h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oh yes - lots going on.

1. My usual little church choir. We sing occasionally in Church and probably the next commitment will be at Easter - we usually accompany the long service on Maundy Thursday. We may be asked to sing for the kids at the First Communion service which in Germany is always on the first Sunday after Easter. We also get asked to sing at Weddings, and now the clique is getting older, there's even been one funeral we were asked to do.

2. The local choir which performs the final concert of the Summer Festival. There was no concert last year, but this year we're doing Mendelssohn's Elijah. Because it is such a mammouth work, we have already started rehearsing and the concert will take place not at the last weekend of the school term, as it usually does, but in August. Schools break up in June here this year. The holidays are staggered from State to State to relieve traffic congestion on the holiday weekends but it doesn't really work.

3. The Sternsinger choir - which was just a short stint. Another project choir which was formed for the sole purpose of accompanying the service to start the national Sternsinger event. That takes some explaining which I won't both you with here. We rehearsed for one weekend last November and the service was in the Cathedral on 2 Jan. This is our Cathedral: It's over 1000 years old.

http://www.welterbe-speyer.de/fileadmin/speyer/media/splash-dom-1002.jpg

4. The "Queen" Project Choir. We are now nearly through with the proposed 15 songs. There are three concerts in March and two in April. I hope we'll be good enough on time! It's a very different type of singing, and lots of fun.

5. On a private level, I've got together with some girlfriends and we're doing a few songs for a 50th birthday. I'm a bit nervous as most of the things we're singing are Irish folk songs and I'm the only non-Irish one in it. That's this Sunday - the day after tomorrow.

6. I'm in another choir in the next village to the one I live in and they are a typical "Männergesangsverein" (male voice choral society) and have their 100 years anniversary next year, so things will be hotting up this year. This is the choir we sang that wonderful Robert Ray "Gospel Mass" with. This year we are specialising in Musical songs. The average age of the choir is about 75, and they take ages to learn songs. But they're a nice crowd.

My Wednesdays are still free. I wonder if there's a choir that meets then?

My goodness! However do you find time to visit hootoo?

You're not perchance nanny to the children of a widowed Austrian sea-captain are you ?

Phew! You're certainly busy, TC! Sounds fun and hard work at the same time. It's been ages since I sang in a choir and it will probably be a little while until I het the time to be in one again.

I'm looking forward to hearing further news.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

Our little church choir has been received very well on various occasions, weddings and singing for the crowd of young people who are due to be confirmed in September.

Next Sunday is the village fair, and for the last four or five years we have started a "tradition" of holding mass actually at the fairground on Sunday mornings. The Parish Committee run a large and successful food and drink stand every year at the fair, so after Mass, you just turn the benches round and get yourself a beer and a sausage and have lunch. We should have warm weather, although it's raining and at the moment.

Ah - but! Next Sunday is also the big big concert - we finally get to put on "Elijah" (German name "Elias") That's in the evening. Final rehearsal is all day Saturday, so I shall spend the whole weekend singing.

The "Queen" choir gave 6 concerts in the end - a roaring success. The audiences really loved it, but all the really musical people who came thought it was terrible! This is probably because (a) they don't know the songs as well (b) the choirmaster was the chappie who arranged the songs and he had very little idea about choral singing - this bothered me and a friend who was in the choir at the beginning, too (c) there was very little attention paid to dynamics. Although during rehearsals we had gone into this quite thoroughly, when it came to the performances somehow it all got forgotten.

So now I've got to find some black paper to cover my score of the Mendelssohn, and find a red scarf to wear. Actually I think I had one when we did Haydn's Creation with the same choir about 8 years ago....

I am exhausted! We spent Saturday rehearsing - about 6 hours in all, as it was our first and only rehearsal with the orchestra. We went right through each section of the whole oratorio - everything that didn't involve the soloists.

In the afternoon, the soloists turned up. We all fell for the guy who sang Elijah - he had a lovely voice, speaking as well as singing, and he was grinning and joking all through the rehearsal, but really did his stuff well. The alto soloist was great fun, too, and as all of them sang their parts perfectly, it was a most successful rehearsal. After a really wet, cold week, the Saturday was warm and sunny, and Sunday promised to stay like that.

Relatives of my husband came from Bavaria expecially to see it, so we had organised some entertainment for them.

My marvellous middle son took over the shopping and cooking for an evening meal of barbecued kebabs while his girlfriend cleaned up what bits of the house I hadn't managed before leaving for the rehearsal at 10 am.

So I came home from a strenuous rehearsal to a clean house and meal all ready, and later on our visitors came and we were able to sit outside and barbecue and eat and talk. Son No 1 suddenly turned up, bringing back the tents he had borrowed for a canoeing holiday. So he had plenty to tell, as well as celebrating his recent graduation as an electrical engineer (pats on backs all round!) and one of our visitors has just retired as an engineer!

Sunday started with a church service at the fairground, where our little church choir sang. It was very pleasant and warm, and afterwards there was beer and Weisswurst at the fairground all round.

That was our lunch, as I had booked a boat trip on the backwaters of the Rhine which we had to get to by 2.30 pm. Or so I thought. When we got there, the boat had just left - it was due at 2 pm. I was so cross with myself, and was desperate to find a way of making it a nice afternoon, and was so busy apologising to my guests, that we didn't notice that there was a second boat, and it had seen us standing on the shore and came back to pick us up. The guide and helmsman of the boat turned out to be a friend of my husband's, so we had the perfect trip on still waters, looking out for water birds and admiring the peace and the nature. Our visitors were duly impressed.

So we disembarked and went for a much needed cup of / and then it was time for me to go home and change for the concert. Our visitors' hotel was both near the café we were at, the restaurant we'd picked for dinner, and the place where the concert took place, so we all retired to our bath- and bedrooms for a hour.

Part 2 in a minute.

Sounds as if you had a great time. Glad you got your boat tour after all.

The concert started at 7.30 pm. We had to be there at 5.30 for an hour's rehearsal beforehand, so I missed out on dinner. But I felt a bit woozy from the Weisswurst and couldn't have eaten anything anyway.

And then the audience started taking their seats. Rickety folding chairs in an open courtyard. I had reminded everyone I knew who was coming that they would be well advised to bring cushions, which many had done.

We could go out and talk to our guests - and there were loads of people I knew there, people from other choirs and colleagues of my husband's, etc., etc.

The mayor (an appalling speaker) got up and said a few words, and then without any more ado, we started. There was absolutely no disturbance from outside - no ambulance going past, no shouting kids or dog-walkers from the path at the back, where any small noise made resounds around the courtyard. In the second half, an aeroplane flew overhead, but at a great height so that didn't bother us much.

There were a few drops of rain during one of the bass arias, but I literally only got three drops on the one page of the score, and that was all, so fortunately, no one broke off at that point and we just kept on singing.

The work is so melodious and moving. We sang everything exactly the way our conductor had been drumming it into us since Christmas, so she was pleased. So the audience certainly got what they paid for, and what with the convivial atmosphere in the interval, the clement weather, the beautifully designed programmes, the unusual and impressive surroundings, it was an absolutely perfect evening.

Except that my feet and legs are really painful from all that standing. Are there any techniques that anyone knows, which relieve the strain on ankles and calves while standing for so long? I was wearing the most comfortable shoes I could find........