Well now...

I'm not quite sure how this happened, but it seems I've had an e-mail. From somebody called Kayleigh. I'm not quite confident of what it says, but I would hazard that the young girl wants some singing lessons. 'Hi dude' the missive opens, 'cool blog. I wnt a sngng tchr. Ru cheap cos i cant afford much lol ;-). See ya.' James, the choral-scholar, cracked the code for me after evensong on Sunday. (Sumsion in G, in case you're interested - which I'm sure you're not - followed by the mighty and unnecessary noise that is the anthem, God Omnipotent Reigneth, by Charles Wood. If He really does then I feel sure that he's got better things to do at four o'clock on a sunny Sunday afternoon than listen to that cacophony.) Anyway, back to Kayleigh. I've invited her to my flat for a voice trial and I'll let you know, blog, how it goes. In the meantime I must dash - I've got the deputy head-chorister's cello practice to listen to, if you'll excuse me. Not a Cambridge doctoral supervision I know, but it pays me for a pint or two.

Anybody there?

Right - I think I've got it sorted now. I was musing during Dross in D or some equally unmemorable setting the other evensong on what my technie friend had told me. Apparently I must inform everyone that the blog exists in order for them all to look at it and comment. 'But that's the whole point of the blog' I said to him. As usual, he didn't seem to understand. I assumed that putting something on the web or net or into cyberspace would be enough. But no! I've already had to sign up to an e-mail that I didn't want in order to register the damn thing; now I've got to send a message to my friends to tell them all about my blog. 'And if I haven't got any?' I asked, not quite sarcastically. 'Oh, I'll give you some of mine' he told me. So, everyone he knows has now been sent an e-mail telling them about my new blog and suggesting that they read it. Apparently there is a lay-clerks web-site too, through which such things can be disseminated (although by all accounts they spend their days debating pointing or else arguing about the finer points of Sarum chant and the correct liturgical positioning of the Kyrie - I ask you?!). So anyway - word has gone out, and from now on I'll no doubt be inundated with requests for lessons, concert bookings and commissions. Come on now - you can't all like that Philip Moore stuff, can you?

Or maybe not...

Well, I must say I'd expected more than this! forty-eight hours after sending my first missive into cyber-space and I've received a total number of responses of precisely - zero. Zero. Being bank holiday Monday we weren't even rehearsing yesterday, but at evensong today I'll certainly be having words with my choral-scholar friend. Well, I say friend: colleague. He stands next to me and sings, rather well for one so young. He helps me find the right page in the hymn book and he knows these fancy setting that the organist insists on introducing - Otce Nas by Janacek, and the Kodaly Missa Brevis; Flor Peeters' hopelessly mis-named Missa Festiva, for God's sake. Anyway I was assured that all I had to do was start a blog and people would come running to my door. Of course, they don't know where my door is yet. But then I don't want all-and-sundry finding me, for goodness' sake. There has to be some sort of filter - like an electronic version of the casting couch, maybe, for my prospective students and an e-audition for the choirs. I shall have words this evening, serious words about where this blogging-thing is leading. Is it the fifteenth evening? No. Well, maybe the Old Testament lesson will be long enough. I'll keep you posted. (Posted - get it? As in, posting to the blog! Oh, never mind.)

Ah, well...

Hmm... just getting the hang of this blogging thing, at least I think I am. Let me introduce myself. I'm Can Bass 1: that is, Cantoris first bass, as in one - the most senior, indeed - of two Cantoris basses, not just bass 1 as in 'sings the higher of the two bass parts'. Which, of course, I do, being on Cantoris. That's the way it works. Cantoris - that is, the side of the choir sitting on the same side of the chancel as the cantor (or Precentor, as they now refer to him) - always takes the higher of the two parts. The other side - Decani, where the Dean sits - that's, well, for all the elderly who no longer seem to have an upper range. But enough of tall hat. Back to my blog; the blog about me. Well I'm here in a provincial city, 'somewhere in England' as they say. And apart from the daily grind at the cathedral, things...well, things have been a bit tight recently. You know the kind of problem - frequent inability to stand one's round in the pub after evensong; buying fishcake with my chips instead of cod or haddock. Anyway one of these young, attractive and sickeningly talented new choral-scholars - who happens to be a bit of a whizz with computers - suggested that I might start blogging. Of course, I cuffed the little whipper-snapper firmly round the ear! But once I'd picked him off the floor he told me all about it - writing on the internet and drumming up some interest in my faltering career as a soloist; maybe even adding to my list of pupils, too (especially young sopranos, and by young I mean anything under 60 which seems to be my present lower age-limit). So here I am then, world wide web - Can Bass 1. Available for concerts, large and small - it doesn't matter if the choir can't sing because I can and provided that you've paid up-front, I will. So what are you waiting for?