another Christ Church

Posted on October 14, 2023 by vhk10

My action-packed October featured a musical event on every Saturday. On the first Saturday I wasn’t actually performing myself – I was in Oxford for a birthday celebration and then went to the installation of an old friend from my student days as the new sub-Dean at Christ Church Cathedral. This was the first Cathedral I ever performed in, though I have not done so for a long time. Priory Voices used to go there sometimes in August, but usually their voluntary choir (which I used to sing in) takes care of services outside school term.

The music was, I believe, requested by the sub-Dean and included Leighton’s’ Second Service (he is a Leighton expert) and Faire is the Heaven by Harris (a piece I first encountered singing in a choir with him). The readings were about Daniel in the lion’s den and Satan being cast out of heaven, the latter scene vividly depicted in a window in front of me. Inspecting the music list, I was a little sorry to see that the Cathedral no longer does the full BCP psalms for the day; it was the last Oxbridge College to do so. Under a previous DoM whom I remember, they were taken slowly and occupied a large part of the service, and the tale is still told of when Jesu Meine Freude was on the list for the 15th evening…

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the Abbey season begins

Posted on September 30, 2023 by vhk10

Bath Abbey Chamber Choir was quick to restart for the new season, with a conductor newly appointed to the Abbey’s music staff, and a midweek evensong livened up a September which was otherwise musically blank. And it wasn’t standard pieces either! Our canticles were mix’n’match: a four-part Magnificat on the first tone by Palestrina and a Nunc Dimittis by Victoria. The anthem was How beauteous are their feet by Stanford. What these all have in common is that I’ve only sung them once before (according to my records); in the case of the Palestrina and the Stanford, a long time ago! Ley’s Prayer of Henry VI and Ayleward Responses were rather more familiar.

I miss the next service in the Abbey but after a couple of false starts we have a Cathedral visit coming up.

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Poulenc through glass

Posted on August 31, 2023 by vhk10

I didn’t plan my Proms season, and my decision to go to the Glyndebourne Prom performance of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites was a spontaneous one made earlier that day. This opera (did any have a more offputting title?) is one of those works like Bach’s Coffee Cantata that really shouldn’t exist but does. I have wanted to get to a performance of it for some time and suddenly realised that here was my chance.

I decided to treat myself to a seat in one of the boxes, hoping to avoid the noisy eating, fidgeting and conversation that have blighted a lot of recent Proms concerts that I’ve been to – although perhaps there were fewer disruptive people at this Prom than at many others. I was in Loggia 07, Seat 8. This was at quite a sharp angle to the stage, but I knew this in advance and didn’t mind too much that I’d see the action almost sideways on. What I did mind was that there was a glass panel between me and the stage (and the orchestra). This blocked the sound and I felt that this seat should be charged less than others in the box for that reason. I suspect the panel is a relatively recent addition, decided on by someone with a tin ear.

The production retained (I’m told) much of the Glyndebourne staging. It was largely in period though with some 20th/21st century intrusions. (I noticed an iron with an electric flex) It was as well performed and as moving as I could have wished for. I won’t add to the glowing reviews cited below – this was generally agreed to be one of the best Proms of the season so I chose well – except to single out Karen Cargill’s Mother Marie, whose sternness thawed as the action progressed.

Reviews:

Seen and Heard International
The Classical Source
The Arts Desk

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Abbey round-up

Posted on August 28, 2023 by vhk10

I’ve sung a few services with Bath Abbey Chamber Choir in the last few months though not all (missed the ordination, for example).

For the Coronation weekend in May we had appropriately themed music: Purcell’s I was glad, and another Coronation piece, Confortare by Walter Parratt, though with the words neutered so we no longer had to ‘play the man’. Later in May there was a Eucharist with music by Palestrina including Dum Complerentur. I was surprised to find how long ago my only previous performance of the piece was, and yes, I hadn’t totally forgotten it!

In July we sang Evensong with David Bednall’s plainchant-based setting of the Evening Hymn (new to me), and O Lord, look down from Heaven by Battishill (with bowels though I think they just yearned rather than sounding). I did the solo part in the Magnificat of Gray in F minor, and found out just why it always sounds so squawky when I hear other people sing it.

Later in July there was another evensong pairing canticles I hadn’t previously sung: de Rore’s Magnificat on the first tone and Lassus’ Nunc on the seventh. Our introit was Byrd’s Prevent us, O Lord and the anthem Tomkins’ setting of When David heard. The final service of the season (although it can be a little hard to tell when the season begins and ends) was a Eucharist in August, with movements from Mozart’s Mass K194 (I did the solo in the Gloria) and Byrd’s Ego sum panis vivus, a new piece to me. There’s clearly a lot of Byrd around this year, but he wrote sufficiently many pieces that that there’s lots still to discover.

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Three Choirs 2023: the final evening

Posted on August 15, 2023 by vhk10

The Apostles – relatively rarely done because of the number of soloists required – was missing piece needed to complete my performances of the three great choral works by Elgar.

I remarked before that The Kingdom will do its best to convince you that God is an Englishman, but The Apostles, with its Hebrew melodies, quotations from the Talmud and shofar (we had a long trumpet rather than an actual ram’s horn) is altogether a bit more exotic. And that’s not all…

Mary Magdalen by Caravaggio

Caravaggio’s penitent Magdalen is rather more subdued than Elgar’s

An orgy scene in an oratorio by Elgar – who’d have thought it? Actually this was one of the trickier passages in the piece. Overall, despite its length, there aren’t that many showpieces for the chorus, a large part of whose role is interjections (probably because of all those soloists). Nevertheless, I would take it over The Kingdom in future. I was particularly impressed by the libretto and how well Elgar must have known his Bible to choose such appropriate texts from other parts of Scripture (and the aforementioned Talmud) to expand the Gospel narratives.

   
   

Reviews (and they were of the same concert!):

Bible quote in Gloucester cloister window

A text set in The Apostles (window, Gloucester Cathedral cloister)


Seen and Heard International
Bachtrack

So 2023 was of necessity a somewhat austerity edition of the Festival, which made it logistically easier for me, at the cost of reduced opportunities to sing. I was impressed by the standard of the choir, which I felt was higher than in the previous Festival I sang in.

Singing in 2024’s Festival will involve weighing up the repertoire against the things which I could otherwise do which got sacrificed this year.

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Three Choirs 2023: From Pub to Pulpit …. to pub

Posted on August 8, 2023 by vhk10

The Festival Chorus had fewer concerts than in 2016, but took park this morning event on the Thursday, a collaboration with folk ensembles Broomdasher and Coracle. Like Sancta Civitas, this was a hangover of Vaughan Williams-related programming that had been held over from the anniversary year in 2022.

This renamed brew appeared again for the 2023 Festival.


We started by singing some anthems (O How Amiable and Valiant-for-Truth) and folk-song arrangements (Gloucestershire Wassail and Just as the Tide was Flowing) by Vaughan Williams. I now had the pleasure of being conducted in person by Samuel Hudson – previously I’d been in the strange situation of having sung for him without having met him.

Then we learnt more about RVW’s work collecting folk songs, heard an improvisation on some of the melodies, and then three of the tunes which found their way into the English Hymnal, with some of the secular verses to which they were previously sung. The texts demonstrated folk’s direct engagement with some of the darkest aspects of life and I probably won’t be able to sing the corresponding hymns now without being reminded of this. One tune – ‘Danby’ – was known only to me among those in the Festival Chorus; I had sung the hymn to which it is set once before, and only once, as a teenager when I first started in church music, and its intriguing melody with a flattened seventh in the first line had stayed with me ever since.

Afterwards I repaired to the Festival Bar for a half of ‘Partington’s Potion’ and later on attended a gathering of work colleagues at the Bristol Brewhouse (their 10th anniversary as it happened)

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Three Choirs 2023: Tuesday evening

Posted on August 7, 2023 by vhk10

Tuesday brought a change of orchestra with the Royal Philharmonic replacing the Philharmonia. And the most unfamiliar of the music we had to sing.

Holst’s memorial stone in Chichester Cathedral


Holst’s Ode to Death was only a name to me previously. As long as you can count to 5 and to 7, it is pretty straightforward to sing. There is a very characteristic central section in what I call Holst’s ‘hobnailed boot’ mode, with crotchet octaves clunking their way through the lower registers. I’d happily sing it again, but am not in a great hurry to do so.

Francis Pott’s A Song on the End of the World had its premiere at the Three Choirs Festival in 1999, but for reasons beyond the control of the performers that did not go well and it was felt that it deserved another outing. (We had just one survivor from the previous performance in the choir this year.)

I’d been intrigued by Pott’s music after hearing his The Souls of the Righteous on evensong broadcasts. A song was a piece that sorted out the modernists in the choir – I’d like to think there were at least some others there. Tonality comes and goes (you’ll look in vain for a key signature). The words, carefully selected from liturgical texts, mediæval lyrics and a variety of modern poetry, are almost uniformly dark, although I will go out on a limb here and say that I did not find them as depressing as those of A Time for All Seasons a few years ago. However having a high tolerance for dissonance in itself doesn’t make it much easier to learn. While I don’t have difficulty pitching augmented 4ths/diminished fifths (singing Friede auf Erden as a student taught me how to do that) I discovered I wasn’t all that good at falling sixths; something to work on. This piece took out a lot of our rehearsal time, but I think we nailed it on the night – at least, the composer looked pleased afterwards.

Reviews:

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Three Choirs 2023: the evensongs

Posted on August 1, 2023 by vhk10

I made it to two of the evensongs during the Festival.

The first one was on the first Saturday: Jonathan Hope conducting the Saint Cecilia Singers, many of whom had sung in the opening service that morning and would sing again in the evening concert! The music included Stainer in B flat (which I have encountered surprisingly rarely) and Great is the Lord by Elgar.

On the Tuesday Evensong acknowledged the William Byrd anniversary. Geraint Bowen conducted the combined three Cathedral choirs in his Responses and Laudibus in Sanctis, with the Tomkins Second Service. This time I wasn’t able to get into the quire; the south transept (which must seat at least a hundred) filled up and some people had to sit in the nave. This popularity clearly wasn’t anticipated as dozens of us had to share orders of service. (The order of service booklet covers the whole week, so you are supposed to leave it at the end for others to use at later services. Back in 2016 I challenged someone who was trying to take one away, to get the reply ‘I’m from Australia’! Maybe Australians had reduced the quantity of booklets this time.)

Why was the Tuesday so popular? There weren’t so many evensongs this year I think, which may have increased numbers. A desire to hear earlier repertoire, as a contrast to most of what was being performed in the Cathedral? The lure of Laudibus in particular?

There was an alternative to overspill: I’m told evensongs were livestreamed on to a screen in the beer tent. Only at Three Choirs….

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Three Choirs 2023: the first Saturday concert

Posted on July 30, 2023 by vhk10

Our first concert, on the evening of the first day, contained two choral items in the first half.

cluster of grapes

‘O how delicious are the grapes’ (Blake) Rehearsal refreshments in Gloucester

Rise up, O Sun! was a new composition by Eleanor Alberga setting words by Blake. There was plenty to get your teeth into here with lively rhythms and singable lines. It came to life even more with the orchestra, who conjured up sounds like exotic tropical birds (or so I imagined them) to populate the lush landscape described in the poem.

I’m not sure how I’ve managed to avoid Vaughan Williams’ Sancta Civitas. Actually, I can work out why – it’s because it’s a complex work to put on with three choirs, a large orchestra and two soloists (one of whom has to sing very little to earn his fee. Ours were Roderick Williams and Ruairi Bowen). So it is rarely performed (its only appearance at the Proms wasn’t till 2015) and recordings don’t do it justice for reasons that will become clear.

‘Babylon the great is fallen’ From the Angers Apocalypse tapestries. [PMRMaeyaert, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons]


It has that general air of weirdness that attaches to any artistic production based on the Book of Revelation. The text is made more generic (for example by removing the name of Jesus from the closing ‘Even so, come Lord’) and slightly expanded by quoting from other passages such as the vision of Isaiah.

No one does polychoral like Vaughan Williams, and he seems to have gone in for it especially in the early 1920s; as well as Sancta Civitas, the Mass in G minor and the anthem Lord, Thou hast been our refuge date from this time. The main chorus (often in 8 parts) from to time spawns a semi-chorus, and in addition to that there is a choir of upper voices located elsewhere. The intersections of all of these allow for some spectacular effects including bitonality.

This was definitely my favourite of all the pieces I performed in the Festival, but the concert was not over as the second half contained Elgar’s violin concerto, played by Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay from our resident orchestra, the Philharomonia. From the choir setting you don’t get the best balance and I was not very familiar with this piece (one of the longest violin concertos in the standard repertoire at nearly an hour), and also generally in danger of getting Elgared out, but I thought he did it justice.

Review:
Seen and Heard International

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Three Choirs 2023: the opening

Posted on July 29, 2023 by vhk10

As already remarked the opening of the Festival was different this year, with a shorter service in the Cathedral after processions through the city centre had converged on it.

Dr Foster would have recognised the weather, and after gathering at the Kyneburgh tower (a newish landmark I hadn’t previously noticed) we dodged the raindrops to find somewhere to sing Vaughan Williams’ setting of the Gloucestershire Wassail. We lighted on the entrance of a closed-down discount shop (rather a lot of Gloucester city centre is like this) which afforded us some shelter and stopped the music from turning to pulp.

Together with the Flowers Band and a group singing Ukrainian songs, we picked our way through the puddles to the Cathedral, processed in and took our places on the staging for the opening service. Our anthem was Vaughan Williams’ O Clap Your Hands (a reprise for those of us who sang it last year). The Te Deum was Holst’s Festival setting which I’d never sung or even heard of before, a little to my surprise; although Te Deums are not sung so often now Mattins is a rarity, I’ve done a fair few different ones.

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