Hysterical? Moi?

I wasn't sure if there was going to be a blog entry this week, as I was too ill to go to choir and had to stay at home and watch The Apprentice instead (just for the Prokofiev, you understand). But given the scandalized text I received just after rehearsal was over, I felt I must acknowledge the fact that David-the-Conductor told the soprano section that they’re much more hysterical than the altos. Oh HOW can you SAY that!!! That’s COMPLETELY UNFAIR (clutches heart in anguish). And after ALL I DO for the choir! (You can’t see, because this is only some words on a screen, but I am actually storming off in high dudgeon right now.)

At least the insults got shared around, as I then heard from several quarters that David told the whole choir they were “singing like slags” during Berlioz’ Shepherds Farewell. How does one sing like a slag? I’m intrigued!

Of all the composers we’re performing in the Christmas concert, though, Berlioz is probably the most likely to approve of a bunch of slags singing his work. This is after all a man who declared “If the Emperor of Russia wants me, I am up for sale”. Oo-er. Berlioz does seem to have had quite a colourful life. In Paris when the July Revolution broke out, he finished writing a cantata amid the sound of bullets and then went out to “roam around Paris ‘till morning, pistol in hand”. He doesn’t specify whether this was anything to do with the revolution, it might just have been a regular pastime. He does seem to have been quite bloodthirsty. At one point he hatched a plot to murder his ex-fiancee and his family, dashing from Italy to France with a pistol. Ever the planner, he also took poison in case the pistol misfired, and women’s clothing, ostensibly to disguise himself but really so that he could strangle her with some pantaloons if the poison didn’t work either.

Luckily he thought better of the plan and so lived long enough to compose the Shepherds Farewell. Even this innocuous piece has an exciting back story. He first released it under a pseudonym, to prove the critics that they were wrong about his music, which received regular maulings. And they fell for it hook line and sinker, raving about it. One woman even went so far as to declare that “Berlioz could never write a tune as simple and charming as this little piece”. Far from being happy at this success, Berlioz was angry on behalf of all his other music. History does not declare what happened to the lady critic. I expect Berlioz lured her to the aquarium and ran her through with a swordfish.

(references all from good old Wikipedia)