Choir
Lots of singing these days: rehearsals tonight, tomorrow and Friday (dress rehearsal), and then performances on Saturday and Sunday. Rehearsals take more than three hours now, which is heavy training for my voice. But, so far, it has held out, and actually learned something :). We do also have some breaks, since the conductor keeps swearing at us, for breathing all at the same time, for not keeping pitch, for not knowing the pieces well enough, etc.. It's quite instructive, really: they don't teach you swearing in language courses...
I shouldn't complain, though: sometimes he says something positive, and most of the swearing is not at the basses. The altos come first, for contiually keeping their faces buried in their sheet music and not paying attention to his conducting. Then come the sopranos and tenors, for not keeping pitch and not singing lightly enough in the high ranges. If he addresses the basses, it is usually for simply singing something wrong, but this happens, on average, about once per rehearsal. So far, I was wondering whether that was because he considered us hopeless cases anyway, or because we were actually doing relatively well. But, in one of today's attempts at being nice, he said that when one stands far enough away, it sounds relatively passable, especially the basses.
Unfortunately (?), the performances will not be recorded, or at least not recorded with the purpose of publishing on CD. At tonight's rehearsal, someone asked whether they would, which caused the conductor to exclaim: 'Um Gottes Willen, nein!' He has a point, actually: the type of music is rather unusual for people who sing mainly German church music, the language is a problem, since people can't remember the text by meaning (cf. Japgrad, for UC choir people), and it's a capella, which is also unusual, so on the whole it would require more work to make it recordable.
But, on the whole, I very much enjoy the whole thing: the conductor's swearing is not only instructive but also funny, and I like the music. It also begins to sound roughly the way it should, and I think we'll be able to pull off good performances. For those who would like to come but can't: I have a recording by the St. Petersburg Chamber Choir of Rachmaninoff's liturgy, which is much better than anything we might hope to achieve, even with more time available.
I shouldn't complain, though: sometimes he says something positive, and most of the swearing is not at the basses. The altos come first, for contiually keeping their faces buried in their sheet music and not paying attention to his conducting. Then come the sopranos and tenors, for not keeping pitch and not singing lightly enough in the high ranges. If he addresses the basses, it is usually for simply singing something wrong, but this happens, on average, about once per rehearsal. So far, I was wondering whether that was because he considered us hopeless cases anyway, or because we were actually doing relatively well. But, in one of today's attempts at being nice, he said that when one stands far enough away, it sounds relatively passable, especially the basses.
Unfortunately (?), the performances will not be recorded, or at least not recorded with the purpose of publishing on CD. At tonight's rehearsal, someone asked whether they would, which caused the conductor to exclaim: 'Um Gottes Willen, nein!' He has a point, actually: the type of music is rather unusual for people who sing mainly German church music, the language is a problem, since people can't remember the text by meaning (cf. Japgrad, for UC choir people), and it's a capella, which is also unusual, so on the whole it would require more work to make it recordable.
But, on the whole, I very much enjoy the whole thing: the conductor's swearing is not only instructive but also funny, and I like the music. It also begins to sound roughly the way it should, and I think we'll be able to pull off good performances. For those who would like to come but can't: I have a recording by the St. Petersburg Chamber Choir of Rachmaninoff's liturgy, which is much better than anything we might hope to achieve, even with more time available.
posted by Olivier at 11:51 PM
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