It would have been far more interesting for me, and any passing reader, if I had been blogging throughout the last three months – did a recording, gone through another bereavement, launched the CD and heard us on the radio lots and lots.  But actually, there really was no time.  Really, there wasn’t. But the CD is out now, and available via links on the Musica Secreta website, and if it doesn’t set the cat among the pigeons, I’ll just have to get Chester, the family moggie, on the case.  Well, seeing as how he’s belly up on the floor here, waiting for attention as he always is, I might have to think further afield.

And then there was last weekend’s trip to Triora, the Italian Salem, when Deb, Mel (seasoned Musica Secreta debauchettes) and the lovely rookie Natasha sang for a conference on witches.  What music do witches like, you might ask?  Don’t know, don’t care.  We sang them Josquin, Palestrina, Rore, Agostini, Marenzio and Ingegneri.  And they seemed to enjoy it – though judging by the DVD they gave us, I can see why I’m a boffin-singer, and not a singer-boffin.  I look slightly scared, and you can hardly tell that I was having the time of my life singing all those bass parts on my own!

But it was all good, and now it’s over for a while.  I think.  Sacred Hearts the novel is out, Sacred Hearts Secret Music will sit along side it very soon, and we just have now to watch our babies in the marketplace.  Meanwhile, I have a book to write – a book that has been sitting in my head for seven years now.  So what am I doing today?  My accounts….

See, every musician has to do stuff that isn’t fun once in a while.

I should be in bed – no, I really should, as it is after midnight and I’ve been burning the candle at both ends for well over 48 hours.  Sunday night went straight into Monday morning as I had forgotten that I had not completed all the short scores, so at 4am I was just shutting Sibelius down.  The rehearsal later that day was a wonderful experience – we had the new continuo team (Claire Williams and Kinga Gáborjáni joining Fanny Kelly) together for the first time, and also our other newcomer, mezzo Clare Wilkinson.  Deb and I were overwhelmed by the beauty of the noise.  Then this evening had another wonderful rehearsal with the choir.  So looking forward to Sunday when we rehearse the choir with the continuo – then straight into the recording on Monday.

I’d like to say I have no idea about how this disc will be received, but I’m afraid I know all too well.  Last time we had Know-nothing ClothEars saying in a national daily broadsheet that we performed the music without the bass line, even though there were three thumping great continuo instruments playing all the time.  This time it will be, “How very dare they!”  But you know what, I don’t care.

Palestrina’s music was made to be passionate, not sanitised.  The Lamentations are some of the most agonised, vivid and searing verses in the Old Testament, and virtually every recording I have ever heard sounds as if the choir have been fed bromide for six months.  Deb says Savonarola, and I agreed 100%.  She has also written ornaments for the Mass that are so sexy they ought to be singing in basques, and we will make Palestrina into something that channels the overwhelmingly sensual love of God admitted by the early modern religious, and smacks the Doubting Thomases right between their disbelieving ears.  So there.