It's been a very long time since I've seen just about every choir member scramble to learn a piece of music. But for the past several weeks, we've all been trying to sear into our memories this song that's based on Pachabel's Canon in D. The main difficulty was this: the song repeats the same phrase ( "Alleluia in excelsius") 16 times. And while there are a couple of repeated phrases, most of them are all structurally different note-wise. There's no pattern! While I can't speak for the entire men's section, I can say that every person around me and in my carpool group was trying to figure out the best creative way he could learn the song--and spent many hours in the process.
One guy simply used repetition after labeling each of the phrases 1-16. He'd memorize #1, then do #1 and #2, then #1, #2, and #3, and so forth, all the way to the end of the song. Over and over again. Another guy used some music software and put each phrase on it's own line, all the way down the page, so he could quickly see the differences. I decided to go through each phrase and label them with letters so I could see what was repeated and where the differences were. It looked like this
{Intro}
A B
C D
E F
E G
E G
H B
A I
A I
H J
A I
A I
A I
H K
E L
E M
As you can see, it was sort of a mess. The A-I pattern was most prevalent, but you'll notice that there were four variations of "Alleluia" (A, C, E, H) and nine variations of "in-excelsius" (B, D, F, G, I, J, K, L, M).
At any rate, most of us spent a lot of time on this song that debuted on today's Music & the Spoken Word (take a listen HERE). Mack seemed pleased with the performance but indicated we have a little more work to do before we perform it at the Christmas Concert in December. I sat there trying to figure out why Mack didn't arrange the song with more of a pattern we could follow. But I'm sure he had his reasons. I know next to nothing about arranging...
We spent the extra rehearsal today going through Christmas music, music for the Veteran's Day special next week, and the choral work ELIJAH. I'm having a terribly difficult time with ELIJAH. The words (at least to the songs we've learned thus far) aren't very uplifting or hopeful. A sampling:
"Yet doth the Lord see it not, He mocketh at us; His curse hath fallen down upon us, His wrath will pursue us till He destroy us."
"Though thousands languish and fall beside thee, and tens of thousands around thee perish, yet still it shall not come nigh thee."
"Behold, God the Lord passed by! And a mighty wind rent the mountains around, brake in pieces the rocks, brake them before the Lord. But yet the Lord was not in the tempest."
I'll try and keep an open mind.
Looking ahead to Christmas, if any of you did "put your name in the hat" for Christmas concert tickets, best of luck to you. If luck does not prevail for you this year, tune into your local PBS station on Dec 13th for the premiere showing of last year's concert (see HERE for details). You can also stream the songs from that concert on any of the major streaming services or purchase the CD/DVD at various places around. Also, check out this comprehensive list of all-things-Christmas related to the Tabernacle Choir. Very handy.
And that's all I have!
Until next time, God be with you.
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