balulalulalulalulalulalulalulalulalowlalulalulalow....

[verbminx]

If anyone were to go to my Amazon wish list right now, they would find about half a dozen versions of "A Ceremony of Carols" by Benjamin Britten - it's been on my mind lately. It's ten versions of The Bomb and I wanted to have a copy around for the holidays. but it is hard to find a version where the boys sing on key, sometimes it's better sung by a women's choir. I've spent the day trolling Kazaa for a copy of "Balulalow", my favorite piece ("o my dere hearte, yonge jesu swete, prepare thy creidil in my spreit, and i sall rock thee to my hearte, and nevermair from thee departe... and sing balulalow") - when I was about seventeen I sang the solo part in a christmas concert. I also like "This Little Child", but it's really hard, and our choir could never quite put it together. Though we did often cause our conductor to hurl his baton into the air in mock frustration. I miss singing in a choir.

I also discovered the name of that damn Bach piece I learned like two months before I quit singing. "Quia respexit" from the Magnificat. It's filling in that little hole in my memory... I can now remember how the first line goes.

not religious-xian at all, but i do like older sacred music. loathe the contemporary stuff.

arwen isobel is adapting nicely. we took a nap together earlier and she was nicely calm. i kept her on her 4-foot lead, but she didn't want to stray anyway, she wanted to cuddle. she has a squeaky lamb toy that she really likes, so it was me and her and the lamb.

Comments

[tropiquena.livejournal.com]

britten's "ceremony of carols" is one of my favorite works.
i sang it (the whole thing) in elementary school in a children's treble choir, and just this year our choir director informed us we (my girls'/women's choir, whatever we're supposed to be) would be doing selections (luckily, she picked my favorites - "balulalow," "this little babe," and "deo gracias") from it this year - i squealed when she announced it. ;D

[tropiquena.livejournal.com]

oh, and *duh,* "there is no rose." i just forgot that one 'cause we did it independently last year. what fun. :D

i like two lines of "as dew in aprille" - "i sing of a maiden that is makèles" and "moder and mayden was never none but she." <3 the way they build. :)

[verbminx.livejournal.com]

yes, we also sang "as dew in aprille" - and those are my favorite lines too. :) i think i've done about 3 of the songs... like i said, we were not up to "this little babe" - well, we were, but our director was a mad perfectionist, and there was something wrong that he could hear that we could not. so we practiced it on and off for a couple of years, but never performed it except for once in a mall.

Re:

[tropiquena.livejournal.com]

bleh. it's so frustrating, as a singer, to be told that something's wrong but not be able to pick it out and fix it oneself, you know? i guess i've felt that way with regard to other singers, but i can't very well scream at them to correct it (as much as i want to!) - yes, i'm a section leader, but i don't want to be seen as "the bitch."

it's just grrahrrahrarrrhrhh!!!!, though, because some of the first altos CAN'T SING. blah. i'm a second alto, but we have just as many songs in SSA as we do in SSAA. blaaaaaah.

[verbminx.livejournal.com]

I think 1st alto tends to be the section where directors stick The Girls Who Can't Sing, because usually first alto parts are in a nice midrange, not too low or too high or basically too different from a speaking voice.

see if you can hold a "sectional"? we used to do those, meetings where we'd pick through our parts and fix any problems. I was soprano section leader my senior year and pretty much a defacto section leader junior year as well. but i wasn't particularly afraid to be The Bitch, either. ;)

Re:

[tropiquena.livejournal.com]

hahaha, yes. arguably, though, it's kind of like second soprano in that the notes are often weird and tough to get, you know? what i've seen is that there will be a couple of *really* good musicians at alto I, and then a whole bunch who honestly are tone-deaf (which i don't GET, because we're the highest and most "elite" of the select choruses at my school...).

our soprano II section is SO quiet. :/ i don't know what our director was thinking this year. she's kind of losing her hearing, though, which is too bad. our alto section as a whole is quite strong - and our second alto is rather awesome, if i do say so myself. ;D

we've held sectionals, and i was The Bitch at those - and i'm just getting a general resentful vibe, you know? one that makes me concerned that if i keep the bitchiness up, they WON'T work with me.... blah.

dumb question...

[lauradoll.livejournal.com]

That passage is in Middle English, yes? As in Chaucer "And he bigan with right a myrie cheere, His tale anon, and seyde as ye may heere."

Just curious. I lack culture in some of the worst ways.

Re: dumb question...

[verbminx.livejournal.com]

i think it's more like early modern english, or late middle english.
it's more comprehensible than the middle-english stuff on anonymous 4's "on yoolis night", esp the title song, which iirc dates to something like 1400ish. you should definitely check out that cd, even just downloads from it... it's really gorgeous. i like "balaam de quo..." and "on yoolis night" and "there is no rose" (not the britten version), and there's one other whose title i can't remember, but it's in the high teens or early 20s as far as track numbers on the cd.