Beaumont School Music Department

Year 12 A2 students take note! The link here takes you to the BBC Singers' own choral timeline. This is an excellent addition to the presentation I gave on Monday. The BBC Singers have selected unaccompanied sacred works from Dufay to the present day, giving a whistle-stop tour of the choral repertoire. You have the opportunity to listen to the selected tracks, as well as read about the composers and the time in which they were working. This is an invaluable resource; please make sure you have a read and listen! There is also a lot of useful information here , which will help you with this week's timeline homework, as well as giving you a good overview of genres and the development of instruments over the history of music. Next week's Composer of the Week on Radio 3 is Tomas Luis de Victoria (note the spelling Eddy!). Click here for more details and make sure you listen to repeat (Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 8.45pm) or use the Listen Again facility.

Saturday 14th February - Wednesday 18th February 2009. Letters are now available for Paris 2009! The tour is open to anyone who plays or sings in one (or more!) of the school's extra-curricular music groups. Like last year, there will be an expectation that everyone will sing on tour. Details of the trip are on the letter, and links to places of interest will appear, once we have confirmed that the trip will go ahead. Please see me if you have any questions or worries about the tour. For those of you in Year 11, please pop in and collect a letter from my desk in Room 30. How exciting!

I thought this might be a good time to encourage you to do a bit of preparing for the first rehearsal, as it might make things a little bit easier if you've opened your scores in advance! I would like to have a go at the Overture (no. 1) and Company (no. 2). It would be a good idea to familiarise yourselves with the music, mainly by doing the following: Find a recording or YouTube extract of both of them (there is definitely a video of the 2nd number in a previous posting), listen to them as well as following the score. The recording I have is the 1996 London Cast Recording (see above picture). Using a pencil (soft HB is best, as you will have to rub out your own markings when you return the scores), just underline your character where it appears on the score. As you'll see, for Company , this is quite complicated as your character will transfer from line to line. That's all you need to do! Don't worry about learning any notes etc, we will do this in the first rehe...

...for your reply slip and payment for the trip to see Company on Friday 20th June 2008. You should have all received a letter so if you haven't already, please put your slips and money in the relevant box outside the Finance Office. ASAP please. OK, now for the really important information (all the information I give is important, of course): The first set of rehearsals will be during 6th Form Conference Week. These are the dates on which I plan to hold rehearsals: Tuesday 1st July 2008 - Lunchtime & after school (until 4.30pm) Wednesday 2nd July 2008 - Lunchtime & after school (until 4.30pm) As there should be 100% attendance here, I want to have a go at the opening number! How exciting! Please e-mail me if you don't think you can attend these rehearsals. Also, we would like to rehearse on the first two days of the holidays: Monday 21st July 2008: 10am - 3pm. Tuesday 22nd July 2008: 10am - 3pm. Please let me or Miss Shepherd know whether you can make this or not. The ...