Charpentier Te Deum

Today's the day ......................... to practise

We've a choir concert coming up in April - and so today I've been practising one of the things we're singing - Charpentier's Te Deum.

Marc-Antoine Charpentier composed this piece of music probably between 1688 and 1698, during his stay at the Church of Saint-Louis in Paris, where he held the position of musical director.  I find it quite incredible that we're singing something that probably sounds much the same (give or take a few instrument modernisations) as it did more than three hundred and fifty years ago.  He certainly included lots of instructions to everyone as to how he wanted it to be performed.

Nowadays, of course, you are offered lots of ways that you can help yourself to learn a piece of music.  You can download the finished piece from a cloud floating somewhere nearby - to your laptop, tablet, ipad or iphone.  It doesn't cost much either and you can make it into a playlist so it's in the same order as you will sing in your concert.  And then there's lots of free help in the form of this sort of download which plays your voice part in the piece.

In fact you've really got no excuse at all for not knowing what you should be singing when the time comes .........................