Category: Choir Updates

Dear All

Thank you for responding so quickly to our query about concert dates. Responses were overwhelmingly in favour of the earlier date. We have therefore taken the decision to move our concert to Saturday 24^th June, with apologies to those who are unable to make the new date.

The June date will allow us to add what I hope you agree will be a fun and exciting element to our concert. Marta’s (sop) choir will be visiting London from Spain that week and we thought it would be a lovely idea to invite them to sing something at our concert. This would be in addition to The Creation and Brahms pieces we have been working on. Details have still to be worked out but we will hopefully have chance to hear them sing one of their traditional Spanish songs as well as singing some pieces with them. More details to follow.

Reminder that we will be having sectionals this week (28/2). Hosts/Venues are as follows:

Sopranos – at Caroline Cuss’s

Altos – at Siobhan Jones’s

Tenors and Basses – at Christchurch WITH ROBERT! 

See you back at Christchurch next week 7/3

Morning all, nice to see many of you back in singing mood last night.

We started out (after a bit of Australian rounding – try getting that earworm out of your head) with a new piece – Geistliches Lied by Brahms. A choir like us does not often get to sing Brahms. Most of his choral writing is for a big group, and much is for big choir AND big orchestra. But saying all of Brahms is out of our reach is such a shame as he wrote for choir like he wrote for orchestra – lovely big sweeping phrases and those lush harmonies. If you have not listened to it, please do – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNHGslY5ic0 – those who found it a bit turgid last night will hopefully hear how it sounds when put together and with bucketloads of expression. Last night we just worked on the first section, which repeats with different words as the third section. The second section is a little darker and trickier. The final Amen coda won’t take a lot of learning. The sheet music (available out of copyright for printing off) is on the download section of the website. There was some discussion among the German speakers about the strangeness of the words. They are from the 17th-century German poet Paul Fleming, so probably bear the same relationship to modern German as Shakespeare does to today’s English. But they are correct in the music.

For our work on the Creation, we took a close look at 3 movements:

1	7	Im Anfange schuf Gott Himmel und Erde
2	12	Nun schwanden vor dem heiligen Strahle
4	22	Mit Staunen sieht das Wunderwerk
10	38	Stimmt an die Saiten
13	47	Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes	We worked from the beginning to letter C. There is nothing terribly tricky in this piece, all of the musical progressions are pretty predictable and logical, so it’s about being spot on with detail. Pronunciation – erzählen is er-TSAY-lun and Hände is HEN-duh. Let’s not get into the habit of saying these wrong from the off or it will be hard to correct.
18	76	Der Herr ist groß in seiner Macht
27	107	Vollendet ist das große Werk	We slogged hard through just six lines of music – up to letter C – and you did a great job of getting the parts solid and able to be slotted together. Bars 25-30 are where it gets quite chromatic. The tenors especially have some unexpected note sequences. It’s worth listening to this movement if you have time to get used to how it moves and flows.
29	116	Von deiner Güt, o Herr und Gott / Gesegnet sei des Herren Macht	This is one of the ‘easiest’ movements in terms of note learning and structure. You have the notes fine. We will dip back into this one now and again just to focus on being exactly together.
33	151	Singt dem Herren alle Stimmen!

It is hard work going through movements note-by-note like this. Thank you all for your dedication and perseverance as we do. A few more weeks of this and then it will all start to fit together and the singing will become much more fun, I promise. Please keep coming along so that we all know the notes and avoid needing to go back over the same bits. That would be really quite a drag.

Next week I have a family commitment so cannot be at rehearsal. Apologies. Please watch out for messages from your section leaders regarding alternate arrangements which will most likely be separate upper- and lower-parts groups. Thanks to those organising and hosting.

Have a good week, especially Katrina who is recovering from a fall from her bike. Get well soon.

Chris

Most of you already know that some of the choir will be traveling to Austria this summer, to take part in a group sing of the Haydn Creation with choirs from all around the world. But given we have some new members and some changes in the situation, I wanted to update you.

If anyone is interested in coming that has not already signed up, we may have ability to add up to three more travelers. They could be singers or they could be partners or family who just want to join us. Please see me after rehearsal, or drop me an email if you would like to discuss. Dates are Thursday July 6 to Sunday July 9th.

Chris

Hello everyone, I hope you have had a good half term. We are back at Christ Church this week, and with a new piece to pick up – and in a rather different style to the Haydn we have been doing well with. Brahms wrote his Geistliches Lied as a study in writing counterpoint. For something written primarily for composition practice, it is rather lovely. Please print off a copy and bring along this week [link], with the Haydn score of course. If you have time to listen to it through, this is the arrangement I’d suggest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i5NH7LYu1Q

And for a blast from the past, please look through your files for the Voyagers’ Chorus from Idomeneo. If you can’t find it or were not with us when we sang it in June 2019, you can print if off here: https://sheengatechoir.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Voyagers-chorus.pdf

See you tomorrow

Chris

Reminder that it is half term break and there is no choir rehearsal today.

Dear All

Apologies for the tardy wrap up after Tuesday night. Not in any way a reflection on the quality of the singing, or indeed the excellent turnout. Overall, it has been a very promising start to the learning of this new major work. There are 9 movements that we need to learn, and we have made strong progress on 7 of these. Please keep listening to it, saying the words out loud in German, and using Cyberbass if you like that sort of thing.

No rehearsal next week, enjoy your half term break. We reconvene on Tuesday Feb 21, when we will be starting to look at the other pieces that will complete the program. Watch this space.

In the second half of term, we will also be looking to try out the Tower House hall for rehearsal, and likely having one more sectional rehearsal to allow parts to focus on their own individual tricky bits.

See you in a couple of weeks.

Chris

Anyone not flying off to the pistes this weekend, and who feels that they can wrench themselves away from important study time on the Creation, might like to pop along to the very beautiful St.Mary’s Church on the river in Battersea for an hour of piano music on Sunday afternoon: Ravel’s timeless Pavane pour une Infante défunte, the two Chopin Nocturnes I played at your last concert (so time to pop for a quick fag at that point) and the eight pieces by Brahms that make up his Op.76 piano pieces. Free admission and you get a cup of tea at the end!

Robert

Hi all, The scores have arrived! Thank you, Tricia. So tonight everyone (hopefully) should have music to sing from. So no need for wholesale printing.

But iff you could, please print off a copy of this for us to end rehearsal with:

https://www.cpdl.org/wiki/images/9/9e/JesuJoyVs1EOSATB.pdf

See you shortly

Fantastic job tonight, singers. This was rehearsal 4 and already you are have learned the bulk of the notes of around half of the chorus works. Still plenty of refinement to do, for sure, but extremely encouraging. Thank you all for your hard work. Note bashing is never a whole lot of fun, but tonight was excellent. Special shout out to our two new singers and young Des, and to Gareth, the one-man bass section.

This is the listing of the chorus movements:

1	7	Im Anfange schuf Gott Himmel und Erde	Recitative & Chorus
2	12	Nun schwanden vor dem heiligen Strahle	Aria & Chorus
4	22	Mit Staunen sieht das Wunderwerk	Solo with chorus
10	38	Stimmt an die Saiten	Chorus
13	47	Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes	Chorus and Trio
18	76	Der Herr ist groß in seiner Macht	Trio and chorus
27	107	Vollendet ist das große Werk	Chorus
29	116	Von deiner Güt, o Herr und Gott / Gesegnet sei des Herren Macht	Duet with chorus
33	151	Singt dem Herren alle Stimmen!	Chorus

Tonight we spent good chunks of time on numbers 10, 33 and 29, with a quick dabble at the H-A-P-P-Y bit of 2 just to give our voices a break. There is plenty of challenging fugal/contrapuntal stuff (ie not all singing in hymn-like harmonies and coming in and singing individually) in these, and you coped with it brilliantly. When everyone has their own score you will be unstoppable.

Please keep on with Cyberbass or whatever you like to use at home – just listening to the work is good practice in its own right.

Next week we rehearse, then we are off for half term, or Valentine’s Day, whichever applies to you.

CH

One consolidated post from Lesley, Siobhan, Tricia and me – to avoid you having multiple emails, but at the cost of this being quite long. Sorry!

Scores – unfortunately not likely to have arrived for this week, so some printing to be done please. See below for the plan for what we cover so you don’t print unnecessarily.

Rehearsal this week: given the score situation, and my desire not to make you print endless sheets of paper, expect that we will be revisiting some of the movements we have already looked at and spending a chunk of time on each bit. Sorry if you’re a bit bored of singing the same stuff over and again. Once we have the scores I will be bouncing all over the place like last term. You have been warned.

Please print movements 3 (confusingly it’s 2 in the Carus edition, it’s numbered 3 on the downloads page), 10, 29 and 33, which are on the downloads page. If you previously printed English versions, do not feel the need to reprint. We can work with pseudo German for now. And for fun at the end, let’s bring Sleep and give that an airing – you did it so well in December.

From our Treasurer: Subs – you are kindly requested to pay £80 to the choir account for this term, and the payment for your Creation score of £12.50 if you ordered one but are NOT going on the tour (as you will already have paid Chris).

Thanks all, see you tomorrow

Chris