We like sheep ... (Handeltober)

This time of year sets me to thinking about a lovely thing I did a couple of times, a number of years ago. I joined an exceedingly large collection of voices to practice and eventually perform a long and involved piece of celebratory music.

The Radio Community Chest's Combined Church Choirs perform Handel's Messiah at the Sydney Town Hall every year and have done so since 1941. As with most experiences, the journey is almost as memorable as the performances. During the years I participated, we were schooled by a very skilled conductor who taught us how to pronouce words without an Australian accent - for example, most Australians would sing hal-lay-lu-yarr but we were taught to sing something more like har-laieee-lawww-yarrrr.

It is such an amazing thing to sing -  long, involved, full of emotion, an epic musical journey. It has the power to hold me in suspense, make me shiver, make me cry and fill me with great joy. And it makes me stretch out my toes - that's my indicator for music that really connects to me on a deep emotional level. Weird, I know.

Well, how about that! I just went looking for the name of our conductor and found not only that but two short clips taken from an ABC program, Compass. Fly on the Wall Messiah was made in 2004, the year before Clive Pascoe died, sadly whilst undergoing treatment for leukemia. What a character he was, he would rouse on us (rightly so, we were pretty tragic at the start of our rehearsals) but we always seemed to laugh all the way through. He had such a wonderful way of imparting all the things we needed to learn (like pronunciation) in order to carry off this huge performance. And he flew down to Sydney each week from Lismore, where he was a professor at the Southern Cross University. The last year I did this was, I think, 1995 and it was the year they recorded it and put out a CD. Silly me, I never got around to buying a copy. Hope I can track it down one day.

Funnily enough, I was in the city on Monday and I walked right past St Stephen's church, thinking to myself, it must nearly be time for Messiah rehearsals to start - and start they did that night! I was considering doing it again this year but I didn't get organised - oh well, maybe next year. But I'll head off to see the performance in December.
Hallelujah!