John Hawthorne's Blog

A good rehearsal last evening after a week off for half term (and AmyBeth’s trip to Los Angeles).
 
There was a particularly strong line-up of tenors and basses; but the sopranos and altos rose to the challenge and together we delivered some lusty ensemble singing.
 
We started where we had left off last time with ‘Pastime with Good Company’.  Several members have sung it before with other groups, and there was lively discussion about the words.  Even though some members claimed to know the meaning of ‘gruch’, nobody was sure how to pronounce it correctly, so we agreed to sing ‘those’ instead.  We also decided (after some deliberation) that we would sing ‘comfort’ to rhyme with ‘sport’. We are now close to performance standard and await AmyBeth’s final advice on dynamics.
 
Then on to ‘Fields of Athenry’.  We had only looked at the first verse last time, and the arrangement of the second verse is different.  The tenors get to sing the melody of the chorus, but fortunately the sopranos got over their surprise and learned an uplifting ‘descant’.  Verse three looked like a further challenge until we realised that most of the harmonisation was similar to parts of verses one and two, so learning was quicker than anticipated.  A few awkward corners (and intervals!) need sorting out, but overall good progress.
 
And finally we blew the dust off ‘Proud Mary’.  It didn’t need much polishing, and we’re close to finalising how we will finish, as page 10 doesn’t seem to do the job particularly well.
 
Look out in your email inboxes for AmyBeth’s mark ups of the dynamics, breathing and word emphasis for ‘Pastime’ and ‘Fields of Athenry’.  We’re hoping this will save time (and reduce confusion) at rehearsals, but you’ll still need to make sure you mark up your own copies.
 
Next week we’ll be rehearsing Linden Lea and our G&S piece - Now to the banquet we press. And possibly revisit National Express. 

​John H