Low Notes 10

By David Ward

January 2018. This is the latest in an erratic series of newsletters about the choir that will include information about what we are singing plus irrelevant ramblings and observations from the back row of the basses.

I’m sure many of you will have heard the sad news that David Ransley died suddenly just before Christmas. He had been a stalwart among the tenors for many years; he was witty and kind, had a winning smile and was always fun to talk to. He was also a fine artist. It will be hard to fill the gap left by that tall man in the front row.

The funeral will take place on Tuesday 23rd January 2018 with the service at St Oswald’s, Bollington at 12.30pm followed by the committal at Macclesfield Crematorium at 2pm.

David sang with us on December 3, as did Jean to whom we send our love and sympathy. It’s some consolation that that concert was one of the best I can remember. There were mutterings among the basses that the afternoon rehearsal had not gone sufficiently badly, a fact that might prompt a false sense of security and lead to a disastrous performance.

But once the Saint-Saens Christmas Cantata started, I began to sense a collective focus and determination to perform this neglected piece to the best of our ability. As the cantata continued with excellent contributions from the instrumentalists and soloists, I realised we were on a bit of a roll and by the time we reached Tollite Hostias we seemed to be on fire. The audience applauded warmly and bass mutterings ceased.

Donald’s La Cloche de Noël had a few unfortunate bell clangers but we rose to most of its challenges even if I, for one, would like to have another go at it. It certainly stretched my abilities to the limit: I had put counts under almost every bar, heaping curses on a composer who restlessly (and, ok, inventively) wandered through a vast repertoire of time signatures. At times I was using both fingers and toes to calculate entries and anyone watching me on the night would have observed an old bloke in the back row muttering obsessively “One, two, three…” under his breath.

Special thanks, congratulations and admiration to Rosalind for her marathon night as accompanist.

And now we start preparations for the next concert (March 25), which will include Mozart’s Solemn Vespers and Haydn’s Creation Mass, written just 21 years apart. (The mass was given its name after the composer nicked music from his oratorio The Creation and reused it in the Gloria of the mass.)  We’ll be singing in St Oswald’s with a small orchestra (without bells) and soloists from the RNCM. The concert is followed on April 14 with our singing day on Duruflé’s Requiem, which will be a good chance to get to grips with the piece before our summer concert on June 10. It’s a preparation I for one will desperately need.

I hope you all had a happy Christmas. Once I had secured my house-to-house collection licence (an annual bureaucratic nightmare which I go through only because I want to keep alive a great winter tradition), a few of us went carol singing for an hour or so around Shrigley Road and raised £100 for Save the Children.

It was one of the finest sessions we had and we sang both traditional carols and less familiar numbers including several versions of While Shepherds Watched, one to the tune Cranbroook (familiar from On Ilkley Moor Baht ’At) and other composed by John Foster, an 18th century Sheffield coroner. Where there was sufficient light from convenient lampposts, we sang in four-part harmony.

Now that a new year is upon us, I have resumed my thinking about performance practice and how we might enhance our concerts with terpsichorean flair. And I’ve found the perfect model, thanks to L’Arpeggiata, a marvellous early music group. So please watch the video, take note and bring your dancing shoes to rehearsals. And let me know what you think about the voice of the counter-tenor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5hOyasj5Zo

That’s enough.

Happy new year.

David