Remembrance day concert

Wednesday was Remembrance Day so some students from the college put together a concert of music and readings. We have some very talented musicians in college at the moment - singers and instrumentalists - and a very strong conductor, who also planned the concert.
The music ranged from an arrangement of Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus for viola and three cellos, through Elegies for cello by Faure and Kenneth Leighton, Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, and finishing with the Faure Requiem. The music was interspersed by readings of poetry. The Faure was interleaved with some Hardy war poetry. I didn't know these poems at all - and they weren't published as a set, they just have a common theme - but they worked really well with the music. And I learned something about the Faure from the juxtaposition with the Hardy: this Requiem is not all sweetness and light and eternal rest, there is some real fear and trembling to get through first.
I can't remember the last time I sang properly, so it was good to be singing again. But I had no voice at all thanks to the remnants of a cold. If I want to join a choir locally I will have to get back into practice, as I have no stamina at all. In fact the only part of the singing equipment that was working at all was my diaphragm. So I had breath control but was hardly making any noise.