sooprise! sooprise!

It’s Thursday and I amuse myself by noticing that I woke up feeling desperately inadequate and exhausted. Oh, that’s right. Choir rehearsal was last night.

Eileen’s Mom is ill. Eileen’s sister, Nancy, accepted Eileen’s offer to come up and spend a couple nights with her Mom to relieve Nancy. Eileen got up early and just left so that she will be at her Mom’s when the people coming to fix the phones arrive.

pronouncing “bade”

We are learning William Walton’s beautiful choral anthem, “What Cheer?”

It’s a bit tricky but doable I think. Last night as I was working on it with the choir, a chorister asked another how to pronounce the word “bade.” Instantly (in the middle of working with these choristers on learning the notes and rhythms), there was a discussion of how to do this  with one chorister being particularly emphatic (dare I say angry?) in his insistence that the word was pronounced to rhyme with “mad.”

He was right.

However, I misunderstood his reasoning. He was trying to say that in any situation this is the correct pronunciation. I thought he was trying to make the anthem rhyme properly due to the way he explained himself.

I pointed out that I was under the delusion that I was the choir director and that for now we would pronounce it “bayed” so that we could concentrate on learning notes. I probably did say it that clearly or even that diplomatically.

I promised the choir a couple of links to pieces we are learning including the Walton, so I came home after rehearsal and sent them off, pointing out that the chorister was insisted the word was pronounced to rhyme with “mad” was correct as could be clearly heard in the recording.

I was still smart a bit this morning after last evening’s rehearsal so I got up and researched it. This is how I proceed. I rarely make decisions just on the advice of choristers no matter how learned they are.

There was an entry in Garner’s Modern English Usage which was helpful. I also checked it out in the OED.

I have to meet my boss today. She was too busy yesterday. So that’s all for today. Here’s a play list I made this morning of another wonderful Bach piece I played through several times this morning to restore a semblance of sanity to the old Jupe brain.