Mute-you-all benefits

Four years ago, I wrote (here)

A choral singer knows he's getting on when, as for me this term, the next concert includes three choral pieces all of which he's sung before with another choir or choirs.

Well, in this brave new (lockdown)  world it's happened again. Earlier this month our multi-talented accompanist, Ben,  has taken advantage of this opportunity to use Zoom to hold a series of virtual rehearsals on the last 3 Fridays of July...

<stop-press>
(and the series goes on now, as he's holding further such rehearsals: details here)
</stop-press>

...The first was Parry's I Was Glad, which I've written about more than once (here and here, and possibly elsewhere). This was the first in the series, and I hadn't done any preparatory note-bashing...

<weasel-words reason="He would say that, wouldn't he?">
Ben was at pains to say this wasn't necessary. But we lesser mortals need to do some prep. I thought, having sung the piece many times before, I could busk it; but it's just as well that in Zoom rehearsals no one can hear anything...

<zoom-pun>
Whenever a Zoom host says "I'll mute you all" it strikes me that it's to our mutual [geddit?] benefit that we can't hear each other.
</zoom-pun>

...(except in the final sing-through, when we've got a recording to sing along to).
</weasel-words >

Next up is the dum-dee-dum bit from the Vivaldi Gloria. I've sung this more often than the Parry, but still need to do some note-bashing,  Fortunately it's in F, so I have a good chance of picking out the notes.

<autobiographical-note>

My least prepared rendition of this was towards the end of last century. One of my son's colleagues in Berkshire Youth Choir (and in a barbershop quartet it spawned) was also organist at his local church in Finchampstead. He was organizing a performance of parts of the Gloria.

As I was on taxi-duty that day, and knew the piece well, I became a singing chauffeur.

</autobiographical-note>

The last Friday session is the Hallelujah chorus, which will be in most amateur choir members' repertoire. Although I must have sung this more often than any other piece, I will still need to do some preparatory note-bashing. One stretch of repeated "Hallelujahs" always catches me out however often I rehearse it.

The swan-song of Ben's mini-season is also, as happens, a piece I've sung before, as it was one of the pieces featured in a WCS workshop some years ago (10-ish?) held by another Ben. I'm not sure I can make these sessions (and admittedly my enthusiasm for the music is not great), We'll see.

But I must put in an appearance in the land of the living. (Having been away in Norfolk for a week, I felt the need to show that the blog still has a pulse.)

b

Wringing out the old

Another of my occasional State of the Blog posts giving you a chance to see a stat display that is normally reserved for the blogger...

<so_whats_new>
(not unlike all the other stats I've blogged about over the years... But what makes these different is that the others have been the default Overview,  whereas these indicate which posts rank in the top 10 of all time [Year Zero being 2012].)
</so_whats_new>

Far and away the most visited, in spite of its age, is one about Latin phrases. It's coming up to six years old, and last time I looked the screen capture it was based on was missing. I've no idea what  makes it nearly nine times as popular as no. 2 on the list. I expect some Influencer has spread the word; maybe it's on a syllabus somewhere perish the thought.

The remaining nine fall into 4 broad groups:

• Two that use the same Pedants of the world unite joke (2 and 6)
• Three on various philological points  (3-5)
• Three relatively recent ones (7-9)
• One that, being on its own at ^no 10, is in no way a broad group; so sue me :-)

In an update (after the New Year's dust has settled) I'll add some links (though in the meantime you can search using dates (or guessed themes, if you're feeling really adventurous)  :-) But I want to get this out there before December 2018 goes down as The Month of the Solitary Post,

Happy 2019!

b

Update – 2019.01.02.16:55: Here are the links and a few descriptive pointers. I've also fixed a pretty gross typo, in blue.

• ^no 1 The web page this originally pointed to is gone now but here‘s the jpg it used.
• ^no 2  and  ^no 6 These are the two on pedantry.
• ^no 3 ,  ^no 4, and ^no 5 These are quite old (but rather fun,  TISIAS) philological stories.
• ^no 7  , ^no 8 , and ^no 9   These three, despite their recency, make the top 10 because I plugged them in an MFL Teachers' group that, for reasons best known to Facebook (and I've given up beating my head on that cyber wall), I can no longer access.
• ^no 10 On a machine translation boo-boo.

I Was Glad, take 2

This post started life as an update to an old post, but "jes' growed" It all started on the morning of Good Friday: Classic FM's Hall of Fame is marked by not infrequent travesties of justice, an early example being that "I Was Glad" was down to number 299. That's democracy for you.

Then I saw an ad for a concert I had missed, at Truro Cathedral, the venue

Church at Lostwithiel

for the final performance in my choir's tour of the West Country in the summer of 2013. From a base at Plymouth, we sang at various places, one being here at the pretty church at Lostwithiel. If more about the tour interests you, I covered it in this post nearer the time (a  bit parochial, but with some linguistic  interest on the subject of expressions of home and opinion [bei and chez]).

As I said, our last recital was at Truro Cathedral. By chance, only hours before we sang, the birth of Prince George was announced. In our  repertoire for the tour we had various largely devotional  pieces, and two party pieces from which our MD chose one, varying from concert to concert.

I thought that a  natural piece to sing to welcome the young prince was "I Was Glad".  But – rather tactlessly, I felt 😏 – for the Truro recital our MD chose "Zadok the priest" recalling the prince's grandfather's ill-starred wedding (where it had been played). (Perhaps, though, I was the only one to notice this rather lugubrious echo; besides my view was probably coloured by the marvellous bass-line of the Parry (especially the last few bars).

<autobiographical_note subject="City of Truro">
In my train-spotting days (brief and remote, and no anoraks were involved)...

<digression>
Etymonline says that the slang meaning [HD: of anorak] "socially inept person" (sic – I'd say that the more relevant meaning in this context is "person with obsessive interest in trivia in some very limited context") had appeared "by 1983, on the notion that that sort of person typically wears this sort of coat"...

<but_isnt_that_missing_the_point>
Surely the relevant thing is that an obsessive train-spotter would go to some busy hub (Clapham Junction was a favourite among my peers, not that I ever went) and sit all day on a number of platforms in all weathers, collecting numbers. Hence the choice of outer clothing.

Though this seemed madness,

yet there was method in 't.

They could as well have been called  "Packed Lunches" or "Vacuum Flasks". The anorak might have become a uniform, but there was a reason for it.
</but_isnt_that_missing_the_point>

... But my elder siblings (not sure which, but they were felons of the first water, happy to break several laws by putting pennies on the line [that's trespass, criminal damage, defacing a coin of the realm...] which narrows down  the list of suspects to two {and you know who you are...}) – would not have been called "anoraks" at the time, some thirty years before the coining of that bit of jargon. 

</digression>

 ... I used to frequent the forecourt of a garage on Spring Bridge Road W.5. The bridge was over the mainline to Bristol, a long straight stretch, and so beloved of record-breaking attempts.

One of the trains I copped ...

<what_a_tangled_web>
The train-spotter's jargon for see and register as having been seen is related to such apparently unrelated words as cop (what a policeman does to a suspect) and the German kaufen (after a bit of Grimm's Law treatment) See more on Etymonline (of course 🙋).
</what_a_tangled_web>

 ... was The City of Truro. As Wikipedia says,

Despite being a point of contention, some consider the locomotive to be the first to attain a speed of 100 miles per hour (160.9 km/h) during a run from Plymouth to London Paddington in 1904.

Naturally my informants at the time (who had to tolerate my tagging along) weren't interested in nuance, and this was a record-breaker, period.
</autobiographical_note>

But I'm beginning to ramble (beginning? )

b

PS: A couple of clues:

• Combined ingredients of the French additives to cheat‘s lasagne, but without sea biscuits.  (7,2,4)
• Misbehaving aircon for server. (6) 
  

Update: 2018.04.16.10:55 – Added PPS

PPS Crossword answers – LANGUES DE CHAT,  RAONIC

That garage forecourt has been built over, of course. It's now the foundation of the entrance to a multi-storey car-park (Google maps).