Elgar Festival Chorus - Rehearsal 3 - Mar 1st
Thank you to those who attended last Saturdays rehearsal. It was good to get through the final few pages to complete our learning process. From this point on we will be focusing on getting the Ireland to the next level!
To complete the markings from page 32 to the end:
Page 32 – All tied notes are cut on ‘Say’, ‘heart’ and ‘bring’
Page 32 – Bar 308: Everyone’s notes for the ensuing chord on ‘These’ is present in the FFF chord at the beginning of the bar. A goodly amount of listening to recordings will help you to familiarise yourselves with this. Also, please ensure that you turn the page quickly to keep up with the rhythm and tempo.
Page 34 – The tied notes on ‘things’ (bar 312) and ‘dream’ (bar 318) are cut. Please ensure that we get a clear and distinct ‘s’ on the following rest on ‘things’ in bars 309 and 312.
Page 35 – Bar 321: Altos please enjoy your B natural on ‘happier’ – it clashes rather beautifully with the Sops! And..Sops please be aware of your pitching as you come down through ‘happier men’ and in Bar 323.
Page 36 – We need a particularly strong unison entry on ‘These’ in Bar 328 and a strong accent on ‘dawn’ in Bar 332 and on ‘them’ in Bar 333. ‘Them’ in 333 is full length.
Page 37 – I mentioned a number of places where the chorus is either on its own or is the main protagonist with minimal orchestral accompaniment. Bar 335 through to Bar 344 is such a place and requires fully confident entries and an understanding of the amazing harmonic shifts towards ‘’gaze upon’ and ‘all’. Please assume that your heads will be required to be fully out your copies for this!
Page 38 – Bar 347: Please take out a quaver from the tied chord on ‘all’. And be aware that the gradual change from open vowel to humming tone begins around 351. The humming tone at the end still needs to be heard over the orchestra. Therefore do not come down too far in dynamic here.
In my previous set of notes I identified many of the places where the chorus is on its own. Please refer back to those notes and make sure you are familiar with all of these places in the piece. We identified that there is a slight tendency to slacken the tempo at these points – PLEASE do not. As I have mentioned previously, you would do well to have all such areas learnt off so that Ken is able to rely on your coming with him instead being left behind.
Ken Woods will be attending and taking the later part of the next rehearsal. I will be doing the first half up to the break where we will remind ourselves of all the challenging points. We will also have another thorough look at the Sop/Alto section from Bar 214 to 232. Please do some listening homework to remind yourselves of how it goes. If you don’t already have the markings in your copy, please refer back to my second set of notes for clarification.
I very much look forward to seeing you all at the end of the month, Stephen