No music and music

In vain I waited for my lift to the concert tonight. She got lost, and the phone messages were too slow coming through. At one point she was only a mile away, but then took another wrong turning and finally had to give up or she'd have missed it too. Ah well. I wasn't needed for a solo in this one, and it's warmer here than in a church.

I am consoled by BBC7 having broadcast one of my favourite Hinge and Bracket programmes purporting to be from their Suffolk living-room: the one with Rosalind Plowright, singing and chatting about Snape and Dear Ben. Dame Hilda giving advice to La Diva Plowright is just too, too exquisite.

Téléthon concert at Saint-Léger

The Téléthon concert at Saint-Léger was very good.

Y, C, and I arrived before 8pm, the time requested (I like to get to places in time to find a nearby parking-space). The concert didn't actually start until after 9, which was a long time in a church where the heaters had only just been switched on. It warmed up nicely, though, and there was much chat amongst the choir while we waited. I'm not in favour of talking before singing, but it was all very friendly and took our minds off our cold toes.

The programme was Arc en Ciel (us), Le Rallye de Saint-Antoine, cake and hot drinks, repeat apart from the cake and hot drinks. Most of the female singers had to decline the drinks because the church has no loos. Not a problem for the blokes, of course, though a few of them helpfully suggested forming a circle for us out in the graveyard.

We sang well and bouncily: carols and songs in French, Russian, English, Hebrew, Spanish, Zulu, and three comic songs in French.

The Rallye... was a surprise.
It looked like this, except the St-Antoine rallye's coats are green. Somebody behind me joked "how rude" when they turned their backs on us and put on their hats. I don't know why they turn their backs because the trompes are loud enough to be heard whichever way they're facing. Very loud. Those of us in the front row (i.e. members of the choir) had to put our fingers in our ears. It's an exciting noise, and beautiful when they played softly; decidedly raucous when loud. The "trompe" is obviously difficult to play, and it's amazing how many notes they can get.

I hope someone took a photo of the rallye wandering around with the instruments, because they didn't carry the trompe - they wore it: most of them around the neck. I wanted to comment to my neighbours but realised that French uses the same verb for "carry" and "wear", so it needed too much explanation. They have special cases for the trompes. Well, all musical instruments have special cases, but these were unexpectedly special. The case with a hole!.

The pieces are short (they need a lot of breath) and most of them consist of short phrases in a call-and-respond pattern; a few pieces are more lyrical. Apparently the trompes de chasse bands started around here about 20 years ago (or re-started, I'm not sure).

As the announcer said at the end of their last set, the wild boars in the forest around St-Léger would have been very nervous that night.

Got home at half-past-morning.