Conductor’s Notes 30.09.21

Greetings from a very wet and squally Devon. I thoroughly enjoyed this week’s rehearsal, thank you. It was a pleasure to greet more new faces and welcome the return of some longstanding members. It’s good to know you just can’t keep away from a good thing! Everyone worked particularly hard this week and we covered a lot of ground. If you missed it, please refer to last week’s rehearsal list – we worked at everything except pages 2-4.

I’m grateful to Kieron who stepped in to play at short notice and for his effective sectional work with Sops & Altos.

Eric reminded everyone about subs and updated us on the search for a new conductor – we now have six candidates, closing date tomorrow.

Quiz question (posed last week – What is unique about the number 40?):

Answer – Forty is the only number with its letters in alphabetical order. A member of my Banbury Singing for Wellbeing group suggested It’s when life begins, which may not be true, but an inspired guess. Also minus 40 is the same temperature in both Fahrenheit and Celsius. Nothing at all to do with singing, but a welcome brain break eh?

What we will do on 06.10.21

Warm up exploring SCALES. Please find out what a WHOLE TONE SCALE is, in preparation. There is a well-known (French) composer who was fond of exploiting these – who was it? Scales are made up of a mix of TONES and SEMITONES. Um…unless it’s a whole tone scale of course (clue’s in the name), or a CHROMATIC SCALE, which is just the semitones.

E seems to be a very important note in this piece. It is our rock, our anchor, our home, our saviour…..

In St Nicolas, Britten exploits some unusual harmonies by manipulating tones and semitones, so we sometimes feel very familiarly in a KEY, and sometimes uncertain – ‘at sea’ perhaps!

SECTIONALS: 

S&A Movt 5 p36-39   and Movt 7 p57, 59 & 60

T&B Movt 4 p28-31, 26/27, 20-25

Movt 5 Tutti

Movt 7 Tutti

If time – Messiah chorus For unto us a child is born

Have a good week, best wishes,

Peter