Chorus of gnomes and sylphs, Berlioz

Another week, another chorus rehearsal: another new piece.

Last night we got our shiny, new scores for La damnation de Faust by Hector Berlioz. The first thing to say is this thing is huge – it weighs about two pounds! Carrying around all the music books we now need every week is certainly going to keep us fit. According to the notes at the front of the score, the orchestra is pretty huge too, requiring (amongst other things) an ophicleide and “8 or 10 harps”.

One thing that always amazes me about singing in the chorus is how quickly we manage to learn new music. We made a start to this piece by looking at the Chœur de gnomes et de sylphes. As usual, we started by simply sight-reading the opening section without stopping for mistakes. Trying to sing new music and get my tongue around the French words at the same was not easy. There were times when it felt like it was all going to fall apart, but somehow it was kept together by the few people who had sung the music before.

Then we went back to the beginning and tried again. Almost immediately there was an improvement, simply because we knew what was coming and were able to learn from our mistakes. This time, our director did stop here and there to go over particular problem areas more slowly and gradually the music began to take shape. We were now able to think more about the shape of the music, the dynamics, the correct French pronunciation and so on.

Once the first section was fairly secure, we moved on to the next section and repeated the whole processes. Within the space of hour, we had sung the whole chorus and it was starting to sound quite good. The problem with a big work like this though, is that there is a danger of becoming like a plate-spinner: we move on and learn other choruses and by the time we come back to this one, we have forgotten it. I have a feeling that quite a lot of home practice will be required over the coming months.

Which, of course, I will have plenty of time for with a baby on the way.