Building an audience (1): building relationships

Posted on September 3, 2014 by vhk10

This is a perennial problem for choirs, never more so than in these times when choral singing is popular but audiences may have watch their outlay.

My comments here are really about the Bath choral scene, which I know about both as audience member and performer. Many audience members seem to be very loyal to one particular choir, attending their concerts rather than others. One such person could easily be worth £100 a year to a choir, if they come to all the concerts and bring another audience member with them each time. If choirs can create such relationships and work on them, the effort of fund-raising would be significantly reduced.

And yet I don’t see much effort put into building these relationships, beyond setting up a mailing list here and there. For example, if choir members mix with audiences in the interval, they could look out for people they recognise and chat to them. It was one choir’s failure to do this that caused me to leave one of their concerts and not go back to any further ones. It’s such a simple thing to get right.

An obvious constituency to target is people who once sang in the choir, but now don’t, together with people who have expressed an interest in joining but don’t as yet sing with the choir. There are ways of wooing such people, for example by having a larger-scale concert and inviting some of them to take part, as Bath Camerata used to do on Good Friday. They will then be more likely to come to other concerts. Another very simple thing to get right is dealing with those who ask for auditions; a waiting list for auditions should be just that and lead to an audition. Probably the Paragon Singers have lost several hundred pounds over the years because I’ve not been inclined to go to one of their concerts while I’m still on such a list!

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Did the Chantry Singers leave a gap?

Posted on September 2, 2014 by vhk10

I realise it’s a few years since the Chantry Singers disbanded. The choir was flourishing right to the end, but the founder and musical director felt she had achieved what she wanted with it, and sensed that the market was more crowded with other choirs competing for singers and audience. I sang with it on and off, though I wasn’t with it right at the end, having become discouraged by realising that I was one of their most dispensible singers. Nevertheless, I have fond memories of the concerts in the Abbey and of the people I got to know in the choir.

How to win and retain an audience is a matter which is sufficiently complex to merit a separate post. But I’m not really sure which other choirs were competing for the same singers. There were some larger choirs (and it was at this time that the Minerva Choir raised its game). Smaller ones included Bath Camerata, Paragon Singers, Chandos Singers and A Handful of Singers (founded around the same time) – have I left one out? I’m not sure how large the Bath Cantata Group is. But there seems to be a gap now – no choir of 35 or so singers in Bath doing an orchestral concert once a year and a couple of other concerts.

I wonder if choirs of this sort of size are just difficult to support financially. I recall the demise of the Brandon Hill Singers who were very similar. We needed a full-size orchestra to do works like the German Requiem and that costs a lot of money, but without the bedrock of thousands of pounds that a full-size symphony chorus raises in subscriptions.

[January 2015: I was talking recently to a member of Bath Cantata Group, and I think this choir is moving towards occupying the Chantry Singers-shaped hole, under its new conductor Neil Moore. Although it’s unauditioned, it is taking on larger works in combination with other choirs.]

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The Assumption in Milan

Posted on September 1, 2014 by vhk10

I have been fortunate to be in Milan for some major festivals of the Church year, and this year we were there on the feast of the Assumption. I went to Vespers, which included a procession around the building for which we were all supplied with a large oil-fired candle. The congregation were allowed to join in the small male-voice choir in the music but I couldn’t because it was not printed out for us and I didn’t know it. Possibly the plainchant was local Ambrosian rite. The more recent music sounded 19th century and maybe if I’d been a traditionalist Catholic I might have recognised it. The liturgy was slick as usual.

We witnessed preparations for another festival, the Sienese Palio, and heard what sounded like football chants sung with varying degrees of harmony and musicality by groups of young people. We worked out that these must be supporters of the various contrade.

We stayed near Lucca, the birthplace of Puccini and Boccherini. We visited the museum in Puccini’s birthplace, full of memorabilia from his career, including a spectacular Turandot costume from the Met, and for some reason lots of stuff relating to Edgar. (N.B. don’t visit the ‘Butterfly’ café opposite, or if you must, don’t sit down! Occupying a table incurs a huge markup.) While in Santa Croce in Florence, I saw Rossini’s tomb; his body was moved there from Paris.

My daughter went to a performance of Madam Butterfly in Lucca and you can read about it in her blog.

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Peterborough pitch

Posted on August 24, 2014 by vhk10

There is a proposal to re-tune the organ at Peterborough Cathedral down to A=440. About a third of the necessary money had been raised when Robert Quinney landed the job at New College Oxford earlier this year, but when the Erleigh Cantors visited to sing for a weekend there was no mention of it by the precentor or on the displays about forthcoming projects at the Cathedral. (I was a little sorry that these proposals did not include the development of a proper choir rehearsal room which could be used by visiting choirs, like the new ones at several other Cathedrals; we rehearsed in a long, narrow and acoustically difficult room in the education centre.) For now, one just has to mentally re-tune when singing there.
[Jan 2015: the funds to re-tune the organ have now been raised. And the next project is a ‘Cathedral and Community Music School’ which I’d hope would include somewhere for visiting choirs to base themselves while at the Cathedral.]

There was one piece that went very high – Britten’s Te Deum in E, which I prefer to his other setting. We paired it with a piece I’d never sung – Mathias’ Jubilate. Actually it isn’t a liturgical Jubilate, but simply a setting of Psalm 100 (AV rather than Coverdale) without a Gloria. Another new piece to me was Gerald Knight’s Now the God of Peace, composed at the conclusion of the Second World War.

Our Mass setting was Cecilia McDowall’s Canterbury Mass. This had some decidedly awkward vocal lines and plenty of time-signature changes. There’s a mediaeval influence underneath it all. More contemporary church music in O Sacrum Convivium by Gabriel Jackson, the first piece I’ve sung by him. My vocal line was not very interesting but the piece set a good post-Communion reflective mood, in a Gorecki-like kind of way.

A new canticle setting for me was Parsons First Service. We debated long and hard about what pitch to sing this at – written pitch sent altos (and at times sopranos) plunging into the depths, but transposing it up distressed those with perfect pitch. Then there was the pitch adjustment required when our starting note came from the organ. Our copy was edited by Magnus Williamson, whom I remember playing the organ on a College choir tour years ago, and who is rather disarming about Parsons’ occasional ineptitude in part-writing. I can see why this setting doesn’t get too many outings – it is rather thick and heavy. Rather more competent Tudor polyphony could be found in Tomkins’ setting of When David heard, our anthem on the Saturday.

We ended our weekend with a big sing – Howells’ St Paul’s Service followed by Stanford’s 23rd Psalm – an old faithful which doesn’t come round very often.

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Singing to Barry Rose

Posted on August 20, 2014 by vhk10

I rejoined Birmingham Conservatoire Camerata for a concert in St Andrew’s Church, Cheddar later in the week. This was sacred and secular choral music loosely grouped by themes and interspersed with some solo items.

There were a couple of pieces I’d heard others perform but never sung myself before: MacMillan’s Strathclyde motet O Radiant Dawn and Barber’s To be sung on the water. We repeated some of the music we sang on Tuesday in Wells, and a piece written by one of our conductors for his wedding.

Most of the other pieces were classics of the repertoire such as Finzi’s God is Gone Up, Haydn’s Insanae et vanae curae, Bainton’s And I saw a new heaven. Secular pieces included Ireland’s The Hills and Elgar’s curious My love dwelt in a Northern land. Where do you suppose this land is meant to be? Scotland? Scandinavia? The beloved was female in the original poem, and I think must have changed sex so that the sopranos become the ones telling the story.

Much of this music took me right back to my own student days when I first encountered it. I don’t think I’ve sung Holst’s Turn Back, O Man since then. Holst in hobnailed boot mode, and with a text by someone whose inspiration ran out halfway though each line!

It was only over a drink at the end that I learned that Barry Rose, who has retired to a neighbouring village, had been in the audience.

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An upper-voice evensong

Posted on August 5, 2014 by vhk10

I don’t think I’d ever sung one of these before. In fact I don’t think I’d sung an upper-voice service since I was at school, though I have sung music for these forces in concerts, most notably in Turin.

I’d been invited (from several directions) to join the Birmingham Conservatoire Camerata on their visit to Wells Cathedral. I was available for their Tuesday evensong, joining five other singers.

The Canticles were a setting by Howard Skempton, written for Edinburgh. I found these tricky to learn until I realised that they seemed to be in the Lydian mode. They are entirely in unison, so no margin for error! The anthem set words from a psalm, by Yfat Soul Zisso, a student at the college, and this was its first performance. It was a tautly constructed piece featuring note clusters, like a lot of contemporary church music.

We sang the upper lines of some unfamiliar 5-part psalm chants. Another first – I sang the (plainchant) versicles and responses. Usually these are done by one of the clergy, or if by someone on the choir, someone in the back row.

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Wyvern Central

Posted on July 7, 2014 by vhk10

I didn’t get to sing in the Great Chorus but there was a reprise of two pieces that were performed at it: Zadok the Priest and the Hallelujah Chorus at the end-of-year Commemoration Service in Bath Abbey. This gathering must be the largest concentration of images of wyverns anywhere – these heraldic beasts are the school mascot and appear on blazers, ties and on the front of the order of service.

It all happened early on Saturday morning (so that we got out of the Abbey before the peak visiting hours). I filled in the second soprano part in Zadok, and because another singer missed the rehearsal and only found out she didn’t have the music for Hallelujah as we were about to sing it, I handed her my copy and did my Bristol Choral party piece of singing it from memory.

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my top 10 moments in the Grande Messe des Morts

Posted on July 3, 2014 by vhk10

@gloschor

I spent last Saturday rehearsing Berlioz’ Grande Messe des Morts in preparation for performances in the autumn. I’m still smitten by this piece and present my short list of favourite moments. N.B. I don’t want to imply that the rest of the Mass is no good, or that these are necessarily musically the best bits!

  • Bar 55 of the Kyrie. The first real climax of the work, and where you begin to get some idea of what you might be in for.
  • Bar 141 of the Dies Irae. The big guns finally arrive.
  • Bar 240 ‘Judicanti responsura’. After another huge climax, one of a number of quiet, simple closing passages in this work, with the trademark flattened seventh in the bass.
  • The second subject of the Lacrymosa. Berlioz got quite a bit of stick for this beautiful melody on the grounds of inappropriateness. But this is where you can pretend you’re singing Le Spectre de la Rose, until….
  • THAT chord at bar 179. Some years ago, a black hole way out in space was found to be playing a very, very low B flat. And here’s the greatest chord of B flat ever composed. This chord is, quite literally, cosmic.
  • Around bar 67 of the Offertory. Could this have inspired Wagner’s motif of Brünnhilde’s Pleading?
  • The key change on the tenor soloist’s first ‘Sabaoth’. Only a French composer could have written this.
  • Bar 70 of the Agnus Dei. This haunting passage for low voices takes a different turn from its previous occurrences.
  • The closing Amens. Berlioz finished the Mass in a hurry and put together the final movement largely out of music from the earlier ones, with this little coda. (In fact he needn’t actually have bothered setting ‘Amen’ at all as it doesn’t occur in the text of the Requiem Mass at this point.) But when he revised the work he didn’t recompose this bit, so he must have been satisfied with it.

If you’ve been counting, you’ll realise that my list has only nine items. There are a number of possibilities for the tenth one – I’ll wait until I’ve heard an orchestra playing the music, which may make the choice easier, or indeed suggest alternatives.
[And having performed it, I know what to nominate for no. 10 – the interrupted cadence at bar 95 of the Rex tremendae.]

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the frivolous time of year

Posted on June 26, 2014 by vhk10

At this season the music I’m asked to sing tends to lighten up a bit. First up was Rossini’s Messe Solennelle with Bristol Choral Society – the first time I’d performed with them in Bristol Cathedral, so there was new routine to get used to. I’d owned a score of this piece for years – the Cambridge Chamber Group were going to do it and we all bought our scores at a discount from the Cambridge Music Shop, then the performance never happened. This was my first chance to perform it since then.

It resembles his Stabat Mater in that the chorus parts are pretty straightforward, except that Rossini felt a need to put in a fugue, or in this case two, which consumed the lion’s share of rehearsal time. There is also one of the longest waits I know of for chorus while we enjoy listening to the soloists.

A week later there was a wedding at church, the first I’ve sung there. We sang Rutter’s For the beauty of the earth, which is not as easy as it might sound because it has syncopated rhythms which must be snappy, and the inevitable Jesu, joy of Man’s desiring. The words of this really are twaddle and don’t translate the German of Bach’s cantata (no Lutheran would write anything that vacuous). Nor did Bach make the mistake of setting two verses one after the other – in the cantata they are separate movements. This hardly matters as we sang it into the backs of the heads of the wedding party who were signing the register on the altar, and who doubtless were not paying attention to the words.

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At the enthronement

Posted on June 23, 2014 by vhk10

(adapted from an article written for my church magazine)

On June 7th I attended the ‘installation’ (rather as if he were a boiler or a modern artwork) of Peter Hancock as Bishop of Bath and Wells. The doors of Wells Cathedral opened at 1 o’clock, the building filled up almost immediately and we did not emerge for another three hours!

Before the service proper began, various groups of people filed into the building at five-minute intervals, while we heard music from the organist and a brass ensemble. In fact this was the same ensemble I heard at the Bath Festival, and they did some of the same pieces, including O vos omnes by Gesualdo. Another piece of rather dubious relevance to the occasion was an arrangement of Weep, O mine eyes by Wilbye. After a mandate from the Archbishop of Canterbury had been read out, the action really began when the Bishop struck the West door three times with his staff. On being asked by a child ‘Who are you and why are you here?’ he answered ‘I am Peter, a pilgrim and servant of Jesus Christ and I come as one seeking the grace of God…’ and was let in.

Bishop Peter had to declare his assent to the faith of the Church of England and his allegiance to the Queen and the Archbishop, before he was anointed on his forehead and hands, given his ring, robes, mitre and pectoral cross, and set on his throne. The Bishop was then presented to various local representatives. The Lord Lieutenant of Somerset greeted him with the hope that he would be happy in his new home in Wells, which drew a spontaneous round of applause. (I noticed also that the anthem ‘I was glad’ contained the line ‘Plenteousness within thy palaces’!)* He was then officially presented to the congregation.

In the final part of the service Bishop Peter’s ministry began with prayers, Bible readings and his first sermon as Bishop. The sermon centred on Jesus’ commissioning of seventy disciples in the Gospel reading, and Bishop Peter’s role as a catalyst for discipleship in his Diocese. It’s clear that he is going to encourage lay involvement in the Church – nothing new to us, but perhaps a consequence of reduced clergy numbers?

It may sound as if the congregation had little part in the service, but we were able to acclaim and welcome our new Bishop and there were no fewer than seven hymns to sing. These included ‘At the name of Jesus’ (to the 60s tune ‘Camberwell’ which some of us remember from school), ‘Guide me O Thou great Redeemer’ and that evangelical favourite ‘And can it be?’.

As you might expect from Wells, the music was of a very high standard. There were two new anthems, one a setting of (inevitably) Tu es Petrus by Jeremy Woodside which musically speaking did what it said on the tin, the other a rather more complex and demanding setting by Robert Walker of words by the Indian mystic Kabir. During the latter piece a pupil from The Blue School danced a ballet routine, largely en pointe. The enthronement was celebrated with William Walton’s ‘Coronation Te Deum’.

My church was well represented with seven of our congregation there. After the service we were offered tea and cake outside on the Cathedral Green before dispersing.

[There had at one point been a proposal – dropped after protests – to accommodate the Bishop outside Wells rather than in the Bishop’s Palace]

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Trwy’r anialwch

Posted on June 10, 2014 by vhk10

One of the most famous poetic evocations of the Israelites’ journey through the wilderness is in Welsh (look in your hymnbook). So it seemed appropriate to see Moses und Aron in Cardiff, complete with Welsh surtitles. Really though I was forced to do so because Welsh National Opera weren’t taking the production to Bristol.

The production has had mixed reviews, and certainly the first act seemed awkwardly staged in some sort of lecture theatre. The large chorus (60+) didn’t have room to to move around, and as they picked up chairs at the end I was reminded of the close of staff meetings at work. Furthermore, the references to Moses and Aron approaching from far away didn’t work. In the second act the Golden Calf was replaced by a film, supposedly projected where the audience were sitting. We found this worked rather better; there are no references in the libretto to the precise shape of the image, but plenty to its illusory nature. Some reviews likened the setting to the Arab Spring, although the production is a few years earlier.

At the root of it all though is the question: just what is the opera about? Is it specifically religious, or is it saying something more general? What is the effect of omitting the Egyptians (who never appear) and barely referring to the patriarchs of Genesis, so that God’s relationship with Israel seems to start with Moses? If Moses somehow represents Schoenberg himself, who is Aron? Adolf Hitler and Alban Berg seem to be the main candidates. The latter interpretation is not going to endear the opera to Berg enthusiasts, but it is hard to dismiss completely the idea that it examines the artistic relationship between Schoenberg and his pupil, strained by Berg’s reluctance to abandon keys completely (I have a theory that at one level Lulu is also about this relationship, but won’t go into it here). As the naked virgins line up to be sacrificed, you feel like saying ‘Do lighten up a bit – it’s just some tonality!’ This interpretation does offer an explanation for Schoenberg’s failure to complete the opera. In the third act Moses denounces Aron, who drops down dead, and this could have become impossible to set after Berg died in 1935. On the other hand, Schoenberg had known problems with finishing lengthy works, and his Act 3 libretto is undramatic.

If Schoenberg depicted himself as as the inarticulate Moses, he did himself a disservice, since his writings in German and English are clear and elegant.

Performance-wise, everything seem to be in place and the orchestra and chorus played and sang superbly, with the orchestral detail coming over nicely in the Millennium Centre’s acoustic. Aron was sung by Mark le Brocq, with whom I used to sing in the Cambridge Taverner Choir. One could not tell that he was standing in for Rainer Trost, as he appeared completely comfortable with both the vocal and staging demands of the role. Moses was Sir John Tomlinson, who delivered his lines with great feeling and often lying or sitting down.

Hear for yourself on Radio 3 on Monday 17 June. I don’t know which performance this was recorded at, but Mark le Brocq is singing in it.

Reviews:

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after the 2014 Festival

Posted on June 5, 2014 by vhk10

@KirstenTElliott

The Bath International Music Festival has been and gone, Alasdair Nicolson’s second and last as Artistic Director. I have been told a fair amount about the last couple of festivals by several people closely involved, but should not repeat it here. However, at a time of change I will say that I think some of the Festival’s problems are a few years old. In 2010 the Festival was scaled back, not just in time and number of events, but also by focusing on classical music. A number of regular features of the Festival were dropped – for example, the local historian Kirsten Elliott’s walking tours of Bath. These weren’t a huge money-spinner, but cost very little to put on – no venue hire, just Kirsten’s fee – and tended to sell out. They can’t have been axed on economic grounds.

The tours are running again, but are now part of the Bath Literature Festival. And that I think is part of the problem – that the International Music Festival has been overtaken by other festivals in Bath which go on longer and have more events, and is having to compete with them for Council and other funding. It has I fear rather rested on its laurels and given up its primacy without realising it.

[October 2014: We were promised news of the 2015 Festival soon after 2014’s ended, but nothing yet, not even dates (I discount a web page which seems to think it’s going to be in March!). This doesn’t look good.]

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