Have you ever been listening to one piece of music and found yourself thinking, “That sounds rather like something else , but I can’t quite place it?”  Usually it’s the melody which causes that pondering, or sometimes just the general sound.

For us basses in this current concert, there is an even weirder connection.  Three of the pieces start with essentially the same set of notes:
the Kyrie of the Schubert Mass,

the Kyrie of the Misa Criolla

and El Gavilan.

The notes, in tonic sol-fa notation, are basically doh, re, mi, fah, soh.   There is some sliding between notes in semi-tones, and one piece is in a minor key whereas the other two are in a major key, but essentially it is the same sequence.  Schubert and Ramirez leave the phrase hanging with the last note as soh: in El Gavilan the phrase finishes with a concluding return to doh.

What is it about this sequence?  It is like an announcement, “Sit up and take notice”, or a sort of subdued fanfare commanding attention before the real music starts.

Can anyone think of any other pieces of music which start in the same way?  If there are only these three in the repertoire, it is something of a co-incidence that we are singing all of them in one concert!