classical music on YouTube

Posted on February 9, 2010 by vhk10

From time to time it’s recommended that I get to learn a particular piece by watching a video of it in performance on YouTube. I’ve tried this but it doesn’t really work for me, for various reasons. One is that I tend to get distracted by the visuals and pay less attention to what I hear than if it were sound only. The sound also tends to be of poor quality.

But the real problem I have is that inevitably I see the comments, and these are all too often inane denials of the beauty and value of the piece of music in the video. It’s saddening to read such dismissive comments on a particularly fine composition, given without any reasoning. And this happened most recently to me with Berlioz! I haven’t dared try looking to see what the commenters have to say about some of my favourite bits of the 20th-century repertoire …

In my experience online reviewers of books (on Amazon, say, or the Visual Bookshelf application in Facebook) at least say what it is they dislike about the work in question and have apparently engaged the brain before typing. Why is YouTube different? I suppose it is because the book reviewer has at least put in the effort to read the book, or a significant part of it. The YouTube reviewer has just looked at a few minutes of video.

Looking at YouTube again, there seems to be a way of displaying only very positive comments which is perhaps what I need, the drawback being that I lose comments which are less than very positive, but intelligently so.

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Facebook events

Posted on February 5, 2010 by vhk10

I have recently set up my next performance as a Facebook event. It’s the Grande Messe des Morts by Berlioz in Colston Hall, Bristol, on Saturday February 13th at 7.30 p.m., performed by the South West Festival Chorus and Birmingham Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Jason Thornton with Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts as tenor soloist and Gavin Carr as chorus master.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=319863580358&ref=mf
http://www.colstonhall.org/whatson/Event1260

I can invite my Facebook friends to this event, and they can in turn invite others; it’s completely open. But the facility to browse events is essentially useless. The most focussed you can get is to browse all musical concerts, and of course there are a multitude of those. It used to be possible (say) to see ‘What’s on in Bristol’ on a given night and be shown a list of public Facebook events in that place that night but you can’t do this now (I suspect it went when networks were dropped). I once created minor trouble by setting up an event which had admission by pre-booked ticket to an invited audience, in order to find out who else was going to it. Tickets weren’t checked on the door, and several people came along having found out via Facebook about the distinguished performers and got in free. I’m not terribly sorry about this, as there was space enough for everyone.

Returning to my Berlioz concert, the event doesn’t show up on Facebook searches. This means I can’t tell members of the choir how to get hold of it and advertise it to Facebook friends – only those who are my FB friends, or who have been invited by them, are going to come across the page. This strikes me as a serious flaw.

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an apology to commenters

Posted on February 1, 2010 by vhk10

I was recently contacted by someone who’d tried and failed to post a comment on one of my blog articles. It turned out that his comment had, for no very obvious reason, been classified as spam. As I haven’t had any previous false positives for spam here before, I was no longer bothering to check the spam queue for them. To my knowledge no other messages have failed to get through, but I had noticed that I’d received few comments recently.

When you post a comment you should see the article you’re replying to, existing comments, and your comment, with a note that your comment will appear after moderation.* If you don’t get that (and, of course, you’re not a spammer) then it’s worth emailing me saying which article you were replying to and I’ll investigate.

I use the Akismet plugin to catch spam and, as I say, until now it’s been very good at doing so. I will look at the spam queue from time to time though, just in case. Unfortunately, I can’t tell on what grounds a particular message is designated as spam, or adjust the software myself in any way, except for removing the plugin which would flood me with spam. The software lives on WordPress’s server; this blog used to be kept on a server local to me but the volume of spam directed at it put a strain on it as it was not intended for high traffic.

* I admit most non-spam comments exactly as submitted. There have been a few genuine comments which I have not let through, or which I have withdrawn, if they have seemed to cross the line from fair comment into unsupported and unverifiable attacks on particular people or organisations. Merely disagreeing with me is a different matter. I once edited an otherwise unobjectionable comment to remove a personal telephone number.

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getting classical ringtones

Posted on January 25, 2010 by vhk10

My daughter now has a mobile phone and wants a piece of classical music to use as a ringtone. I’ve been looking at various sites but found the selection rather limited, unless you go for a converted MP3 file from a site like this. I don’t have much confidence that the result would make a good ringtone, or indeed that the phone could handle ringtones in true tone format (it came with minimal documentation). The best selection I’ve found so far is at Boosey and Hawkes, though it’s still not very extensive. (To give an example: the Strauss family are represented only by the Blue Danube and Radetsky March.) Have I missed something?

I can of course write one for her and turn it into a MIDI file, using the process described here.

Meanwhile, I’m very sorry that Contemporary Classical Internet Radio has apparently gone off air. I used to listen to it quite regularly when online (except when it was playing Xenakis).

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booking St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey

Posted on January 12, 2010 by vhk10

I’ve been making enquiries about taking a visiting choir to sing services at St. Paul’s or Westminster Abbey. We used to be regular visitors, and indeed the Abbey and St. Paul’s would sometimes turn to us if they found they needed a visiting choir for forthcoming services. But we haven’t been for a few years now, so I’m restarting the process.

I don’t know how the choir applied originally to sing, but the process at both places is now more formal than elsewhere, with forms to fill in, and in the case of St. Paul’s an optional recommendation from someone well-known in the world of church music is requested. This is a little hard for us to supply; when we visit cathedrals, the director of music is inevitably usually away, and we are heard by the cathedral clergy but not by the music professionals.

I sense that there are now rather more choirs in this market than before. While not all of them can take over a remote cathedral for a week, a day or two in central London is easy to manage and desirable, so there is more competition. I will report back on the outcome of our applications.

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how to leave people out

Posted on January 4, 2010 by vhk10

Sometimes it might be necessary to scale down the size of a choir slightly for a particular performance, because of the music being performed or the venue. The thoughts in this post result from reflections on one occasion when a choir (now not in existence) did this. It wasn’t handled very well; five singers (from about 35) were left out of one concert, and along with it denied the chance to appear in a choir photo which was then used in publicity for some years afterwards. They weren’t given a reason or indeed even told that they weren’t singing (just not sent the music), and all of them left the choir within the next year or so.

Ideally, you want an approach that will:

a) result in a good performance
b) not cause singers to leave the choir or resent being left out. (Unless you would rather the omitted singers left – but in that case what are they doing in the choir at all?)

So how to do it?
Leave out the least capable singers. This is what you will be assumed to be doing, unless you indicate otherwise. It will achieve a), but you must be prepared to lose the omitted singers. And it must be done using this as the only criterion for omission, or it will look like favouritism.

Leave out the people who have joined the choir most recently. This will leave people who are most used to working as a group, but the omitted singers will be the ones whose loyalty to the choir is weakest, so you are more likely to lose them.

Leave out those who have missed most rehearsals for recent concerts. This may lose some good singers, and if the choir is strict about attendance, there may still be decisions to be made about who to leave out. But it is fair, and an incentive to attendance!

Leave out those who haven’t done extra service for the choir. E.g. those who haven’t been on the committee or sold lots of tickets. This may inadvertently penalise those who’ve joined recently (see above) or who have genuine reasons for not being able to do much beyond attending rehearsals, such as being a carer or having to travel a long distance; these may actually be among the most dedicated members of the choir. And it’s not necessarily good from the point of view of a).

Leave out those who will mind least. Oh dear! How do you know who these are? Unless you have people who have said to you that they don’t want to sing every concert, don’t try this. Apart from anything else, if it’s suspected that you omit the meek, it will encourage choir members to be bolshy.

Choose who to leave out by drawing lots. This is fairest, but needs a good choir where no singers are indispensible. Again, if you do this, tell the choir you are doing it and why. Risks a) but avoids b) completely.

Who is not available? No point in leaving anyone out if some are not free to do the concert anyway. But the singers themselves must confirm availability. Don’t assume they are not free because (say) you have heard from someone else that they are making a trip abroad during the rehearsal period.

Do you have to reduce numbers at all? Is it worth hurting some people to achieve precisely the right sound? Or to put it another way, will having a few more singers than the ideal number really wreck the concert?

Should everyone sing everything in the concert? If the concert contains more than one piece, why not use some singers in just one part or the other? This spreads the burden of omission more widely, instead of laying it on only a few, and everyone can be included in at least part of the performance. If some don’t like this, they can deselect themselves.

If there’s no alternative to leaving people out, minimise the amount they are left out from. Do not attach anything such as a choir photo or a party to the concert, from which the omitted singers will also be excluded. It might also help to do something else to retain the loyalty of the people who have been left out. Tell them apologetically that they won’t be singing in the concert – don’t leave it for them to work it out for themselves – and consider using them in some other way, such as doing an item with a smaller group in a future concert and including them in that group.

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the singing revival

Posted on December 31, 2009 by vhk10

There’s been a lot of media interest recently in a national revival in singing. How has this affected me? When you look at where this revival is taking place, it’s mostly in the unauditioned sector, and though this isn’t where I usually operate, it may have an impact on choirs such as the South West Festival Chorus or on ‘come and sing’ day events, which I do sometimes join. I’d like to think also that if more people are trying out their voices, that more basses and tenors might be discovered. They’re out there; I once heard a College director of music say that he could hear that some of the men who read lessons in his chapel would have excellent voices, if only they thought of trying singing.

Rather surprising in the light of this is that competition for singers in Bath has apparently got hotter in recent years, with some choirs having difficulty getting members to be sufficiently committed to them. One is planning to wind up in 2010.

Is it that there are more choirs competing for the same singers? (as for example happened in Bristol a few years ago, causing the demise of the Brandon Hill Singers.) The only newcomers on the scene are Chorus Angelorum and A Handful of Singers, both of which only perform occasionally (neither to my knowledge gave a concert this last autumn).

I suspect that the shortage of singers may be in the lower voices as sopranos are almost invariably the strongest section (I used to be in one choir in Bath where this was the case, and left realising that my own contribution didn’t count for very much).

I wonder also whether choirs are requiring more commitment, and perhaps people are just busier, and so individual singers who might once have sung in two are now confining themselves to one, thereby reducing the pool available. I’m not sure this is a bad thing, having seen the effects of a large overlap between choirs in the previous place I lived in (it effectively excluded too many competent singers from singing in a small choir at all).

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2009 and 2010’s resolutions

Posted on December 31, 2009 by vhk10

I have to admit that 2009 was a quieter year than I’d have liked on the vocal front. There were some highlights: I revisited Spem in Alium for the first time in a long while, and though between New Year and October I made fewer and shorter Cathedral visits than usual, there were some very worthwhile ones including amongst other things a first opportunity to sing Howells’ canticles in B minor. The year wasn’t devoid of solo opportunities either and I thought I was generally singing well.

I did get opportunities to perform music by all four of the main anniversary composers. It will seems strange turning on the car radio on the way to piano lessons on Thursday afternoons in 2010 and not hearing a Handel opera.

Among the disappointments were being asked to note a concert date in my diary and then not being told I wasn’t needed for it, and the audition which was cancelled the day before it was due to happen because the vacancy had disappeared. I also thought I’d been dropped from a couple of Cathedral-going choirs when messages from them stopped arriving, but I’m happy to say that I was wrong in both cases.

It was a rather better year for concert-going though, particularly with opportunities to hear some of the Philharmonia’s Vienna – City of Dreams series in London, which did not disappoint.

I think 2010 will rather be what I make of it. I can’t see any obvious opportunities to do anything different from what I’ve done in 2009, but you never know what will come up during the year. I have to regard the Bath Festival Chorus as a thing of the past as it hasn’t performed since 2005 (though according to its musical director’s web page it still exists!) Likewise I can’t see myself ever being called up from the dep list for the Lord Mayor’s Chapel unless there is a change of regime there. One thing I can promise is that this blog will continue. I realise that recently my postings has been almost exclusively accounts of performances I’ve been in or attended, and I shall try to introduce a wider variety of musical topics.

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Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

Posted on December 22, 2009 by vhk10

Cross-posted from my other public blog, Egg and Dart.

I’m not going to attempt a systematic review, as those can be found elsewhere and in any case I’m unfamiliar with some of the territory Ross covers in his survey of 20th-century classical music.

In the areas I do know about, I found Ross to be accurate and to emphasise more or less what I consider to be important. The index is very thorough in its coverage of persons, including (for example) references to composers’ relatives, though it is less complete when it comes to concepts.

Ross is not ashamed to relate music to composers’ biographies or even to their physical appearance, and the text is full of pertinent anecdotes. Nevertheless, there are detailed descriptions of notable works, more from the earlier part of the century. A website with audio extracts of works referred to in the text can be found here.

One controversial position is that the author is convinced that Sibelius’ 8th symphony was destroyed in a complete or near-complete state, though I believe the evidence for this is unclear.

Although he is English, Ross has worked in New York for some years, and the USA accordingly features prominently. This does not just mean that American composers are dealt with at length; Mahler’s stay in New York is described in detail and one is told a lot about the history of American public-service broadcasting but there is little reference to the BBC, or to British composers other than Benjamin Britten. I don’t necessarily think this bias is a bad thing, as I learnt much about (for example) the origins of American minimalism.

Ross focuses on innovators, at the expense of more conservative composers such as Puccini and Rachmaninov, who tend to get pushed to the sidelines of his narrative, although they’re certainly part of 20th-century classical music history. Perhaps similarly, he can make 20th-century music seem more different from what preceded that it actually is, for example in its degree of political commitment.

Maybe my next reading should be Mann’s Doctor Faustus, which provides a structuring undertext to the whole work.

# ISBN-10: 1841154768
# ISBN-13: 978-1841154763

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Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland

Posted on December 21, 2009 by vhk10

I don’t feel that the Advent/Christmas season has properly started unless I’ve played a CD that I was given a few years ago. It contains Bach’s Advent cantatas BWV36, BWV61 and BWV62 nicely performed by Collegium Vocale Gent and Philippe Herreweghe plus soloists. (Harmonia Mundi HMC901605)

All three cantatas feature the chorale Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland in various arrangements. This isn’t quite the usual four-square Lutheran chorale melody; the flattened seventh three notes in, the non-standard cadence at the end of the second line and the repetition of the first line as the last one betray its ultimate origin in a plainchant melody. One of the points of interest of the CD is following the ways Bach eases over these irregularities, for example by sharpening the seventh or making the penultimate note of the second line an inessential one.

There’s a discussion of the melody with a number of quotations from Bach on the Bach cantatas site. Past visitors to Taizé might associate it with the Lord’s Prayer (in one of Bach’s harmonisations!)

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in the gallery – or not?

Posted on December 15, 2009 by vhk10

I went to hear Bath Minerva Choir conducted by Gavin Carr perform their seasonal concert, An English Christmas, in St Swithin’s Church, Walcot. This was the first time I’d been to a concert in this church (I gather that they have only started to happen recently, after a change of clergy and a refurbishment of the building). It has a pleasant acoustic though not a very resonant one. Performers also included soprano and baritone soloists and members of the Bath Phil (I’m a bit short on details, as the programmes had all gone by the time I arrived).

The concert sold out and by the time I got my ticket from the Bath Festivals box office I was told that it was for a seat in the gallery, and so I could not buy a second ticket for one of the children. (I suppose the parapet in the gallery must be lower at St Swithin’s than in the galleries at Christ Church Bath or St Mary’s Bathwick, where children are permitted). When I arrived though I found that the seats were totally unreserved and we could have both sat in the body of the church. However, I’m not sure our children would have lasted the course as the concert went on for nearly three hours!

The programme included several familiar pieces such as A Ceremony of Carols (in the SATB version), Finzi’s In Terra Pax and Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Christmas Carols. To give the choir a rest, the strings played Britten’s Simple Symphony. I can never hear the scherzo of this without being reminded of the theme from The Archers. The lengthy slow movement seems slightly out of place and perhaps betrays the work’s origin in some unrelated juvenile pieces. The programme ended with a selection of carol arrangements, including a couple by the conductor’s brother, interspersed with four congregational carols.

I thought this was one of the more successful Christmas concerts I’ve been to. I normally give them a miss because they can get into a muddle about whether they are a concert or a service, or become bogged down if they involve readings, because the readers feel they need to take up a significant amount of time. Despite the length of the programme, this concert seemed to fly by.

Another event to mention: my husband went to a concert performance of Otello with Colin Davis and the LSO at the Barbican, which he enjoyed. I don’t think his opinion varied very much from those of the reviewers, so I’ll post some links here: Independent, Telegraph, Guardian, The Classical Source.

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Te Deum Laudamus

Posted on December 12, 2009 by vhk10

Two settings of this text framed the Chandos Singers’ most recent concert in St. Bartholomew’s, Oldfield Park. We started with Haydn’s Marie-Thérèse setting, which was actually a suggestion of mine when we were looking for a piece to complete the programme. Out of the major anniversary composers this year, Haydn is the one I’d somehow missed performing so far. This particular piece is straightforward enough; I’d never sung it before, but had heard it a few years ago at a May Week concert in Cambridge.

This was followed by the Mass by Joonas Kokkonen, held over from a concert last year. I haven’t sung very much of the late 20th century Baltic repertoire (which is suddenly very trendy), but this seemed to me a characteristic example of it. Frequent changes of time signature kept me on my toes.

In James Durrant’s setting of Hardy’s poem An Anniversary, the choir crooned wordless chords, Delius-style, behind the baritone soloist and piano accompaniment. Despite this, I liked the piece more than I expected to. Maybe it was the tone-row lurking in the bass line of the piano part.

Berlioz’ Fantaisie sur la Tempête de Shakespeare was unknown to me and the sort of piece you have to ham up. I’m not sure where the (Italian) text came from but it didn’t have very much to do with the Bard! On the other hand the music had some characteristic key changes and turns of phrase, which has whetted my appetite for more Berlioz. Watch this space.

The second half consisted of Mendelssohn’s early setting of the Te Deum. I can’t think when I had to sing this many top B’s in an evening, and I have the impression Mendelssohn hadn’t quite understood the range of the voices he was writing for. (The piece also featured the most awkwardly exposed top B flat I’ve come across, and there is stiff competition.) Mendelssohn’s interest in Bach really comes over, with near-quotations from parts of the St Matthew Passion and B minor Mass.

The Chandos Singers were back singing carols beside the Roman Bath a week later. If one wraps up warm this must be a lovely venue to do this in, but I had to quite part way through the rehearsal as I could feel my temperature going up far above normal. I’ll have to hope that the choir gets invited back to sing another year.

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