Call me Al (1): my Assembly Rooms début

Posted on March 30, 2016 by vhk10

A couple of years ago I missed the chance to sing Zimbe! with Bristol Choral Society, as I was doing my bit for mixing musical culture across continents by singing Messiah in India. But it caught up with me, as my elder children’s school put it on and invited parents to join the chorus.

We were in the Assembly Rooms which was a first for me, as although I’ve been to many concerts there, I have never before performed there myself. Few amateur groups do, though I think Bath Minerva Choir did so a few years ago and Bath Baroque (when it existed) did too. The acoustic is as pleasantly clear from the stage as in the audience.

The composer, Alexander l’Estrange is a Mertonian, and I said hello. Zimbe! arranges songs from around Africa, almost all new to me, for forces including choir, semi-chorus, children’s chorus and jazz quintet. Some of the challenge of learning it is working out what to sing next, as there are numerous repeated passages. But the rewards are some ridiculously catchy tunes. Years ago I heard a news item about South African workers travelling from the townships to work by train, and how they passed the journey singing in harmony, and I tried to capture some of that spirit.

Our capacity audience gave us an enthusiastic reception, and our encore was a large chunk of the latter part of the piece. I’d like to think I made a good impression on our conductor [April: sadly this has proved to be a fleeting one as he has now left the school, so it was his farewell performance]. On to another cantata by the same composer a week later.

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The Bath Knot

Posted on March 26, 2016 by vhk10

Not a way of tying a dressing gown, but a branch of the The Ancient and Most Benevolent Order of Friendly Brothers of St. Patrick. They hold a service on the Tuesday nearest to St. Patrick’s Day and I was recruited to join the choir in the chapel of St John’s Hospital (an ancient foundation, now sheltered housing) where I’d never sung before. It was the first time in a while that I’d sung a service from a west gallery. It was good old traditional Church of England Mattins, with Anglican chants and, at the climax, St Patrick’s Breastplate (all verses) sung to the music of Thomas R. Gonsalvez Jozé. I’d never encountered this setting before, and it’s been generally supplanted by Stanford’s (or simplified versions of it), but it’s the one the Bath Knot always sings.

A variety of Orders like this exist quietly, for charitable reasons and as a source of social events (and a chance to wear regalia!) I encountered one at Winchester Cathedral a few years ago; a Roman Catholic organisation holding an unadvertised service in a side chapel and firmly all-male, in fact seeming to consist of the sort of man who finds any woman threatening. The Friendly Brothers of St. Patrick, however, include sisters, although from the sound of them I would guess few members had grown up in Ireland. Afterwards we all enjoyed some craic over wine and canapés.

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the Evangelist jinx

Posted on March 22, 2016 by vhk10

I wonder whether I should be allowed to sing the St Matthew Passion at all, given that I seem to bring illness with me when I perform it. The first time I did so, the Evangelist was unwell and his part had to be spoken. (This wasn’t a huge disaster as it was a ‘come and sing’ performance with organ.) The second time a member of the audience was taken ill and the interval was extended so that medical attention could reach them. This time our soprano and alto soloists were both replaced due to illness. Then the Evangelist, Rufus Müller, got food poisoning and only joined us late on in the final rehearsal. Our other three soloists were fortunately unscathed. I’ll single out the baritone soloist, Dominic Sedgwick, not so much for singing superbly (though he did), but because with a name like that we must share a distant ancestor somewhere along the line.

Actually I’ve done very little JS Bach for several years, apart from a motet a few years ago. This was also the first time I’d sung this work in German. It had been a busy day for me, beginning with an installation service for our new priest-in-charge including among other things two meaty descants and Bruckner’s Christus factus est. After this and a rapid journey by foot and train from Bath to Colston Hall, I needed to keep something in reserve for the concert. For some of the venom necessary in the turba parts, I drew on the description of the crowd in Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary, which I’d read earlier that week.

Our orchestra was Music for Awhile, who brought a fine array of baroque instruments with them; I was at the front, just behind the harpsichord and with a good view of the other instruments. As well as the more common oboi d’amore, there were two oboi da caccia. I don’t think I’d even seen an oboe da caccia before, let alone taken part in a performance with one!

I don’t usually do this, but I’m going to compare this performance directly to the Bath Abbey one. There was something to be said for each of them; the Chorus Angelorum one had the English Chamber Orchestra, a team of big-name soloists, and a small individually selected chorus. The BCS one was in German and had the authentic instruments and the extra power and weight you get from a large chorus.

I’ll end by expressing the hope that I get to do the St John Passion again before too long [I did – the following year]. I have sung this only once, when I was a student. I think that if the St Matthew Passion didn’t exist we’d really recognise the greatness of the St John. I love the angst in its chromatic chorale harmonisations – and for me it has one of the greatest endings of any musical work.

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Baroque pitch

Posted on March 22, 2016 by vhk10

Our performance of the St Matthew Passion was at ‘baroque pitch’ i.e. a semitone low. I found this hard to get used to, and have been trying to work out why, given that in 2012 and 2013 I performed Messiah at baroque pitch without being at all bothered. Apart from that almost everything I’ve sung recently has been at A=440.

Is it that I am more familiar with the Messiah, use the score less (and in performance not at all), so there is no ‘travel sickness’ from seeing notes that aren’t the ones I’m singing? Was it because that I learned the Passion a few years ago in a very physically engaged way, and so there is a physical memory of what the notes feel like? Is it because I’ve done more performances of the Handel at baroque pitch (although I struggle to think which of the 20-odd I’ve sung these would have been)? Or has my sense of pitch got keener in the last couple of years (there’s some evidence for this)?

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rejecting the proof reader

Posted on March 9, 2016 by vhk10

Last year I was approached by a proof reader offering me their services (assisted by a special app which speeded up the process). As a sample of what they and their app could do, they pointed out a couple of errors which they believed they’d found.

Now I think this service could genuinely be useful to people who have great difficulty writing accurate English, and on sites where accuracy really matters, so I don’t wish to disparage it. I’m willing to pass on details of this proof-reader on request. But their services aren’t needed here. Here is my reply (which went unanswered!):

    Dear [proof reader],

    Thank you for pointing out typos found by your app on my web site, (www.virginiaknight.org.uk/vhkssinging) and for offering your services as a proof reader.

    Arrangments was indeed a typo, and I’ve corrected it. But hostes is correct. It’s part of a Latin sentence meaning ‘Lord, how many are my enemies’, and the title of a stunningly beautiful and dramatic anthem by Purcell (as it’s a title, I italicised it). As someone with a PhD in Classics I am very unlikely to make mistakes when quoting Latin (which my blog frequently does, because much of the music I sing is in Latin).

    My blog is written for the entertainment of myself and others, rather than for profit, and my regular readers are willing to tolerate a few mistakes along the way. I frequently revisit what I wrote and correct or amend it at a later date – I’m currently doing this in conjunction with adding tags to the entries. So I don’t think I will take advantage of your offer, but pass on the message to others.

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three recordings of the St Matthew Passion

Posted on March 8, 2016 by vhk10

I’ve been preparing for a performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, the first I’ve sung in for nearly ten years, and only the third I’ve ever been involved in. I know the notes of my part thoroughly as they were drilled firmly in last time, but there are major differences in the forthcoming performance. Firstly, I have a very physical memory of where the notes are at modern pitch, but this performance will be at baroque pitch. Secondly, it’s auf Deutsch.

We have three recordings of this work. Firstly, the venerable Klemperer one on LP. This was one of the few LPs I did not transfer to CD, as I couldn’t imagine myself setting aside the 4 hours to listen to it. The memorable moment is perhaps when Peter Pears sings of Peter’s reaction to hearing the cock crow, and it sounds just like Britten.

On hearing of Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s death last weekend, I whipped out our recording of him conducting the Passion (the later of the two recordings) and played it. This was helpful, although I have some reservations; the chorus don’t always sound very involved or (in the crowd scenes) nasty. And while their choral ensemble in Sehet, Jesus hat die Hand is fine, it isn’t keeping the same time as the rest of the performers. Bernarda Fink is just too histrionic for me.

Our third recording is by John Butt and the Dunedin Consort. I have memories of singing for John while at Cambridge (if you’ve been conducted by him, you tend to remember it) but haven’t listened to this recording for a while so don’t want to risk comparing it to Harnoncourt here and now.

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the Scottish opera

Posted on March 7, 2016 by vhk10

I went to Bath Opera again to see Macbeth, encouraged by a friend in the chorus. As last year, I left it to the last minute but they hadn’t sold out, so I was sold a seat in a block tucked between the main part of the stage and a catwalk-like projection down the middle of the auditorium. Although these seats hadn’t sold in large numbers in advance, several people who liked their opera in the round moved down into them at the interval. (Those in them also got their own personal bow from the cast.)

The programme didn’t say which version of Macbeth we were getting, but it was the later revision, shorn of various bits of dance music. Bravo to all performers and others involved!

Shakespeare’s play was a school set text for me (twice) and so remained in my mind throughout as a point of comparison. Lady M in Verdi’s version is rather more of a sensualist (I can’t imagine Shakespeare’s leading the company in a drinking song). Small groups of people (Banquo’s murderers, the witches) get expanded into a chorus. Famous speeches survive in attenuated form (‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’ is represented just by its last couple of lines). And as well as Shakespeare’s play one senses bel canto opera being transformed into something new.

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the sun but not the moon

Posted on February 24, 2016 by vhk10

For the first time in ages I went to evensong at Bath Abbey, sung by a visiting choir in residence for the weekend, in this case the University of Bristol Church Choir. They proved to be one of the better such choirs I’ve heard at the Abbey, with nice tone, balance and tuning. I felt they could have afforded to be more ambitious in their choice of music and the quality of performance would not have suffered. It was also good to see a (clergy) friend in the congregation, so I could sit with someone who was participating fully. But there were three things that stopped this service from being an uplifting occasion.

Firstly, it was sad only to be given 8 verses of Ps. 136 for the psalmody. Why could this more than competent choir not have sung the whole psalm? It’s not particularly long and the rest of it doesn’t say anything nasty. As it was, it stopped abruptly, so much so that God was praised for creating the sun, but never got round to the moon or the stars. Evensong just isn’t evensong if there’s only a handful of verses from an abridged psalm. It’s patronising to the congregation to assume that people can’t handle listening to 20-odd verses of Anglican chant, and the psalms are complete poems and should be treated as such (OK, apart from 119).

I also winced when the hymn was announced. I’d been expecting a seasonal hymn, suitable for the first week of Lent, but we got The day Thou gavest. I hope we haven’t returned to the days when this hymn was relentlessly sung at Saturday evensong at Bath Abbey throughout the liturgical year, without thought for the regular worshippers at this service (there are some). My patience with it ran out long ago as a result.

Finally – I suspect this was not intentional, but the continuous video showcasing the Abbey’s activities in the North transept wasn’t turned off during the service, even though there was no one there to watch it. It was distracting to have it flickering at the edge of my vision, although I managed to shift slightly so that someone in the pew in front blocked my view of it.

I have the impression that the service music for these Saturday evensongs is carefully planned, and the psalmody and hymnody neglected. But they are all part of the act of worship and should be chosen with the same care as the rest of the music.

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Bath loses a music shop – again

Posted on February 19, 2016 by vhk10

After a little over three years, Music Dynamics in Broad St has closed, as the parent company has gone into administration. I didn’t find it quite as useful as it ought to have been. As with its predecessor, Duck Son & Pinker, the staff weren’t thoroughly familiar with their field – as I found out when I asked about a Flanders & Swann songbook and was asked ‘Who is it by?’ And ordering music was very laborious; it took a week to arrive and when I called in to collect it the staff couldn’t find it. For music costing over £10, Blackwell’s will waive postage costs and get it to you in a couple of days.

At the time the shop opened, there was an instrument shop, Sounds International, in Monmouth Place, but Bath couldn’t really support two of them, so it closed a couple of years ago. Now there aren’t any.

[July 2016] Sharps and Flats, which was mostly a gift shop but did stock a limited range of sheet music, has now closed so Bath is now without a music shop of any kind.

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The Sea Symphony (2): Cardiff

Posted on February 17, 2016 by vhk10

Our third performance of the Sea Symphony was at St David’s Hall in Cardiff. I hope our diction came over well because the audience (who’d chosen us in preference to Ireland v Wales in the rugby) weren’t able to get programmes. Here are some thoughts on the actual music.

The programme was the same for each of the three concerts. Firstly the Wasps overture, composed for a performance of Aristophanes’ play in Cambridge. I’ve been to a few Cambridge Greek plays, and while the incidental music for them has usually done the job, the days when a major composer might write it are long gone. Did the Classical Drama Society use up a large chunk of their budget commissioning a score from VW? Or was this particular play very lavishly funded? Or did Vaughan Williams charge students a reduced fee? I do wonder whether the overture was already written or thought out, and when the commission arrived the ‘buzzing’ introduction was added, because the overture’s wasps are much less persistent than real ones and you don’t hear them afterwards.

Mark van de Wiel was the in-house soloist in Finzi’s Clarinet Concerto with the Philharmonia string section. I didn’t know this piece and like much of Finzi it had considerably more drama and darkness than he’s usually given credit for, at least in the first two movements. I’m not sure whether I was meant to think this, but some of the strings-only passages reminded me of Shostakovich!

Having got to know it, I still have rather mixed feelings about the Sea Symphony. The second movement is sublime, with a grand summing up near the end (I was reminded of Vaughan Williams’ anthem Lord, Thou hast been our refuge). But I find the first and last movements a bit diffuse. Maybe the problem is that I’m very unfamiliar with Vaughan Williams’ orchestral works and haven’t worked out yet how to listen to them. I was one of the semi-chorus (which sang two phrases in the 4th movement) in the Cardiff and Basingstoke performances (what was it with VW and groups of 16 singers?).

Review of the Cardiff performance

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The Sea Symphony (1): Basingstoke and London

Posted on January 31, 2016 by vhk10

The first two of Bristol (+ Gloucester) Choral Society’s three outings with the Philharmonia Orchestra, John Wilson and the Sea Symphony were to the Anvil, Basingstoke, and to the Royal Festival Hall, where we were joined by Philharmonia Voices. I’ll put thoughts on the programme itself in another article after the last performance, in Cardiff.

The Anvil had not been built when I was growing up a few miles away. It’s named because of its pointy shape (on the outside), which also resembles the prow of a ship, so appropriate to this programme. Inside, the ovoid shape and reddish walls of the hall give it a rather womb-like feel. It has the disadvantage that there doesn’t appear to be anywhere sensible to eat very near by; I believe such places do exist in Basingstoke but they are right over the other side of the town centre.

We spent the night at the Thistle Hotel at Heathrow. Given the timings, this really was just a bed for the night and breakfast in the morning, the latter being enlivened by a panoramic view of my parents’ former workplace.

We had plenty of time to listen to the Philharmonia in rehearsal, much of which I spent admiring the beautiful matching pair of harps. Later got into a Twitter conversation with one of the harpists (learning that the Sea Symphony has a fiendish harp part); as orchestral musicians go, harpists seem to be among the chattier ones (is it because they get a bit lonely with all the extra time on stage tuning up?)

There were several reviews, though none in the morning papers, which review far fewer individual concerts than they did even a few years ago:

Anvil:
The Classical Source

RFH:
Bachtrack
The Arts Desk
The Classical Source
Evening Standard

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Complicated things with jabots

Posted on January 30, 2016 by vhk10

Not being sure about my future with Priory Voices, I have been looking at other similar choirs and joined one, the Harsnett Choir, for a weekend of services in Wells. I’d been on their mailing list for a few years and shown an interest in one or two of their other Cathedral visits, but their numbers are strictly controlled (I was only able to take part because one of the usual sopranos volunteered to sing alto) and this was my first time actually singing with them. This weekend was, I think, the fourth time in my life I’ve worn a surplice and this is one of the choirs that does complicated things with jabots.

There were some pieces which were new to me. Somehow I’ve managed to avoid singing Stanford’s Te Deum and Jubilate in C. Not just because Matins is rare these days, as I probably sing it a couple of times a year at least and I’d have expected to have encountered this setting by now. We sang all of Palestrina’s Sicut Cervus (I hadn’t realised there was more of it than just the first part). I hadn’t previously come across a Mass setting by Healey Willan, which I’d guess was one of his early works (incidentally, are there any other church music composers with a public park named after them?). We sang a Magnificat on the Fifth tone by Cima; for a truly bizarre YouTube video of this piece see here. There were also a couple of pieces written specifically for this choir.

I didn’t sing in Wells last year and took time to notice that it has a good line in three-dimensional altar frontals.

I wasn’t in the best of voice – I’d had a cough in the New Year and it was brought on again by spending several hours in the rehearsal room with all the windows open – but managed to complete the weekend without any mishaps.

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