Brahms in Doynton

Posted on November 28, 2021 by vhk10

Sadly two supporters of the music at our church died recently and were commemorated with appropriately musical services.

Dawn, a gifted pianist who had given up playing professionally when she married, had lived in Doynton and her well-attended memorial service was held at the village church there. She had left lengthy and detailed instructions for it, and the service planners did their best to accommodate her wishes. The choir sang Rutter’s The Lord bless you and keep you and Brahms’ How lovely are Thy dwellings – rather strenuous when you are the only soprano!

A week later was the funeral of Jane Fletcher back in Bath. I’m giving her surname as we sang together in the Chantry Singers at a time when it seemed as if half the sopranos were called Jane, and I wouldn’t want readers to worry that it was one of the other Janes. She was a familiar face to music lovers in Bath as for many years she stewarded at the Festivals, and once gave me a spare ticket to a concert in the Roman Baths. I don’t think she’d left any specific instructions so she got the Rutter again.

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dodging the demo

Posted on November 26, 2021 by vhk10

Straight back from holiday, and hot-footing it from a church awayday deep in the Mendips, I dashed over to Bristol to sing in the first concert I’ve done with Bristol Choral Society since summer 2019. This event defied many potential hindrances, not least a demonstration outside the Cathedral when we were due to rehearse there. Our final rehearsal was therefore split in two, starting at St Peter’s Henleaze before moving on to the Cathedral once the demo had dispersed.

We presented a short programme mixing the relatively familiar with the less well-known. Elizabeth Poston’s Festal Te Deum for choir, organ and trumpet has only recently been rediscovered and this was its first public performance since the 1950s. It is very different in style from Jesus Christ the Apple Tree with abrupt rhythms and angular vocal lines (I thought she had it in for the 2nd sopranos till I heard what the 1sts had to do!). But it shows she definitely had a distinctive voice. It doesn’t set the complete text, but ends at ‘and we worship Thy name, ever world without end’. I read in the programme that during the Second World War Poston was involved in sending coded messages using music broadcast on the BBC, and I’d love to know more about this.

Like other choirs, we are drawing on what I think of as chamber choir repertoire as we resume concerts, and I don’t think I’d ever done Finzi’s Lo the Full, Final Sacrifice with such large forces. We gave another outing to Gustav Holst’s setting of Psalm 148, and ended with Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs, with Freddie Long as soloist.

Our orchestra was the strings of the British Sinfonietta, who treated us to an unconducted performance of Sibelius’ Andante Festivo, an attractive piece previously unknown to me. It seems to have been close to its composer’s heart, as it was played at his funeral. Not bad for a piece originally commemorating the anniversary of the opening of a sawmill! Did mills in Britain ever commission composers?

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hymn karaoke

Posted on November 10, 2021 by vhk10

On a half-term break in East Anglia, I attended the Sunday Eucharist at a nearby church. There I encountered for the first time something which I knew happened in places where no organist could be found: singing hymns to a recording. (I gather this happens at funerals too, when hymns are wanted but there is little confidence that the congregation will sing them.)

The choir and organ we were singing along to were good quality – probably from a Cathedral. One advantage was that we got a generous number of verses – all of For all the Saints! But some of the drawbacks of this system were also in evidence: the next hymn unexpectedly bursting into the liturgy before it was called for; the volume of the accompanying choir being turned up too much or too little; and a tune that was unfamiliar to everyone, myself included. (For the record, this was How bright these glorious spirits shine sung to ‘Balerma’, which I decided I actually preferred to the usual ‘Beatitudo’.)

Perhaps I should have volunteered to play their chamber organ which looked as if it had been kept in working order. I enjoyed a chat afterwards with the presiding clergyman (the usual priest was away), a former rector of a ‘greater church’ which is known to me.

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a 30th birthday present

Posted on October 30, 2021 by vhk10

The Erleigh Cantors began in 1990, and for their 30th anniversary an anthem was commissioned from Andrew Millington, formerly of Exeter Cathedral. Our October visit to Bristol Cathedral was our first opportunity to perform his setting of My spirit yearns for Thee, a text which appears in some hymnbooks and which has the unusual property that the last line of each verse is same as the first line of the next. This allows the setting to flow easily from one verse to another. I’d never sung anything by Andrew Millington before; he honored us with his presence at the premiere.

Another composer whose music I’d never sung before was Antonio Soler, whose Magnificat on the 2nd tone featured in the same service. This was a tuneful piece which deserve more outings than it gets; we had to have our copies specially reprinted by OUP. If you find lengthy settings of ‘Amen’ tiresome, then this is the Magnificat for you; although most of the piece is expansive, the Amen is dealt with very briefly.

Our Sunday evensong was a tribute to Richard Shephard, with Ye choirs of new Jerusalem as the anthem and his Salisbury Canticles (new to me). These were not too difficult to learn as the musical material is used economically.

Among these novelties we had more familiar pieces, including Vierne’s Messe Solennelle which we usually sing when we come to Bristol. The hardest of these was When David heard by Weelkes, with some deceptively simple-looking exposed isolated notes.

We were well looked after by the Cathedral, including having tea and coffee available in the kitchen adjoining the chapter house. The absence of heating was I’m told due to a temporary breakdown – I have heard nothing further about the proposal to install underfloor heating here.

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a rare visit by the LSO

Posted on October 26, 2021 by vhk10

Sir Simon Rattle brought the London Symphony Orchestra to the Bath Forum to play Martinů’s Rhapsody-Concerto and Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. Orchestral concerts here outside the two music festivals are a rarity. This one was organised as a gift to care homes and streamed to them. It was ‘staged by Bristol Beacon, with funding from the Culture Recovery fund, in anticipation of an ongoing artistic partnership with LSO when the venue reopens in 2023.’ So that is why Bath had this rare treat; it would have been in Bristol, I’m sure, had the hall been open there. My husband went and reported that this large venue was full.

The Bath Recitals series has also resumed and he went to a recital given by the Albany Trio at St Michael’s Church, of music by Beethoven again, Judith Bingham, Turina and Dvořák’s ‘Dumky’ trio . It’s good that concert life is resuming without bringing with it the need to travel far.

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a feelgood piece to return with

Posted on October 20, 2021 by vhk10

I returned to the concert platform with Gloucester Choral Society in a performance of Haydn’s Creation. This is a piece that comes round every few years, and I’ve done it with a variety of groups. My records tell me that I once took part in a ‘Come and Sing’ of it with John Marsh in St Mary Redcliffe, something I have no memory of at all.

Adam and Eve in cloister stained glass, after the events in The Creation

Adam and Eve some time after the events in The Creation. (Cloister window, Gloucester Cathedral)

It was a good piece with which to resume concert performances. Normally I find the almost unrelieved cheerfulness rather wearing, but a feelgood piece was what was needed right now. Remembering what happened last time when I looked up a nanosecond before my entry in a less familiar movement, I made extra sure of the notes this time.

We were accompanied by Jonathan Hope on the organ (the way I first got to know The Creation), who dreamt up all sorts of appropriate sound effects to illustrate the text. (My only regret was that he didn’t use one of the buzzier French-style stops for the cloud of insects.)

We had quite a gap between rehearsal and performance, filled by a visit to the Hungry Bean Café (which also provided a place to change!) and going to evensong with a visiting choir. Next day the Bath Abbey Chamber Choir was in action again at a morning Eucharist (Darke in F + anthems) and we had a rather Gloucester-themed evensong at Christ Church including Sanders responses and Sumsion in G.

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RIP Joanna

Posted on October 15, 2021 by vhk10

I was sorry to learn this week of the death of Joanna Wiesner at the age of 96. You couldn’t be very involved in choral music in Bath without coming across her, in my case mostly through the South West Festival Chorus and my occasional outings with Bath Minerva Choir.

She could organise anyone and anything, and I first encountered her doing this in the ultimate choral test – Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. She was putting on concerts with the SWFC as recently as 2019. And there was no better source for Bath’s classical music-related gossip, dispensed willingly – I remember being filled in on lots of it beside an infinity pool in Goa.

Joanna was a regular sight in the audiences at concerts, especially of amateur groups. I once sat in the front row when attending a concert in St Stephen’s Church, only to hear her complain loudly just behind me – in that church every word uttered nearby is audible – that her view had been blocked. (I didn’t dare turn round and suggest, as I would have done with some people, that she might have avoided this by sitting in the front row herself. Sadly, other reasons made me decide not to stay after the interval of that concert.)

She would have been in her mid-70s already when I first met her, but such was her energy that you didn’t really notice her age. It was perhaps only given away by characteristics of her generation such as the expectation that you would reply to any communication, including emails – which made it rather hard to end any e-conversation with her.

I will try to look out for obituaries as I gather she’d already had a very full life before I knew her.

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a choir which should have existed years ago

Posted on October 15, 2021 by vhk10

Ever since moving here I’ve been frequently asked ‘Do you sing in Bath Abbey?’ And for a long time I not only didn’t, but couldn’t, as there was no Abbey choir containing adult women. But that has changed with the setting up this autumn of the Bath Abbey Chamber Choir, which I am singing in.

It’s a mix of younger and more experienced singers, and in the few weeks it’s been going we have begun to gel nicely as a group. The repertoire is mostly known to me but nevertheless a challenge to sing well. Like Christ Church, the choir is also getting to grips with new furniture and a new acoustic, but we also have the benefit of the new rehearsal facilities which have recently been created.

Our first outing was a weekday evensong a couple of weeks ago, singing Dyson in D and O pray for the peace of Jerusalem by Howells, among other things, and we also led the family Eucharist at the Abbey that weekend, including an anthem by John Rutter (Look at the earth) which I have only ever sung in Bath Abbey, the other occasion being as an alto! Here‘s a clip of us in rehearsal.

I’ve long felt that every diocese should have a choir like this in a major church. Bath Abbey had a mixed choir when I first moved here, but what it sang was a cut-down evensong, this being the era when it was thought women couldn’t sing Anglican chant or full canticle settings. The BACC will be doing occasional services, singing the same quantity of music at them as the other Abbey choirs would do.

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Laysplaining

Posted on September 27, 2021 by vhk10

Given my interests shown here, it’s won’t come as a surprise that I follow various church and choral music groups on Facebook. I had to give up one when my feed filled up with (rather bad) hymns with words and music by one other contributor. But I’ve now shrunk back to lurker status on others. As you are supposed to use your real name on Facebook I can’t conceal my gender, and this inevitably led to my being patronised by lay-clerks. (I can’t claim credit for the name for this phenomenon, which forms the title of this post; it was suggested by a fellow choir member.)

I finally dried up after I opened a discussion about the retro nature of the music of William Harris. My main correspondent started really well, but later returned to the thread (I suspect after a session at the pub) with a contribution which was not only patronising but inaccurate in several respects. I corrected his errors, and since then have only posted very rarely.

The BBC used to run an online forum for Radio 3, which spawned a separate forum for discussion of Choral Evensong broadcasts. When the BBC closed it (perhaps they were afraid of being sued) it reappeared elsewhere. I have read and contributed to this since its BBC days. As you are able to write under a pseudonym, I could get away without a gender reveal – provided that I didn’t refer to recently singing the soprano/treble line or use a careless pronoun when I quoted what others might have said about me.

However that still doesn’t remove the risk of being patronised – even by a fellow long-term contributor. When that happened recently, I quietly withdrew from posting. I notice traffic has gradually declined and was doing so before the pandemic, so maybe that is the experience of others also.

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Portsmouth pointing: 2

Posted on September 14, 2021 by vhk10

We returned from our dumb day (in our case, a first visit to the Isle of Wight) to the second half of the Portsmouth week. This had delighted the script/diacritical mark nerd in me (I update the choir’s website) as I had to typeset both Pēteris Vasks and Богородице Дѣво. The Vasks is one of two anthems I have come across to set words by Mother Teresa; we were permitted to use piano accompaniment as originally written. I sang one of the soprano verse parts in Daniel Purcell’s canticles in E minor, something I’d long had my eye on (I did the other when I was a student).

The Rachmaninov really is ‘the piece of the pandemic’ as since it started I have sung it with four different choirs. It was paired with Watson in E which was more familiar to me than to most others (a standard setting when I was a student). On Sunday morning our Mass setting was new to me – the Missa Brevis by Neil Cox. A piece that I’d be happy to sing again, although it was not hard to tell that the Gloria was written at a different time and for a choir of different ability than the other movements we sang. Our grand finale was Dyson in D and Jonathan Dove’s Seek Him that maketh the seven stars.

We paid special attention to psalms during the week, the highlight being word-painting of Ps. 102 on the Friday.

I had not performed indoors without a mask on for 18 months and it was a relief that everything still worked and I could leave with a real feeling of accomplishment.

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