Dear all
Many thanks to those who have attended the first 3 rehearsals and apologies for not sending out a note after each one.
We’ve made a great start to the year with some music that is really fun to sing! Rather than go over what we looked at in each rehearsal I thought I’d just give a quick overview of each piece we are looking at so far. There is no guarantee all these pieces will be in a concert in the summer, and we are more than likely to add other pieces as we go.
Gloria (Vivaldi) – this is a super well-known piece that always brings smiles to faces. We have looked at most of the movements in the last two rehearsals and have spent particular time on numbers 2, 5 and 7. Number 2 is probably the most difficult to get right because it is very slow, making it hard to follow at times. Number 5 is difficult for the opposite reason – lots of very fast quaver runs! We have also looked at the first movement (which is already sounding good) and a little bit at number 12.
I mentioned at the second rehearsal that this piece has several solos (minimum 2 sopranos and an alto required) which is would be nice to cast from within the choir if possible. Please have a think about this and let me know if you are interested. There is a lot of time between now and a concert in the summer to work on this.
Festival Te Deum (Vaughan Williams) – this is a nice accompaniment to the Gloria, as another celebratory anthem! It’s actually relatively straight forward for the most part, but needs a lot of energy to keep the sentiment going the whole way through. We spent time on this in the first rehearsal but not since. This is very likely to be in a concert in the Summer. This is a Vaughan Williams anniversary year.
Antiphon from Five Mystical Songs (Vaughan Williams) – we performed this in our last concert before the pandemic in November 2019 and are generally picking it up again quite quickly. It is another celebratory piece needing a lot of energy!
Psalm 100 (Jauchzet Dem Herrn) (Mendelssohn) – this psalm setting (in German) is one of three little motets by Mendelssohn we are looking at at the moment, as this is also his anniversary year. This one is mostly in 4 parts but has an 8-part section in the middle which is designed to be sung by a solo octet, which we will all learn together for now.
Kyrie (Mendelssohn) – this is not from a full mass setting but is a lovely short setting. It’s in a double choir arrangement (8 parts), which is something of an experiment to see how we cope!
Heilig (Sanctus) (Mendelssohn) – this setting of the words of the Sanctus in German is much like the Kyrie in that it is split into 8 parts. Along with the Psalm setting above, it is also good to broaden our language barriers a little!
Looking forward to seeing you all next week!
Dave