damont

While there has been a fair amount of singing this past week, the remainder of the week has been less than wonderful, for a variety of reasons. Two of those reasons are because two people are no longer with us. Recently I'd written a bit about Cait, who lost her battle with breast cancer back on 2 May. There was a gathering last Sunday at her house, which I got to the tail end of; when I got home I learned that "Fast Eddie" Silverman had lost *his* battle with cancer on Saturday morning; the obituary can be found in this post. So one of the places I went to this past Saturday was to his wake.

From Ed's wake I headed over to the FanTek House for Cheryl's graduation party; she'd gotten her Bachelor's degree that morning. (In Computer Science; she's still going around asking "How did I end up in *this* major???") Got to see many folks I hadn't seen in a while, including

punkwalrus, the Heares (who don't need to be reminded that their kids are growing up Entirely Too Fast), the Mullers, and heaven knows who else I've forgotten already.

punkwalrus has some pictures from the party up in this post.

Sunday morning I went over to sing at Sharon Chapel. We sang Vaughan Williams' "O How Amiable" as the anthem, but in addition to that, as the sequence hymn we sang the Hymnal's excerpt from Haydn's Die Schöpfung (The Creation). The other hymns were interesting as well. I'm struggling with the top of my range though; during Monday's Alle Psallite practice I was having trouble with middle C and above, and it wasn't much better by Thursday's church choir rehearsal. Yesterday was only middling better: anything above D was strained... and the Vaughan Williams ends with a passage involving entirely too many E-flats and Fs. With five more Sundays left in the "choir year" we're gearing up towards our big finale on Fathers Day (17 June). At practice on Thursday night I opened my mouth and stuck my foot in by suggesting the Fauré "Cantique de Jean Racine" as one of the numbers; it's gorgeous and not all that difficult, but it may be tough for me due to other associations. By the way, the English translation we have is Full Of Suck: not only does it not follow the original text all that closely, it doesn't even attempt to rhyme. So I'm working up an alternate text, which is not quite halfway done. I'd like to double-check it against the original Latin; all I have is the Racine in French, but it's from a Racine collection called Hymns Translated from the Roman Breviary so I know there's a Latin original. Any help finding said Latin original would be immensely appreciated! (Anyone? Anyone?

nateprentice?

djproject?

stell4? Bueller?)

Alle Psallite is rehearsing pieces for Pennsic Choir, but is also checking on possible dates for singing one or more numbers at a local church. The date that came up last Monday was 24 June; that's the same weekend as Conterpoint in Rockville, and I'm not yet sure where I'll be spending Saturday night nor what the Sunday morning programming might be -- so I might or might not be able to sing with the group that morning.

I hope that everyone who went to Kalamazoo (the Congress of Medieval Studies) had safe travel home. Wish I could have been there with you.