Lat night’s rehearsal was about cleaning up the runs and warming up the vowels.

Handel is of course one of the best composers for altos. One of the interesting things about it is that he treats altos as halfway between the men and the women, even though in his day he had female altos (earlier, altos were boys). So the frequent call-and-response kinds of passages in Messiah often have altos singing on both parts. “Who is this king of glory?” the men will ask insistently, and the women will come back with “The Lord strong and mighty.” Altos will be singing the question and the answer, like people talking to themselves.

I took cookies to rehearsal last night. We take turns on that — mostly, I’m sorry to say, just the women. I always pick the week of Hallowe’en because I have all these Hallowe’en cookie cutters, This year, I made chocolate cookies with chocolate-covered sunflower kernels.

I need to get dressed for my morning walk with #2 daughter. We go out at dawn — I into my neighborhood and she to her building’s gym — and it’s almost like taking a walk together.