Tavener, Who He?

Hey, Peeps – late Friday night and I have been bored out of my mind all day so you’d think, wouldn’t you, that I might have done this before now – but, oh no! that would be too sensible.

So now I am tired and grumpy and who knows what I’ll find to write…..

We were several people down – again, but most with good excuses – even one of the newbies was absent so I really hope this is not a BAD SIGN. Behm – who informed me last week that he would probably come back this week as he hadn’t anything else to do on a Wednesday night – had something else to do this Wednesday night after all (being ill, apparently) and so we had to do without him. We badly need an extra tenor so I hope he intends to return in the weeks to come.

In spite of the reduced number we did lots of work and the time whizzed by. In fact we started early!! Surely that must be a first. Anne, Chris, John, Susan and I were there with Ollie a few minutes before anyone else so we started to sing God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen all by ourselves – not difficult as we have done this before – and were well into verse three before we began to be joined by the stragglers looking most perturbed and puzzled – all, presumably, having been quite sure they were on time and, being faced with a small group of warblers warbling merrily away, probably imagined SOMETHING INTERESTING was going on to which they had not been invited. (My presence should have put their minds at rest for if SOMETHING INTERESTING was, indeed, going on then ten to one my ‘talents’ would not be required!)

So – the rest of the attendees arrived in dribs and drabs and, picking up copies of the number, joined us in Christmassy song. We used this as a warm-up. Once upon a time we took it in turns to take the warm-up – a few physical jerks, more or less energetic or spiritual depending on whose turn it was and then some breathing exercises and some scales or arpeggios and, sometimes, a little ditty composed for the occasion or a jazzy improv if it was Sebastian. Once upon a time someone took notes each week and wrote them up and sent them round so that absentees would know what we had done and what they needed to practise but since Jenny – list-maker and reminderer - got all grown up and started working in the community she has become completely disorganised and has lost every rota we ever tried to make so we no longer know who is supposed to be doing what and no one seems willing to take over her role, with the result that Ollie has to warm us up every week and no one ever takes notes any more. Writing this I am thinking that perhaps this is something I could do. Hmmm... I shall go to rehearsal next week armed with a piece of paper neatly divided into sections with dates and spaces for warm-up and note-taking and I shall get everyone to sign up for one or the other or, preferably, both and then I’ll bring it home and forget to remind people what they are doing when and we’ll be back to square one but at least I’ll have tried.

Back to rehearsal. Having finished with the Merry Gentlemen we divided up into girls and boys and off we went to get to grips with the Korean piece Jajang, Jajang, Ahgi Jesu – a lullaby. Korean is a new language for us so we females stuck to la-ing though the men seemed to be singing the words when we rejoined them. Either Ollie knows how to speak Korean all of a sudden or they are taking a big risk because almost always when some phonetic version of a foreign language appears on a piece of music we find the reality is very different when we ask someone who actually knows how it is supposed to sound. At least the tune sounded good though heaven only knows what the men were singing about. Hopefully we will find a helpful Korean to put us on the right track. Both Jenny and Kay were yawning away during this song. I don’t think it’s boring at all. Perhaps we were keeping them up. Still they managed to join the rest of us in impressing Ollie when he asked the women to sing a bit of the piece on their own. At least, I think he was impressed. “You did that quite well, didn’t you?” says the Boy Wonder, in wonder. Yes, we did.

Next, while the tenors, basses and honorary man Jenny set to work on a new piece by Tormis – something to do with sledging, I think – we women set off once again for the room with the piano to have a look at Rocking by John Tavener. Someone misheard something because the name Tavener seemed to cause undue confusion amongst the sopranos. Or perhaps his name simply has the same effect on some people as his music does on others. Anyway, as I said, we set off for the piano room and one look at the music, over-endowed with sharps and flats and every single possible interval designed to throw the singer off balance, had me thanking my stars that Anne would be bashing out the notes on said piano to help us along. "Little Jesus, sweetly sleep" is something we used to sing at Primary school for the nativity play. But not like this! Oh no. Not like this at all. But this is absolutely lovely once you get the hang of it. It will sound magical in St Giles. It isn’t even as difficult as it first appears – except, perhaps, for the odd note here and there (ha!).

We finished by singing through The Swallow and the Bells which we will sing in Ukrainian or some such eventually but for which we only have a dire English translation at the moment. The words might mean the same in whatever language we’ll be singing it in in future but they couldn’t possibly be as naff and ugly (they're actually worse than the morecommon version, Carol of the Bells!). Sometimes English just doesn’t work. Then we did O Nata Lux which is yummy and then it was time to finish.

I have odd little notes here and there on my music – to whit: "uppity Chris", "glue", "yawns". While the latter certainly has to do with Jenny and Kay looking as if they should be home in bed I have no idea at all what the other two mean. I only know that I had it in mind when I wrote them that this edition would be a very amusing addition to my blog. This is what comes of not getting down to things. Not getting down to things is what I am best at. Everyone needs a skill of some sort and that is mine. I am with Scarlett O’Hara on the “I’ll think about it tomorrow” business. But it never did her any good either.