We are all now appreciating the Schubert and starting to understand the unexpected key changes that are an essential part of his rich romanticism.  It leaves us with some unfamiliar and tricky melodic lines to sing but the overall impact in performance will be truly stunning.

Thats how we ended up with the question last night – “why do we have a B double flat rather than just writing an A when they are really the same thing?”

There were several explantions mostly centred around the notion that there isn’t an A in the key we were singing …
though I’m not sure any of the luminaries could actually tell us what key that was!

They say a picture is worth a thousand words so I offer you this illustration (with many thanks to Margaret Duncan).  Once I had seen this it was suddenly all clear.