(no subject)
How come I've got loads done today and yet don't feel any better?
(oh, right, it's because I looked at the Rainbow waiting list and wanted to cry because OMG so many children and not enough places BUT we do have a potential new leader so maybe we can fix this?)
ANYWAY I'll probably feel better tomorrow when I look at my to-do list and it's half the length it has been recently so there's that.
Yesterday was so much fun too. The Sixteen do these workshops at various places during their Choral Pilgrimage tours and you get to sing some of the music that's going to be in the concert and they talk about the composers and the history of the pieces and lots about technique and particularly how to sing this amazing polyphonic music that they do.
We sang the Gloria from Francisco Guerrero's Missa Surge Propera and also Alonso Lobo's Versa Est In Luctem (all the music in the concert was by those two, they were master & student at the Cathedral in Seville in the 16th century).
It's not the sort of music I get to sing very often so it was really wonderful to have a go and really think about how it's put together and also how it might have sounded & been sung & learned when it was first written and then hearing The Sixteen sing it themselves in the evening was the icing on the cake. They sang the Gloria faster than we managed and so much more precisely but Versa Est In Luctem absolutely broke my heart- you can hear the weeping & wailing & mourning in the music.
They started the concert with another Guerrero piece called Duo Seraphim which had three choirs (well three groups, there were 18 of them in total) singing across the building to each other which sounded amazing although I'd have loved to hear it in a church with proper galleries set up for the choirs.
I also loved his Laudate Dominum which was one of those wonderful pieces where you can hear the harps and the trumpets and everything else they sing about even though you know it's just voices.
All the music was beautiful though, it's really the first concert by The Sixteen I've been to and I'll definitely try to catch them again.
(oh, right, it's because I looked at the Rainbow waiting list and wanted to cry because OMG so many children and not enough places BUT we do have a potential new leader so maybe we can fix this?)
ANYWAY I'll probably feel better tomorrow when I look at my to-do list and it's half the length it has been recently so there's that.
Yesterday was so much fun too. The Sixteen do these workshops at various places during their Choral Pilgrimage tours and you get to sing some of the music that's going to be in the concert and they talk about the composers and the history of the pieces and lots about technique and particularly how to sing this amazing polyphonic music that they do.
We sang the Gloria from Francisco Guerrero's Missa Surge Propera and also Alonso Lobo's Versa Est In Luctem (all the music in the concert was by those two, they were master & student at the Cathedral in Seville in the 16th century).
It's not the sort of music I get to sing very often so it was really wonderful to have a go and really think about how it's put together and also how it might have sounded & been sung & learned when it was first written and then hearing The Sixteen sing it themselves in the evening was the icing on the cake. They sang the Gloria faster than we managed and so much more precisely but Versa Est In Luctem absolutely broke my heart- you can hear the weeping & wailing & mourning in the music.
They started the concert with another Guerrero piece called Duo Seraphim which had three choirs (well three groups, there were 18 of them in total) singing across the building to each other which sounded amazing although I'd have loved to hear it in a church with proper galleries set up for the choirs.
I also loved his Laudate Dominum which was one of those wonderful pieces where you can hear the harps and the trumpets and everything else they sing about even though you know it's just voices.
All the music was beautiful though, it's really the first concert by The Sixteen I've been to and I'll definitely try to catch them again.