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Hi Choir Friends,
Finally we come to the serious part of our work on the Liebeslieder Waltzes, when Amy Harris joins Anne at the keyboard next Tuesday! She's the accompanist at Corban, and they have early evening rehearsals, so she'll be joining us at 8:00. I really don't know what to expect as to your ability to just fall into place with their elaborate accompaniment, so we'll see how it goes. It may be that we'll need to just focus on the first half of them, leaving the remainder for the following week. I do know one thing: we'll have an exciting time!
I felt we accomplished a lot last week on the two a cappella pieces, especially The Log Driver's Waltz. I have thought of them as being equal in difficulty, but you seem to have settled much more comfortably into that one. I don't think that the notes are any more challenging in Loch Lomond, but certainly the rhythm text is much more tricky. In order to prevent the text holding us back, may I ask that you each take seriously the need to spend maybe 15 minutes a day just saying all the "dai dai" etc. marching bits that are assigned to your part? I know, it's not fair that the sopranos have much less of that than any of the rest of you, but that's the way it is. When that composition first came out years ago, it seemed that every big high school and college choir performed it, and I was doing a lot of adjudicating during that period so I heard it a lot and loved it. What always struck me was the way the singers in every choir just flung themselves into those marching rhythms, demonstrating the famous pride of the Scots. Basses, I'm thinking what a huge difference it made when you extended the "dyeee" for the full length of the given notes: you form the harmonic basis for those entire passages. So don't be shy! We must be rock solid, rhythmically. If we had room, I think I'd have you all marching around, to keep the rhythm solid. All of you, hit your "d" with power.
Speaking of the letter "d', we'll want to be doing the exact opposite in Amor de mi Alma, to achieve the desired Castillian Spanish! Instead of the explosive "d" in Loch Lomond, in Amor we must go for almost a "th" when we see a "d": briefly flatten your tongue into the front of the roof of your mouth. We'll spend time saying the text together to hear and feel that difference. We'll need to speak the text together anyway, to be sure we all understand that "naci" is pronounced "nah-thee"; I was hearing a surprising number of hisses on that word last week!
So next week we'll begin rehearsal with our two unaccompanied pieces until Amy arrives, and work on the Brahms both before and after the break.
In addition to getting comfortable with the texts next week, I'd like to challenge the sopranos and altos to also keep pitch accuracy in mind. It was weird that when you were reminded to listen and to use air (not force) to go for the higher notes, you sounded fantastic! Remember that we won't have the chance of a do-over in performance, so we must make pitch accuracy a habit. Last term we sweated bullets learning to surmount the challenges of So Gracious is the Time, and the performance was crystal clear! Let's keep that goal in mind. Sopranos, your section leader felt you must have been tired; nice of her, but let's just make accuracy a habit, regardless. Altos, what I hear affecting your accuracy is singing too hard, pushing. Take the weight off your tone and your wonderful chocolate sound will be there!
I sincerely hope that our bouts of the flu will be in the rearview mirror now: wouldn't it be great to have the entire choir together for rehearsal? We can do it!
Have a great weekend, and I'll see you in March,
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