Good Friday with the Bath Camerata

Posted on September 5, 2003 by vhk10

So what did I do earlier in the year? One thing was joining the Bath Camerata for their Good Friday performance of Mozart’s Requiem in Wells Cathedral. These days the Good Friday concerts, when the choir is expanded with former members, are the only times I sing with this choir, and in fact I hadn’t been able to do a Good Friday for a few years. So it was exciting to be in such excellent vocal company again, especially as the Cathedral was full for the concert. There was a new piece ‘Why weepest thou in wild array’, to which I and the other additional singers contributed plainchant interludes while everyone else was distributed around the building.

Sadly, it wasn’t such a success from the social point of view. Because I hadn’t sung with the choir for a while, I think few of them remembered me; at any rate only a couple of them asked me how I was and what I’d been doing, and in the performance I and the other imported singers were shunted on to a back row behind the others where I couldn’t see the conductor (until someone in front of me decided at the last minute not to sing).

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Audition

Posted on September 5, 2003 by vhk10

I had an audition to rejoin the Chantry Singers (with whom I used to sing) earlier this week. I really dread auditions – much worse than doing solos in front of large numbers of people. This time at least I was able to demonstrate I wasn’t bluffing when I said I could go at least up to B flat, though my mind blanked when I had to sing the middle note of a chord! Sight singing (Lassus) was OK, especially as I had sung the piece a year or so ago (I owned up to this). The standard sight-singing test at auditions used to be the Sanctus from Byrd’s 4-part Mass. For a prepared piece I used one of Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder which I’d recently learnt. (I used to do Mozart’s Laudate Dominum, but I felt I’d had enough of it after a while). Anyway I shall be rejoining the Chantry Singers for their Christmas concert.

(Written March 2004) A number of people have posted here asking how they get started with auditioning and realising their potential as singers.

I have a number of contacts in choirs around Britain, but can’t help with specific places elsewhere. If you’re looking for a choir in Britain, I recommend British Choirs on the Net.

If you aren’t in Britain, the chances of someone in your area reading your contribution to what is now a fairly old article in my blog are extremely small. I can only offer the following advice:

Try to have some lessons. Failing that, find out who the good choir trainers in your area are and join one of their choirs. You may learn a lot about how to sing well from what they say in rehearsal. Your local community choir might be a good place to start. If you know someone who sings well, ask them where they learnt/are learning. But make sure you get some singing, rather than just staying on a waiting list!

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Singing in Llandaff

Posted on September 1, 2003 by vhk10

I did three days of a trip to Llandaff Cathedral with the Cathedral Chamber Choir. No music new to me here* and I got the Balfour Gardiner Evening Hymn for the third time in 4 weeks! I hope it’s a long, long time before I’m asked to sing it again, because I find it a pretty vacuous piece (the musical material of the central section is particularly thin). I sang at Llandaff once before, with my college choir at Cambridge and it hadn’t changed much except for some building between the song school and the Cathedral, no longer singing a setting of the Creed (it was the only cathedral where I’ve ever done that) and not getting a drinks party with the clergy after the Sunday Eucharist. And, to my great relief, the guided tour no longer turns up during the Magnificat every night – it made Evensong feel like feeding time at the zoo!
*except the variant Rose Response which is suitable for the Welsh liturgy.

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Proms concert

Posted on August 29, 2003 by vhk10

I got away to London on Wednesday and went to the Proms concert with Mark Wigglesworth and the London Philharmonic. This included Berg’s Seven Early Songssung by Christine Brewer (the first professional performance I’ve heard live since I learnt some of the songs five years ago), also Brahms’ first symphony and excerpts from Tannhäuser. I enjoyed it despite some rather dodgy woodwind moments – also the Seven Early Songs are lightly scored and got a bit lost in the Albert Hall.
I would have enjoyed it even more if I hadn’t had to frantically rush around for a taxi (the one I ordered didn’t turn up) afterwards in order to get the 21.33 train home. The later trains were replaced by buses because of engineering on the line and had I missed the 21.33 I would not have returned home till 1.30 a.m. There have been dozens of these ’emergency’ works on the line since I moved to Bath seven years ago and I estimate that they have affected about half of my attempts to have a midweek night out in London during that time.

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a weekend at Southwell

Posted on August 19, 2003 by vhk10

I went to Southwell Minster at the weekend with the Open University Chapel Choir, having been recruited when the conductor saw on my web page that I wanted to sing at Southwell. I can see why I haven’t been there before, as they don’t get many visiting choirs. We sang several Tudor pieces, also a canticle setting by the conductor, and an anthem which managed to go all six pages without changing key. I think I can only go so long without a key change, unless it’s early music, or not in a key to start with!

We also sang a service at Upton church nearby, from the tower of which it is claimed you can see two cathedrals (Southwell and Lincoln) on a clear day.

I’ve just written to Birmingham Cathedral and St. Mary Redcliffe to see if they will have one of my other choirs (the Cathedral Chamber Choir) for a weekend in 2004. It’s the second shot at writing to Birmingham as I never had a reply to my letter of a few months ago. [I did get a reply in the end.]

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Salisbury

Posted on August 13, 2003 by vhk10

So how was Salisbury? Very hot, especially as we had to wear cassocks and surplices! I sang four services, 3 x Evensong and a communion service. It was nice to sing Howells’ Westminster canticles again as the only other time I have done them (6 years ago) I was losing my voice. I enjoyed doing them as my diet of Howells canticles seems mainly to be Coll Reg (which I don’t like singing) and Gloucester. Actually it was varied a few months ago by the New College Service at St. Paul’s Cathedral. My favourite Howells canticles though are the St. Paul’s service which I haven’t done in over a decade.

Other highlights included ‘For lo, I raise up’ by Stanford, the Balfour Gardiner Evening Hymn, and the Tomkins Fourth Service. And a couple of pieces new to me – ‘O salutaris’ by Villette and ‘Pris Herren’, the latter being in Norwegian, which adds to the languages I’ve sung in. (The conductor lives in Norway and a choir from his town, visiting England, sang one of the services jointly with us).

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Starting up….

Posted on August 12, 2003 by vhk10

This is just to get the ball rolling. If you’re not interested in choral music you probably won’t find this very exciting. I have just been singing in Salisbury Cathedral and am about to go to Southwell Minster.

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