Junction 11a of the M5 is one of the more mysterious bits of the British motorway network. Leaving the motorway there to drive into Gloucester is straightforward enough but try finding the junction starting from Gloucester and it is a different matter. Road signs are coy about admitting that it exists, and, should you succeed in finding the way there, instead of the usual roundabout and gentle slip road you are spun in a tight counter-clockwise three-quarter turn in order to continue your journey south.
It has a certain similarity to the Kalmus scores of Mahler 8 that we are using. You might have thought that following the soprano line in choir 1 might be straightforward, but that is far from being the case. One moment you are sailing along at the top of the system, but move on a page and your line is buried under a pile of assorted soloists and kiddies, or gone altogether, only to reappear in the middle system a few pages later. To add to the gaiety of nations we 2nd sopranos have had a few alto titbits tossed in our direction for balance reasons. Usually I don’t mark up a score with anything heavier than pencil, but this is an extreme case, and I’ve bought some translucent adhesive strips in assorted colours to pick out my line. I haven’t done it for every single line – if I can’t locate the start of the Chorus Mysticus I don’t deserve to be called a singer of Mahler – but I’ve marked most of them, colour-coding a warm orange for the alto bits. I’ve also written ‘tacet’ in pencil at the top of all the pages where I don’t sing anything.
As this is the Internet, here’s a picture of some cake, made by me for yesterday’s all-day rehearsal when my newly highlighted score got its first outing:
This is the second time in as many years that I’m singing in a performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. Last year was good preparation – not least because I’m no longer frightened of fast tempi in this piece – but I’m now singing second soprano in the first choir rather than first soprano in the second choir. There are a few things about the rehearsals last year that I rather fondly miss: Gavin’s way of giving upper-voice cues in falsetto for example. But one thing they have in common: both sets of rehearsals have been blessed with a superb standard of accompaniment. The Gloucester contingent is Choir 1, while our Hereford and Worcester counterparts make up Choir 2, so when we rehearse separately there’s a Choir 2-shaped hole. Saturday was the first time we had Choir 2 with us and I could look back on all the bits I sang last year with a certain amount of nostalgia.