What can I say about choir this week? It was a smorgasbord of Christmassy stuff. A bit of Handel, a touch of traditional arr. Wilcocks, a healthy dollop of Giles Swayne’s Starlight (hurray!), a smattering of Bruckner and a pinch of traditional arr Drummond combined for some exciting musical fireworks and hideous musical collapses.
The collapses were largely in “Angels from the Realms of Glory”, which we’re singing in a not unchallenging arrangement by our very own David-the-Conductor. Angels from the Realms of Glory was written by James Montgomery in the 19th century, and appears to have several possible tunes. In England, though, the first time it appeared someone said “oh hang on, it’s that Angels one, I know how this goes” and ever since we have sung it to the tune of “Angels we have Heard on High”. David-the-Conductor’s arrangement takes this traditional carol interchange and expands on it, throwing in “Gloria”s and “Joy to the world”s with gay abandon and mixing them all up in some very unexpected harmonies. This was complicated stuff, and slowly but surely we all lost track of where we were. By verse 4 we may as well have been wading in chromatic mud. David-the-Conductor somehow coped with the horror of listening to us mess up his arrangement and dragged us through to the end with some very determined arm-waving, but we definitely didn’t finish in realms of glory. We’ve still got two weeks to polish it up though, so I’m sure we’ll be ready to spring it on the audience by the time the concert rolls around.
And the audience had better look to their laurels, because Angels is this year’s Oriana Audience Challenge, where the audience have to grit their teeth and make it through a carol together while the choir do everything we can to put them off. The audience are usually surprisingly good at this, but it is always a moment of tension in our Christmas concert. Someone in the second row actually swooned under the pressure two years ago and had to be revived by Phil the Tenor. If Wednesday’s run-through of Angels is anything to go by I think we might have to put the local hospitals on high alert this year.
Saturday 27 November 2010
Friday 19 November 2010
Hysterical? Moi?
I wasn't sure if there was going to be a blog entry this week, as I was too ill to go to choir and had to stay at home and watch The Apprentice instead (just for the Prokofiev, you understand). But given the scandalized text I received just after rehearsal was over, I felt I must acknowledge the fact that David-the-Conductor told the soprano section that they’re much more hysterical than the altos. Oh HOW can you SAY that!!! That’s COMPLETELY UNFAIR (clutches heart in anguish). And after ALL I DO for the choir! (You can’t see, because this is only some words on a screen, but I am actually storming off in high dudgeon right now.)
At least the insults got shared around, as I then heard from several quarters that David told the whole choir they were “singing like slags” during Berlioz’ Shepherds Farewell. How does one sing like a slag? I’m intrigued!
Of all the composers we’re performing in the Christmas concert, though, Berlioz is probably the most likely to approve of a bunch of slags singing his work. This is after all a man who declared “If the Emperor of Russia wants me, I am up for sale”. Oo-er. Berlioz does seem to have had quite a colourful life. In Paris when the July Revolution broke out, he finished writing a cantata amid the sound of bullets and then went out to “roam around Paris ‘till morning, pistol in hand”. He doesn’t specify whether this was anything to do with the revolution, it might just have been a regular pastime. He does seem to have been quite bloodthirsty. At one point he hatched a plot to murder his ex-fiancee and his family, dashing from Italy to France with a pistol. Ever the planner, he also took poison in case the pistol misfired, and women’s clothing, ostensibly to disguise himself but really so that he could strangle her with some pantaloons if the poison didn’t work either.
Luckily he thought better of the plan and so lived long enough to compose the Shepherds Farewell. Even this innocuous piece has an exciting back story. He first released it under a pseudonym, to prove the critics that they were wrong about his music, which received regular maulings. And they fell for it hook line and sinker, raving about it. One woman even went so far as to declare that “Berlioz could never write a tune as simple and charming as this little piece”. Far from being happy at this success, Berlioz was angry on behalf of all his other music. History does not declare what happened to the lady critic. I expect Berlioz lured her to the aquarium and ran her through with a swordfish.
(references all from good old Wikipedia)
At least the insults got shared around, as I then heard from several quarters that David told the whole choir they were “singing like slags” during Berlioz’ Shepherds Farewell. How does one sing like a slag? I’m intrigued!
Of all the composers we’re performing in the Christmas concert, though, Berlioz is probably the most likely to approve of a bunch of slags singing his work. This is after all a man who declared “If the Emperor of Russia wants me, I am up for sale”. Oo-er. Berlioz does seem to have had quite a colourful life. In Paris when the July Revolution broke out, he finished writing a cantata amid the sound of bullets and then went out to “roam around Paris ‘till morning, pistol in hand”. He doesn’t specify whether this was anything to do with the revolution, it might just have been a regular pastime. He does seem to have been quite bloodthirsty. At one point he hatched a plot to murder his ex-fiancee and his family, dashing from Italy to France with a pistol. Ever the planner, he also took poison in case the pistol misfired, and women’s clothing, ostensibly to disguise himself but really so that he could strangle her with some pantaloons if the poison didn’t work either.
Luckily he thought better of the plan and so lived long enough to compose the Shepherds Farewell. Even this innocuous piece has an exciting back story. He first released it under a pseudonym, to prove the critics that they were wrong about his music, which received regular maulings. And they fell for it hook line and sinker, raving about it. One woman even went so far as to declare that “Berlioz could never write a tune as simple and charming as this little piece”. Far from being happy at this success, Berlioz was angry on behalf of all his other music. History does not declare what happened to the lady critic. I expect Berlioz lured her to the aquarium and ran her through with a swordfish.
(references all from good old Wikipedia)
Friday 12 November 2010
From a Plant to a Gardner
Robert Plant’s Electric Prom was televised last Saturday night, and my nose managed to sneak into a shot all by itself. I was most impressed by its blatant move to grab stardom and embark on a solo career. I guess the rest of my face has been holding it back all this time. There was quite a lot of angst flying around on Facebook during the day about who would look the silliest on TV. Well, I can reveal that the “biggest numpty” award goes to ... no-one. Everyone looked surprisingly good and confident. We should definitely step out from behind our choir folders and sing from memory more often, as it makes us look much more at one with the music. As to who looked best, well, that’s a hard one to call. Lots of people were jiving around their mikes like seasoned professionals. But Tom in the basses managed to go that extra step, with his relaxed confidence when Robert Plant introduced the choir. Everyone else looked a bit sheepish, but Tom accepted the plaudits of his adoring public as though born into royalty. Tom, you win the “Face of Oriana” award for your ability to soundlessly enunciate the word “Thank you”. Great diction.
Right, that really is it for the Electric Prom now, and we're well into rehearsing our Christmas music now. The Gardning leave that I so optimistically predicted a couple of weeks back is already at an end, as John Gardner’s “Tomorrow shall be our Dancing Day” has somehow sneaked on to the programme for our Christmas concert. I’m going to get all my bitching in early, as I’m secretly certain I’m going to end up loving this piece. But at the moment I am once again outraged by Gardner’s inability to pick a time signature and stick to it. And seriously, what is that phrasing all about?? It’s as though he thinks “what would a singer do naturally?” and then does exactly the opposite. You spend hours trying to drum the unnatural phrasing into your head, only for a hollow sense of futility to hit when you actually manage to get it right. It’s the musical equivalent of a Rubix Cube. Or at least I assume so, I’ve never actually managed to finish one of those. To make matters worse, Louise in the First Sops has decided she wants the choir to sing this piece at her wedding in December, so we’re obliged by the bonds of friendship to put the work in. I’m tempted to say we’ll only sing it if she has it for her entrance music. It’d be fun watching her oscillate wildly between a waltz and a two-step all the way up the aisle.
Right, that really is it for the Electric Prom now, and we're well into rehearsing our Christmas music now. The Gardning leave that I so optimistically predicted a couple of weeks back is already at an end, as John Gardner’s “Tomorrow shall be our Dancing Day” has somehow sneaked on to the programme for our Christmas concert. I’m going to get all my bitching in early, as I’m secretly certain I’m going to end up loving this piece. But at the moment I am once again outraged by Gardner’s inability to pick a time signature and stick to it. And seriously, what is that phrasing all about?? It’s as though he thinks “what would a singer do naturally?” and then does exactly the opposite. You spend hours trying to drum the unnatural phrasing into your head, only for a hollow sense of futility to hit when you actually manage to get it right. It’s the musical equivalent of a Rubix Cube. Or at least I assume so, I’ve never actually managed to finish one of those. To make matters worse, Louise in the First Sops has decided she wants the choir to sing this piece at her wedding in December, so we’re obliged by the bonds of friendship to put the work in. I’m tempted to say we’ll only sing it if she has it for her entrance music. It’d be fun watching her oscillate wildly between a waltz and a two-step all the way up the aisle.
Saturday 6 November 2010
BAH-HUMBUG!
The excitement of the Electric Prom is now almost completely behind us, although it’s being televised tonight (Saturday) on BBC2, so we do still have the “who looks like the biggest numpty” competition to come. I will report in full on the results next week! (Unless it’s me, in which case I will never mention it again). So we are now onto rehearsals for our next concert, which is, of course, Christmas. Up and down the land, choral singers everywhere are already harking the herald angels and wondering what exactly figgy pudding is. We were almost completely carol-less last year, so this year we’re going to make up for it with not one but two concerts packed full of Christmas cheer. David-the-Conductor has asked for suggestions from the choir for what we’d like to sing in our Christmas concert, and I’m delighted to see that Swayne’s “Starlight” is already on the list (“People of Planet Earth, hear what I say”!), although I think that whoever suggested Bohemian Rhapsody is likely to be disappointed.
I love Christmas carols, but not in November. I get pre-christmas rage when I see trees in department stores. It’s still AUTUMN you weirdos! So even though we tempered the premature Christmas jollity with bits of The Dream of Gerontius, I was still not in the best of moods at choir this week. And as always, when I’m a bit grumpy, I began to passively resist the situation. I diminuendoed when I should have been crescendoing. I emphasised off the beat notes. I sang random women’s names instead of the lyrics. It cheered me up no end, but thinking about it afterwards, I’m actually quite concerned. How come no-one noticed that I was belting out “Beryl and Flo” instead of “peril and woe”?? David-the-Conductor didn’t stop us even once to say “no no, that’s BURIAL, not MURIEL”. I am clearly not contributing much to the overall sound of the choir. But maybe I just need to get more strategic. The soprano section is too huge and solid to be undermined easily by one rogue scrooge. Maybe I should move to the tenors.
I love Christmas carols, but not in November. I get pre-christmas rage when I see trees in department stores. It’s still AUTUMN you weirdos! So even though we tempered the premature Christmas jollity with bits of The Dream of Gerontius, I was still not in the best of moods at choir this week. And as always, when I’m a bit grumpy, I began to passively resist the situation. I diminuendoed when I should have been crescendoing. I emphasised off the beat notes. I sang random women’s names instead of the lyrics. It cheered me up no end, but thinking about it afterwards, I’m actually quite concerned. How come no-one noticed that I was belting out “Beryl and Flo” instead of “peril and woe”?? David-the-Conductor didn’t stop us even once to say “no no, that’s BURIAL, not MURIEL”. I am clearly not contributing much to the overall sound of the choir. But maybe I just need to get more strategic. The soprano section is too huge and solid to be undermined easily by one rogue scrooge. Maybe I should move to the tenors.
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