Mass for two choirs and two organs

[Contratrombone64]

Christ Church St Laurence's choir will be performing Widor's Mass setting scored for two organs (one chamber) and two choirs. Part of the festival of St Laurence on 10 August, if any one's in Sydney, pop in for the service, 6pm.

[Soubasse]

Throroughly enjoyable work that one, played it a few years back (but had to condense both the organ parts into one - a third manual would have been very useful at the time!). Don't fancy my chances of getting to Sydney by August so I'm sorry I won't be able to hear it as I'm sure it will sound a treat at CCSL.

[Contratrombone64]

Soubasse - yes, the choir and organists are all well and truly competent enough for the challenge. I'm looking forward to it.

[mathetes1963]

I know the piece! Quite spectacular, when done well. I'm afraid it's a rather long drive to Sydney from North Carolina, though.

[Contratrombone64]

Indeed - and there's a rather large puddle in between that might prove problematic!

[dll927]

About that puddle -- the one on the opposite side of the U. S. can also be a challenge.

Some years ago, while teaching an advanced ESL class to Spanish-speaking kids, they were working on a lesson on "What would you do if ---?". To those not up on grammar, such "conditional" sentences are just about the highest form of verb study, and also, in Spanish, where the lovable subjunctive comes into play. (Subjunctive is almost non-existent in English, but very much a part of many languages.)

ANYWAY, one question in the exercise said, "What would you do if you had a car?" One girl answered, "If I had a car, I would drive to London." Well, there isn't a thing wrong with the sentence, except in the realm of possibility. And so far, the mother of all bridges hasn't been built.

I might mention that this took place in Los Angeles, which makes the distance even more of a problem.

[jhnbrbr]

That reminds me of my great uncle whose tractor was sunk by a German U-boat. But to get back on topic, I'm not familiar with this work by Widor, but I'm sure it's very good. I used to have an interesting little biography of Widor (before I lent it to someone) and I remember reading how he and (I think) Vierne used to enjoy improvising together using the two organs of St Sulpice.