Author: Lesley Morley

Dear all

Just a gentle remind to engage with the doodle poll in the next 2 days please! Here’s the link if you can’t find it: https://doodle.com/poll/kkg8c95cxn5btakn?utm_source=poll&utm_medium=link

It’s really easy!

See you on Tuesday

Dave

Dear all

As mentioned in the last Roundup, we are looking to add another piece to the repertoire for a concert in June. There is a Doodle Poll at this link – https://doodle.com/poll/kkg8c95cxn5btakn?utm_source=poll&utm_medium=link – for you to vote for your favourite! We are looking for something not too long but substantial, with a bit of a challenge but not too much so. Not an easy list of requirements!

I’ve complied the list of possibilities below, mostly from suggestions from the choir but also from my own repertoire and tried to give some brief info on each. You can vote for as many as you like and I have presented them in alphabetical order to avoid bias!

Faure Requiem – one of the most popular pieces, fits the bill in terms of length and difficulty, but perhaps a bit overdone (several other amateur choirs have restarted with this). 2 solos (Soprano and Baritone), easy to do with just organ accompaniment.

Haydn Mass in a Time of War – one of Hayden’s most popular masses and a real showcase of his style! It’s a really rewarding piece to sing. Needs 4 soloists (SATB) and harder to do without the orchestra (medium-sized). About 40mins long, which is about the limit of the timing we need.

Jenkins The Armed Man (A Mass for Peace) – a great piece, more modern than the others on this list, can be done with a small ensemble which is useful for us. I’m including this as it was a popular suggestion before but, at just over an hour, it is probably too long for what we need.

Rutter Requiem – I know it’s Rutter but, as with most of his bigger works, it’s not all pretty tunes sung by adorable trebles that we usually associate with his music. Although Rutter’s talent for pretty tunes shines though, it’s a work with very serious undertones and interpolates a psalm setting and an anthem. Much like the Faure, this is very singable but challenging in the right way. Can be done with just organ and soprano soloist.

PLEASE complete this by Saturday 19th February so we can hopefully announce at the next rehearsal.

Have a good week off!

Dave

Dear all

Apologies for taking a week to get the latest roundup to you, but it gives me the chance to remind you that there is no rehearsal tomorrow, Tuesday 15th February as it is half term!

Last week, we spent a fair amount of time on the Festival Te Deum, mainly focusing on the next section we had not looked at before (from Figure 4 on Page 5 to Figure 6 on Page 8). This section was sounding really good once we had bashed through the notes and makes me confident we can give a good rendition of this piece. The trickiest bit is the rhythms between figures 4 and 5 – have a look in your free time to make sure you’re on top of it.

We then sung through movement 2 of the Vivaldi (Et in Terra Pax), which is probably the trickiest movement but we are singing it very well. It has a tendency to speed up (partly my fault) so we need to make sure we keep it steady.

Lastly, we learned the notes for the solo octet section of Mendelssohn’s Psalm 100 setting. Despite the lack of any bass 1s (!) we sang this exceptionally well. We’ll look at it more in coming weeks and, as before, I am hoping that we can have a small octet or hexadectet (I’m going with this for a group of 16 singers) singing this in future.

As I have mentioned a few times, I am hoping to add another piece to the repertoire for a concert in June and I hope to have this sorted by the end of half term. At some point you will receive a link to poll to vote for what we sing with the Vivaldi. Watch this space…

Dave

Dear all

Apologies my roundups have been a bit inconsistent so far this term, and that this one is coming around so late!

Firstly, as some were asking, our break for half term will be on Tuesday 15th February.. That’s next Tuesday.

At last week’s rehearsal we started with some detailed work on the 12th (and last) movement of the Vivaldi, the Cum Sancto Spiritu fugue. Lots of counting needed in this piece, as parts drop in an out at various times. It’s worth taking some private time to make sure you know the notes in this piece, as I’m not planning to do more bashing through them in detail. We also looked at the 9th movement (Qui tollis and Sucipe), which is generally straight forward but with some tricky intervals in the first section. Again, worth checking you are comfortable with it if you have time.

We then spent some time with the Vaughan Williams Festival Te Deum, mainly going over the opening few pages again (as it had been a few weeks!). This piece has some tricky moments but is generally very singable, and made easier by the fact that large parts of it are only in 2 parts. We will continue to work through it in the coming weeks.

Finally, we covered the Psalm 100 setting by Mendelssohn, especially the last page and a bit (after the solo octet section). This is sounding very good – we will add the middle section in coming weeks.

I mentioned last week that we will likely add another larger work to sit alongside the Vivaldi. I want the choir’s member to be a part of the decision-making for this so I will set up some kind of poll – watch this space.

See you tomorrow

Dave

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

Hi all

Just a reminder to please bring Carols for Choirs books, if you have them, to tomorrow’s rehearsals (7th December). Either the green or white books are fine.

if you don’t have them, don’t panic! There may be some spares and we can share.

See you there!

Dave

Dear all

Many thanks to those present at tonight’s rehearsal. Unfortunately I feel I must plea again for everyone to come to rehearsals if at all possible. We now only have 2 left before we perform in front of an audience and we are far from ready – if the number of people absent from rehearsals remains as it has done for the last few weeks we will struggle to be ready in time. For the second week running, fewer than half of the tenors and altos were present. We are beyond the stage where this can be accommodated – I am not willing to present an unprepared choir in front of an audience. EVERYONE who intends to sing in the concert on 14th December MUST be present for the remaining rehearsals for it to be feasible.

Those who were present achieved a huge amount. We sang through the entire programme in order (see below) and it was really encouraging to hear how secure we were with the music. However, we need to be far more familiar in order to give convincing performances. Next week we will focus on the pieces we have spent less time on recently.

Running Order (for the concert of December 14th) – feel free to set your music in order for remaining rehearsals:

Linden Lea

Turtle Dove

Swansea Town

All Through the Night

Skye Boat Song

Down by the Sally Gardens

Danny Boy

Ellen Vannin

Battle of Jericho

Shenandoah

On the Day:

Arrive – 6:45pm (or as close as possible)

Rehearsal – 6:45-7:45pm

Concert starts – 8pm

Concert ends – 9pm (approx)

I will send a separate email to those performing in the Holly Lodge concert with details.

Apologies for slightly ranty roundup this week. Thanks and well done again to all those at tonight’s rehearsal – it sounded fantastic in places!

Dave

Dear all

Many thanks to those present for a fantastic rehearsal tonight! We achieved a huge amount, including note-bashing through the final 2 pieces for the concert. My now-usual please for everyone to prioritise attending the remaining rehearsals – we don’t have any more time for note-bashing as we really need to start tidying the pieces for performance now, so if you don;t know the music, learn it in your own time!!

We sang all through Down By the Sally Gardens, which is a reasonably simple 2-part arrangement which we generally found quite comfortable. We need to tidy up breathing/dynamics etc, but this will be a very popular piece in performance!

We then looked at the Skye Boat Song, our Scottish contribution to the UK tour of folk songs. Again, this arrangement is fairly simple and we picked it up quickly, but the simple things need to be really clean and tidy to be effective!

Next we looked at Ellen Vannin, which we have not touched for a few weeks, but was not as rusty as I was worried it might be (in fact, it was rather good). The texture in this piece remains quite thick throughout, which means it can sound a little stodgy – keep the energy up, especially in the middle verse, so it doesn’t sag!

We then looked again at All Through the Night, and I’m pleased that we are now managing the Welsh fairly confidently (at least, that’s how it sounds, so good acting if it isn’t!). Watch me for ends of phrases in this – a lot of them end with consonants (especially ‘s’) which all need to be together or it will sound messy. Keep revising from my transliteration from the email a couple of weeks ago.

Finally, we had a sing through The Turtle Dove, after some brief revision of the middle verses. This is going to sound lovely, but really does need to be a Capella and we dropped pitch a little. It happens in the third verse when we are all singing the words together – keep thinking high!

I will send another message round later this week (work permitting) with more details about both concerts, but we agreed today that for our concert on Tuesday 14th December we would arrive at 6.45, with a view to starting the concert at 8pm and be insisted by 9.

Have a good week!

Dave

Dear all

Many thanks to those who were there for tonight’s rehearsal. We were very well stocked for sopranos and quite well so for tenors, but distinctly lacking in bases and altos, which made the balance of the choir tonight interesting to say the least! As last week, can I please urge you all to come to as many of the remaining rehearsals as possible. Of course I understand that life happens, and that this is the cold/flu/COVID season, but we only have 4 rehearsals left before our 2 engagements now and we do not have time to go over bits people have missed any more.

Those who were there achieved a huge amount today, with complete sings through 3 pieces, including one we only started working on 2 weeks ago. Not only that, but those sings through were really rather good!

We first spent some time on Swansea Town, which we have not touched for some time. We are now pretty comfortable with the nots, so need to start making this a performance piece. Try to make sure you know this well enough that you can watch me while you are singing, as well as glance at your copies, especially on the last page where we will pull the tempo around a little. Remember also that the middle ‘storm’ verse will be a little slower.

We then worked on the second verse of Danny Boy, which we picked up much more quickly than I thought we would, which is fantastic! Again, keep an eye on me for the tempo changes towards the end, and also for the general pauses in the first verse (after the word ‘hushed’) and second verse (after ‘warmer’). We also need to do far more with dynamics in this piece.

Finally we looked mainly at the last verse of All Through the Night, making sure we know the Welsh pronunciation and the notes. This has the potential to be a show stealer so we need to start polishing now, and trying to worry more about the music and less about the language!

For those able to sing at the charity event on Thursday 9th December, firstly thank you very much for giving your time for this, which looks like it will be a fantastic thing to be part of. As a brief outline of the timings for the day:

6:00 – 6:15pm – arrive

6:15- 6:50pm – rehearse with the pianist/organist

6:50pm – break

7:20pm – in seats ready to start

7:30pm – start

8:50pm (approx) – finish

We will be singing 3 pieces across 2 slots (to be confirmed, but likely to include All Through the Night). More details next week.

Have a lovely week all!

Dave

Dear all

Many thanks to those who braved the chilly autumn night to come to rehearsal this evening. We achieved a heck of a lot, but by my count we now only have 5 rehearsal left before the planned concert – it is really important that everyone comes to all rehearsals from now on. If we only have ¾ of the choir each week, we need to keep going over notes rather than actually rehearse the music and get it performance ready.

Today, we spent time on Battle of Jericho, managing to perform more than half of it without music. This piece, more than any, needs to move on from note bashing so please look at your part during the week if you can. I won’t spend any more time going though the notes with this piece! Rhythm is far more important than notes in this kind of music – we need to make sure the rhythms are really accurate and snappy.

THe rest of the rehearsal was dedicated to the new arrangement of All Through the Night (Ar Hyd y Nos). It’s sounding lovely – the notes are relatively straight forward. Of course, we are hoping to sing the majority of this piece in Welsh, so we need to get our heads around the words! I thought this edition of Rehearsal Roundup might be best used to transliterate the 2nd and 3rd verses for you. Remember the different pronunciations:

ch – no direct English equivalent, pronounced as in the Scottish loch

dd – voiced ‘th’, as art the end of the word breathe

th – unvoiced ‘th’, as at the end of breath

ll – no direct equivalent in English (or any other European language), it’s a bit like a cat’s hiss, produced with the tongue between the sides of your teeth

ff – ‘f’ sound as in off

f – ‘v’ sound as in of

u – pronounced like the letter ‘I’ in English

w – used as a vowel in Welsh, equivalent to the English ‘u’ or ‘oo’

y – also used as a vowel, usually either ‘uh’ or ‘ee’ sound

So, here’s the Welsh words, with a rough transliteration in italics below. I can’t transliterate the ‘ll’ or ‘ch’ letters, so I’ve left them as they are!

Holl amrantau’r ser ddywedant

Holl am-ran-tyre sair thu-wed-ant

Ar hyd y nos

Are heed uh nos

“Dyma’r ffordd i fro gogoniant,”

Dum are forthe ee vro go-gon-yant

Ar hyd y nos

Are heed uh nos

Golau arall yw tywyllwch

Goh-lie ar-all ew tuh-wuh-llooch

I arddangos gwir brydferthwch

Eee are-than-gos gweer brid-ver-thooch

Teulu’r nefoedd mewn tawelwch

Ty-leer nevoyth mehoon (as a diphthong, ‘meh-oon’) ta-wel-ooch

Ar hyd y nos

O mor siriol, gwena’r seren

Oh more seer-yol gwen a seren

Ar hyd y nos

I oleuo’i chwaer ddaearen

Eee o-lay-oi ch-wire thy-are-en

Ar hyd y nos

Nos yw henaint pan ddaw cystudd

Nos ew hen-aynt pan thou custeethe

Ond i harddu dyn a’i hwyrddydd

Ond ee har-thee deen aye hoyr-theethe

Rhown ein golau gwan i’n gilydd

Rown ayn goh-lie gwan een gill-eethe

Ar hyd y nos

Happy learning!

Dave