A wedding filled day

Wow! Three weddings in one day! I sang at one in the morning, and it was pretty incredible. I used to play the organ for weddings, and I must say that I am a trifle jaded with regard to them. In short, I hate them. However, the one this morning was for Natasha, a fellow choir member, and it was totally wonderful. She had a chamber orchestra to accompany the choir, and she selected some of the usual - Jesu of Man’s Desiring and Panis Angelicus - and some not so usual – Hubert Parry's I Was Glad which is so beautiful that I really am glad every time I hear it. Click on it and you can hear it too. It was one of the first pieces we did when I joined the Cathedral Choir, and I was quite overwhelmed. Everyone else knew it, so we didn’t practice it much – rather like today when we ran through it once in the morning before the wedding, and then I felt competent only to turn the pages at the right time (if lucky). At Catholic weddings, there is frequently a Mary song, and the most usual one is the Bach Gounod Ave Maria. This is such a chestnut! When I have a CD with it on it, I usually press “Next” at its start. However, our soprano Yali Cheng sang it with the original setting – piano and strings with the voice just a part of something bigger and way more wonderful. As it started, I thought, “Oh my gosh! I bet my father came down from heaven to hear this.” He would never have pressed “Next.” The cello and violin were celestial – vibrating to deep in the soul. Yali sang it more exquisitely than I have heard it sung before. The notes just hung in the air like silver mists.
The afternoon wedding was at the Cathedral as well, and Rachael’s choir sang for that, so I didn’t go, but there was family representation.
The evening wedding was that of a co-worker, and I was quite looking forward to it. However, when the time came, I could not force myself out the door. I am afraid that I am a stay-at-home-ophile, and consequently a go-out-ophobe, and it was the first day in quite a while that I have not had something I had to do somewhere else - actually, I did, but as you see, I didn't do it. Consequently, my house has been a house of horrors. There was an entire family of dust muskrats living under my bed. It was so refreshing to vacuum them up. I still have a huge pile of things to deal with, but I have put it all in my dining room and I can close my eyes when I walk through that room. When I compute, I have my back to it. Yesterday I had to close my eyes throughout the whole house.