The snow's almost entirely gone. The ground's wet in places, but I could take my usual walk over the ridge. Very nice, all in all.

Ljungandalens kammarkör went to Söråker over the weekend. We ate... a lot. We also managed a surprising amount of singing. Then we sang at the May fire in Hässjö, where it had the audacity to snow on us, but only for a little while (Glad sås), before the sun came out again (Vintern ra).

We left early, because we were really tired, and not at all interested in hot dogs, for some reason.

Songs...

Feb. 23rd, 2023 12:18 pm
Party at work Friday night.

I have promised to come up with some songs. That is, not the list of almost 30 songs that I have at the moment, that would need fifteen pages or so. I have to pick and choose.

So far, I have decided to use about ten short songs, and three or four long ones (I'm not sure if they like long songs, but if they do, there should be some to choose from).

It's time to pick some. Taube? Ramel? Bellmann? Vreeswijk? I think I'll start with Min hatt den har tre kanter.

New songs

Feb. 7th, 2023 08:46 pm
I'm back from choir practice in Haverö. We're singing Povel Ramel, which is fun. For some reason none of the men were present, so we couldn't do everything. We did try out Underbart är kort, though, and soprano for Ta av dig skorna. It's tricky, but we'll manage.

Now we have a month to learn everything, so we can sing it at a music evening!
... when we sing about Christmas.

Choir leader T said: You (Haverökören) will do the funny stuff, Kammarkören will do the boring stuff (or perhaps not so boring), and the children's choirs will do the cute stuff.

Is he saying I'm both funny and boring? Or that I don't make any difference?
Tomorrow is Easter Mass in Haverö, and I don't like the songs we're going to sing.

Ok, it's one of them that I think is terribly sexist, but no one else seems to agree. I suppose I'll have to clench my teeth and sing it.
At tonight's choir practice we finally got the spring plan. So now we know that the spring concert will be on the third of June. And that Easter will be the normal stuff. And the music service next Sunday... well, we had been told about that.

We were quite efficient, perhaps eight songs.
M bought me a present: a template for writing notes. I admit that I usually use software for music, but it might be fun to learn to do it by hand. What I need now is a way to create staves of the correct size... The template is only one size, and it's not quite right.
Concert tomorrow.

We sing some spring and summer songs, some other things. The children's choirs will be there too, and nothing draws people like the children's choir. We may get an audience!
I promised to help out at a gathering tomorrow, which my friend Mv organises. This was to include some choir songs. Now it turns out that the lady who was going to sing alto won't be able to come. Which means that I have promised to learn some new parts.

I suppose I should sit down and call it fun.
Tomorrow is Spring Worship Day, and I'm going to Worship Spring in Church. Or at least, sing spring songs at the service with Kammarkören. I hope it doesn't snow. Or hail. That's a reasonable request, isn't it?
,,
I like LilyPond better and better. Someone has made an effort into making good-looking music, but someone has also put some effort into making it work. Things -- bar numbers, song lyrics, you name it -- work the way you expect them to. And you can choose Postscript with a command-line switch!
I tried Lilypond today. It turned out to be a nice music score setter. Most things worked at once (not the headers, for some reason).

I did a little quick-and-dirty thing on Almqvist's "Varför kom du på ängen?" for two sopranos, and it looks a little "traditional". That makes sense, since they have tried to make it look like manually engraved music. I'll try it out some more.
This year's Spring Concert will be on the eleventh of June, and will involve no less than four choirs, since T has started a new one for children of about nine. Twelve girls, he says. He seems to enjoy it.

We always seem to end up not quite so well prepared as we would have liked, but at least we're making an early start with the new songs -- and some of the old ones as well.
Choir started on Wednesday. We got three new songs. Very differnt from each other too: Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, Benny Andersson and Allan Edwall! I'm looking forward to this spring.

T had something to say about the classical piece -- Juninatt by Peterson-Berger. He pointed out how Swedish it is. Not just the song itself(which is indeed classical Swedish choir music): the title "June Night" is really only comprehensible to Scandinavians. We are very romantic about our summer nights.

Home

Jan. 5th, 2017 09:27 pm
We're back from Scania (just before the bad weather), and tomorrow I have to be in church with Kammarkören. It's still Christmas songs, I think.
We started practice at twelve. The children's choir arrived at a quarter to three, so we could rest and have some layered sandwich. And change.

It was a nice concert, and people seemed to like it. I think my placement went back and forth during the course of it.

Trying something new, I wrote the name of the next song on the back of every sheet, which worked so-so. Next time I'll try writing on the front instead.

This means Christmas is officially over :)
Today was taken up by two Advent services, in Haverö at eleven and Ånge at two. For me they meant singing from ten in the morning until three in the afternoon. Ok, I didn't sing the whole time.

I actually got to hear Haverökören -- I had slipped out for a moment to fix my hair and change my shoes, and they started without me -- and I found it a real pleasure: tight and focused and beautiful. From the inside, a choir usually sounds flat and noisy, and even if you learn to hear, or feel, when it's "right", you don't really know what "right" is, until you get the chance to listen from the outside. So I was happy about that.

Ljungandalens kammarkör was joined by the children's choir, who sang a couple of songs. They were good. There were nine children, four of which were boys! We were all very excited.
My choir leader suggested that we, for Sunday's rather formal church service, ought to sing a song where parts of the choir sings "Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump"

Clarification: The song in question is Fritiof Anderssons paradmarsch, a very upbeat and, I suppose, cocky song about coming home after travelling the whole world. It's a nice song, and funny, although not quite what you usually sing in church. And yes, the "Trump" is there, or rather "tram". It's not a word, just sounds to accompany the main tune.

Playing

Aug. 26th, 2016 10:11 pm
Yesterday I tried playing a piano piece that I haven't played since my mid teens (Sommarsång by Wilhelm Peterson-Berger). It's the only thing that I've really been able to play by heart, but probably also the last thing I learned to play well.

It didn't go too badly. I'll probably learn if I keep going.

That said, I think I'm improving at the piano. I should find a teacher...
Spring concert with Ljungandalens kammarkör (Valley of Ljungan Chamber Choir) today. It went reasonably well. T has been throwing stuff at us, and I think we did what we could with it. Everything wasn't new though, I thought it was a pleasant mix.

Åhlen's Summer Hymn was a little weird. We may have practised it too little, I'm not sure, but I think it was better last time we sang it. It's one of the songs you're just supposed to know. As for me, I found yesterday that I sound terrible singing it. Possibly because I learnt it many many years ago, and it could be that the voice I learned to sing it with doesn't work any more. I'll have to relearn it. No big deal, really, but it's a pity I didn't notice it earlier.

My hair fell apart. I had pinned it and sprayed it until I smelled of hairspray all over, and it didn't help. Now I can't get the pins out.

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Karin Margareta

December 2024

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