I enjoy my Harmonia Monday choir for the opportunity to learn to sing (it's a slow process!) but I wouldn't if it weren't for the music. Admittedly we can struggle with it. The Messiah choruses are complex and fast and sometimes get up high. The parallel but temporally moved lines of canon singing can be an worthy challenge. Finding the harmony and not dropping into another part, not least struggling with the soprano melody, is a playful task. I like all that. This last open day featured a string of interesting tunes in 4-or-more part harmony from baroque to modern, many in religious traditions (it seems that's where a lot of choral music comes from). Music from Mozart Missa Brevis, Handel Messiah, Bach B minor mass, Hassler Dixit Maria. Music as far back as Greensleeves in harmony, attributed to that great lover Henry VIII. Through a string of love songs (love has ever been a theme of popular songs): Go lovely rose, My sweetheart's like Venus, She's like the swallow, The shower, and one more seductive, Fine knacks for ladies (their seductions were discrete compared to ours). And a final return to religious singing, but modern: Lauridsen from Lux Aeterna. A fine program directed by our two conductors, Shiela Thompson and Oliver Raymond, with our repetiteur, Jenny Kain.
Harmonia Monday sang under Shiela Thompson and Oliver Raymond (conductors) and accompanied by Jenny Kain (piano).
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