Fanaticism wins no fans
Or: Sometimes It’s Good When You’re Not Who They Think You Are
Last night’s chorus rehearsal was one of the ones that reminds you why you bother. We actually started making some music. Not consistently, and not all the way through, but we definitely rose above the notes on the page here and there. The Holst is still sounding pretty rough, but Divine Grace will eventually start dancing. The Duruflé is helped along by half the chorus (not including me) already knowing it; but really, it’s hard not to have fun firing a big old high E-flat (in exCELsis, baby!) into the back rafters. I like the Chilcott Canticles more every time we sing them. The Ravel is still loathsome and vile, but at least it’s getting to be correctly-sung vileness.
The Liber Usualis isn’t generally accorded pride of place in pr0n collections, I shouldn’t think, but our conductor read out a few bits about the proper accentuation of Latin that turned out to be, shall we say, a wee bit ecstatic. “Oh, look,” he deadpanned. “This is all on page xxx.” Well, that explains it, then.
Some conductors (one in particular I once sang for) would have gotten all offended and self-righteous about our flippancy in the face of the Holy Thing that is Ye Musicke. Not our guy. He laughed right along with us before using the energy generated by the laughter to launch into a pretty ripping practice of the Duruflé “Sanctus.” I point this out to lend color to what follows.
At break, one of the silent auction backers got up to talk about some of the donations. “And we have,” she said, “three Lord of the Rings posters inscribed and signed by the guy who did the Tolkien language translations for the Peter Jackson movies!”
Which yes, they do, because I bought them and chivvied David into decorating them, because the choral society did the orchestral suite last spring and I thought they’d be appreciated.
“Him?” scoffed a woman sitting behind me. “He’s such a jerk.”
Er, okay. Um. I happen to be married to said jerk.
Turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. Seems the choral society called upon a local expert to help them with pronunciation for the choral bits in the orchestral suite. The woman who had spoken up regaled me with the whole story at break, though she couldn’t remember the guy’s name, and the Tolkien-verse has quite a few people it could have been, so I’m not speculating.
Anyway, seems he swallowed up an entire rehearsal, which is bad enough, since members of this particular choral society pay handsome amounts for the privilege of singing, and at rehearsal we expect to, you know, sing. And he did not stick to his brief, which was pronunciation, either. He went off on a huge tirade about how much he hated the movies, how they Sacreligiously Diverged from the Holy Book of the Blessed Tolkien, how lousy David’s work was, how lousy Howard Shore’s work was, and so on and so forth ad (according to my informant) nauseam.
He did not win any fans in so doing; that was perfectly clear from the nods and grimaces greeting my informant’s recitation.
Me, I’m just glad they didn’t mean poor David!