The new choir

I've been out of sorts for a few days, forgetful, bothered and distracted. I leave the house without my tram card or my masks. I can't remember whether I locked the door or not. There's something going on, but I don't think it's anything serious.

Anyway, if Pat had not urged me on I would probably not have gone to the rehearsal of the new choir.

But she did. So I did.

It must be a 40 to 50 person choir. I felt a little uneasy as we sat quite close together in the rehearsal room, but we were all masked and in principle all vaccinated or tested.

The average age was about 10 years more than me. Allmost all the men appeared to be in their seventies or over. I feet pretty young! 

We're singing Brahms, Saint-Saëns and  Franck. It's a huge change from the repertoire in the chamber choir. There it was largely 20th century. This is romantic stuff.

And last night's two songs are in German. German has influenced French, but it remains quite different. French is all about vowels - lots of them - all subtly different. German is all about consonants. Lots of them. And all needing to be pronounced.

One chap, faced with the word schleicht, said "All that to go in just one note!".

Thankfully there is a German among the basses. Questioned again about the initial "s" in German words - pronounced like "z" in English, he said "There are not fifty ways of pronouncing letters in German, not like in French !"

There we are. Back singing again.

The rehearsal room is in a tree-lined garden. Tree-lined gardens in Bordeaux mean mosquitos. So I anointed myself with essential oil of mint in a neutral oil carrier. I ponged of mint briefly, then I either got used to it or the force wore off. Not one bite!

The journey home was an adventure. "Take bus 5, then bus 11" said the app. What it didn't say was that the stops I needed were all out of service because of roadworks, so I spent quite a lot of the night charging up and down roads trying to find a bus stop that was still functional. Still, I'll know for next time.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit about music exams in UK and France

They're really different. I think I have already mentioned that while in the UK people generally find a private teacher for their instrument, or do it through a school scheme, here there are municipal music school, conservatoires and so on. The situation is a little more complex than I had first understood, because the schools vary in the rigidity of their organisation: the most, the conservatoires, next the municipals, then the associations. Our music school is an association, but it tends to apply the standards of the municipal schools with its programme of cycles, etc. Britain - grade 1 to 8, grade 8 being roughly equivalent to A-level, pre university/conservatoire. France - 3 cycles, each taking about 4 years, with 3ème cycle being roughly equivalent to grade 8. Theory of music - UK to take grade 8 you need theory grade 5. In France you study theory alongside your instrumental studies, very slowly. Catrin's flute music is MUCH more difficult than the stuff she does in theor...
Read more

Good news from my sermon buddy

Yesterday we went over my script from August 13. There really wasn't much she had taken exception to. Once or twice she wondered quite what I was getting at (they had the same problem at Deeside, I think...) and I do have difficulties with the word " de ", but then she said "Who doesn't?" So I felt very encouraged. I also took the opportunity to ask her about one or two things: 1) Direct preaching. Like I used to in Britain, I preach saying you - using "vous" when I am talking to the whole wide world and "tu" when I want it to feel as if I am addressing each person individually. French preachers tend to say rather "What will we do, what will one do". So I asked her if she felt my way was too direct, too brutal for the French ear. She said "I think you can get away with it with your English accent". In fact several people have commented on how much they appreciated being spoken to directly in preaching. 2) Liaisons Last...
Read more

A brief sortie to North Wales

 Following the Great Keswick Debacle, when our volunteering at the Keswick café was sabotaged by our assorted indispositions, we had airline tickets to use up. Yes, we had not taken travel insurance, so we paid even more money to change our tickets to fly for a short visit to North Wales. This time we were able to go. We passed extremely slowly through a very crowded Bordeaux airport but in good time to get our plane. All seats in the terminal were taken so we leaned against whatever we could find while waiting to board. Hey, bags need seats, too! though sometimes pointing out to Pat, "No, that's a bag seat", makes the bag find a new refuge on the lap of the person sitting next to it... Once on the plane we quickly found our allocated seats - right at the back on the left hand side - stowed our bags and the flight was smooth and uneventful.  We had 30 minutes in Manchester to disembark, get through immigration , hustle off to the station and board our train for Shotton. I...
Read more