Last night’s rehearsal with Minerva Voices was one of those that felt the ensemble turn a corner. You just can’t predict when these turning-point moments are going to occur – you can’t schedule them in to your carefully-planned rehearsal organisation and rely on their happening when you want them to – and all you can do is plan and hope that the work will pay off.
In recent rehearsals, we’ve started to sing in mixed-formation, breaking out of singing in voice-parts to stand with different voices either side; we’ve started to work at singing sections of pieces looking at the scores as little as possible; we’ve begun to sing without using the piano; and, let’s face it, I’ve been nagging the choir each week to lift their heads, breathe properly, take control of the line, sing out and generally get themselves in gear. The choir has responded each week, it’s true, tentatively learning to take a more positive approach, not to be afraid of making mistakes, having confidence in themselves; but it takes time for all these elements to come together on an instinctive level, where you sing with all these factors taken into account because they’ve been instilled in you during the formative, learning process. So you just have to keep working, and wait for it all to start to come together – and pray that it will happen before the performance itself…
And all the weeks of nagging – by both myself and this year’s assistant conductor, Joe – finally began to yield results last night. The ensemble sound was more confident, the choir was beginning to find its feet and start to perform, rather than simply singing through the repertoire.
The other aspect to last night’s rehearsal was a first try-out of the choir’s concert outfits, to see if the colour and co-ordinating will work. This year, we’ve gone for the simple but stark contrast of black and cream, and last night we sang for most of the session in concert-dress; and it does make a difference. Not only do you need to sound like a choir, you need to feel like one; to stand and deliver in a manner that tells the audience that you know what you are doing, and that wins the listener’s trust even before you have sung a note. Standing like a choir last night also helped them sing like one too.
Assistant conductor, Joe Prescott, in action
So, when it comes to singing in Canterbury Cathedral at the University Carol Service on December 14th, we will know how it feels to stand and sing in the outfits we’ll be wearing on the night; another variable removed. Of course, what we won’t know is how it’ll feel on the night with over a thousand people waiting expectantly by candlelight for the first notes of Past Three O’Clock to be lifted into the cathedral’s vaulted roofing; but that will add an extra frisson of excitement to the moment of performance. We hope, anyway…
The moment of epiphany came during Whitacre’s ravishing Lux Aurumque; flying now without piano support, we launched into those colourful opening chords; it was fine, but wasn’t really working properly; the notes were in place, but the colours weren’t coming. ‘Listen,’ I said – ‘now really listen to one another – watch someone who comes in when you do – listen to another part and work your dissonance against theirs. Be aware of everyone around you, and commit to the sound.’
There was some shuffling around, we arranged ourselves in the new line-up, and sang through Vaughan Williams’ arrangement of ‘The Truth from Above.” The last chord died away, and there was something of an extended silence; we could, I think, all feel that something significant had just happened. The ensemble sound had changed completely. The balance was better; with the sopranos (who are normally the more dominant of the voices) now standing in the middle, the sound was no longer left-hand-heavy; the altos and tenors, now standing on either end, could now be heard more clearly, and because the basses were now also in the middle, everyone could now hear the bottom of the chords and tune to them better.