Britten and Duruflé for Holy Week

Posted on February 25, 2004 by vhk10

I’ve accepted invitations to take part in in a couple of concerts in Holy Week. On Palm Sunday I shall be singing Rejoice in the Lamb for the first time in over a decade. I remember it accurately enough, but also make the same mistakes as I used to! Despite (or perhaps because of) the rather dotty words, I prefer it to Brittens Hymn to St. Cecilia.

On Good Friday I shall be singing in Durufléis Requiem in Oxford. Conductor, organist and both soloists are all known to me by a variety of routes, so it should be fun socially. I prefer this setting to the Fauré, which I find can be insipid. On the other hand I’ve been over-exposed to it, mainly because Duruflé was a cult composer in some of the circles I moved in in Cambridge, and I’ve never considered his music to be that special. I would be happy never to perform Ubi caritas et amor again, and not just because the sopranos don’t do much in it!

Westminster Cathedral will let us do the Tallis Mass setting, and we are negotiating how to share Sheffield Cathedral with various other things that are going on there the weekend we visit.

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memory

Posted on February 20, 2004 by vhk10

This year, for the first time, I’m entering the Mid-Somerset Festival. I am competing in two classes, singing a Handel aria and a song by Copland. I took part in a similar event years ago, and didn’t enjoy it, perhaps because I feel that music isn’t essentially a competitive activity. Competitions are a necessary evil for people wanting a career as performers, but not compulsory for the rest of us!
I decided to take the plunge this year for a number of reasons. I wanted to perform something secular for a change. The adjudicator’s comments are also potentially valuable (though you can get similar feedback by taking part in a masterclass). And it might raise my profile a little locally, as most of my singing is done outside Bath. It’s already caused a certain amount of interest among fellow Chantry Singers, who on the whole aren’t aware that I do solo singing as well. And there seem to be a lot of Mid-Somerset Festival anecdotes from past years.

There’s a catch, though – unlike the other competition I once entered, you have to perform from memory! I don’t habitually do this, though I once gave a half-hour recital from memory so I know I’m capable of it. There doesn’t seem to be any short cut save singing the music over and gradually weaning yourself from the printed score. I ‘test’ myself on little bits of it at odd moments. The difficulties are different in the two pieces; in the Copland the challenge is getting notes and rests exactly the right length, whereas you don’t realise how much Handel permutes the various parts of his short text until you have to memorise his setting. Fortunately I have an accompanist I can trust.

Meanwhile, I make yet another thwarted attempt to join the Bath Festival Chorus. I’ve lost count, but this must be about the fifth or sixth failure I’ve had. This time the reason is that the Festival Chorus is not performing at all in the next Bath Festival. This has happened twice in the last four years, and it was not used in the last Mozartfest here either – a worrying trend. So there goes one of my resolutions for 2004 down the tubes!

I have negotiated some parking permits for the summer from Winchester Cathedral and am now trying to find out whether we can get away with doing Tallis’ Mass Puer natus est nobis in Eastertide at Westminster Cathedral.

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which composer are you sitting on?

Posted on February 16, 2004 by vhk10

We’re buying a new sofa and found that several models in a local shop were named after composers. (We think that it may have been the same shop which used to have on sale – quite without irony – an ‘Othello’ double bed.)

The ‘Mahler’ was appropriately well-upholstered and expansive, but we were disappointed that ‘Ives’ wasn’t covered in two different fabrics at once. And the ‘Liszt’ footstool doesn’t seem quite right somehow. The other composer represented is Borodin. We wondered about what others might be like – a minimalist but surprisingly comfortable ‘Webern’, for example.

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things I’d like to sing (2)

Posted on February 12, 2004 by vhk10

A sequel to my earlier posting of anthems etc. I feel overdue for singing. Now for some of the larger scale works. In some cases the reason I haven’t done them is clear; I’ve been in small chamber choirs rather than the large choruses required for them. But I feel the gap every time I hear them broadcast or see the work on a concert poster.

a) Bach’s B minor Mass. In fact, I have done this, with the Schola Cantorum of Oxford when I was a student. But I sang alto because that’s what the members of the choir who auditioned me thought I should sing (it’s the only choir of that size I’ve ever been in where members of the choir rather than the conductor took auditions). This wasn’t very satisfactory for me, or for the choir, as the alto section in general was underpowered and some choral scholars from New College had to be drafted in at the last minute to boost the sound.
I’ve narrowly missed this work a number of times by either joining a choir just after they’d done it, or leaving just before, so not having done it as a soprano is just unlucky.
b) Bach’s St Matthew Passion. Again, I have done this, in Oxford even longer ago. This was a scratch ‘come and sing’ performance with organ. Unfortunately the Evangelist fell ill and they couldn’t find a replacement and his words were spoken. So an unsatisfactory performance in the days when I was a novice singer and I feel I haven’t actually performed the work at all. [I took part in a very fine performance in Bath in April 2007]
c) Until a couple of years ago I hadn’t done any Handel oratorio other than Messiah; then I got to do Israel in Egypt. But I haven’t sung any of the others.
d) Likewise, I’ve done the Nelson Mass a couple of times but none of the other large-scale Haydn masses.
e) Despite its killer soprano lines, I would love to sing in Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. I was unlucky last year as the Bath Festival Chorus did it but I was away during too many of the rehearsals to be able to sing.

There are a whole lot of other more recent works that I’ve missed out on: Mahler’s 2nd, the Glagolitic Mass [done this now], Belshazzar’s Feast, Poulenc’s Gloria [done this now], the War Requiem [done this now!], Bruckner’s masses [done the F minor one now] are some that come to mind.

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singing at the nursery

Posted on February 6, 2004 by vhk10

Yesterday I repeated something I did a couple of years ago and went to my son’s nursery to lead the children there in some singing. They like parents to come in and do things for the children from time to time if they have appropriate skills. So I sat in a rocking chair and we (me, about 30 children and nursery staff) sang nursery rhymes and children’s songs for about 20 minutes. This time round I was a bit more aware of current versions than I was before, when the little ones startled me with an extra bit of ‘Baa baa black sheep’ that must have been added since I was a child!

My son’s favourite song at the moment is the one which runs through the alphabet to the tune of the first three lines of ‘Twinkle twinkle little star’. This gets you as far as W; X, Y and Z are then delivered in a kind of Sprechgesänge at the end. When my daughter was not quite two, we suddenly noticed her doing the standard actions while we were listening to Mozart’s piano variations on this theme on a CD.

One thing I notice at all the children’s singing groups I’ve been to is that songs tend to be pitched lower than is necessary for children’s naturally high voices. (It’s a tendency that worries some music teachers too!) The extreme case was one a couple of years ago where the (female) leader was I think a heavy smoker and rarely ventured above even middle C. I try to avoid doing this if I’m leading, and if others sink into the basement I just sing those bits an octave up.

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secular gringing

Posted on February 3, 2004 by vhk10

This item of news appeared on the BBC website yesterday. Of course it’s not really news because organists have been sneaking secular themes into their improvisations for as long as they’ve been able to improvise in church.

I once spent a week in Canterbury Cathedral during which the organist decided to challenge the choir to keep a straight face as they walked in each day. We were treated to, amongst other things, the theme from Postman Pat (evidently a favourite for this treatment) and the 007 theme. The latter was slowed down so that had I not known in advance that it would be played, I would not have recognised it!

Another friend of mine in my student days used to include Tristan chords in his pre-service improvisation at a local church. His friends in the congregation would nudge one another as they came round.
The organist in the article, Matthew Redman, is known to me as we were in Manchester at the same time and later in Bath he was organist at the church I then attended, although I don’t think he ever heard me sing.

I enjoy the Ship of Fools website, especially comparing the Mystery Worshipper’s accounts of services at various churches I know with my own experience of them.

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a large interval

Posted on January 29, 2004 by vhk10

Not the musical kind (though there are quite a few of those involved), but the length of time since I last performed Brahms’ German Requiem, which I am doing with the Chantry Singers this term. The only other time I performed this work was when I was a student and just starting out as a choral singer. Since then I’ve only performed a couple of isolated movements as anthems. And I’ve never done any of it in German.

I’ve never before performed a work after such a long interval (it will be exceeded if I ever do the St. Matthew Passion). Somewhat to my surprise, many in the choir have not done it at all, so I’m not surrounded by people who know it any better. I find that my memory of it is very patchy – I can have no memory of a particular passage and then the next phrase comes back with total recall! This can have the curious result that I know the harder passages of the work better, presumably because I put more effort into learning them all those years ago. I suspect that when I first sang it I didn’t learn the notes all that thoroughly; I was less disciplined about this in those days, and also less confident and more likely to rely on others for leads. Of course I can supplement my limited memory with recollection of the work from having heard it on broadcasts or recordings.

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Handel in the hymnbook and out

Posted on January 20, 2004 by vhk10

It is at this time of year that I wonder ‘What is it about the hymn Brightest and best that attracts tunes with awkward intervals?’.

What I think of as the standard tune, ‘Epiphany’, is straightforward enough. But I have also sung it to a tune offered in the English Hymnal, the Bach chorale ‘Liebster Emmanuel’ which is the only hymn tune I can think of offhand with a diminished fourth in it (easy enough if you’re used to singing Purcell, of course). It has an octave drop in the middle of one line too, but this is harmless enough compared with the next possibility.

If you go to Bath Abbey in Epiphany you may well be invited to sing the hymn to the tune ‘Bede’ from Hymns Ancient and Modern, which is one of the hardest tunes for the congregation I’ve ever encountered. (I discount occasions such as the wedding where the congregation sang ‘Wachet Auf’ in Bach’s arrangement, top G’s and all!). There are plenty of notes in this one, often more than one to a syllable (and the lines of the hymn have 10 or 11 syllables each). Any member of the congregation who attempts to sing along and gets as far as the third line will usually be shaken off by having to sing two intervals of a seventh and one of an octave! If this sounds rather unvocal, it’s because the tune is adapted from an instrumental work by Handel (I believe).

You can find MIDI versions of the first two tunes at:
http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/b/r/brightes.htm

On Saturday I went to hear Bath Baroque doing a miscellaneous programme with a loosely applied ‘royal’ theme. Two of Handel’s Coronation Anthems were sung by some of the Exultate Singers, including one or two former Brandon Hill Singers known to me.

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Westminster Abbey (2)

Posted on January 12, 2004 by vhk10

On January 2nd most of us were back again, this time for a service where I’d sung neither canticles nor anthem before (a rare thing!).

Our canticles were Stanford in F. On singing them I realised why I hadn’t done them before; apart from one or two nice moments, they just aren’t very interesting. We chose them because the Abbey observes a liturgical ‘dress-down Friday’ by asking for unaccompanied canticles. We didn’t want to do anything Tudor or Renaissance because we’d done that the previous day. There aren’t many unaccompanied later canticle settings; the only other Mag and Nunc pair I can think of is Naylor in A (Tonus Peregrinus, anyone?). [April 2004 – Add Gray in F minor. All three of these are for double choir] An alternative approach would be to take a free-standing unaccompanied Mag (e.g. Finzi, Stanford in B flat for double choir, Swayne) or Nunc (e.g. Howells, Holst) and either mix’n’match it with a setting of the other canticle or pair it with a plainchant setting.

The anthem was O magnum mysterium by Morten Lauridsen. This is one of those long, slow moving, almost wholly diatonic pieces with repeated phrases, whose notes can be learnt in less time than it takes to perform the piece (Gorecki’s Totus Tuus is another). As with other such pieces, I found it suprisingly difficult to sing.

The Abbey has already indicated that we would be welcome to come again so I hope to have another go at finding Purcell’s memorial on a future visit.

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Westminster Abbey (1)

Posted on January 7, 2004 by vhk10

On New Year’s Day/Jan 2nd I was singing Evensong in Westminster Abbey with the Cathedral Chamber Choir. Our programme for the first service was especially appealing to me: the Gibbons 2nd service and Gibbons’ anthem ‘See, see the Word is incarnate’, a piece I’d long been keen to sing. (I see that these pieces are also appearing on next week’s Radio 3 Choral Evensong broadcast). Gibbons is my favourite Tudor composer – there is an urgency and flamboyance about much of his music compared with that of his contemporaries. In fact I think the Second Service is my favourite set of canticles; there is so much variety in it with barely a change of tempo needed!

The OUP edition of the canticles we used is beginning to show its age (1930’s) in some ways, especially in its wariness of a discord in the Gloria to the Magnificat: ‘this note should be sung very lightly’. I suppose in the 19th century the dissonance would have been edited out altogether. But at least we were all using the same edition! For the anthem, the choir was using two different editions because of a shortage of copies and all the usual variations between them cropped up: different key, different pagination, different underlay, different barring, different distribution of music between voices and different expression and dynamic markings! This always eats up rehearsal time.

I attempted to visit two special (to me) places at the Abbey. Leading off the main cloister is a passage going to another, smaller cloister, and off this second cloister is another passage going to a garden which few of the thousands of visitors to the Abbey ever reach. It’s a pleasant place to spend an odd moment outside rehearsals, but I have never succeeded in working out its opening hours at this time of year. This time it was open on New Year’s Day but not on the Friday.

I also wanted to go and pay my respects at the monument to Purcell, in his old workplace, as he is one of my favourite composers. As the Abbey is a major tourist attraction, and in recent years has also become a waiting room for people about to catch Eurostar trains from Waterloo, visitors are constrained to follow a circuit in one direction round the building. As a member of a visiting choir you do not have to pay admission, but you still have to go with the flow once inside. The choir as a whole is also marshalled carefully about; for example, after evensong you are led back into the cloister, the door is shut behind you and you can’t re-enter the building to hear the organ voluntary! I have now discovered that Purcell’s monument is in the north choir aisle, but I didn’t find an opportunity to go and look at it. I’m not even sure that the north choir aisle is open apart from for a few minutes immediately before services, when as a member of the choir I can’t get to it because I’m lined up in the cloister waiting to process in.

I’ll hold over an account of the second Evensong till my next posting.

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my musical resolutions for 2004

Posted on December 31, 2003 by vhk10

a) to sing some more things on the wishlist
b) to get to sing at last with the Bath Festival Chorus
c) to sing in at least one new Cathedral. As I have bookings for Gloucester and Sheffield, this resolution at least looks as if it will be fulfilled.
d) to get at least an audition with either the Exultate Singers of Bristol or the Paragon Singers in Bath. At various times in 2003 the conductors of both choirs contacted me to say they would be in touch again ‘soon’, and I have heard nothing further. It’s difficult to know in this situation whether you will do yourself harm or good by reminding them that they’ve said this.
By comparison with other recent years, 2003 wasn’t a good one for solos. It would be nice if I had more in 2004, especially in those choirs where I haven’t ever done one, but of course this is in the hands of other people.

In a year’s time I’ll look back on 2004 and see how much of this has or hasn’t happened! [Results here]. The year gets off to a flying start with singing Evensong in Westminster Abbey on New Year’s Day (with music by Gibbons) and January 2nd.

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homegrown CDs

Posted on December 29, 2003 by vhk10

Just before Christmas I received something I’d forgotten all about – a CD of some of the music I sang at Salisbury in August. It’s now much easier to produce short runs of CDs at a sensible price than it used to be, and I think good recording equipment has got cheaper too. The Chantry Singers concert last week was recorded for future release, and a CD was made of the Cathedral Chamber Choir Salisbury tour in 2002, which I send to prospective venues as a sample of what the choir can do. And just about every church choir seems to be doing one these days!

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