the Coronation Mass in Worcester

Posted on February 23, 2006 by vhk10

Same Mass, but a different Cathedral and a different choir (Priory Voices). Of course this meant that the Mass was very easy after last weekend, the main problem for me now being resisting the impulse to come in at the solo entries.

This weekend brought a couple of new pieces for me to sing: at last, Casals’ O vos omnes, which I have heard broadcast many times but never performed myself. We also performed O Praise God, a setting of Psalm 150 written for this choir where the main difficulties were rhythmical. Fortunately many of these difficulties are passed on to the conductor or the organist, who in this case was Andrew Burr, the composer! Another Priory Voices standard was the evening canticles in G by Jack Hawes, written for St-Mary-le-Tower, Ipswich – I wonder if they are still in the repertoire there? [Oct 2013: I’m told it’s not in the rep there at the moment, but they would like to revive it!]

The main problem when singing at Worcester Cathedral is still balancing voices and organ – it is easy for the choir to be overpowered. I was pleased though to see that the Georgian house at the north-west corner of the Cathedral, semi-derelict when I last visited, is now apparently occupied and cared for.

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the Coronation Mass in Peterborough

Posted on February 13, 2006 by vhk10

This weekend I went with the Cathedral Chamber Choir to Peterborough, a Cathedral I have not sung in for a long time (I sang evensong there a couple of times with my Cambridge college choir, there being a College connexion with Bishop Feaver). One welcome change since then is the front choir stalls now have a thick cushion on them, at least for visiting choirs with adult sopranos, so that there is room for our legs!

It was quite a strenuous weekend, with new music to learn, a lot of rehearsal time and the Peterborough organ (which, like Salisbury’s and Lichfield’s, is tuned sharp). I made a belated entry into the Mozart anniversary celebrations (having missed singing in a performance of a Missa Brevis last weekend because of a heavy cold). We sang the Gloria/Sanctus/Agnus Dei of the Coronation Mass and I was one of the soloists. I have long used the Agnus as a solo item but in an arrangement which omits Mozart’s rather dramatic link to the ‘Dona nobis pacem’, which I now got to do.

There were three pieces new to me. I’d never heard of Tomkins’ Above the skies my Saviour dwells, a verse anthem with counter-tenor solo. Perhaps it doesn’t get done much because of the non-biblical devotional text. On Sunday morning the motet was Ego flos campi by Clemens non papa, the first sacred piece I’d ever sung by him. It’s a seven-part motet and had been edited by our conductor. There is a fair amount of dissonance in it but the individual lines are strictly diatonic. I’m afraid I found myself suffering accidental withdrawal symptoms after I’d rehearsed it a bit! On Sunday afternoon we sang O sing unto the Lord by James MacMillan, a very characteristic piece in its rhythms and ornamentation, and long organ postlude. I liked it as much as anything I’ve sung by MacMillan. (For the record, our responses were Tomkins and Rose and our canticle settings Caustun ‘Short’ and Stanford in A).

We weren’t able to rehearse in the song room (we used a part of the ambulatory instead) or anywhere in the Cathedral after the (early) evensong on Saturday. At this point we were able to use the handsome St. John’s parish church in the market square. But I found Peterborough much easier to deal with than some other Cathedrals when arranging the weekend, perhaps because not so many visiting choirs are interesting in coming there. I spent a fair amount of time in the city centre and was disheartened to see only one shop that was not part of a chain – apart from the Cathedral shop!

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minus 20 for Louise

Posted on February 3, 2006 by vhk10

Ever since the Metropolitan Opera began relaying its matinee broadcasts to us via the BBC, we’ve been keen listeners to the Opera Quiz in the interval. In fact, most years I send in a question, though to date they’ve never used one of mine. I was particularly proud of one from a couple of years back about casting (of metal objects, not matching singers to roles), using extracts from several of that season’s operas.

We noticed however, that the canon of operas familiar to the panellists was rather different both from ours and from the repertoire put on at the Met. Until a couple of years ago I would keep a running tally during each quiz based one which operas were mentioned, and see at the end whether the scores were positive or negative. A high negative score (over 100 was not unknown) meant that the panellists were drawing (I assume) on the Met’s former repertoire rather than what you might hear now there or at other major opera houses.

It was rather ad hoc but ran roughly as follows:
+10 or +15 points for any opera composed after 1945 (except The Ghosts of Versailles, see below)
+15 points for operas by Berg or Schoenberg
+10 points for any opera earlier than Mozart
+10 points for certain other operas at my discretion (e.g. Cherubini’s Médée)

-10 points for anything by Saint-Saëns, Gounoud (except Faust) or Massenet
-15 points for Andrea Chénier or Adriana Lecouvreur
-20 points for the following: La Gioconda, Louise or The Ghosts of Versailles (which was premiered at the Met – we got tired of hearing about it)

This wasn’t so much a value judgement on all these operas (I actually enjoy the last hour or so of Andrea Chénier) as a way of quantifying how out of touch some of the panellists seemed to be! However, I’ve given up on doing this now, as a new generation of panellists has appeared and even the old guard now only mention La Gioconda in an ironic postmodern sort of way, rather than as something assumed to be well-known to everyone.

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a dozen a day

Posted on January 27, 2006 by vhk10

A couple of weeks ago my daughter started having piano lessons. I don’t intend to document her progress regularly here, but the experience of watching someone starting out is proving fascinating. It’s all so far in the past now that I didn’t appreciate just how many bits and pieces there are to take on board for the first time, before you reach even a very simple level: learning where the notes are, playing with both hands at once, playing two notes together with the same hand, and triple time are some of the recent ones we’ve dealt with. We are using John Thompson’s Easiest Piano Course (which wasn’t around in my time) and A Dozen a Day (which definitely was).

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evensong broadcast from Bath

Posted on January 16, 2006 by vhk10

This Wednesday’s Choral Evensong broadcast comes from Bath Abbey. Someone from the Abbey told me that there had been broadcasts from there before, but the last one was in 1984. Certainly I cannot remember ever hearing one. A number of venues disappeared from the evensong broadcast circuit when the second weekly broadcast was dropped; these included St. Clement Danes church, Paisley Abbey and various Roman Catholic foundations. Perhaps Bath Abbey was also a victim of this.

I see that the programme includes Ascribe Unto the Lord by S. S. Wesley. At one time this piece used to be hashed up on a more or less annual basis in broadcasts, sometimes by choirs which were usually very good (the treble/alto verse section especially used to defeat them). In particular, it was the anthem on what I think was the worst evensong broadcast I can remember. However, I heard Bath Abbey girls and men perform it towards the end of last year and feel confident they’ll do it well. I shall be listening in and hope it may lead to further broadcasts.

One thing on the Bath Abbey website rather disappointed me. There is now a page for visiting choirs which invites them to sing on a Sunday or a weekend, but the possibility of doing an isolated Saturday Evensong isn’t raised. I do hope they aren’t being phased out.

(Sun 22 Jan) I think I second Jenny’s comment below. In fact there was a visiting choir at the Abbey yesterday which I went to hear, conducted by the conductor of the Exultate Singers! It was an RSCM regional ‘Cathedral Singers’ choir. I was pleased to see that they’ve now found a use for former girl choristers in some of these choirs, as women and girls were singing sop/alto. When I asked a few years ago about joining one, the organist at the church I then went to said ‘It’s all male!’ and that was that.

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failure

Posted on January 12, 2006 by vhk10

This entry is an attempt to explain further one of my musical New Year’s resolutions.

From time to time, there’s been something in my choral life that didn’t work out as I’d have liked. E.g. being dropped from a choir or from a particular concert, never being considered for a solo, or failing an audition. All of these things have happened to me at some point in the last few years; in writing what follows I do not have any one particular incident in mind.

On many occasions it’s not hard to see why. It may have been at a time when I wasn’t singing well, or there may have just been lots of other better singers around. On the other hand, you can’t exclude the possibility of having been accidentally overlooked (which certainly has happened to me) or of favouritism – not unknown! But in between that there is a grey area of instances where I’ve been left wondering why the axe fell (so to speak) on me and not on another, since it’s rare to be given a reason, even though you can hardly fail to notice when one of these things has happened to you.

Part of the reason for having singing lessons is for someone else to identify and iron out the problems I can’t hear for myself. But what about the flaws which only become apparent in a choir? Some are so perennial that there’s no need to make a special resolution; it’s always possible to be a better sight-singer. Others are more insidious. It was reflecting on this that made me decide to make 2006 the year that I really concentrated on how to come off phrases.

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a calendrical plea

Posted on January 9, 2006 by vhk10

This isn’t really related to music, but someone reading it may be able to help.

Every year I buy a calendar with photographs of British Cathedrals. The format has varied – perhaps they haven’t all been produced by the same publisher – but it’s often been called ‘Cathedrals and Greater Churches of Britain’. I like to buy it when singing in a Cathedral with a visiting choir, along with Christmas cards depicting the Cathedral, so I can support it.

This year I drew a blank. Neither of the Cathedrals I sang at in the summer (York and Chester) were selling such a calendar for 2006. When I went to Exeter in October I found a Cathedrals calendar on sale but it was illustrated with paintings and I really wanted photographs. Wells and Bath Abbey don’t sell it and I haven’t found one on sale over the internet.

So if anyone has seen such a calendar on sale, especially if there are still copies on sale now, I’d be interested to know! There’s a barren expanse of kitchen wall where it usually hangs.

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Mein Gott, Vorsprung durch Technik

Posted on January 7, 2006 by vhk10

This was the name of an imaginary cantata in Private Eye‘s version of the Radio 3 listings during the Bach Christmas, in which only J.S. Bach was broadcast on Radio 3 for ten days.

When there was a similar exercise for Beethoven, we thought that doing the same for Bach would make the listener feel as if they were spending the week in church. It did feel like that sometimes, especially at a time of year when I’m singing in church a lot anyway. When I turned the radio off I could still hear in my head a choir bursting out into a vigorous four-square chorale harmonisation, or a soloist delivering some recitative before launching into an aria interwined with an instrumental obbligato. But the balance between sacred and secular was maintained and those 24 hours of organ music were well spaced out (I think a lot of it was in the middle of the night). I did get to hear my favourite chorale prelude, BWV 721, tucked in among longer pieces.

The programmers had an inclusive attitude to dubia, and these provided some entertainment as we tried to work out why they might not be by J.S. Bach, or in some cases how anyone could have thought that they were. With Beethoven there were some pieces where his inspiration clearly flagged, but it would have been hard to find much of that among Bach’s works.

This time the piece that kept coming round was the famous Chaconne from one of the violin partitas. I heard several versions, though I must have missed the arrangement for piano by Busoni as I can’t imagine they didn’t play it.

Some final impressions:
– I am fairly familiar with Bach’s instrumental music and the major choral works, but much less so with the cantatas. I’ve probably sung in performances about ten of them. (But then I’ve not sung in the B minor Mass as a soprano, a proper performance of the St Matthew Passion, or the Christmas Oratorio either).
– the Moog synthesiser now has the status of a historical instrument
– (purists stop reading) other things being equal, I prefer Bach on the piano to the harpsichord!

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2005’s and 2006’s resolutions

Posted on December 30, 2005 by vhk10

2005 was bound to be a pretty quiet year for singing and I didn’t make many resolutions. So I didn’t get to any new cathedrals, or sing anything from the wishlist (though I did sing several pieces new to me). I did however do something about the ‘all purpose low note’ I wrote about a year ago, and it’s now largely been replaced by notes of a determinate pitch.

So what are the wishes for 2006?
a) to perform in at least one of the four remaining C of E cathedrals in England: Birmingham Cathedral, Leicester Cathedral, Bradford Cathedral or Wakefield Cathedral.
b) again, to sing something from the wishlist
c) to get opportunities to perform at the level I was doing before Magnus’ birth, either with the Exultate Singers or elsewhere. One such opportunity will be the Bath Camerata’s Good Friday concert, though I don’t expect it to lead to more
d) related to the last I suppose, but also a repeat: to sing in the Bath Festival Chorus, which was not practical for me to do in 2005
e) having got rid of the all-purpose low note, to work on another weak point in my choral singing. I need to watch more, especially at the ends of phrases! This is related to a general tendency to lose interest at phrase ends; I sometimes catch myself in a ‘been there, done that’ attitude when I get to them.
f) to learn some demanding new solo repertoire. There are a number of such pieces which I’ve been putting off for a few years. Perhaps 2006 should be the year to tackle some of them.

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carols inside and out

Posted on December 25, 2005 by vhk10

This Christmas I did some outdoor carol singing, something I don’t do every year. First came half an hour of carols to the shoppers at Bath’s Christmas market. We got some appreciative comments as we explored the limits of the Carols for Choirs arrangements for unaccompanied singing. The tricky one is the arrangement of We wish you a merry Christmas which goes up to a top B flat!

(I once did some pre-Christmas carol singing in one of the main shopping arcades in Manchester, for which the choir funds received a handsome cheque. ‘Don’t think of the notes’, our conductor said, ‘think of the banknotes!’).

On Christmas Eve it was carol singing door to door in the village where we are spending Christmas. In previous years the leader of the group tended to pitch the carols very low, forcing me to sing bits an octave up. This time it had been taken over by a tenor, so no such problem. We raised nearly a hundred pounds for charity.

In between I sang at St. Mary’s Bathwick’s Nine Lessons and Carols service, performing alongside ‘Bathwick Brass’ (who this year included a percussionist). I nearly pulled out of this because I’d had little voice the previous week. It’s a few years since I cancelled a singing engagement altogether for this sort of reason, though there have arguably been times – particularly in autumn 2004 – when I should have done. This time, as usual, the low notes were the first to go and the quiet high notes were the last to come back.

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how conductors react to this blog

Posted on December 20, 2005 by vhk10

There are two main responses: some can’t wait to read my writeups of performances and tell other choir members to read them too. Others aren’t so keen on any potential source of publicity for the choir that isn’t under their control.

I have a policy of not reviewing performances I’ve taken part in and I also think of the potential reaction of people involved in the choir and of those who run the performance venue. In practice this means that my accounts are largely based around repertoire: what was new to me, difficulties I had in learning or performing it, how it compares to other things I’ve sung.
I will also now refrain from writing about a particular event, apart from noting that I took part in it, if I’m asked to do so on behalf of a choir that I sing in. Obviously I don’t want to put my place in the choir in jeopardy by saying anything that will give offence. On the other hand, it’s surely a good thing if choir members take time to reflect on what they’re asked to perform rather than singing it unthinkingly.

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an Exultate Singers Christmas concert

Posted on December 17, 2005 by vhk10

On Wednesday I went to a Christmas concert in aid of cancer research at St. Mary Redcliffe church (for the first time in years I’m not singing in such as concert myself this year). Carol concerts lie on a continuum between services and concerts. Unlike pure concerts, they may include prayers and congregational hymns, but unlike services you have to pay to attend! This one was definitely at the ‘service’ end of the continuum. (A less satisfactory one was a concert I performed in at Bath’s Theatre Royal a few years ago, where we (choir and orchestra) sang to an embarrassingly small audience in the theatre stalls.)

This time the Exultate Singers sang several items on their own as well as leading the hymns, all known to me, and some of which I sang with them last year. The length of the nave was well used in Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin. The choir is singing another concert in St James Priory church on December 22nd and also has a new CD out. Details are on the choir website.

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