Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Friday, 9 May 2008

The post-Easter doldrums....

We are becalmed.
The metaphor is deliberate, this is not depression, i simply find myself and my choir in a spot where whatever I do, we can seem to make no headway.
This happens every year, b****ing and moaning about Holy Week and especially the Vigil, and how there's too much to do, (especially too much liturgical music as opposed to the sweet songs 'we like',) and the services are too long --
But when the pace is less hectic, when we still have major festivals coming up but we can work on more versatile music for Ordinary times for the sheer beauty of it ... they abandon me and my rehearsals like 'tweens playing hooky!
FIVE people last night.
FIVE.
And this year we have the added task of the ordination.
And last night, someone asked why we didn't sing thus-and-such for Pentecost.
Without going into the merits of the piece, (a wink's as good as a nod, to a blind man,) Pentecost is in 3 days, I've never even heard of heard of the piece (there is so much music in those cabinets, I will never look at it all,) it is unquestionably a pianistic accompaniment so I'd have to rework it, there are no originals in the files only almost certainly illegal photocopies, and to top it off --- the questioner was showing up at rehearsal for the first time in three weeks.
(Warning: I figure I'll probably whine in this manner every Friday for the next month and a half.)

Oh, well... the Monteverdi is starting to have a little shape.

1 comment:

Mary Jane Ballou said...

Ah, choir abandonment syndrome! Remember how excited and happy they were after Easter. Where are they now? Oh, refilling the swimming pool, catching up on the grocery shopping, "just tired, I guess."

Sounds like a good time for chant and canons, if you ask me. Happy Pentecost!