November Conductor’s Notes

Hello everyone, I hope you all had a lovely half-term break, and I’m sure you all did loads of wonderful practice at home.

This term has been an absolute joy, and we’ve made some really excellent progress (not just with the music, but as a choir and ensemble), and I’m really looking forward to the concerts!

November

Here are (hopefully) all the details you need to know for the next month, I hope you’ll find it useful.

November’s Rehearsal Plan
And here’s the rehearsal schedule for this month. Please do come prepared where you can, I understand it’ll be a little tricky in the last couple of rehearsals as there’s nothing specific at this stage, but you’ll know what you personally need to work on.

Please be aware that we’re running the piece on Thursday 6th November, and we’ll be joined by members of Wheatley Singers, and our fabulous Muezzin!

Concert 1: Wheatley
Date: Saturday 22nd November.
Location: St Mary’s Church, Wheatley.
Rehearsal time: 1:30pm-3pm.
Concert time: 4:30pm-6:30pm.
I think the only details I don’t have is the concert dress, but I imagine it’ll be what we normally wear (see below). Kate will confirm this on the 6th November.

Concert 2: Botley – US!
Date: Sunday 30th November.
Location: St Peter and St Paul’s Church, Botley.
Rehearsal time: 2pm-5pm (hopefully not needing all of this time).
Concert time: 7:30pm-8:45pm. Post concert buffet – please bring a mix of foods!
Concert dress: All black, or dinner jackets (black jacket and trousers, white shirt, black bowtie, black socks, black shoes).

Marked Score
The marked score is the same as ever, and is available as a link here: Marked Scores
I’ve had to password-protect it, and the password is: CumnorChoralSocietyAutumn2025 – please let me know if you have any problems with this.

The only difference to what we’ve done in the past is, in the last movement, we sing from the bottom of page 94 until Letter C. Don’t worry as this is the same as the first movement, so nothing new to learn, we just have to sing it a second time.

Spotify Playlist
There are loads of recordings out there for this, but my recommended one is: https://open.spotify.com/album/1CgJvRQcoKATvHRis0T3He?si=1C9RtDT0S5aX7Q6p7BrMFQ
Alternatively you can find it on YouTube.

Learning Guides
Here’s a link to some helpful learning guides… the audio quality is rubbish, but I hope they’re helpful in your practice at home: https://www.choralia.net/jk01mp3/jk01mp3en.htm

Alternatively, some people have also recommended this guide on YouTube as it has the words too: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkmEwdgCruO9t0_KWwReCuHsn3XBJsyDv&si=iXWhDPzsUheYXPM8

Poster and Tickets

We still need to sell loads more tickets, so please plaster this poster everywhere, and share the link to the tickets: https://cumnorchoralsociety.co.uk/future-events/

See you all soon!
– Ben