Another small one. Short, too.

Of what or of whom am I speaking?

Well, it’s not hard to guess, is it? Not our Boy Wonder, though he is quite little. Not any choir member at all, though some of them are really tiny.
No, no. Wednesday’s rehearsal is my subject matter of course and, once again, we were a select group and, once again, it wasn’t worth doing much in the way of learning new material. It must surely be time for things to get back to normal now, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Where is everybody????

Anne has lost her voice – careless but easily done – and she won’t be back for quite a while as she finds it impossible, she says, to attend rehearsals and not join in. Fair enough. I think lots of other people were caught up with work and I suppose this can’t be helped. Kay was at a parent-teacher meeting and came along late but by the time she got there we’d just about finished so we serenaded her with a new piece we’d learned (so quickly and I sight-read it all very happily, too; could it be extremely easy, by any chance?) and I think she got a chance to sing through something but she might as well have gone straight home from the school for all the practice she got, poor thing. Still, she had in-laws baby-sitting so it would have been daft to miss the opportunity for tea and biscuits, no?

We began by singing Sang and then put it aside for later. We sang Grabmediddlywhoosits, too – bit of work required on the Gaelic pronunciation but Robin’s solo sounds lovely. Then we tried the new piece and, as we didn’t get copies to bring home, I will have to leave it to Christopher to inform you what it is called and by whom it was penned as I cannot remember at all [it's called O Lux Beatissima]. I do remember it being something of a doddle to sight-read with a fair amount of accuracy (I am not claiming perfection, not by any means) and that it is in Latin and is suitable for Christmas. See, I took in quite a lot, really.

Once we’d finished with that one the BW announced that he was off to make a cup of tea and that he was leaving us to do some work on Sang – make it interesting, he ordered as he disappeared. Well, we tried, really we did. There was a considerable period of silence broken, eventually, by a giggle or two and then Mrs F got all sensible (?? I know!) and made a suggestion. Off we went then, everyone had something to say. Only trouble was no one seemed to have the same thing to say. One wanted to crescendo at exactly the place someone else thought a decrescendo would be nice. Someone wanted to speed up when others thought a rit. would fit the bill; loud/soft, fast/slow, start/stop. Lordy! We did have a go at verse one and it sounded not bad at all but then the discussion about ways and means reopened and we never got any further so that when Ol returned we were still talking round in circles – and round. And around and back again. He soon sorted us out. We played around with just the first word for a while and some very sudden changes in volume in the first couple of bars and voila! Far more interesting already. We are inclined to become a bit lazy with older pieces and this sort of tweaking works wonders.

So, there you are. Bit dull but I have things to get on with so that’ll have to do you. Laters!