Friday 30 November 2012

Sound Sleep by Vaughan Williams and a river road in Yorkshire

I have had a couple of quiet and uneventful days in Petworth preparing myself for next week and three auditions and another schedule of driving, picking up from airports and playing accompaniments in three very far flung venues about 300 miles apart!

C said to me this morning, ' I wish I was like you Seanmhair, just working some days and then having a holiday on the others' ! Well, I think 45 years in the all aspects of the business earns me the right to have time off, and work like a loony in-between times, which she clearly sees as slacking!

I had a super choral masterclass weekend, and enjoyed some gorgeous choral music, some of which brought memories flooding (pardon the pun) back to me of my time with Middy and the Middleton Singers.

One song I particular, a fluid and wonderfully evocative part song called 'Sound Sleep', written by Vaughan Williams comes to mind. It is deceptively tricky with vocal qualities and rolling chords which if one closes one's eyes, green pastures and quiet countryside float in the mind's eye perfectly. It needs such matching tone between the parts, which means that those individual parts are barely discernible, it becomes almost impossible to single out any line. Only the overall blanket of sound is heard, like the layers of colour in the sight of Yorkshire moorland. I love it, and so wanted to join in with the mezzos ! I shocked myself greatly, when I realised I remembered the mezzo part almost flawlessly, just goes to show that the stuff we learn in our formative early years really does carve its own notch in the brain.

Nowadays I can't remember if I have had lunch, never mind what I ate!

The picture of the 'road' upon which we needed to drive to escape Littlebeck! It was never going to happen in a Toyota Aygo, a car of very small proportions!



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