High Mass in the Duomo

Posted on June 16, 2006 by vhk10

During my trip to Milan a couple of weeks ago I was able to attend the main Sunday Mass in the Cathedral, for the Sunday after Ascension Day. It was presided over by the Cardinal Archbishop (one of last year’s papabili) and was liturgically spectacular (particularly when the Easter candle was slowly winched all the way to the roof) but the music didn’t really match up. A largish choir of men and boys sang a largely unison mass setting and a couple of hymns (one of which, disconcertingly, went to the tune of Hark! the herald angels sing). No music was supplied to the congregation.

Last autumn in Venice I fared rather better. At the main Sunday Mass in San Marco a mixed-voice choir sang a 19th century (or pastiche of the style) four-part setting, though not a very interesting one. I also went to a Mass for All Saints’ Day there; no choir, but a sheet with the words and music to several hymns so that the congregation could join in.

The best I’ve done in an Italian cathedral was a mass in the Duomo in Florence, I think the last Mass of Sunday morning. The music came from a small book of plainchant melodies which we were given.

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an upbeat string quartet

Posted on June 7, 2006 by vhk10

We missed a lot of this year’s new-look Bath Festival, unfortunately, but we did manage each to get to a concert by the Vanbrugh Quartet in the Assembly Rooms.

My husband and daughter heard Haydn, Beethoven (Op. 131) and Bartók’s 6th quartet. The Bartók was in fact the second time they’d heard this piece in recent months and I was told that this performance had greater clarity of detail than the other.

I went to hear Zemlinsky and Beethoven’s Op. 132 in a rather thinly-attended concert the following night. I don’t think I’d heard the Zemlinsky quartet (his first) before. It was ‘upbeat’ in more ways than one; as well as being generally sunny in mood, most of the themes began with an anacrusis, or felt as if they did, which became an irritating mannerism after a while.

The Beethoven quartet is my favourite of all his quartets and having got to know it early I would now recognise it instantly from the smallest extract. A problem I had with the performers, shared by others in the audience, was the self-effacing sound of the first violin and more generally a lack of drama about the performances. This was less of a difficulty in the more contrapuntal Heiliger Dankgesang than in the outer movements.

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a double dose of Elgar and Purcell

Posted on May 21, 2006 by vhk10

A busy weekend of concerts recently. On Saturday night I sang in a concert in Reading with the Erleigh Cantors. The main work was a repeat performance (from Exeter) of Kodály’s Missa Brevis but singing first soprano this time (which makes quite a big difference to the range of the part!). The Mass was complete, including the Ite Missa Est in its organ version, which I think works better than the choral arrangement.

Rutter’s Birthday Madrigals were almost entirely new to me: settings of Elizabethan texts in a mostly jazz style, though the second is in the rather more serious style I’ve found elsewhere in his recent compositions. It’s the only score I can think of with the picture of the score of a different work on the cover!

We also did the early partsongs by Elgar, including My love dwelt in a Northern land (a curious fact about this – in the original poem the beloved was female) and the Spanish Serenade: great fun but unlike anything ever heard on the Iberian peninsula, I think. The programme was completed by something I’d never sung before, Purcell’s I was glad and something I’ve done more times than I can remember, most recently at Marshfield, Mozart’s Laudate Dominum.

On Sunday I was performing in Bathwick with the St. Mary’s Chamber Choir. This time Elgar was represented by As torrents in summer and Purcell by my singing one half of Sound the Trumpet, one of several solo turns by members of the choir. The rest of the programme was madrigals and part-songs, only a few of which I’d done before.

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scrolling Mahler

Posted on May 4, 2006 by vhk10

I was startled on loading a new CD into the player tonight to see the words ‘Mahler – Symphony no. 9’ scroll across the display on the front. Not because the CD wasn’t Mahler 9 – it’s the newly released BBC Legends recording of the work conducted by Maderna – but because no CD has ever done this for us before. The tempo indication at the beginning of each movement was also displayed. Our CD player is about 3 years old. So I ask: have classical CDs only very recently started including this information in a form that a CD player can read? Or have we just happened not to buy any that had it? We buy quite a lot of CDs, but many of them are I suppose not new remasterings or pressings.

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two against three

Posted on May 3, 2006 by vhk10

I have recently started to learn ‘L’invito’ by Rossini and got hold of Ricordi’s edition of it. I was rather surprised to discover an obvious misprint: a 3/4 bar with only two beats in the voice part. It was easy to see what had happened; the note values of the first two beats had been halved.

There were two curious things about this:
– the same bar occurs twice elsewhere, both times correctly printed
– there are no publication or reprinting dates in my copy, but this must have gone through several reprints at least. However, the error has never been corrected.

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two concerts for Holy Week

Posted on April 15, 2006 by vhk10

I’d been meaning to go to an Exultate Singers concert for a while, and missed a couple including one with a new cantata to commemorate Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s anniversary. I hope that this contained lots of suspensions, especially as it was performed in Clifton!

But what I got to hear in the end was a programme of music for Holy Week and Easter in St. James Barton church. Much was familiar to me, indeed I’d sung some of it with the choir, but there were pieces I didn’t know including a motet by Roxana Panufnik.

On Friday I was performing in Wells Cathedral with an expanded Bath Camerata. I’ve already written about the languages I had to sing in. I was also expected to sing more quietly than I’ve had to do for some time! These skills get rusty if you don’t use them. I also sang in Tavener’s Svyati and Messiaen’s O Sacrum Convivium and the concert also included music by Pärt and Howells. Svyati was new to me, but very characteristic of Tavener – perhaps he is writing what seems like the same piece lots of times, in order to perfect it.

Socially it was better than last time, though I suspect few in the current choir could name me. When I sing at these events I realise just how many ex-Camerata singers there are around in the Bath area who for one reason or another don’t sing regularly with a choir at the moment.

Both concerts were well attended and there must have been some overlap in the audience. It would be interesting to hear in particular from anyone who heard the Good Friday concert (since I don’t attempt to evaluate here performances I took part in).

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a plug for St. John’s

Posted on April 13, 2006 by vhk10

In past years, there has been a broadcast of a Passiontide service from St. John’s College, Cambridge on Radio 3. I was delighted to find that the College has made this year’s service available as an audiocast:
http://www.sjcchoir.co.uk/

I was even happier to find two of my favourite anthems (Gesualdo’s O vos omnes and Purcell’s Jehova, quam multi), about which I’ve raved elsewhere in this blog, are included, along with music by Howells, Stainer, Harvey, Gibbons, Poulenc and Anerio.

The audiocast is in MP3 format, and further audiocasts are promised over the next few months. I shall certainly be listening to them.

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MIDI manœuvres

Posted on April 12, 2006 by vhk10

I bought a new mobile phone and wanted to write my own MIDI file to use as a ringtone. (My old phone would allow you to compose ringtones on it, but you were restricted to a single melody, in a pre-determined synthetic sound, in notes of a constant length, so it was pretty limiting.)

I soon worked out how to upload and install MIDI files downloaded from the Web (for some reason though they only showed up on my phone after the connecting USB cable had been pulled out). I started with the hymn-tune ‘Tallis’ Ordinal’, downloaded from Cyber Hymnal.

For writing a ringtone from scratch, I was recommended the lilypond software for music typesetting (http://lilypond.org/web/). I hadn’t found this by my own efforts because it wasn’t picked up by searching for ‘MIDI’. It’s open source software, and it’s clear that its native platform is Linux. It does not have a graphical interface; you notate the music in a text file using lilypond’s notation scheme and lilypond will then convert it to PDF, PostScript and if you ask it nicely MIDI. Some simple examples are provided to get you going.

Now came the really puzzling bit. I found that my phone would play the downloaded MIDI file, but not use it as a ringtone. To save missing ringtone misery, here’s what you do: get hold of software such as the free version of Anvil Studio (http://www.anvilstudio.com/) open the MIDI file and then save it as is and download it to your phone. You don’t need to know anything more about what Anvil Studio does. I found this tip in a discussion on a bulletin board; I hate to think how long it might have taken me to try it otherwise.

(Disclaimer: I have no financial or other relationship with lilypond or Anvil Studio)

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walking away

Posted on April 9, 2006 by vhk10

I can be pretty tenacious but I’ve recently been thinking about two situations I’ve been in with regard to singing when I would have done better to back out, admit to myself that I’d made a mistake and do something else. Both were a considerable time ago and not where I live now.

At one time I studied with a singing teacher whose approach to interpretation involved relating what you were singing directly to specific personal experiences of yours. Now I don’t deny there can be some benefit in this, though it’s not the only way: if you find the mood of a particular song difficult to enter into, why not imagine yourself as a character in a play or novel who might feel that way? There might be good reasons to keep personal experiences and singing separate; for example, someone might be singing in order to put bad experiences out of their mind.

My teacher came to know rather more than was really desirable about my life outside singing and made several comments about it which were not only wrong (in hindsight) but potentially damaging. I don’t think any of this was helping me to sing well, and I realise now that rather than allowing myself to be intruded on to this extent I should have found someone else to study with.

The other situation concerned a singer in a choir I was once in who took it on themselves to do the conductor’s job; they repeatedly commented behind his back on how the soprano section was too loud and I suspect the comments were aimed in part at me. There was indeed a problem with balance, but it was the common one that the soprano section was stronger than the others; there were more singers who were trained or in training, some to a high level. As a result we projected our sound more strongly even when singing quietly. I affected not to care about this, but I did feel I was under pressure to sing with poor technique and I didn’t totally withstand it. When I left the choir I had lost the habit of singing with proper bodily support; I should instead have left much earlier.

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two new languages

Posted on March 29, 2006 by vhk10

Rehearsals have now started for the Bath Camerata Good Friday concert in Wells Cathedral. The two main pieces I am singing in are Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and Otce Nas by Janacek. From my point of view, these have a certain amount in common; first, both have a harp accompaniment. Secondly, I haven’t sung either before, and thirdly, I haven’t in fact performed anything in the language of either (Hebrew and Czech, respectively) before!

I can’t say that Czech trips that easily off my tongue but on a first rehearsal I coped rather better with it than with the Hebrew. (I studied the music beforehand but without the words, so that I wouldn’t get pronunciations that were way off fixed in my head). Perhaps because I can relate the words to the meaning rather more easily. I spend odd moments in rehearsal trying to work out which words of the Hebrew text mean what, as much as I can. And I’ve heard more performances of the Janacek and have a recording, so I don’t have to concentrate quite so hard on unfamiliar notes. Also, Bernstein sets a longer text and there’s less repetition of it.

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the back of the conductor’s head

Posted on March 24, 2006 by vhk10

I went to the final performance of the revival of Wozzeck at the Royal Opera House. I shan’t attempt to review the performance here, but reviews are available online: e.g. the Guardian‘s or the Observer‘s.

As I saw the opera only last year I hesitated about going but in the end the pull of the music was just too strong. I didn’t experience diminishing returns, and each performance brings out different details – I can’t take them all in in any one hearing. There isn’t after all necessarily anything unusual or undesirable in hearing the same string quartet (for example) in two different concerts close together, and since the greater part of Berg’s music is contained in his two operas, you can’t really get to know it properly at first hand without going to them.

Fortunately a Berg habit need not be expensive and as I settled into row C of the stalls I reflected that it would have cost me several times as much to see an opera by Wagner from the same seat, thanks in part to an online offer which I discovered when I came to buy my ticket. Row C is a little further forward than ideal and I found a couple of heads between me and parts of the stage. On the other hand, another head I had a good view of the back of was that of the conductor, Daniel Harding. I’m not among those who have no interest in seeing conductor or orchestra during an opera, or who feel that to do so breaks the theatrical illusion. Particularly in a work where the orchestra carries so much of the drama.

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a reunion in Gloucester

Posted on March 3, 2006 by vhk10

I went to an old girls’ event held at Gloucester Cathedral by my old school (which actually wasn’t in Gloucester, or even Gloucestershire). After a guided tour and tea, we heard the choir sing evensong, for which they laid on the Bathwick favourite Stainer in B flat and Parry’s I was glad. Top B flats all round! I learnt something from meeting people; I may forget names and not have a memory for faces, but I do remember what instrument people played!

I had thought about going to hear the Exultate Singers perform Handel’s Dixit Dominus on Saturday and write a review, but I didn’t get there in the end. So I’ll write about Dixit anyway. This was a popular piece in my Cambridge days, and I performed it with three different choirs, once doing one half of the Dominus a dextris tuis duet. I always enjoyed singing it, although it was hard work and I always felt the last movement went on a bit too long, particularly when you suddenly went into B flat minor just as you felt the piece ought to be winding up. I also recall that the Bärenreiter score contained in the first movement one of the all time classic page-turns, at least if you were singing first soprano. But it’s a great piece. One conductor commented in rehearsal that it wasn’t that hard to write good four-part counterpoint, but good five-part counterpoint was an order of magnitude more difficult.

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