Last night’s rehearsal was a corker.  Choir and conductor in great form, with soloists measuring up well to their respective tasks.  For us choristers, it is as though we have been mixing and baking a cake over the past fifteen weeks, and it is now out of the oven ready for the decorations to be added – soloists yesterday, and orchestra next week.

And what a cake it will be!

I know that mixing metaphors is bad writing, but I cannot help but make another observation.  The sound of the choir last night was awesome.  Confident, firm, and at time very loud.  However, we were in a small building, which seemed to constrain our sound and leave it, if it were a tree or a shrub, only just in bud.  How wonderful next week it will be to be in the Chapel, where the acoustic will encourage our sound to blossom and flourish in all its glory, with the buds opening to full flower.

The audiences are in for a rare treat.  And we in the Choir should also make the most of the remaining opportunities to sing this glorious music.

A final thought on the Mozart Mass in C minor.  The man who wrote this beautifully crafted, profoundly spiritual music was someone who specialized in writing opera buffa and was disliked by many for his frequent lavatorial humour.  As they say in Yorkshire, “There’s nowt as queer as folks.”