All in a Small Room

We tried small group again this week but once again it was too small to do anything. Somehow we need to lure in a few more people. Ollie thinks he will have to choose something exciting to do and then, maybe, more of us will turn up. We had no Tenors at all – except for the BW who doesn’t really count (though he does occasionally like to join us in song and may well have to if the situation re numbers doesn’t improve) and only one Alto (me. And we all know how useless I am on my own).

Instead of starting something new we had a look at that magnificent man in his flying machine, reminding ourselves of what we learned last week and as we sang more people turned up and as more people turned up we went further and learned more. I actually remembered and managed to sing all on me lonesome – the right notes and everything. You may recall that the Altos have a lot of la-ing to do in this one. Seven pages of it, in fact; I just counted. Seven pages, then a break while the ‘la’s are interrupted by rather more interesting text and then we’re back to the L-word for another couple of pages at the end. It’s quite hard work – does funny things to the tongue. Luckily it’s not all on one note. And it may sound as if it’s really boring but it’s really not. Honest.

But I do think I need to get my eyes seen to. The sight-reading is quite bad enough without being obstructed by poor vision. Caused, I have to point out, by poor lighting.

(We spent all evening in the piano room this week and it’s not exactly brightly lit in there if you bag a spot by the radiator). I can still see to thread a needle if the light’s good enough (and the needle big enough and using string instead of cotton!) and I am loath to give my eyes the excuse to become as lazy as their owner - that is what happens, I believe, if one wears glasses – but trying to read little black dots on thin black lines, at speed, in not very good light, at the end of a long day... well, is it any wonder I sing rubbish??

Having sung through to the end of Leonardo (though without having even glanced at the beginning of it yet, which makes one question what is in store for us when we try to tackle that section) we did a bit of Desh-ing. I got all sorts of bits of it right this time which have never been right before but there’s still a fair few places (the end, which we learned last, in a break from tradition) where I am floundering and which I MUST look at properly before next week. I can do either the words or the tune (rhythm) but not both – trying to do both sends my eyes off in different directions. Everyone else seems to have got the hang of this one, though, because it is sounding good.

We have a new piece of Tormis – Jaani Hobu, or St. John’s Steed. It is a sort of round with other things going on and it is very repetitive, thank God, because it will, eventually, go very fast. We have done O Morgenstern where the Tenors and Sopranos sing in a different key to the Altos and Basses and now we have this where everyone seems to be singing in a different time signature. 4/4, 3/4, 2/4 we are instructed at the beginning and several people were wondering aloud how it was possible to do all three at once. Well, of course, we don’t do it all at once but there’s a bar of this, a bar of that; the Tenors and Basses are doing one thing while the Altos and Sopranos do another, everyone comes together for a bit then off we all go on our separate ways again. And there are the key changes too, of course. Our Lord and Master was quite surprised and impressed with how quickly we got the hang of it (I’m not sure what that says about his belief in our ability) but get the hang of it we did and pretty quickly, too. Somehow it was really quite easy. Odd.

There’s not much else to report. Anna Lauren was back with us having had a trying time getting away to America for Christmas. Original flight cancelled so spent Christmas day driving down to London in order to catch a plane on Boxing Day – nightmare.

It seems our Polish choir will not be able to visit this year though they are still happy to have us over there. No idea what we’ll do about the trip now but no doubt decisions will have to be made soonish. If we go it will be in September, by the look of things, so maybe we’ll get to sing in London in May after all, which would be nice. I should have said last week that Luke IS GOING TO BE A DAD – yey! Another Rudsambee baby. What a fecund lot. Imagine how incredibly exciting it would be if we had more potential fathers in the Tenor section. Ah well, one can dream...

And on that note - time for bed.

xx