This year, for the first time, I’m entering the Mid-Somerset Festival. I am competing in two classes, singing a Handel aria and a song by Copland. I took part in a similar event years ago, and didn’t enjoy it, perhaps because I feel that music isn’t essentially a competitive activity. Competitions are a necessary evil for people wanting a career as performers, but not compulsory for the rest of us!
I decided to take the plunge this year for a number of reasons. I wanted to perform something secular for a change. The adjudicator’s comments are also potentially valuable (though you can get similar feedback by taking part in a masterclass). And it might raise my profile a little locally, as most of my singing is done outside Bath. It’s already caused a certain amount of interest among fellow Chantry Singers, who on the whole aren’t aware that I do solo singing as well. And there seem to be a lot of Mid-Somerset Festival anecdotes from past years.
There’s a catch, though – unlike the other competition I once entered, you have to perform from memory! I don’t habitually do this, though I once gave a half-hour recital from memory so I know I’m capable of it. There doesn’t seem to be any short cut save singing the music over and gradually weaning yourself from the printed score. I ‘test’ myself on little bits of it at odd moments. The difficulties are different in the two pieces; in the Copland the challenge is getting notes and rests exactly the right length, whereas you don’t realise how much Handel permutes the various parts of his short text until you have to memorise his setting. Fortunately I have an accompanist I can trust.
Meanwhile, I make yet another thwarted attempt to join the Bath Festival Chorus. I’ve lost count, but this must be about the fifth or sixth failure I’ve had. This time the reason is that the Festival Chorus is not performing at all in the next Bath Festival. This has happened twice in the last four years, and it was not used in the last Mozartfest here either – a worrying trend. So there goes one of my resolutions for 2004 down the tubes!
I have negotiated some parking permits for the summer from Winchester Cathedral and am now trying to find out whether we can get away with doing Tallis’ Mass Puer natus est nobis in Eastertide at Westminster Cathedral.