Rudsamblog

This was a note-bashing rehearsal. What we worked on is all in the printed music. Consequently there's very little to write down in these notes. We worked on

• Huron Carol
• The trees of the field
• Veni veni emmanuel
• She moved through the fair (small group)

We will also be doing the Apple tree wassail, so get that into your folders.

Warm-up: One shake, one LA.

Huron Carol

the melody has a tricky note: the last note of bar 12 is F natural, not F#.

For the altos, there's a hazard in bar 50: an A where the corresponding note in bars 14 and 32 was a B

on page 2,

• Jenny will join the tenors for verse 2
• we will sing "knelt" instead of "kneel", to get a rhyme with "pelt".
• end of bar 30 - no fermata - whereas we will linger over the same notes in bar 48
  

bars 30 and 48, where only tenors and basses are singing and there's a 6-way split: tenors will take the upper three notes, and basses will take the lower 3:

• Angus sings the G and F, Arno sings the C, Sebastian & John sing the low F.

The pace will slow at bar 49.

We will take a breath in the middle of bar 54 before the second in excelsis.

We will observe the dynamics and end ppp.

The trees of the field

We note-bashed this, and got no further than bar 11. I had enough of a struggle without trying to write notes as well. Private practice recommended.

Veni veni emmanuel

We sang through this several times, polishing up -

• notes (there are only a few tricky bits)
• pronunciation (see Claire's notes from last week)
• dynamics (as written)
• balance (e.g., to let Robin be heard)

After the fermata in bar 37, we will not take bar 38 as a full three beats of silence before the upbeat to bar 39. Watch Ollie.

Announcements

I didn't hear these, since I was making tea/coffee. With Anne being away, I thought there wouldn't be any. However, Jenny did do some organising of food for Rachael's Halloween party. I presume she'll post a separate e-mail about that.

P.S. Small group worked on She moved through the fair, paying particular attention to

• the note clusters BCDF#/CDEG in verses 1 and 2 at the start of the second and third lines of the words.
• Balance - to let the solo lines through.
• Dynamics - giving some swell and fade shape to the nah nah nah phrases
• Support - to maintain good tone in generally quiet singing
• and, for once, we can let a little air into the sound in the opening bars.