We started this morning by doing some loosening up movements to music from Shaun Davey's piece THE BRENDAN VOYAGE. The track, Water Under the Keel, begins with a melody on the Uilleann pipes and grows to include the full orchestra, giving a wonderful opening up feeling which is exactly what we need to prepare for a good sing.
After some voice warming exercises we then applied ourselves to the Carl Orff piece, Evening Red and Morning Grey.
The four lines of this rhyme are set to a very simple tune which moves stepwise within a small range of notes, allowing us to listen carefully to each other trying for a good blend of the voices. This is a piece to be worked on over a period, involving as it does flutes, xylophones, timpani and sleigh bells as well as the voices.
We then turned to a more challenging sing, a beautiful setting of the last stanza from Longfellow's poem, The Day is Done,
And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.
The jumps in this melody need careful concentration but express beautifully the sense of the words making it a real pleasure to sing, especially individually, in our quieter moments.
Getting out the instruments after our coffee, we played about with rhythms on the small percussion before lunging into a piece involving improvisation from several members _ an interesting and lively sound as well as good fun.
Finally we gave full voice, again listening as we sang, for a good blend, to GREEN GROW THE RASHES O! (almost, but not quite, from memory).
