April has been a very quiet month musically. An early Easter in March, no Low Sunday cathedral weekend and too early for the next round of concerts. It’s mostly been rehearsals and a solitary evensong where we marked the Stanford anniversary with his canticles in C and I more or less sight-sang the alto part in Morley’s responses.<\/p>\n
Preparations have begun for Bristol Choral Society’s next concert, Howells’ Hymnus Paradisi<\/i>. After I’ve not sung it for decades, it has come round twice<\/a> in as many years. There are of course great advantages in this – I don’t need to invest large amounts of time in learning it and all the work I did last year gets another payoff rather than just being expended in a single evening. (Another way of putting it – I get a chance to correct the (minor) mistakes I made last time!) I don’t get bored doing the same work twice in fairly quick succession if the music’s good enough. But the downside is that along with the notes I learnt a particular interpretation of things like tempo changes (which are many) and I’m now being asked to follow a rather different one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" April has been a very quiet month musically. An early Easter in March, no Low Sunday cathedral weekend and too early for the next round of concerts. It’s mostly been rehearsals and a solitary evensong where we marked the Stanford … Continue reading