This final glad tiding is a little bittersweet but probably the most important of the lot nonetheless.

Singing with choirs has pulled me through the most fraught and dismal times of my life and so perhaps you can understand how distraught I was on reading that choral singing, as a superspreader of droplets over further distances than normal speech and at some speed and pressure, is deemed one of the riskiest activities possible in this Pandemic situation.

After the Cecilians’ first rehearsal in early January, all concert ventures and communal rehearsal spaces closed and that put an end to my only source of in-person social contact outside home.

Luckily I was able to join my Bromley choir’s rehearsals by Zoom for the St John Passion, getting up at 2.00 am my time each week for a half hour rehearsal. Thirty minutes singing together with my friends every week was quite enough motivation for me to set that alarm every week. It’s so much nicer than having to learn a work alone and, of course, the sound is off so there’s no need to worry about wrong notes.

The Hong Kong choirs resumed in late summer in the lull between our third and fourth virus spikes. The differences in approach of the two choirs brought the difference in the levels of technical difficulty into relief: singing carols and reasonably simple pieces with low levels of technical difficulty are much easier to coordinate and hone than a long work with as much depth as the Mass in B Minor. The HK Bach Choir is not a note bashing organisation: we are required to do the work in advance and learn the piece well with a view to working on subtleties in rehearsals. In my view this can’t be done with a huge, multi-levelled work like this. (People have suggested that I join one of the many Zoom choirs that have sprung up. They tend to work on pop songs for this reason.)

When we did eventually manage to rehearse with split groups on alternate Thursdays, it was properly socially distanced and in the round, which meant that it was almost impossible to hear what our neighbour was singing and blend accordingly, which is the whole point of a choir. Surgical masks are mandatory for the whole time, by the way, according to the rules of the cultural centre. That’s fine. It’s not enough just to “trust each other”

I’d tried to speed learn the work but my reading and pitching aren’t good and I found myself floundering. At least I wasn’t the only one and much better singers than me were finding it really hard in that rehearsal, which turned out to be the only one we could have before all the venues shut again. Still, the Bach was, is, glorious, and intricate and comforting and intellectually challenging and at least I have managed to establish some sort of a foundation for when and if we actually get to perform the B Minor. My reading is starting to improve too.

The Cecilians managed to record various pieces in various groups and put out some tracks on YouTube for a Christmas that was even more important than usual in this benighted year. That was something at least.

I’m starting to make plans to resume my individial solo singing lessons. I want to spend this time correcting my remaining weaknesses with breath and tonality. As I write, I’ve received an email from the HKBC with plans for the next term. Back to Bach.