Hello everyone! What an absolute pleasure it was to see you all again last week, and especially wonderful to welcome all our new members – Mark told me in the pub we had 94 people at that rehearsal, and 13 more to come! It’s so great to be back and beginning our work on the Spring ’25 project – Bach’s St John Passion. Below is the update on what we covered (in case you missed the rehearsal), what we’ll do next week, and lots of other useful bits, so thanks for reading!
Importantly, below is the list of dates for the year. Please get these in your diaries so you don’t miss out on any rehearsals or concerts. You can also find this on the ‘Rehearsals’ section of the ‘Members’ part of the website HERE.
What we did – Wednesday 4th September
As I said, an excellent first rehearsal, and we hopefully now have a good overview of Bach’s musical style in both the Chorales and the Chorus numbers, as well as both a broader overview of the opening and ending of the work, plus the smaller building-blocks of the first movement.
- We began with Number 3 – page 28. Our first introduction to a chorale. We learnt the notes, then went through the German pronunciation, and sang it in English to truly understand the words.
- Then we did Number 40 – page 216. This is the end of the piece, and our final chorale.
- After this we looked at Number 37 – page 200.
- Following the break we worked on Number 1 – page 1. This is our opening chorus, and we heard how arresting and painful the introduction is, then learnt each little building block of music (motif), and how they pass between each part of the choir. We also learnt the structure of a Da Capo Chorus which, after the ‘B’ section, jumps back to the start to repeat the beginning.
- Then we saw our first ‘Turba Chorus’ – the people’s chorus – Numbers 2b (p24) and 2d (p26). These are dialogues between the Evangelist (narrator) and us, the people. Lots of energy is needed for this!
- Finally we finished with Number 5 (p31) – our final chorus of the day.
To catch up: If you missed this rehearsal, please look at and listen to the opening 5 movements, and the final 2 chorales of the piece.
What we’ll do – Wednesday 11th September
We’ll continue our overview of the work, beginning with Number 39 (p204), which is a Da Capo chorus at the end of the work which we didn’t have time to cover last week.
Following this, we’ll be discussing one of the major sequences in the work, which provides a structure to the whole piece! We’ll sing Nos. 18b (p88) & 23f (p140), then Nos. 21b (p102) & 25b (p152), then Nos. 21d (p107) & 23d (p133), and Nos. 21f (p113) & 23b (p124) before finishing with the focus of entire work – No. 22 (p123)
Below is the rehearsal plan for the September rehearsals of the Bach. If you’d like to get ahead of the game, this is what we’ll be doing.
Marked Scores
The marked score will be provided over Christmas, in time for the Spring rehearsals, but below is a link to the unmarked score for anyone who would like to use it on their tablets. As the edition is still in copyright, and this page is open to the public, the document is password protected. Annabel will be sending round an email shortly with the password to view it. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for understanding.
Learning Guides
We’ll be providing plenty of resources for the Spring term to help you with learning the piece, including lots of language pronunciation guides for the German (we’ll also be organising some language coaching for the choir too)!
In the meantime, I’ve found a pronunciation guide for the chorales, as well as some note-learning via John Fletcher Music and Choralia, which you can check out free of charge below.
– Chorale Pronunciation Guide HERE.
– Choralia HERE.
– John Fletcher Music HERE.
Listening Guides
As always I try to provide good recordings for you to listen to to help with the learning.
The recommended recording on Spotify HERE.
The recommended live performance is on YouTube HERE.
Cotswold Youth Choir
We had our first get together of the season with an open afternoon called ‘Musical Madness’ on Sunday. It was great fun, and we’ve hopefully got a few more members joining us, so the choir is slowly growing.
However, we’d love to get as many young people singing as possible! This is your youth choir, and we should all be really proud of it. So please keep sharing our poster to anyone and everyone you know to encourage as many young singers to join as possible!
Future Events
Two events for you this week.
– Firstly, one of my other choirs, newCHOIR, are running a vocal workshop on Saturday 14th September, led by guest conductor Janet Lincé – if you’ve worked with Janet before, you’ll know how brilliant she is, so this is not one to miss! Places are now limited, so do check it out HERE.
– Secondly, Oxford Orpheus is running a workshop/concert on Verdi’s incredible Requiem. You can check it out HERE.
This Week’s listening
... is simply to listen to the opening of the Bach St John Passion... one of the recordings above should do! Enjoy the pain and anguish he pours out in the opening instrumental... wow!
See you all on Wednesday 11th September
– Ben