You know you’re a Purcell fan when …

9 Responses to You know you’re a Purcell fan when …

1. choirboyfromhell says:

   May 15, 2007 at 1:06 am

   Thy Hand Belinda…..

   Yes, I’m as much as a Purcell fan as could be detected by my random searching under the phrase “singing Purcell”

   I sing in a large (and increasingly rare) Episcopal parish church choir of men and boys in the Great Lakes region of USA, and just was the tenor soloist in the popular trio verse anthem “Rejoice in the Lord Away”. It was better than sex and drugs. And earlier that week we had done the g minor Mag and Nunc.

   God, I’d die to sing “Man that is born of a Woman” or anything else pertaining to the death of Queen Mary for that matter. Don’t you love his cross relationships and suspensions?

   Watch out, we’ll be on tour over there next year.

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2. vhk says:

   May 15, 2007 at 2:19 pm

   Welcome to the blog. Purcell’s anthems aren’t usually quite so interesting for soprano. I recently sang my favourite one and a couple of others. I don’t seem to get asked to do them quite as much as I used to and haven’t done Rejoice in the Lord Alway in a very long time, even though we had it at our wedding. I hope you didn’t sing it from that awful edition which abridges the interludes. Another I haven’t sung since I was a student and would love to do again is O Lord God of Hosts.

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3. choirboyfromhell says:

   May 15, 2007 at 10:48 pm

   Yes, it was a god-awful Novello edition of about fifty years old with the repeats taken out. There were metrical and harmony differences as well, which made it a little awkward in the warm-up, as I’m used to the Watkins-Shaw version in Dr. Daker’s New Church Anthem Book. It would have been sweet to use the latter and have a string accompaniment.

   I agree, it has a pretty boring treble line (it’s a “rebuilding” year for the boys in our parish but you should hear our girls!!!), so the ATB trio was appropriate.

   I also agree on “Jehova, quam multi sunt hostes mei” is a favorite, with a good tenor solo (but he must had hated bass-baritones, solos always seem rhythmically troublesome). And I got to sing “Hear my prayer, O, Lord” just after my voice changed at another church in central Ohio for (then) Archbishop Desmond Tuttu way back in 1983.

   Have you ever performed Dido-and/or ever sung the Queen’s Epicedium?

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4. vhk says:

   May 16, 2007 at 9:40 pm

   I don’t think the Queen’s Epicedium gets performed much round here – at any rate I’ve never heard it performed or learnt it.

   I’ve been to several performances of Dido and Aeneas, the most recent of which was shortly before I started the blog, but I wrote about it anyway. I’ve never sung anything more than extracts. Unlike most Purcellians, I have rather mixed feelings about it, mostly I think due to the witches. The classicist in me regrets this alteration of Virgil to suit 17th-century tastes; moreover, a lot of groups now ham them up, with results that just sound like trained singers pretending that they aren’t. Hmm, maybe this should be a new post too.

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5. choirboyfromhell says:

   May 17, 2007 at 1:23 am

   Trained singers that try not to be…hmm. Yes, I should think too much vibrato would ruin Dido, but I have a recording of Emma Kirkby and it is sweet. I would like to hear her live some day, as she’s one of my favorite sopranos.

   The Oxford Camerata recorded the Music on the Death of Queen Mary, and it’s quite long and interesting for a treble.

   And yes, we don’t need any more witch hunts. We just lost a horrible witch hunter here in the U.S., masquerading as “tele-evangelist”. Then again, we’re at a very low point in our national history over here, period.

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6. vhk says:

   May 17, 2007 at 12:57 pm

   I was thinking of the harsh, snarling tone the witches use on my recording of Dido (Kirkby/Hogwood). I shared a platform with Emma Kirkby last month. She is fading a little now, though she would not have lasted this long if her technique had been damaging. We also have a ticket to hear her next week in the Bath Festival so expect another writeup soon.

   I’ve done much of the funeral music for Queen Mary, in particular Thou knowest, Lord which is among the least suitable music I’ve sung at a wedding.

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7. choirboyfromhell says:

   May 17, 2007 at 2:00 pm

   That’s as bad as singing Schubert’s overly popular Ave Maria in Latin at a Lutheran funeral. When the funeral director called, I asked him what composer and he stalled a moment, and replied “ah duh, I don’t know, the POPULAR one!” And nobody knew about original German that was composed for a poem “Lady of the Lake”. I tried to convince the director and one of the family members that German would much more appropriate, but they had never heard of it. I knew then it was going to be a gig from hell.

   I hope that all goes well with Bath. I assume the concert’s at the abbey. Good acoustics?

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8. vhk says:

   May 17, 2007 at 10:34 pm

   One of my nuptial horror stories also involves Schubert’s Ave Maria, but that’s one for another item.

   Emma Kirkby is performing Dowland and Purcell in the Assembly Rooms – the usual venue for chamber concerts here.

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9. choirboyfromhell says:

   May 18, 2007 at 2:11 am

   Oh, God wish I were there…

   Reply