when the conductor is ill

Posted on November 12, 2016 by vhk10

I went along to hear Priory Voices sing Evensong with music by Stanford and S S Wesley at Wells Cathedral. The founder and usual conductor is not able to conduct at the moment so members of the choir are (very ably) doing the job instead. It was a pleasant service, and as I’m very bad now at being a member of a congregation I was glad that I was surrounded by people who were focused on the liturgy and not just chatting to one another.

Actually conducting the performance is only one part of replacing the conductor, and as it’s not clear when the usual one will return, there are a whole lot of other issues to be negotiated. Who should replace the people who will inevitably drift away at such a time? (I know of at least one such person among those who sang at Wells.) What repertoire is to be sung? How can one prevent individual choir members (I have no one in particular in mind here) pushing their own agendas? Should the choir be making bookings for future visits, and if so where and how many? Should the sound of the choir be preserved? (Over a meal afterwards it became clear that some want to steer it towards a more ‘men and boys’ sound). Who is to discipline choir members, and how?

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a free ticket to Cavalli

Posted on November 11, 2016 by vhk10

I won a pair of tickets to Cavalli’s La Calisto performed by English Touring Opera at Bath’s Theatre Royal, thanks to a competition in the Bath Chronicle.

Cavalli has been chosen before by this company. La Calisto is his best-known work; it has plenty of substantial roles (Juno’s and Diana’s are as substantial as Calisto’s) and lively intertwined plot and subplots. It was sung in English but rather as in a silent movie each scene was introduced with the display of a single-sentence description.

The various parts were all well sung and acted, with Juno being our favourite. And some lovely period sounds from the pit, though the ‘organ’ sounded a bit fake. The production played up the comic side of the plot with ribald gestures (but what do you expect when there’s a satyr around?) contrasting with the rather dry libretto. The Heath Robinson-like set required considerable physical agility from the singers.

The performance was well attended, and as before I noticed that there is an audience that converges on Bath from miles around when there’s an opera on. Now I think there are few in Bath who know more about Greek mythology than I do, but I realised that I was among some seriously experienced fans of baroque opera, ready to compare performances of Rameau or Handel at the drop of a hat.

Bath Chronicle review

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30 years of the Bath Camerata

Posted on November 4, 2016 by vhk10

I dashed back from Gloucester on the train to get to the Bath Camerata’s 30th birthday concert in the Pump Room. Ten years ago the 20th birthday was celebrated at a Good Friday concert which I sang in. This time round the former members just took part (optionally) in one or two numbers, some of them playing glasses in Eriks Esenvalds’ Stars. We were however given a special seating area which confirmed (even allowing for the presence of partners) that there are an awful lot of former Camerata members around!

The music was drawn from the last 150 years or so, with several showpieces which had been used in competition. The centrepiece of the first half was Friede auf Erden by Schoenberg, which I once sang with the Exon Singers. Its equivalent in the second half was James MacMillan’s Miserere which used a variety of styles and made even the familiar Tone II plainchant seem fresh and new. But this being Camerata, the programme wasn’t all serious!

There are still several in Camerata from my time there, and the choir, now under Benjamin Goodson, made light of the difficulties, although one of the parts was not as blended as it could have been. The only real dampener on the evening was the absence of Nigel Perrin, who was convalescing after an operation.

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Double Gloucester

Posted on October 31, 2016 by vhk10

Back in Gloucester again, this time for a weekend at the Cathedral with the Erleigh Cantors.

As has happened here before, we had an out of the ordinary service to sing, in this case a farewell Eucharist in the nave for one of the Canons. Our setting was Jonathan Dove’s Missa Brevis, which I hadn’t sung before and which presented a lot of rhythmic challenges, as any mistakes in this area could be ruthlessly exposed. For the anthem, Giovanni Gabrieli’s Exultet iam angelica, I was part of choir 3, which sang only briefly but which got to go up on to the spacious organ screen. (This space got quite a bit of use for stray singers in the 3 Choirs Festival, for example the Carmina Burana‘s children’s chorus, ‘Lift thine eyes’ in Elijah and Mater Gloriosa in Mahler 8. You’d be amazed what there is up there.)

Sunday morning’s Eucharist was also in the nave, and we presented Vaughan Williams’ Mass in G minor, with Philip Stopford’s Ave Verum Corpus as the offertory motet. Although the heating was on (unlike at Ely four years ago) the Gloucester miasma was beginning to settle for the winter. There isn’t much that can be done about it, short of diverting or draining the Severn.

It was good for the final evensong to be cocooned in the quire, where we sang Howells’ Westminster Canticles and Walton’s Coronation Te Deum. Now where have I come across that piece before? In fact, I’m about to do it again with Bristol Choral Society, so my copy had a complicated arrangement of colour-coded tabs and markings with initials, to indicate differences for the two performances. It is a confusing enough piece to sing even once, especially as different editions have moved the vocal lines around. (I have removed/deleted the first lot of markings from the score now, so it is a little less complex.) Our introit was Casals’ O Vos Omnes. I don’t rate this as highly as does the choral acquaintance whose favourite anthem it is. I don’t think it’s the greatest setting of this particular text, or indeed, even the greatest setting of this text in the European Sacred Music volume. But it is a well-crafted piece that I enjoy singing.

I had the honour of being one of the last people ever to park in the spaces immediately south of the Cathedral; the following day the archaeologists moved in to investigate the site before it is grassed/paved over, as part of Project Pilgrim. Maybe this might be followed by Project Chorister, a renewal of rehearsal facilities similar to what has been done recently at Wells and at Exeter?

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My Museum of Bath Architecture début

Posted on October 25, 2016 by vhk10

The Museum of Bath Architecture (formerly the Building of Bath Museum) has occasional concert series. I remember hearing the Paragon Singers (appropriately enough) there some years ago. I was fortunate to be invited to sing with the 10-strong choir of Bellacapella, conducted by Basira Ward, in a programme of sacred music for women’s choir. We were accompanied by fellow Corpuscle and Minerva Choir accompanist Steven Hollas, on the organ retained from the museum’s days as a chapel (why couldn’t St George’s Bristol have retained its organ in the same way?)

There were just two pieces in the programme. First was Rheinberger’s Mass Sincere in memoriam, written in memory of Brahms, though not a Requiem Mass. This was a charming, reflective setting, reminiscent in places of SS Wesley, and less expansive than his unaccompanied double-choir Mass which I’ve sung a few times. I’ve heard music by this most famous Liechtensteiner here before.

Then came possibly the most famous sacred piece for upper voices – Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. I’ve sung this once before, back in Cambridge with the ‘Virago Consort’ (I think it may have been the only concert they ever gave) conducted by Graham Hancock. The solos were spread around various singers: I had the upper part of ‘Quis est homo’.

We sang from the organ gallery looking down across the top of a large model of Bath on to our audience in the body of the chapel. I haven’t done much upper-voices music for a while, in fact not really since the early days of Corpus Angelorum; it was a refreshing change to explore this repertoire, and to give a concert with a small choir.

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My Michael Tippett Centre début

Posted on October 19, 2016 by vhk10

I’ve only been to Bath Spa University’s Michael Tippett Centre a handful of times. Not long after I moved to Bath I had a disastrous audition there, and I seem to recall rehearsing the Millennium performance of Mahler 8 there too. I returned with the choir of Christ Church to sing Choral Evensong.

We weren’t actually in the auditorium, but in the foyer. This resembles Bath’s crematorium chapel in giving you the illusion of being outside, with farmland visible through the large expanses of glass. The handsome cattle there seemed appreciative; at any rate, they moved nearer during the service.

We had a piano nearby but chose unaccompanied repertoire by Gibbons and Grayston Ives. The foyer actually has a pleasant acoustic. Maybe next time I perform there I’ll have graduated to the main space.

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three degrees of choral separation

Posted on October 8, 2016 by vhk10

A couple of times recently I’ve found myself sharing a choral acquaintance with someone I know and been told ‘Small world!’. But should people be all that surprised? How many removes am I from most active (by which I mean singing in at least two choirs) choral singers in England?

I think three should probably do it. For example, one person for whom I have sung was, at the time I first encountered them, in charge of some 500 singers. Add to that all the singers they have previously worked with, and we’re into four figures. Consider all the people those thousand-plus people have ever sung with, and by this one route I am 3 degrees of separation from a very large number of people. And that is starting with only one of the hundreds of people I’ve shared a concert platform (or church/cathedral choir stall) with over the years.

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‘some of the most demanding work in the repertoire for bassoon’

Posted on October 1, 2016 by vhk10

So says the Wikipedia article on Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. Bassoons? Does the writer of this realise what the chorus sopranos are asked to do?! This is a work where you can’t tell by looking at a vocal line whether it is for soloists or for chorus. Where when you get an F on the top line of the stave, you think ‘Ah, a nice low bit’.

So why am I letting myself in for it? Particularly when it involves yet more trips to Gloucester? The thing is that for some years I’ve realised that this is a huge gap in the works I’ve sung, and yet one that is hard to fill because the Missa Solemnis is not often performed, although at the moment it seems to be relatively popular. So when I found out Gloucester Choral Society were about to do it, I signed up. Not really knowing quite how I’d get on with the work, since I don’t particularly enjoy singing the Ninth Symphony, which is the closest thing to it, or even listening to the last movement of the Ninth.

So far so good. I’ve learnt that the high tessitura is only part of the difficulty – add in everchanging rhythms, tricky interaction with the soloists, large intervals and the huge fugues which end two of the movements. Furthermore, as with the Mahler 8 at 3 Choirs, we are using German pronunciation and I’m aware that Italian Latin is still passing my lips. For some reason it was easier to do this in the Mahler, perhaps because of the less familiar text or the proximity of actual German in the second movement.

This is a hard piece to get into and I know Beethovenians who really don’t understand it. At times we are back with straightforward choral writing that could come out of Haydn, and then other parts are (as with the Grande Messe des Morts) so advanced that one feels the musical world has yet to catch up with them. I can only really compare it to works like Gurrelieder in this respect. But it definitely beats the last movement of the Ninth.

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Lilies for William

Posted on September 25, 2016 by vhk10

Members of the Cathedral Chamber Choir reassembled a week later at St. Gabriel’s Church, Pimlico to remember William Wingate. William was a very long-standing member of the choir, who occasionally conducted it and sadly died recently before his time. Although we tended not to socialise together and our tastes in church music were quite distinct, I wanted to honour his memory by being part of the choir at this memorial event.

The programme can be found here. The Cathedral Chamber Choir offered two pieces, both with words by Henry Vaughan. Did Vaughan have a thing about lilies? Both texts mentioned them, appropriately enough in a church dedicated to the Archangel Gabriel. One was commissioned by William from Ronald Corp, The Revival; I recall singing in the premiere of this in Winchester Cathedral. The other was Welcome Sweet and Sacred Feast by Finzi. I have only sung this once before, and never with any other choir. It doesn’t seem to be programmed much, which is a shame, even if it is a rather rambling setting of quite a diffuse text.

The programme also included performances by the London Chorus and Voix de Vivre. I was particularly interested to hear James MacMillan’s The Gallant Weaver. new to me. We all joined forces for Vaughan Williams’ Let All the World and Parry’s Blest Pair of Sirens. The Parry has an unusual status in being proverbially a standard part of the choral repertoire, and yet these days not at all frequently encountered; as with the Finzi, I think I have only performed it once before. We gave enthusiastic performances of both to an audience of non-singing friends and relatives before sharing a meal.

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An alternative to the food festival

Posted on September 23, 2016 by vhk10

I was glad to revisit Lichfield with the Cathedral Chamber Choir as my last choir trip there, with another choir, was not a happy one and I wanted some fresher memories of the place. The choir room has been moved permanently to a building in the Close as too many choristers fell down the stairs.

No difficulty at the weekend getting a quick lunch, as there was a food festival on with stalls everywhere including on the green at the West end of the Cathedral. I should say, no difficulty if you wanted burgers or hot dogs – if you’d been a vegetarian you would have had to hunt around. I’m not sure the festival generated any extra members of the congregation though. Many of the choir stayed at the George Hotel whose bar does a special line in gin.

As to the music, I don’t think there was anything I’d never sung before, but Great is the Lord by Elgar comes round much less frequently than Give unto the Lord (I’m not sure why) and it was only the second time I’d ever sung it. Familiar pieces included Mozart’s Coronation Mass (solos done full and Benedictus abridged), the Byrd Short Service and James MacMillan’s A New Song. We revisited the very expansive set of responses by our Musical Director, Matthew O’Donovan. I hadn’t done Kelly in C for a few years and it seems to have gone out of fashion as you don’t see it so much on music lists. None of these were too strenuous at ‘Lichfield pitch’.

Meanwhile my husband went to hear the Jubilee Quartet play for the Bath Recital Artists’ Trust in a programme of Haydn, Schubert, Webern (Langsamer Satz) and Janáček (Intimate Letters), in the Masonic Hall. They were billed as all-female, but one was indisposed so there was a man playing; it was hard to tell whether this had affected the interpretations of this young, enthusiastic group.

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My Lord Mayor’s Chapel début

Posted on September 12, 2016 by vhk10

I joined the choir of St Mary’s Bathwick to sing at the Assumptiontide Festival of the C of E Catholic Societies in Bristol. Actually that is a bit inaccurate because so many of that choir were away that fewer than half the singers were from St Mary’s, the rest having been drafted in from outside.

First there was a Solemn Concelebrated Mass at the Cathedral, with movements from Byrd’s four-part setting. We sang all 10 (!) verses of Ye who own the faith of Jesus, a favourite hymn in its abridged version of the Catholic headmistress at my primary school. We must have sung it there at least once a fortnight. As yesterday, there was a mismatch between our verses and the congregation’s. Some less familiar hymns too, including one which I found myself singing for the first time while processing!

There was a less solemn moment: a huge crash during our offertory motet, Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin, as someone overlooked a DO NOT STAND ON THIS notice on a piece of staging, and it up-ended. The communion motet was Farrant’s O Sacrum Convivium which is actually a fitting of those words to Lord for thy tender mercy’s sake.

With barely a break we crossed the road to the Lord Mayor’s Chapel for vespers. I have been on the dep list here as long as John Marsh has been organist, and this was the first time I’d sung a service in the Chapel. We had the impression that the Chapel isn’t much used by visiting choirs. More Byrd (his Ave Verum) and a rather lovely setting, with moments of drama, of O salutaris hostia by Elgar in E flat. This is not the most familiar setting of these words by Elgar, but rather this one.

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introit vs anthem

Posted on September 9, 2016 by vhk10

I went along to hear a choir drawn from an RSCM course sing at Bath Abbey (they are resident at Kingswood School every year). Looked out for the distinctive cassocks of St. Ann’s Manchester (no one else wears that shade of purple) but didn’t see any in the large choir. I was pleased that the canticles were Gibbons’ Second Service, my favourite setting. I think that developing singers should be given a shot at some of the greatest pieces in the repertoire, and not necessarily play safe in the way that I rather associate with the RSCM.

An unusual feature of this service was that the introit was longer than the anthem! At least, it seemed to take longer to perform. There was also an amusing moment in the hymn ‘Glory be to Jesus’ when the choir had the seven verses in a different order from the congregation! I wasn’t aware there was a different order from the one I’m familiar with. At least it wasn’t ‘The Day Thou Gavest’ which has been done to death at weekday evensongs at the Abbey. Well done to all.

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