The annual memorised performance of Messiah came round again. I had been worried that I would be back to square one with learning this, but some of the harder choruses to memorise, such as All we like sheep, fell into place quite easily. I expect that each year you do it, it becomes slightly easier; at any rate that is the impression I have from observing the singers around me.
We perform with cuts and I am sufficiently confident to start thinking what it would be like to memorise the choruses we leave out. I imagine that The Lord gave the word would be fairly straightforward, Their sound is gone out and Let all the angels of God rather harder, and But thanks be to God really pretty tricky. I well remember the difficulties the choir had learning this last for the first performance I sang in which it was included, and that was with the music! I think the problem is that it retains too much of its origins as a duet.
Both our full version and the child-friendly highlights were well attended and well received, and it was good to have people I knew in the audience at both of them.