So I’ve temporarily lost all my choirs, including the church one. What do I do for singing?
I’d normally try to sing every day, which means individual practice on the days when I have no rehearsal or performance. Now that practice has to be daily and is the only singing I’m doing. Only I don’t have any choir repertoire to work on. I’m starting by brushing up some vocal exercises, which I usually tend to skip over in order to get to the juicy repertoire. I realise with one thing and another I’ve barely been required to sing above a G for several months (apart from the occasional descant in church) – not since the German Requiem in the autumn, which has left me a bit rusty in that area, and generally I mustn’t get out of practice. I’m digging out some of my old books of exercises – Vaccai, Herbert-Cesari, Lütgen’s Die Kunst der Kehlfertigkeit (don’t you just love that word) as well as some choice selections from choir warm-ups (one-one-two-one-one-two-three-two-one-one-two-three-four….) and ones used by past singing teachers which I keep either in my head or on tatty sheets of paper. I’m rather surprised at which ones are proving to be useful to me, but this is a personal thing so not likely to be of interest to my readership.
I’m also slowly working through Ida Carroll’s Advanced Sight-Singing Melodies, which are quite tricky as they were for diploma students – it’s gratifying if I get one right all the way through. Then I’m singing through the soprano parts in some of the anthems in Novello’s Tudor Anthem book, many of which I’ve never sung. Indeed I’ve never come across a choir with a set of copies of this anthology. As the weather warms, and inspired by what Italians have done, I’m opening the window for some of this.
Meanwhile I am progressing putting the LP collection we have inherited on to CD. It has been quite a long haul, partly because the records haven’t always been in good condition and there’s been a fair bit of click removal and cleaning necessary.