These are the Days of Our Lives

Queen's classic ballad of nostalgia and acceptance has always felt like a duet waiting to happen - and indeed George Michael and Lisa Stansfield sang it as such in the memorial concert to Freddie Mercury. This arrangement for combined male and female barbershop ensembles likewise exploits the dialogue implicit in the lyric, placing the narrative in the men's group for Verse 1, answered by the women's in Verse 2, with both ensembles participating equally in the choruses.

There is a brief bridge that evokes the minor-mode feel of Brian May's guitar solo, and the whole uses the expanded palette provided by 8 parts to generate that aura of yearniness that infuses the original.

I was listening to this in the car on the way home from what turned out to be my last chorus rehearsal before coronavirus lockdown, and the process of arranging it was complicated by the way it brought me face-to-face with my own sense of loss in being separated from the sound of vocal harmony.