Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.

Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2006
9:21 p.m.
'Twas another glorious late summer day, sunny, warm, and suitable for hanging out wash. My cleaning lady came this morning, a weekly event which is greeted with delight and dread in equal measures. Buddy Boy couldn't find his school books, Hubby's papers were rearranged, but the floors are washed, the mantlepiece dusted and the bathrooms clean. A small price to pay, n'est-ce pas?

The singing comes on apace. I am beginning to think that I will be able to perform Mozart almost glitch-free in a week and-a-half's time. There is still a bit of a yodel as I pass from middle to head register which becomes more obvious as I tire, which I do towards the end of the aria. Why did I pick such a difficult piece? I also worked on the jazz tunes for the cultural event organized by Little Princess' BF and some of the blues tunes.

This was followed by choir, which presented its own challenges. As I mentioned, we are performing a Bach canata, the one commonly mispronounced "Wack it off", or the "alarm clock cantata". There is an "allelujah" section (there's always an "allelujah" section) in which the lower three voices sing rather florid ribbons of sixteenth notes and the sopranos wail away with the cantus firmus, being the chorale tune that permeates the piece. harri3tspy will be glad to explain if anyone has any questions afterwards.

The powers-that-be have decided that most of the women will sing the alto line and just a few select sopranos will take the top part, which meant that today we spent a half-hour learning it. It sits quite low, as alto lines generally do, and singing it over and over, on top of the previous practising I had done, meant that I had to stop singing before my voice just quit. Period.

Anyway, next week at this time I will be at my beloved writing group, something for which I have been pining ever since we broke for the summer.

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