scholarly fiddling

Posted on July 11, 2022 by vhk10

My musical activities for a mid-June weekend began with a solo recital of folk fiddle given by Sam Sweeney (sometime of Bellowhead) in church.  This is repertoire that I don’t know at all and Sam’s introductions revealed that it can be much more scholarly than I’d realised, with manuscripts yielding up tunes unheard for centuries waiting to be played.  And clearly it can be (and was) performed with great subtlety.

On Sunday I was back with Bath Abbey Chamber Choir for two pieces I’d heard a number of times but never performed.  Elgar’s O Hearken Thou was on my wishlist; we sang it as an introit in the original single-verse version.  Our canticles were Darke in F, far less sung than the Communion setting in the same key.  I’m not quite sure I’ve never done these, but I have no record of having sung them.  I’m also not sure why they aren’t done more often.  They are for double choir, but seem just as good as Wood in F (say) to my ears.  We had luxury casting in the organ loft for this service: Martin Baker.

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the patron saint of my choir tours (2)

Posted on June 30, 2022 by vhk10

There was one final performance day on our Veneto choir tour: the Duomo at Asola, a small Cathedral city.  Here we had a (vetted) organ at our disposal which increased our repertoire.  We sang for a Mass (preceded by a very determined recital of the Rosary by some of the congregation) and then a short concert.  The latter included a sequence of music by composers associated with Gloucester (quite a choice here, but we were selective).

Our Mass setting was parts of the Missa Brevis by Mátyás Seiber; I’d never come across this before but did once do his settings of Yugoslav folk songs at a May Week concert.  Other pieces that we hadn’t already performed included:

Maze at Villa Barbarigo

To decline from sin, and incline to virtue….

  • Panis angelicus, Franck
  • Justorum animae/Beati quorum via, Stanford
  • Lord for Thy tender mercies’ sake, Farrant
  • Thou wilt keep him, Wesley
  • Blessed be the God and Father, Wesley
  • Magnificat in G, Sumsion

Having been trying to talk Italian at people for nearly a week by this stage, I’d got quite practised at rolling r’s and also enjoyed giving our audience some of the sounds they don’t have in their own language such as ‘wh’.

It was generally agreed that this had been a particularly successful tour all round.  I’ve been on half a dozen overseas choir tours; while there have been others which were musically more ambitious, or which I particularly enjoyed socially because there were several close friends present, this one hit the mark in all the essential categories: high musical standards, organisation that worked, unbeatable venues to perform in and a good mix of people.

And the maze? A day before the performances in Asola many of us went on an excursion to the gardens at the Villa Barbarigo, laid out to point morals symbolically (but seen through Renaissance humanism so nothing explicitly religious). Take a wrong turn in the maze and you fell into the clutches of the Seven Deadly Sins, but I was given a hint on how to avoid them.  I thought I’d have to retrace my steps at one point, then unexpectedly emerged at the end.  I’m not really sure what that symbolised.

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the patron saint of my choir tours (1)

Posted on June 7, 2022 by vhk10

On the previous foreign choir tour I went on, to Lisbon, we were proudly informed that St Antony of Padua had come from the city and shown a site associated with him. And the one I have just returned from was based in Padua and includes singing in his basilica, so I have followed him around.

Gloucester Choral Society’s latest excursion began (for me and quite a lot of others) with a railway journey and an overnight stop in Milan. We brought with us a number of carefully rehearsed pieces, mostly unaccompanied.

Our first performance, the day after arrival in Padua, was really one for the bucket list: San Marco, Venice. Usually they host choirs for concerts and services quite often (to judge by the number of people I know who’ve sung there) but we were the first visiting choir since the coronavirus pandemic. We got an early train and bounded this way and that across canals to the Piazza, then were admitted to an open courtyard for a quick run through of the music before singing at the midday Mass, in a block of seating at the front of the south transept.

I have previously performed in other buildings with a comparable degree of prestige (Notre Dame, Chartres Cathedral and of course British ones such as St Paul’s).  I generally feel the sense of occasion before and afterwards, but when actually in performance I become so focused on the music that I don’t give thought to the surroundings, and that was the case this time too.  

After lunch and some free time we reassembled in S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari (where Monteverdi is buried) and performed the same pieces at an early evening Mass led by an exceptionally friendly priest.

A couple of days later we crossed the road from our hotel and sang for a Mass at the Basilica of St Antony. Here space constrained us into three equal rows, and I had to step forward from the second row (altos) to join the end of the soprano row when we sang something other than plainsong. (It still felt as if the rest of the choir were the other side of Padua.)

Our music included:

Cloister, Basilica of St Antony, Padua.

Cloister, Basilica of St Antony, Padua

Venice:

  • Gibbons Almighty and everlasting God
  • Byrd Ave verum corpus
  • Tallis O Lord, give Thy Holy Spirit
  • Harris Holy is the true light
  • Tavener Hymn to the Mother of God

Padua:

  • Stanford Coelos ascendit hodie
  • Byrd Non vos relinquam orphanos
  • Mozart Ave verum corpus
  • Philips Ascendit Deus

All familiar to me except for the Byrd Non vos relinquam (normally sung by lower voices which explains how I missed it) and the Tavener which I’d only done once before. Another post will describe the rest of this choir tour.

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Vivat! Vivat!

Posted on May 26, 2022 by vhk10

A lot of choirs have programmed Parry’s I was glad in concerts around the time of the Platinum Jubilee, and it’s been natural to include the often-omitted ‘Vivat’s’, as the Erleigh Cantors did this year in their concert at St Peter’s Earley. The anthem does work better with them, as there is otherwise a rather abrupt key change.

This was not the only big sing in the concert, as I renewed my acquaintance with Bruckner’s Ecce Sacerdos Magnus, performed as part of a sequence of his motets. Previously I’d sung it back in my student days – I’ve never done it with the trombones, only organ.

We brought out some pieces from the recent Bristol weekend: the Soler Magnificat, our commission from Andrew Millington and the Nunc from Richard Shephard’s Salisbury service. Another piece came from a Cathedral weekend I missed: John Tavener’s Hymn to the Trinity, which was originally written for a choir I used to sing for, the Cambridge Taverner Choir. I missed being in the premiere by five years or so.

We did some earlier pieces too, including Gibbons’ Hosanna to the Son of David and The King shall Rejoice by Handel (another big sing – I suppose it goes with pieces written for royalty). Not to forget Stanford’s three Latin motets, which will reappear in another post shortly.

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Vaughan Williams’ greatest hits – and Britten

Posted on May 20, 2022 by vhk10

The concert programme for the final Gloucester Choral Society concert of the season marked the Vaughan Williams anniversary with a selection including some of his best-known shorter works. We sang in all of them apart from The Lark Ascending, played by Hannah Roper.

The Mass in G minor is a work I’ve sung parts of many times. But I’d never sung the Creed for an audience, only in a Come and Sing, so there was a first performance for me in this concert.  I’m always glad to have a chance to do this piece and particularly enjoy the parallel fifths at the end of the Gloria.

I sang the Serenade to Music a few years ago with Bristol Choral Society. That time we dispensed with soloists and everyone sang everything, but in this performance we had a solo quartet, and organ (or rather toaster – Gloucester’s organ has just been taken out of action for repairs) accompaniment.

Otherwise: I revisited the Five Mystical Songs after a few months, with James Geidt as soloist this time. This performance and the one last autumn confirmed my view that no two people conduct the end of Let all the World the same way.

We sang the Te Deum in G, rather faster than I’ve done it in previous performances, and the concert concluded with O Clap Your Hands.

We had a very complimentary review: Seen and Heard International.

A week later I was back in action with the Bath Abbey Chamber Choir, singing a Sunday evensong.  As (I think) the only soprano familiar with Britten’s Festal Te Deum in E, I was volunteered for the solo part, which I’d never done before.  Our canticles were Wood in F for double choir.

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a workshop on The Eighth

Posted on May 12, 2022 by vhk10

Four years on from Berlioz, the South Cotswold Big Sing Group is reconvening, this time to perform Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. Sadly, the advance workshop in Gloucester was all I’m going to get of this, as I’m not free to sing in the performance. But I came along anyway, having missed singing with large groups.

I think I’ve alternated between Choir 1 and Choir 2 when I’ve sung this, and it was Choir 1’s turn. In the morning we rehearsed on our own, and then were joined by the other lot, and at some point all the notes got sung.

Afterwards I dashed out to my local bookshop to get my hands on a copy of The Eighth by Stephen Johnson. Our conductor has made dire predictions that health and safety will make performing the work impossible in future, but I hope that won’t be the case.

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Requiem (3): a new one

Posted on April 14, 2022 by vhk10

The third Requiem of the spring was a premiere performance of a work by Richard Gabe, a member of the choir at church and connected by marriage to a late friend of mine. Like the Rutter it mixed some words from the Requiem Mass with other liturgical and biblical texts; each movement was written in memory of a friend or family member of the composer. The choir was assembled for the occasion on the day (with prior rehearsal and music circulated beforehand), but quickly gelled into a unified sound, and we had a large audience to perform to for the mid-afternoon concert.

It was a busy weekend for me as there were two Palm Sunday services at Bath Abbey. Highlights included movements from Palestrina’s Missa Aeterna Christi Munera, which I don’t think I’ve sung since I was a student, two settings of Christus factus est (Bruckner and the less familiar Anerio) and Daniel Purcell’s canticles in E minor, as sung by me in Portsmouth Cathedral last year. I’m told there’s been a live donkey at the Palm Sunday Eucharist there in past years, but we didn’t have one this time.

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Requiem (2): Fauré

Posted on March 30, 2022 by vhk10

A week on: another Requiem and another setting of Psalm 23. This was Gloucester Choral Society’s double-bill of Fauré and Stanford in Gloucester Cathedral.

I would have liked to have illustrated this post with another in the sequence of windows from the cloister, showing the Ascension. But there isn’t one! The sequence drawn from the Gospels/Acts jumps from the women at the tomb, to Paul on the road to Damascus. There are plain windows in between, as if they had intended to fill the gap, or some mishap befell the windows with Ascension, Pentecost etc.

This would have been to illustrate Caelos ascendit hodie, the central one of the Three Motets, which we performed in a sequence with some transposition to smooth awkward jumps of tonality between them. The text is an obscure one – an internet search just turned up references to Stanford – doubtless chosen for Trinity College because of the line Laudetur Sancta Trinitas.

Other Stanford pieces were that war-horse, the Te Deum in B flat, the aforementioned Psalm 23 setting and ending with the double-choir Magnificat in B flat. When I worked in Cambridge I would sometimes go to evensong at King’s at the end of the week, and because Friday was unaccompanied, as often as not this would be the setting. I’d sit there staring at the stained glass wondering just how much more of the piece there was! Our interpretation was rather livelier, certainly more so than any other I’ve given of this work (I may have been the only soprano at least who had performed it before).

The Fauré was accompanied by the organ, the last I’ll hear of it for a while as it’s being taken out of action for major work. I’ll get to sing it again in the autumn with Bristol Choral Society.

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Requiem (1): Rutter

Posted on March 26, 2022 by vhk10

Somehow I found myself singing three concerts with a Requiem in, within four weeks. The first was the return of CanZona (I sang in their last concert in December 2019) to perform Stainer’s Crucifixion and Rutter’s Requiem.

I sang the Crucifixion as a student and don’t think I’ve performed the whole piece since then! Not that I have a particular aversion to it, but I haven’t taken advantage of chances to do it and it had faded from the memory a bit. It used to be sung every year on Good Friday at another church in Bath, but that tradition appears to have died out. Of course it never goes away entirely, thanks to God so loved the world and a couple of hymn tunes (about which I hope to write more in another post).

I was assumed to know John Rutter’s Requiem, but in fact I’m unfamiliar with his larger works for choir and orchestra. It includes other biblical and liturgical texts, and draws on a mix of styles, including the French Requiem tradition and spirituals. The setting of Psalm 23 was composed some years earlier, and I’d already encountered it as he recycled it for Psalmfest too. We had lost a couple of altos to Covid, so I filled in alto leads as and when I could.

Our concert made headlines in the Bath Chronicle for non-musical reasons which I won’t go into here.

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the sounding of thy bowels

Posted on March 24, 2022 by vhk10

The phrase in the title used sometimes to be replaced by other words in performances of O Lord look down from heaven by Battishill, but not when I heard Merton College choir sing it at evensong in Bath Abbey earlier this month (nor in a recent evensong broadcast). It was, however, omitted from the text printed in the service sheet.

Merton joined forces with the girls and men of Bath Abbey choir for this service. There were some 60 singers in the combined group, which suited Battishill’s and Stanford in B flat rather more than Tomkins respones and Tallis. The sound was certainly powerful! There was a good-sized congregation and my only quibble was that we didn’t get a hymn to sing, unlike the weekday evensong which inaugurated the Abbey’s Chamber Choir last autumn.

Merton does something unique, I think, in Oxbridge and offers entrance choral scholarships to students at other Colleges. (I suspect Cambridge, with its competitive choral rivalry between Colleges, would not tolerate this.) So the choir, which admittedly always did have a significant proportion of non-Mertonians, is increasingly a University choir which happens to be based at Merton.

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