Over the rainbow

About ten days ago a friend who plays in Oxford's fabulous community street band, Horns of Plenty, told me that they were encouraging the 8pm Thursday noise-making for frontline workers to become musical. The next I heard was that 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' was the theme tune for frontline workers. So I told my street's WhatApp group that last Thursday I would be out in the street playing my violin, very nervously and inexpertly, and extremely grateful for any support, instrumental or vocal. Last Thursday we had a violin, a viola, an electronic saxophone and many voices. We were nothing like as good as this street in Cardiff but everyone loved it and we promised ourselves an encore this evening.

But the music we'd been sent was much too high-pitched for most unpractised voices to sing, so this morning I set about transposing it down a fifth. I wrote it all out by hand and WhatsApped it to our street then wondered whether now was the time to learn how to use music-writing software. Could I afford it? Would it be too complicated? It turned out that Musescore is free and easy enough for me to have produced this tidy-looking piece of sheet music, with words, in under four hours. You have no idea how extremely chuffed I am to have learnt how to do it. A lockdown day very well spent.

My blip contains no people because I couldn't take a photo while I was playing but this evening we had violin, viola, saxophone, accordion and lots more voices, both from our street and from the one it butts on to. So I told the assembled neighbours about the National Youth Orchestra's plea to everyone - yes, you too - to play Beethoven's Ode to Joy tomorrow evening at 5pm BST. They've had to cancel their concert in celebration of Beethoven's 250th birthday (as our choir had to cancel our Beethoven concert on 4 April) so this will be some small compensation for them. 

Is our street up for it? Oh yes!

Do it, photograph it and share it: #NYOdetoJoy. The music is on that link, but you know it anyway. And the words couldn't be better: 'All men will become brothers' (Schiller would, of course, have written 'All people will become siblings,' but women weren't invented back then.)

For those who remember Brexit, Ode to Joy also happens to be the European anthem.

I will report back tomorrow.