Yesterday saw another of those curious coincidences which brighten up our lives from time to time.

Maybe the compiler of the yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald Cryptic Crossword had been in collusion with Carlos.  I doubt it, and suspect that what happened was simply a happy coincidence.

The clue for 13 Down had me stumped for a while.  “Place oboe part aurally, and play for the first time,” it read.  Only the appearance of a few letters from answers to other clues enabled me to figure out the answer.  A place is a site, and an oboe part is a reed.  Site followed by reed, which sounds like………

………sight read.

And that is exactly what we did last night to this beautiful piece by Gustav Holst, Christmas Day.  Overall, we sight read it pretty well, thanks to Carlos’ patient coaxing, and Jim’s skillful reading of the accompaniment.

It’s a lovely piece.  The carols blend together so well that you do not realise what is happening.  They merge seamlessly and effortlessly from peaceful moments to strong climaxes and back.  The final few bars were described so aptly by Pam when she said that it was like the carollers disappearing into the distance, still singing.

It is strange to think that Holst is really only known for The Planets.  If this piece is anything to go by, there must be many other delightful pieces by him which are worthy of being in the regular repertoire.

They say that good things come in threes, and last week was no exception.  After several weeks of no concert-going, I went to three events in the space of five days.  the first included a musical representation of the lives of convicts under British rule in England and in Australia; the second, very different, was Carlos and the RHHSO’s exciting and exuberant program of music from South America.  The third was very different again.

This was an extraordinary concert.  The Yorta Yorta singer and composer Deborah Cheetham-Fraillon has written a War Requiem for Peace as her response to the frontier wars around Eumeralla in what is now Victoria.

It’s the sort of piece which really should not work.  The Roman Catholic Requiem Mass was first re-written in English to transpose it into the spiritual framework of the Dreamtime, based on a Creator Spirit and Ancestral Spirits.  It was then translated into the Gunditjmara language, and Deborah CF (I trust she does not mind being thus abbreviated) set these words to music on a grand scale – a huge orchestra, a large chorus and a children’s choir.  Indigenous artist Tom Day has produced artwork for each of the nineteen movements, which was displayed on a huge screen behind the orchestra.

But it does work.  It works very well.  Clearly its main perspective is that of seeking eternal rest for the spirits of the Gunditjmara people, but the spirits of the settlers involved are not forgotten.  There are heart-rending moments of intense agony, spell-binding moments of quiet reflection, and settling times when the music floats effortlessly throughout the auditorium.

The music is well suited to the large space which is the Concert Hall.  All the players and singers, conducted by Benjamin Northey, performed with conviction, and the soloists’ voices, especially that of Deborah CF herself, managed to soar above the combined forces with ease.  The only downside was an over-enthusiastic audience applauding at the most poignant moments, thereby spoiling some of the piece’s magic.

A festoon of microphones implies that the performance was recorded, possibly to be broadcast by the ABC.  Keep an ear out for the inevitable promo!

Deborah CF is a member of the stolen generation.  Her adoptive parents nurtured and encouraged her prodigious musical talents and her boundless energy to make her the musical tour de force that she is today.  It must feel very strange to be a success in a culture which is not your birth culture.

I like to think that every performance of this work is another step, however incrementally small, in bringing a spirit of respect and reconciliation between people who have their historic differences, but who are facing the future hand in hand.

I do not know what it is that has prompted me to put fingers to keyboard this morning.

Maybe it was the kind encouragement of a couple of choristers at last night’s rehearsal.

Maybe it is starting to prepare the same music which the Choir was rehearsing when I joined eighteen years ago.

Or maybe it was the article in the current edition of Peninsula Living, espousing the benefits of singing in a community choir.

The latter item refers to the usual mix of “scientific” studies which supposedly prove the claimed benefits of singing.  I have never needed convincing.  Having sung in choirs for most of my life, I simply know that singing in a choir is good for you.

Perhaps most tellingly, there was a time when I had a particularly stressful job, and setting off for choir practice (a round trip of 60km in an English winter, possibly through rain, hail, snow, black ice and fog or any combination of these) was the very last thing I wanted to do after dinner on a Tuesday evening.  But I always went.  I had to go, as I was transport for one of those most valuable of commodities, a First Tenor, who did not drive.  I figured that if it ever came to auditions, they would have to pass me, as if they did not, they would also lose a First Tenor.  Whatever the motivation, without fail I always felt better on the return journey, buoyed up and positive for the rest of the week.

Last week I was part of a conversation about individualism versus collaboration.  Which produces the better society?  There are arguments both ways.  The competitiveness of individualism often drives invention and economic progress.  But collaboration produces social cohesion, a common purpose and sense of looking after each other.  That is what singing in a choir engenders above all else.  We all know our own part, but we are also aware of what everyone around us is doing, and we work together to produce the best possible result.

For my money, singing in a choir is a microcosm of a better life, and as such it’s worth its weight in gold.

The English language is full of pairs of words which have meanings similar to, but not exactly the same as, each other.  In terms of the Choir, two such are “practise” and “rehearse”.  What do we do on Thursday evenings –  rehearse or practise?

For many, the words have the same meaning.  But there is a subtle difference.

“Practise” comes from Latin and Greek words meaning to repeat something several times, improving each time – and indeed the idea of medical doctors “practising” comes from the idea that they use their past experience to perform ever improving diagnostic and surgical procedures on many patients.

“Rehearse” comes from a curious French word “rehercier”, not from anything to do with hearing.  “Hercier” is the French word for to harrow, in the agricultural sense, meaning to break down the clods of earth left from ploughing and examine them before planting the next season’s crop.  So “re-hercier” is do do that a number of times.

Coming back to Thursday evenings, Carlos makes sure that our time is spent both taking the music apart for examination and running through the same section several times, getting better (hopefully!) each time.  So we both “rehearse” and “practise”, in the precise meanings of the words.

Maybe this duality and ambiguity is why I say to Anne on a Thursday evening, simply, “It’s time for me to go to Choir.”

My thanks to Ed Ayres, ABC Classic presenter, who sparked my interest in these words  by a reference to “rehearse” and “rehercier” in his most recent book “Whole Notes”.

Last night members of the Choir assembled in the large hall at CPPS and sang together for the first time since June 2021.  What a wonderful feeling it was to be making music together again, from the discipline of learning new parts to the excitement of bursting into the opening chorus of the well-known Coronation Anthem, “Zadok the Priest”.

What is more, we fully expect to do the same next Thursday evening, and on all following Thursdays, until, at the end of May, there is the frisson of putting on our first concert in over two years.  Suddenly it seems that, despite all the awful things going on in the world around us, there is the opportunity to enrich our own lives and those of others by making music together.

Last Friday Anne and I heard an outstanding performance of the Fauré Requiem given by the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and Choir.  It was very measured, with the few climaxes standing out starkly against a marvelously restrained backdrop.  It was to have been the subject of this blog, but it was overtaken by the events of last night.

Somehow, the experience of singing together, however tentative and imperfect we may be, eclipsed that of listening to even the best of other groups’  performances.   Snatches of Handel have been with me all night and have been upmost in my mind as I write this piece.

Other choirs may provide us with inspiration to give the best of ourselves, but there is no doubt that the best feeling, the best tonic, the best therapy, is to be singing ourselves.  Long may it continue!