Hello all, I hope everyone is well.
It has been a fun and impressive term’s work. We have learned almost all of the music for the summer concert, which is a huge chunk of notes, and we are in good shape to hone and finesse the program to performance standard. Thank you for all your hard work, sitting in a cold church, getting used to singing in German and much more. I hope you have had as much enjoyment from it as I have.
Enjoy your three Tuesday nights off. I know some of you like to work on things in our breaks. For those who do, here are some thoughts.
First: words, words, words. We are not singing a single word of English in this concert. And while a few of us can count German or Spanish as a mother tongue, for most of us this means that we are all working just as hard on figuring out the words we are on singing as the notes. Which makes it doubly tricky, and increases the risk that our heads are down more than they are up. Solution – learn as much of the texts as you possibly can. It takes a little time, but the entire choral libretto of the Haydn is in fact only about half a side of A4, and in some cases, such as the second of the movements we looked at yesterday, there are very few words repeated several times over quite a long movement. So I have posted a file with the Creation words on the concert music page, and the translation is there too so that you know the general meaning of what you are singing. Reading this German text through a few times over the holiday is the biggest thing that you could do to help free up your mind to focus on the music. And of course, the same with the other pieces too.
Second: listen to what we are singing as much as possible. There are YouTube links on the concert page. Included in this, please listen to the Mozart Laudate Dominum. We have never sung it, but many of you will recognise it. It will help us to pick it up quickly after the holidays if you have an idea of how it sounds. Same for Va Pensiero.
Beyond that, if you have the inclination to use the various practice tracks, that is great but entirely up to you. If you did want something specific to work on, the second half of ‘Die Himmel erzahlen‘ is the most chaotic part of the whole work. Lines are flying all over the place in all directions. The only way to do it is to be 100% confident of your part and be able to sing on through without being thrown off by the mayhem around you. We will be spending time on this next term, but the more you are able to hold your own the better.
Enjoy the break, and see you back at Christ Church on April 18th.
Chris