les Davey de France

 It's easy to find good music for Good Friday. There's a wealth of things from the Italian baroque all the way through to contemporary composers. Hymns and worship songs abound, too. But Easter Sunday is a bit harder. There's lots of drums and trumpets, and rowdy rumpty-tump. You can have introspective things about facing the morrow, you can have simulated garden encounters.  But for me nothing touches the spot like Christ lag in Todesbanden. It's just a setting of Luther's hymn, that goes like this : Christ Jesus lay in death’s strong bands, For our offenses given; But now at God’s right hand He stands And brings us life from heaven. Therefore let us joyful be And sing to God right thankfully Loud songs of alleluia! Alleluia!  No son of man could conquer Death, Such ruin sin had wrought us. No innocence was found on earth, And therefore Death had brought us Into bondage from of old And ever grew more strong and bold And held us as his captive. Allelui...

Bordeaux has good memories of the visit of the Irish and the Welsh supporters for the football tournament some years ago. Noisy, funny, but compliant and generally cleaning up after themselves, the city enjoyed hosting them. This year for the rugby the Welsh supporters were present in number once more. Again, the city was impressed by the fact that the Welsh sing. A group had decided to cycle from Paris to Bordeaux, arriving at Place de la Bourse in time for the match, and this they did. They were greeted by a massive crowd who proceeded to sing from memory and in harmony the National Anthem, I bob un sydd ffydlon (and old temperance hymn), Calon lân (a clean heart, one of Wales' best loved hymns), Cwm Rhondda (this one in English), Yma o hyd (become a Welsh national resistance song) and Max Boyce's ever-popular rugby anthem "Hymns and Arias".  I was impressed, and I grew up with it. The match began at 9pm when it was 27°C. We find these heatwaves rather tiring, so I ...

 The Pizzicati sent out a poster containing the date of the Gjeilo concert. I'm in the UK.

 Choirs, eh? Anyway at present I am back at Arianna and we are rehearsing a work by James Whitbourn, called Annelies. It’s a kind of cantata or oratorio based on the diary of Anne Frank. It’s not very cheerful, though it has some charming passages. I’m also finding it quite a difficult work to get into. I sing low bass for Arianna, thought I can’t remember why. The choir continues to rehearse at the Pessac library, which is far easier for me to reach than the old Music School rehearsal room, but I’m not sure what they plan for the future. Annelies is sung mostly in English. English pronunciation is a minefield for the Gallic mouth. Enough said. Meanwhile another choir advertised for help from any basses, tenors or high sopranos. I looked into them. They rehearse in a part of Bordeaux which is easy to get to by Tram D. You just sit on the tram for about 30 minutes and then walk 5 and you’re there. They’re a smaller group and thin in tenors and baritones. They need me in baritone for...

 How much can one take ? Some months ago one of the choirs I sang with briefly was putting on the Bach B Minor for their fiftieth anniversary. They're a very good choir so I was excited to go and hear them - how often do you hear a live B-minor? - so I happily forked out the price for two seats. The a storm hit and the trams were disrupted and our journey to the theatre (!) where they were singing was made impossible.  Well they decided to do "excerpts" - essentially almost all the choruses - from the B-minor in one of the city-centre  freezers  churches on a "give generously" basis in aid of the local fund to support Ukraine. We gladly went along. The pianist put out a request for a page-turner but found someone before he got my message offering to help. I was very glad because the pianist was centre-stage with the page turner facing the audience.   Well, the choir sang very well. The conductor is very animated and pretty well dances as he conducts. The tempos ...

 So I'm back with my old choir in Pessac. They currently rehearse in a room at the municipal library, which suits me as it is walking distance from the railway station. The Bordeaux railway station is walking distance from our flat, so the whole journey takes me about 1/2 hour walking and 5 minutes on the train. And to cap it all, I get a lift back! We're singing Annelies, by the British composer James Whitbourne. From time to time I am asked for my opinion on various English vowels. For example, one passage has the words "countless", "wounded" and "smouldering".  Annelies is a setting of excerpts from the diary of Anne Frank. It has some very beautiful moments. There is a good recording on Naxos.

 A couple weeks ago we had tickets to go hear a choir sing the Bach B minor mass (it's OK, it's a Lutheran mass). I sang with the choir for a while and contemplated going back for the B minor but it's the weekends... Anyway we set off in good time for the tram journey to the theatre. It was TAMPING down (that is, it was raining very heavily indeed). We got to Porte de Bourgogne where you change trams to go to Mérignac and the theatre. "Trams interrupted till 8pm". We had no chance of getting there on time. We returned home, dampened in body and spirits. Last night the Bordeaux opera chorus were putting on a programme of Arvo Pärt. I'm very pärtial to Pärt, so I asked Pat if she'd like to go. She's never knowingly heard any Pärt so she said yes. It was in the Grand Théâtre. We could walk there, even through a blizzard, so I was confident that this time we'd be present. But just to make sure I thought we could go for a pre-concert drink in the Bar à ...

 I am between choirs, and at an unfortunate moment because this is the year when we can do Christmas concerts again! The choir I last sang with has a concert next Sunday, I think, in a church in outer Gironde. (I can't continue to sing with them because they've turned into a kind of regional weekend choir.) Meanwhile the Petits Chanteurs de Bordeaux, a Cathedral-based children's choir has a concert on Friday evening in aid of the Café Joyeux, a café that employs handicapped people. The Choeur Voyageur is doing the same concert three times on three different dates in three different places in Bordeaux. These are free concerts. The Choeur Notre-Dame, directed by a friend, also has their Christmas Concert soon. I want to go to support my friend. And then there are the Christmas concerts of the Opera choir. I haven't even looked at them! Then in early January another choir I used to sing with (weekends again!) is performing Bach's B-minor. This will be an excellent perf...

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...

I auditioned for our chamber choir around the beginning of the pandemic, did a lousy audition, especially the sight-reading, and was surprised to be accepted. Since then we have been able to rehearse perhaps three or four times, always masked from the moment we meet to the moment we leave. So I had never seen the faces of some the folk. It's chamber choir and we sing unaccompanied. We do some pretty easy stuff but also some more challenging music. Most of it I've never sing before because I've always sung in big accompanied choirs. I'm at the list of my musical competence. I'm singing 2nd bass, and I'm really a baritone. I can get down where I need to, but I need to work on my volume down below. I'm learning the pieces, but I'm not a bad reader really, thanks to the time I spent as a kid playing in a competing brass band in South Wales. So last night there were two new experiences for me. First was singing Debussy for the first time. "Dieu qu'il...

 As well as the usual advice, like "Get up and get dressed, even if you're working from home", "maintain contact with people and with God", "read helpful things", "don't watch the news too much"... it's important to do the thing that helps you to maintain your physical and mental well-being. For some people it's team sports. For me it's music. It's good for me physically because I've always played wind instruments or sung. It means working on your breathing. Good for an asthmatic. It's good for me mentally because my mind works like that. There's nothing quite like listening to Bach for clearing my brain of it's mental fug. There's nothing like singing or playing in an ensemble for totally engaging your mind.  Jigsaw puzzles, colouring or sudoku don't cut it for me. I do a frightful amount of reading in my work anyway. TV series or films are OK if I have the time and if I feel like them. But I can...

 It's not that early - 7:45 here in Bordeaux - but I'm still the only one up so far. This year there's been more talk of Plygain that usual. Plygain is the old Welsh tradition of carol services. They'd take place in the early morning, usually in a country church or chapel, and people would turn out in droves - just as popular as Carol Services today or more so. The local clergy person would open proceedings then invite people up to sing, and unrehearsed groups, in the old days generally of men, would come to the front and sing the old traditional carols by heart. The old Welsh traditional carols were full of biblical references identifying the infant Jesus as the one who came from Bozrah, the shoot from the stump of Jesse, the promise given to Adam, the lawgiver on Sinai, and so on. I think the fear is that the tradition is now dying out and all memory of it, too. One church in Montgomeryshire where the plygain had its roots has just closed. Children who grew up with pl...

 This evening I should be in our choir rehearsal. Our choir is a 32 person, four to a part, eight parts choir. We sing unaccompanied and we were currently working on a Christmas programme, using arrangements I've never done before by people like Ola Gjeilo, Jim Clements, John Tavener and so on. Nice stuff. I'm singing the low bass part. I'm not a low bass really, but real low basses are as rare as real high tenors. People like me do what they can. We started rehearsing in September, distanced and with masks. It was still good. We were learning parts and learning to cohere and so on. But now we're confined and we can't sing together. I miss the synergy. When the church meets online we sing, but to do that everyone mutes themselves except the specific accompanist who's doing that song. So it's good, but it's not singing together. You don't get the synergy. Oh well, we'll be back together soon. https://youtu.be/pwmLR8lTX_s https://youtu.be/h-mSmEfLm...

A couple of things have helped.  Catrin came round and clowned around with music. A future bride came round to eat, and to plan her wedding in three weeks' time. I listened to Vaughan-Williams' Fantasia on a theme of Tallis.* I took a nap. I needed it, too, after a short and disturbed night. My preparation for tomorrow morning and for Sunday. * one bright spot in the covid experience has been the artists finding new ways to reach the public with their music: the pianist Igor Levit's micro-concerts, Voces8 and Apollo5 and so on with their chamber choir stuff, orchestras performing from unusual halls, the Wigmore Hall broadcasting wonderful singers. I can't always spare an evening or the cost of a ticket for a concert in Bordeaux but here world-class music has come to our homes, and I'm very thankful.

The saga of trying to find a practicable choir continues, this time with me seeing a notice that a chamber choir needs men. The choir rehearses not so far from where we live: about 20 mins by bike, 30 by bus and tram or 45 mins' walk. I replied to the notice and got a respone from someone I know from another choir urging me to contact the musical director. I did so and he phoned straight away to arrange to come and do an audition. Then begins the mental wrangling. What could I sing? I decided on a rather awkward but beautiful piece of Poulenc but each time I worked it through (without accompaniment - I'm not good enough on piano) I messed up a tricky chromatic section in the middle. I decided to go with something else. Anyway, as I was still warming up he phoned to say he'd arrived. Oh help! What a disaster! We did some vocalises to establish my range. We did the bass line of "The silver swan", which we'd sung at the gîte. He brought out a Fauré test vocalise ...

 The virus is once more being spread in Bordeaux. We currently have an r number of about 1.78, and an incidence of about 52 cases per 100,000 population. 4.2% of tests for coronavirus give positive results. There are still few hospitalisations and few in intensive care, but we are told that this is because for the moment the virus is spreading among young people, and that when they start to infect older folk the numbers in hospital will rise. This picture is true of various places in France, so on a national level the government is prearing for local confinement and for restrictions on travel. Meanwhile masks have to be worn in the two busiest streets in Bordeaux as well as in shops and in public transport, but from next Monday they'll need to be worn everywhere in the open air.  Meanwhile churches are champing at the bit to fill their premises and choirs are waiting eagerly to resume rehearsals. For Bordeaux Church we're working on a plan to try and enable us to thrive in the...

 There are various choral workshops that take place during the months of July and August. A few years ago someone in the choir approached me about going on one held just about an hour north of Bordeaux in the little town of Guitres, but at that time ... well there was no point even considering it. Now things are a little different so when a message went out that there were still places available, notably for chaps, I made enquiries, discussed it quickly, and sent off my form. Two works would be prepared and performed, by living composers. Ha! Coronavirus had other plans. We normally rehearse and perform in the abbatial church of Guitres, a tiny town with a splendid romanesque basilica plonked right in the middle, but in light of the crise sanitaire the mairie cancelled the workshop. Pat and I made plans to take a quick trip to explore Pau, Lourdes and environs, but then I was contacted by  a member of the choir to say that even though the choral workshop was not going ahead, t...

At the weekend the Opera National de Bordeaux Aquitaine held a series of free concerts - at lunchtime performances of Peter and the Wolf, at tea-time some dance and then in the evening the Fauré Requiem, some movements from Beethoven symphonies and a couple of arias from Florian Sempey. We went along for the evening. Marc Minkowski opened proceedings explaining the rules for entry and exit and telling us we could remove our masks while seated. (Hurrah!). Salvatore Caputo, the charismatic chorus master, introduced and conducted the Fauré, then gave place to the Musical Director, Paul Daniel, to conduct the rest of the programme.  The concerts were held in the amphitheatre that is formed by the Eglise Sainte Croix and the Conservatory, the Square Dom Bedos, as a tribute to the healthworkers "who gave their lives to save ours". The sound is surprisingly good, especially with some amplification. All sang well - we had some lovely moments in the Fauré, an excellent time with M. Se...

It's been a tough week. For one thing I've had LOTS of meetings by zoom or varying kinds. Some have been very helpful. Others have been demanding. All have been important. These have included : 1) A doctrine day on the incarnation run by the Pastors' Academy. First time for me to attend an event of this kind and it was very stimulating. 2) A conference run by a new group of presbyterians in the UK called Gospel Reformation UK. It involved three addresses, by Kevin deYoung, by Garry Williams and by Jonty Rhodes. Again, this was stimulating and helpful 3) The CNEF33 pastorale designed to share issues relating to confinement and more urgently to deconfinement. We adapted quickly and well to confinement. Preparing for deconfinement and adapting to its demands is like to be far more difficult. The national CNEF group is proving to be very helpful, producing succinct advice for churches like, "holding house groups during this period is strongly discouraged". ...