Mercia's "Belshazzar's Feast" story and other anecdotes....

[mercia]

Walton's Belshazzar's Feast

I've just read a funny story about BF, which I suppose I ought to keep until there's a dedicated thread

[ardcarp]

I've just read a funny story about BF, which I suppose I ought to keep until there's a dedicated thread

Oh go on, Mercia. No time like the present. (It's not the one about 'slain' is it?)

[mercia]

(It's not the one about 'slain' is it?)

it is - oh is it a well-known story ? I'd never heard it before

[Finzi4ever]

it is - oh is it a well-known story ? I'd never heard it before

Please share anyway with the rest of us who haven't heard it.

[Nick Armstrong]

Mercia's "Belshazzar's Feast" story!

I've just read a funny story about BF, which I suppose I ought to keep until there's a dedicated thread

Here you go...

[mercia]

yikes - not sure it deserves its own thread - and I think you all know it already

at a Hoffnung Festival - an "extract from Belshazzar's Feast" is programmed - Walton + soloist walk on, Walton gives downbeat, choir shout SLAIN, Walton turns, shakes soloist's hand, they both bow and walk off - end of extract

[french frank]

Thank you. I did google for it but found nothing

[ardcarp]

You told it so well. Mercia. 10/10

There is a story about William Mathias's carol Sir Christemas which ends with an organ blast and a shout, 'Nowell'. A new and bumptious choral scholar needed bringing down a peg or two. Before the carol service, the other lay clerks told him that the shout was so loud, no-one could actually hear the word, so it was a tradition that they could shout any word they liked and it wouldn't make any difference. Meanwhile the rest of the choir, including the choristers, had been primed to be silent. So in the service, there was the organ blast followed by a lone voice shouting "S**t".

[Nick Armstrong]

Mercia having heroically accepted the challenge, this would appear to be a good place for other musical stories. (We've probably had a thread before for that purpose but a brief search didn't reveal it...). Having widened the thread title, have people heard this one (Maybe someone knows if it's actually true)...

The shout of "Barabbam!" in Part 2 of the 'St Matthew Passion' was apparently the subject of multiple takes in the sessions for Harnoncourt's first recording for Das Alte Werk... The choral scholars from King's College, Cambridge became... restive, so it has been recounted, and one take featured a shout of "Up yer b*m!!!". The take was used on the recording.

Apocryphal, almost certainly. Amusing, quite.