Got my score, got my folder, got my sandwiches. Got up early - before 7am - to shove down a bowl of porridge in a breezy garden in preparation for a long day, writes David Ward.
Today 999 singers (we hope) and me are going to rehearse and perform an iconic piece from the choral repertoire by Thomas Tallis, born 501 years ago. Spem In Alium is written for 40 voices and is usually sung by 40 solo singers. I've heard it performed a couple of times by The Sixteen, a choral group that had to multiply itself by two and a half when it came to Manchester's Bridgewater Hall.
Now a massed choir of singers, good and (in my case) decidedly indifferent, from all over the north and probably far beyond are going to tackle the piece in the same venue. We have until about 5pm to glue it together and cameras from BBC4 will be there to record what could be a triumph or a total disaster. The latter, muses the producer, will make very good television.
The full score of Spem In Alium, a mere 138 bars long, is as tall as a stunted soprano and as wide as a dumpy tenor, with 40 staves laid out on every page. You would need arms like a gorilla to hold it but at least you might have a vague idea where you are.
I am singing the bass part in the first of the eight five-part choirs and have been supplied only with a seven-page A4 score of my group. We kick the whole thing off and I am due to come in at bar six, which I might be able to manage if I concentrate, and keep going until bar 25.
Then choir one has 14 bars rest. I am not good at counting and am not sure I can keep quiet with pin-point accuracy. And, lacking the full score, I won't have a clue what the other seven choirs are up to. This is worrying.
Further on, choir one shuts up again, this time for 19 bars, almost long enough to nip out to another kind of bar and sink a pint. It would help if I were a good sight reader. But, depsite years of peering at dots and lines, I don't seem to improve.
So I have persuaded my friend Sarah to bash out the bass line into my tape recorder and have been wandering round with headphone on all week, singing to myself and talking to no one. I am now more familiar with the notes than I was, which isn't saying much.
My plan is to wedge myself between a couple of canny lads from the Huddersfield Choral Society. The bass line of choir one is not, it has to be said, the most interesting part of this huge work. But someone has to do it. I see myself as the honest foundation of a great cathedral of sound built above me. Must stop. Have to do some vocal exercises.
