annual fun day

My Life in the Choir  -   by Lydia Lallemant

 Every school day morning - except Wednesday, of course, (our day off) - the girl choristers rehearse at Eastgate from 8 o’clock until 5 to 9.  I always enjoy morning practices because they are fun and delay the time until school starts!

Because we have to get up early, (7.00am for most of us), our voices aren’t at their best until we’ve sung the warm-ups.  Our conductor, Mr P, accompanies these with improvised chords which, though wonderfully jazzy, don’t always work!

The warm-ups include a variety of vocal and physical exercises, some of which are very amusing.  Well, some people find them amusing.  Well, I find them amusing ….

The vocal exercises range from various tongue-twisters to humming or ng-ing noises, all on descending scales, such as, ‘see blue car’, (not very challenging), ‘floppy fluffy puppy’, (increasing difficulty), or ‘particular stickers attract active vicars’, (impossible)!

After morning practice, the girl choristers at the senior site catch the minibus, where Rollin, the best bus driver ever, takes us to school.  Throughout the day, everyone accumulates a lot of homework.  Choristers aren’t let off, but being a hardworking, diligent group, we can cope ….

On a Monday and Thursday evening, the girls sing Evensong.  This means the Senior School pupils are allowed to leave school fifteen minutes early!  Choral evensong is a service which includes responses, two readings, magnificat & nunc dimittis, two hymns, a prayer and an anthem.  Before the service, we have an hour’s practice, but evensong itself only lasts 3 quarters of an hour.  My favourite part of the service is when the Precentor tells us to turn to page 6 in the buff-coloured book.  It’s not buff; it’s beige!

Throughout the year, we sing almost all of our repertoire and learn a few new pieces each term.  We have an expansive collection of songs in our choir library, which is ever-increasing.  Although the girls know most of the pieces here, there are still a lot we haven’t learnt.

There are so many pieces I can’t wait to sing this Christmas.  It will be especially important for me, as this will be my last year in the choir.  I’ll really miss it.

I’ve learnt so much by being in the choir.  It’s greatly improved my singing and music knowledge and my ability to work as part of a team.  Before I joined, I’d never had a singing lesson and I didn’t know what vocal chords were, but after 5 fantastic years, I’m still learning!

 

Life in the Stall        by Sophie-Dominique Waddie " I joined the choir of Lincoln Cathedral in September 2005 as a girl probationer. At first, it was very difficult to settle in, but with the other choristers to help me, I soon felt more comfortable. I like singing lots of types of cathedral music, but my favourite at the moment is to sing the psalms. Not every one of the girls agrees with me about psalms!  I have to agree with them, a lot of the other music is brilliant as well. A lot of the music we sing comes from the bible, which is why I like some of it so much. When I joined the choir I was not allowed to sing everything in the services, but as I progressed I was allowed to join in more and more. Also as I sing more in the services, it becomes more enjoyable for me. As probationers, the others and I had special singing lessons with the assistant organist, tours of the organ loft and the cathedral, as well as visits to the Precentory to learn about the services and we even had chocolate cake once! I have wanted to join the choir ever since I first saw the girl’s choir come into the Cathedral when I was four! I told my parents that was what I wanted to do but they didn’t believe me at first. But here I am! The time I walked into my first service I felt all shaky but happier than ever. I was thinking “Here I am where I have always wanted to be and I have fulfilled a dream.” I don’t get the shakes anymore! Some people don’t like the early morning starts, but the morning rehearsals are very good for me because I always get up about half past five anyway! We practise early, as we sing at evensong on Monday and Thursday and we sing at weekends, Saturday and Sunday too. We have also sung in other places and for the radio and the television sometimes. We are very busy at Christmas and Easter, singing a lot. On Christmas Eve we girls sang midnight mass, even I was not up at half past five on Christmas day! The main thing is I like to praise God and this is a way for me to do it.

 

A Day in the Life An important development in recent years - at Lincoln as at many other Cathedrals - has been the introduction of a girls' section. What follows is an account of this development and also an account by two of the senior girls of what it is like, day by day, to do the work of a chorister. A typical Monday starts off at quarter to eight in the morning. We arrive at quarter to for an eight o’clock rehearsal. First we all get out our music stands (we each have one with our name on it), then music from our pigeon holes, they too have our name on to avoid confusion as to whose music belongs to whom! We then do some warm-ups, some of which are rather amusing, like trying to sing ‘do-ray-me-fa-so-la-ti-do” backwards, which is surprisingly hard. We rehearse the music for the service that day and if there’s time we do music for other days. Sometimes we want to make time for this as we do some very cool pieces, my favourites were the Jazz mass (by Chilcott), and an assortment of James Bond! This may all sound rather boring but the choirmaster’s constant puns and jokes make it all very funny and everyone in the choir has a great time. Amazingly, we still manage to learn all of the music to a very high standard; this is also due to our excellent choirmaster (and us, of course!!!). At the end of rehearsals the choirmaster often starts to play the piano, quite often the accompaniment to Joseph! The choirmaster’s impressions of characters are always very funny. After our practice, we hop onto the school minibus driven by our mate, Rollin. We have limited radio stations and always somehow end up listening to 80’s pop ballads. We always (try to) sing along (even if we don’t know the words!). Rollin drives us over to our part of the school where we start our lessons. Being choristers, we are happy to participate in musical lunchtime activities throughout the week. We do Concert Band, Orchestra and Chamber Choir. We sing and perform a variety of groovy music (this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s all disco music from the 70’s). At the moment, the Chamber Choir are learning, and are about to perform, the complete opera of Dido and Aeneas by Purcell. Nearly all of the main roles are sung and acted by current or ex-choristers. The choreographing/directing is done by Clea Tappin (very well, in fact, absolutely fantastically). The conductor is Aric Prentice. He is also the choirmaster and the Director of Music. The storyline is a tragic tale of woe. It’s basically about two people (called Dido and Aeneas) who fall in love, fall out, and get killed by evil witches. (In other words, bad conquers good, and they don’t live happily ever after…… But it’s all great fun!!) We leave our last lesson at 3:45 (which is quarter of an hour before the end of school. He he!). Rollin drives us back over to the cathedral where we have a break for about half an hour. Sandwiches and drinks are provided if you are peckish! Then we are collected by Mr. Prentice. He walks us up to the song school where we change into our cassocks (robes) and start the rehearsal. We practise for about 45 minutes (don’t worry, it’s not all practising!) then we have a five minute break until we line up for the service of evensong. Evensong takes about 45 minutes. We sing the responses, the psalm, canticles and an anthem. After the service, we get changed, put our music away and go home! (This is the end of our day.)      Written by Avalon and Lydia