What is the collective noun for Chorus Masters?
Indeed - a pride of lions, a school of fish, a business of ferrets - but of chorus masters : a threat of chorus masters, a session of chorus masters, an aggravation of chorus masters ?
Who knows - but however they are defined, a group of them will be descending on Copenhagen this coming weekend.
It was some time ago when I was Associate Chorus Master for the chorus of Radio France that I received an invitation for a seminar in Harlem (Holland, not New York) to meet with all the other radio chorus masters in Europe. At the time it seemed like a curious idea - I mean what we were to do with each other. The whole nature of the job predisposes one to expect little in the way of camraderie. In most chorus master positions you are on your own to a great extent in that there is only one of you. True, you will have the support (psychological and administrative) from other members of staff - and on that score, in Copenhagen I am spoiled for choice - but there is generally nobody else doing your job. The responsibility is entirely yours. It is you and the chorus.
Yet as soon as I arrived and met my invisible colleagues it seemed the most obvious thing to do - just to acknowledge one another's existence for a start. And so I was very pleased that when I suggested I do something similar and attempt to gather in the Opera chorus masters within the region of Copenhagen the Opera gave me full backing.
It began last year with a painstaking set of trips around all the major opera houses of Scandinavia and the Baltic states - the new economic area that has opened up since the fall of the Iron Curtain. What quickly became apparent was not only that each Chorus Department functioned as a little atoll but that all the little atolls thought it would be a great idea to drift into each other's space and exchange experiences - indeed, Chorus Masters and Mistresses wanted to become a bit touchy-feely.
So this Friday (volcanic ash permitting) chorus masters from Bergen in the North, Copenhagen in the South, Riga in the East and Århus in the West - to name but a few - will be congregating on Holmen. Not only will it give us a chance to meet each other and discover we are not in fact totally cut off from the rest of the operatic world, but also an opportunity to listen to a variety of speakers, not only from Scandinavia but also from the UK and Austria.
We might discover we don't actually like each other. I think it unlikely. One of the colleagues I met on my travels arranged to meet me initally in the 20 minute interval of the show I had gone to see. As it turned out, I never got to see the third act and we finally got up and left each other 2 hours after the final curtain had come down.
May be it should be a Chat of Chorus Masters.
Philip White
Who knows - but however they are defined, a group of them will be descending on Copenhagen this coming weekend.
It was some time ago when I was Associate Chorus Master for the chorus of Radio France that I received an invitation for a seminar in Harlem (Holland, not New York) to meet with all the other radio chorus masters in Europe. At the time it seemed like a curious idea - I mean what we were to do with each other. The whole nature of the job predisposes one to expect little in the way of camraderie. In most chorus master positions you are on your own to a great extent in that there is only one of you. True, you will have the support (psychological and administrative) from other members of staff - and on that score, in Copenhagen I am spoiled for choice - but there is generally nobody else doing your job. The responsibility is entirely yours. It is you and the chorus.
Yet as soon as I arrived and met my invisible colleagues it seemed the most obvious thing to do - just to acknowledge one another's existence for a start. And so I was very pleased that when I suggested I do something similar and attempt to gather in the Opera chorus masters within the region of Copenhagen the Opera gave me full backing.
It began last year with a painstaking set of trips around all the major opera houses of Scandinavia and the Baltic states - the new economic area that has opened up since the fall of the Iron Curtain. What quickly became apparent was not only that each Chorus Department functioned as a little atoll but that all the little atolls thought it would be a great idea to drift into each other's space and exchange experiences - indeed, Chorus Masters and Mistresses wanted to become a bit touchy-feely.
So this Friday (volcanic ash permitting) chorus masters from Bergen in the North, Copenhagen in the South, Riga in the East and Århus in the West - to name but a few - will be congregating on Holmen. Not only will it give us a chance to meet each other and discover we are not in fact totally cut off from the rest of the operatic world, but also an opportunity to listen to a variety of speakers, not only from Scandinavia but also from the UK and Austria.
We might discover we don't actually like each other. I think it unlikely. One of the colleagues I met on my travels arranged to meet me initally in the 20 minute interval of the show I had gone to see. As it turned out, I never got to see the third act and we finally got up and left each other 2 hours after the final curtain had come down.
May be it should be a Chat of Chorus Masters.
Philip White
posted by Det Kongelige Operakor at 22:42
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