From a Scherzo to Bach and Nellie the Elephant!

Three of us had a very useful line by line practice of a number of pieces. The trills in Scherzo took time to clarify, particularly as it is a challenge to count beats when trilling! Any advice on this would be welcome. The three Bach Chorales are really good, but we grapple a little with the arrangement of the third one (Valet will ich dir geben) with it’s C# and F#, with occasional A# and G#! This is the well known hymn tune “All Glory Laud and Honour”, but the bass line in particular does not resemble it!.

Light relief came with Nellie the Elephant, but there was still plenty to trip us up. It is 6/8 but we counted two beats to a bar, to evoke the plodding elephant.. We need to watch our timing over the last 3 bars where the Treble and Tenor play 7 double notes, with the treble taking the higher ones. These are followed by three quavers, each separated by two quaver rests. ! A challenge indeed.