Next up was a workshop day on Bach’s Mass in B minor, hosted by Neil Moore and Bath Cantata Group prior to a forthcoming performance. Readers who’ve been with me a long time know that I don’t have much history with this particular work, although I did get to sing it in Wells Cathedral some years back. I’m still on the lookout for opportunities to do so again and an event like this was the next best thing. I even hoped I might acquit myself well enough to be roped in as a bumper for the concert performance, but no such luck.
There were surprisingly few people I knew there, apart from people I’d sung with in the Cantata Group (I haven’t been able to do so for a while because it rehearses on the same night as the Abbey Chamber Choir). There were quite a number from another Bath choir which had sung the work recently, and one or two who’d also been in the SW Festival Chorus’ performance along with me.
St Luke’s Wellsway is a long and narrow church, sadly organ-less. The choir sat in many rows, with three or four 2nd sopranos in each row and the tenors and basses a long way back. This disconcerted some of the first sopranos next to us, as there was a high chance of sitting next to someone singing a different part from you, and not everyone can cope with that.
We got through all the choral parts of the work, though some were dealt with rather briefly (I’d have like more time on the Sanctus and Hosannas, for example). I didn’t remember it quite as well as I expected, but there are a lot of dots there after all. Now all I need is another concert performance.