The sectionals in Glee look like more fun than ours

If you’re a tenor everybody wants you (chorally speaking). Tenors are a rare breed. As a tenor, you must surely feel appreciated, needed, perhaps even loved. If you miss a concert you will be abandoning your few loyal comrades in their hour of need. The rest of the choir will notice your absence, and throw uneasy glances at the space in the ranks where you should be. You make a DIFFERENCE. If you’re a soprano, however, your section stretches back to the horizon. You could get lost in the jungle for 6 months and when you emerge, staggering and traumatised, back into the choral ranks, people will throw you a glance and wonder if you’re up to date with your subs. You are part of a vast collective of strangers, tied together only by the need to chant approximately the same line. We’re like the Borg, basically. However the one real benefit of being a lady in the world of choral singing is that when we have sectionals (where we split into sections to rehearse separately), we’re too huge and amorphous a mass to move with any speed, so we get to stay in the nice bright main hall while the men have to troop off to the poky little chapel downstairs. Heh heh heh!

Sectionals this week gave us a chance to notebash some of the Puccini Messa di Gloria. It’s a really fun piece, and well-rounded with some lovely tunes. Don’t listen to The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, which rather dismisses it with the cold one-liner - “Puccini's choral, orchestral and instrumental works, dating mainly from his early years, are unimportant, though the Mass in A-flat (1880) is still performed occasionally”. Blimey, bit harsh. Whoever wrote that had clearly not read Classical.net, which has Puccini writing the Mass in 1860, at the age of 2. That must surely raise its importance in the classical pantheon? In any case, it seems to have been well received at the time of its first performance in 1880, but then forgotten until 1952, when it was rediscovered by the portentous-sounding Father Dante and performed again in Naples to another warm reception. According to the programme notes at the start of our copies, the critics at these two performances – 72 years apart – made strikingly similar comments about the piece. Is this, as the notes hold, a demonstration of the timeless beauty and universal appeal of the Mass? Or did the critic at the second performance sleep in, miss the performance altogether and then search desperately through his newspaper back catalogue, copying the previous review verbatim and rushing it down to the editorial office bare minutes before his deadline? I guess we’ll never know.

The Force was with us

Choral singing is fabulous, but it can also be a pretty hard slog sometimes, and last Saturday’s pre-concert rehearsal was a good example. We were determined to nail the remaining few tricky bits in both the Leighton and the Martin, which meant a lot of hard work and extreme concentration in a church as cold as the cold cold grave. We froze solid for four grindingly hard hours, wrapped in coats and scarves, bolting as one down High Holborn during the break to form an agonized queue in Cafe Nero. But it was worth it. By the time of the concert we were ready to give it our all. There were a couple of hairy moments – I think I may have done an unintentional solo at one point – but it was atmospheric and at times overwhelmingly beautiful. I got shivers during the Martin Agnus Dei in particular, and it wasn’t due to the cold. Well, not entirely, anyway. And I’m happy to say we Jedi-mind-controlled our way through the tricky Hosannas with great success. Thank you, the Force.
So another concert successfully completed, and we’re straight into the next challenge. Wednesday was spent singing our way through the music for our next Oriana concert in April. We’ll be doing Shicksa ... Schiscka ... sssiska ... something in German by Brahms, Gardner’s A Burns Sequence, and Puccini Missa di Gloria. It feels much more relaxed and lighthearted after the majesty of the last concert, but again really great music. But before that, on Easter weekend we’ll be taking part in the Star Wars extravaganza at the O2, singing music from the film scores. We were really hoping this meant singing the theme tune with some random words attached – “Star – WARS – Sta-a-a- AAAAAAAR – wars” - but sadly it appears to be genuinely choral music from the prequels rather than a Singalonga event. But I have high hopes for some improvisation in the bar afterwards.

5 times is bad times

Call me old-fashioned, but what’s wrong with a nice stable 4/4? We all know where we are with that. If the time signature just stays the same, we can get on and sort out the melody and the harmony without concentrating reeeeeely hard and having to count quavers on our fingers. And seriously, what is it about the word “hosanna” that makes 20th century composers break out in 5-time?? What’s wrong with them? I remember when hosanna was a nice 6/8 word, in my primary school days. Does that really need tinkering with?? It shouldn’t be allowed. And especially, ESPECIALLY, composers should be banned from throwing in the occasional 6-time bar just when we’ve got our heads round counting in 5s! That’s just cruel.

The Leighton is mainly the piece causing this angst, although that doesn’t get Martin off the hook. The rhythm is the only tricky thing now because we’ve sorted the complicated, dissonant harmonies. In fact we’re attacking the discordant clashes with some relish, and I’m even confident that those discordant clashes are AS WRITTEN in the score, something I haven’t always been able to say in my choral career. So all was going well with the Leighton at this week’s rehearsal, and I was particularly psyched to get picked for the semi-chorus singing the beginning of the Sanctus, which I was banging on about last week as the loveliest part of the piece. But then the word “hosanna” approaches, and Kenneth gets his 5/4 hat on. Suddenly the entire choir were all over the place. 5-time is HARD. “Do you want only the semi-chorus to sing this bit too?” the soprano sitting behind me asked David-the-conductor hopefully. I glowered at her as befits such a blatant escape attempt, but she just looked back at me like butter wouldn’t melt. In this situation we did what any choir would do, and resorted to epic Hollywood. “Use the force!” cried David, Yoda-like at his music stand. We felt for the notes with our minds, and, incredibly, the force was with us. Now we just need to retain the force until the concert on Saturday. I’m maintaining it through meditation and some mild ewok-baiting.

Luscious Leighton

After the glory of Sound and Vision, we came back to earth with a clatter this week when we realised our next concert was only 10 days away. We’re singing Masses for double choir by Frank Martin and Kenneth Leighton. They’re both superb pieces, but pretty complicated and a complete change of style from our recent pop successes, so we’re working super-hard to polish them for performance.

Up to now I’ve been far keener on the Martin than the Leighton, but after a rehearsal devoted to Leighton and lots of listens to the recording, I’m really starting to understand the shape of the piece much more. Leighton was a master of counterpoint, and this mass is no exception. The Sanctus in particular is gorgeous, interweaving the voices in lyrical triplets. And just as it’s lulled us into a soothing false sense of security, in comes the hosanna with tricky crossing entries and changing time signatures to thoroughly wake us up again. The Agnus Dei ramps up the emotional tension, with beautiful solo lines set against the choir exploring its full dynamic range. I was briefly disconcerted when the soprano solo line ended with a jarring slide upwards, but that luckily turned out to be the sound of my train departing King’s Cross. The joys of the i-pod age. And if the music itself isn’t enough to fall in love with the mass, it’s dedicated to a man with the happy name of Herrick Bunney. Hurray!

We must have been struggling to make the change of style, however, because David-the-Conductor went off into ever more extravagant realms of imagery to get us to infuse expression into the music. And we duly came to life. The altos had a good go at being perverted. The basses were positively sinful. We all invoked the exact wave of terror you feel when you’re in a kebab shop and someone runs in and hits you on the head with a bottle and runs away. It was all very appropriate for a Mass setting. I’m not sure I’ll ever see church-going in the same way again.