These pieces of music came into being in a prison camp on Sumatra. The initial idea was Norah Chambers, and Margaret Dryburgh and her worked on the various pieces. Some they did together and others individually, depending on how well we could remember the original pieces of music. The idea was to bring singers together - Dutch, British, Australian - about thirty in all, to make music to uplift us and perhaps to bring some beauty and sanity. The music was written on odd bits of paper, mostly in pencil, and written as small as possible to save paper. It was difficult at first to sing without words, what sound to make, the tempo and the color. The One sound not used was "AH." It was too throaty. We found the best sounds were "Ne, Le." When notes had to be sung together, as in "Morning Sun," the sixteenth notes were not broken, but sung legato. The sounds used were "Le," with the accent on the first note of the sixteenth notes, such as humming was used when there was a solo singer as undercurrent to the melody. |
