Monday 26 January 2009

Warning do not read! this post will waste your time

Shortly after posting yesterday’s blog we had a power cut which lasted about a minute. Still lucky though as many homes throughout France are still without power.
The rain poured down all night and this plus the day’s music which was going round and round in my brain meant very little sleep.
Yesterday I was given more sheet music, which I have paid for out of my annual choir membership fee. This now joins the other pieces of music in my small nylon briefcase. (a promo gift from Gresswells at some past library and information show).
If I was to go on the choir’s roadtrip to Fribourg in July, I would presumably be singing it all. As I do not read music, and evidence suggests that not many of my fellow choirist(e)s do either, this would present some difficulties. Still I am sure I read somewhere that if you go to sleep with a book under your pillow you take it all in subconsciously. So tenor parts here I come!
My new list of tunes:
Verbum Caro (extract des “Litaniae de Venerabilite Sacramento » by Wm Mozart : I didn’t know he had even been to Obamaland.

Miserere from the same work as above. Both appear to be in Latin

Signore Delle Cime by Bepi de Marzi. An Italian piece which is could be a haunting song about one man and his chimney, but there is also a montagna amongst the lyrics. He probably got the stone to build his house and chimney from the mountain.

Te Deum by Mozart. This is also in Latin and the title speaks for itself. He seems to have set some verb conjugations to music, probably to help him remember them
Salve Regina by Gabriel Faure. Now we have a road in town named after him, and I think that last year there was a celebration of his music in the nearby town of Pamiers. Although this is a kosher copy, the text is small and feebly printed. Again in Latin this is a song about an ointment used by the Queen.

Zigeunerleben by Bob Schuman Opus 29 no.3 extract from Drei Gedichte von Emanuel Geibel. It seems to be a poem by Emanuel Geibel.
Fortunately there is a translation of the poem from German into French at the end of the score.
It starts off all about trees and leaves and the last 2 lines
“Le mullet piaffe au lever du jour”
Les silhouettes s’en vont, qui te dira où »
probably means that he woke up in the shower just like Bobby Ewing and dreamt about the forest etc. Why? Well it is obvious, but as there are many out there less dead good at languages than me so here it is.
His messed up hairstyle (a mullet is a hairstyle much favoured by footballers in the ‘80s) at daybreak. The shadows (dream like figures such as Miss Elly, JR etc) have buggered off, God knows where.

The Lord bless you and keep you by John Rutter which being in English is easy to understand. It is all about God blessing and shining and the last page and a bit is all amens, so the home straight in this one should be a breeze. Quite what it will sound like as my fellow singers miss off the endings to all the words………


Les fetes d’hebe by Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683 – 1764) obviously took him ages to write despite being only 8 pages long. He probably travelled with it constantly tweaking it like that Italian bloke with the Mona Lisa (which I have seen in the Louvre and in real life in very small, probably a handy magazine size for ease of portability).
At first I thought this might have been a song about the grass festivals, but a closer looks and I see an “r” has been omitted. Then I remembered a line from “The life of Brian” where the hero Brian Coen is refers to himself as a Heebee
i.e. a Hebrew. So this is a Hebrew party song, probably along the lines of “Agadoo-do-do” Should be a real crowd pleaser. Perhaps there will be movement and hand actions to go with it.

Did I mention that I was tired?? The good thing about our choir is that no one ever says what the songs are about, so I could be right.
If you read all of this right to the end. Give yourself a gold star or honk your horn.


OOPs! another power cut

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