. It is in Old French, which is weird, and very fast and it took us weeks and weeks to get the hang of it but she didn’t look all that much like a frightened rabbit so she must have found it sort of OK. Of course she may well have been singing rubbish and all the wrong notes too but I was too far away from her to hear (by that I mean I had Jenny in between) and I do hope so because that would make me feel far less stupid than I do when I see these young people picking things up so easily. By that I mean learning, not bending down to retrieve dropped objects which I can still do with no trouble at all I assure you.

The third verse of Une Puce - sung by choir 1 who get all the fun (no, I’m not in it) – requires to be sung in a very nasal, ugly fashion – well, that’s what the BW requires of it, anyway. It is about ‘une vielle charmeresse’, an old enchantress who has for our purposes, it appears – at least in the eyes of the young master – lost any chance she might once have had of enchanting anybody and must, inevitably, be witchy and horrid rather than a faded beauty with seductive voice – and, yes, what fun would that be? So – ugly and nasal it is. As a result, thanks to Anne – and rather happily – we have a new piece of musical terminology. Forget... what have we in the folder?... yes, forget ‘moderato, grazioso’. Forget ‘slowly and gently’ or ‘lievemente, giocoso’ (what??). Forget ‘senza misura’ and ‘poco piu mosso’ (hmmm….?). Instead we have ‘sustained old hag’.

Genius. My, did we laugh. And laugh. And, as I said earlier, laughed some more when supposed to be singing.

All together it was quite a jolly little rehearsal. We are really rather a jolly little bunch. And now I’m off for a jolly big drink.

Cheers!