Toilers at the coal-face of music

An interesting article in The Times here about the work of the BBC Symphony Chorus. The hook for the article is the musically inexperienced hack joining the chorus for the performance of the Dvorak Te Deum (rightly termed tedium by chorus members, I did it myself whilst in the London Philharmonic Choir). But still, at least he (Neil Fisher) does make it clear how much work and committment is required of the singers in such choirs. One of the reasons why I dropped out of the London Philharmonic Choir was the fact that a Sunday evening performance effectively required almost the entire weekend to be devoted to rehearsal, fun but hard work.

One thing that Neil Fisher fails to note, in the Dvorak the choruses repeated use of the word fac on its own caused a great deal of ribald hilarity.