This piece was only a name to me until I signed up for Bristol Choral Society’s Come and Sing, which this year featured the music of Vaughan Williams. It’s a ‘song’ for choir in a genre which has now gone out of fashion: a setting of a poem for chorus and orchestra lasting about 10 minutes. (Blest Pair of Sirens<\/i>. which you also don’t hear very much these days, is another example.) It’s an early work, mixing some rather four-square material with more harmonically daring passages.<\/p>\n
Over 200 of us gathered at Tyndale Baptist Church, a handsome building notable for its stained glass windows (it’s a pity though that the lovely central east window can no longer be illuminated by natural light). Our other piece was the Mass in G minor. I’ve sung most possible bits of this over the years: first and second soprano parts, and most of the solos. But I’m not very familiar with the second soprano line and I don’t think I’d ever sung the Creed, so I had some learning to do even in this much more familiar work.<\/p>\n
At the end of the day we sang through both pieces with the piano impersonating the orchestra in Toward the Unknown Region<\/i> and discreetly accompanying in the Mass (to avoid the loss of pitch which Vaughan Williams clearly anticipated to judge by his comments in the score).<\/p>\n
We were told that Vaughan Williams has been a bit out of fashion recently, which may partly explain why there are many important choral works by him that I’ve never sung: the Sea Symphony<\/i> (this may change soon, though), Hodie<\/i>, Dona Nobis Pacem<\/i>, Sancta Civitas<\/i>, the Oxford Elegy<\/i> and, astonishingly, his Fantasia on Christmas Carols<\/i>. [2020 update: I’ve now done the symphony, Dona Nobis Pacem<\/i> and the Fantasia<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This piece was only a name to me until I signed up for Bristol Choral Society’s Come and Sing, which this year featured the music of Vaughan Williams. It’s a ‘song’ for choir in a genre which has now gone … Continue reading