Christmas comes but once a year. Unless you’re in Oriana, in which case Christmas happens 3 times over a period of a month and a half. Yes indeed, having performed not one but two Christmas concerts in December, we are now rejecting the Gregorian calendar and all its works, and will be recording our Christmas CD in line with the Julian calendar Epiphany on the third weekend in January. Excellent! I always mistrusted that new-fangled Gregorian nonsense, and this will allow us to reach out to new audiences in such Julian calendar stalwarts as Ethiopia, the Ukraine and the Republic of Macedonia. After all, how can two million Macedonians be wrong?
The Christmas CD will be, as I understand it, pretty much a full replay of the Christmas concert, which I very much hope you attended. It was a smorgasbord of Christmassy delights, many of them original arrangements by our very own David-the-Conductor, all sung with a level of gusto that made me proud. Particular highlights were David’s arrangement of Star of Wonder (which frankly I am prepared to campaign hard to make Christmas Number One next year – it’s great!), and of course the marvellous Starlight (which I rave about in the blog every year so there’s nothing new there). Lowlight for me (apologies to the children’s choir and any other fans of this piece) was the Rainbow song. If you missed it, the song goes something like this:
“We’ll send you a rainbow for Christmas,
oooh, aaah,
a rainbow message of loveliness and joy and soft fluffy animals,
oooohh doo beeee doooh,
wear your knitted santa jumper from your grandma with a smile because Jesus loves you,
shooby doo wop,
together we’re a rainbow!”
To their credit the children’s choir sang marvellously (as did Oriana of course), and the song seemed to go down incredibly well with the audience, but frankly I could barely keep my head out of the sick bucket long enough to join in. Shudder.
But I’m not sure why I react so strongly to this piece, when Starlight (which to be fair, could also be considered “a bit naff”) is the very height of Christmassy joy for me. Isn’t it interesting that carolling “we’re reading a message by Starlight, and the message is love” makes me grin and caper, but singing “we’ll send you a rainbow for Christmas” makes me want to rupture my own vocal chords so as never to have to sing it again. I am the Scrooge of the rainbow song. Together, the rest of you may be a rainbow, but I am a little black cloud of grumpiness and I shed cold water on your message of burbling cheer.
Anyway, having to occasionally sing something that you hate does go with the territory in Oriana, and is a worthwhile price to pay for the chance to sing such a diverse range of music. And to prove it, we also had some superb and challenging choral pieces in the mix, which offset the froth enough for me to make it through the Rainbow Song alive. Leighton’s Nativitie in particular is a glorious and reflective piece of choral beauty, and while we weren’t quite perfect we certainly did justice to the mood of quiet awe. It sent shivers down my spine. Allain’s Christ’s Love Song, too, is a warm and shimmering piece of built-up harmonies and two-choir rivalry. (Choir one is the best! Nyah nyah nyah choir 2!) I’m really looking forward to doing them both the justice they deserve on the recording. And I hope all our stalwart Oriana fans will support us by: a) pledging to buy the CD; and b) keeping their decorations up until the CD recording is over. It’s still Christmas in the Ukraine everyone! Do it for global harmony!
Friday 30 December 2011
Tuesday 29 November 2011
Chriiiiiistmas tiiiiiime, festive greenery and alcoholic beverage
It’s Chriiiiiiiist-maaaaaas! Well, nearly. And Oriana are into our annual Christmas concert rehearsal melee. Christmas, in the immortal words of Sir Cliff, is a time for living, a time for believing, a time for realising that we’re singing a LOT of music and we don’t really know it that well. Ooooh, mistletoe and wine. We always seem to pull it out of the bag in the end, though, and the audience get to roar along with a few carols while the choir try and put them off by harmonising in different keys and occasionally bursting into a different carol altogether, so it is always a fun and interactive experience.
However, one thing that always worries me about Christmas is the way it reveals my populist musical bent. Everyone else loves singing In Dulci Jubilo and frightening things in 13/8 by Russian men in horn-rimmed glasses, but for me its “Frosty the Snowman” and Giles Swayne’s “Starlight” every time (“People of planet Earth, hear what I say!”). Try as I might to raise a sardonic eyebrow as we belt out “We’re sending a message by Starliiiiiight, and the message is Luuurrrrrrrrve”, I can’t help but grin widely and dance a little bit.
So you can imagine my despair when I was looking up “In the Bleak Midwinter” for blogging purposes, and came across the following list of Best Carols of All Time, as voted for by assorted respectable musicians and choirmasters. They are thus:
1) In the Bleak Midwinter
2. In Dulci Jubilo (See? Told you)
3. A Spotless Rose
4. Bethlehem Down
5. Lully, Lulla
6. Tomorrow Shall be My Dancing Day
7. There is No Rose
8. O Come All Ye Faithful
9. Of the Father's Heart Begotten
10. What Sweeter Music
Cough, excuse me? What? No Hark the Herald Angels? No Little Donkey? No …. (sob) … Starlight? Admittedly Bethlehem Down and Lully Lulla are nice pieces, but they’re not exactly the kind of thing Santa would burst out of the chimney to, are they? And what’s all this stuff about roses?? Where’s the holly and the ivy? This is Christmas with the Christmas taken out of it, as though sleighbells and chocolate and happy songs about snow are beneath our musical intellect.
However, even these stuffed shirts pale into insignificance next to “Hymnologist and theologian Ian Bradley” who according to Wikipedia has questioned the theology of “In the Bleak Midwinter” thusly:
"Is it right to say that heaven cannot hold God, nor the earth sustain, and what about heaven and earth fleeing away when he comes to reign?"
What?????? It’s a Christmas carol, not a PhD thesis in bible studies. Similarly can it be right to exhort the hooved and probably tone-deaf Little Donkey to “ring out those bells tonight”?*. Is it correct form to expect Jesus to arrive on no less than three sailing ships on Christmas Day? Of course it isn’t, but what’s wrong with a bit of festive licence? Honestly, when did Christmas become the time of pernickety fuss-budgets? (Try rhyming that, Sir Cliff)
Well if you can’t beat them, join them. I typed intellectual Christmas carols into Google, and would like to announce that my new favourite Christmas Carol is “Listen, the celestial messengers produce harmonious vocalization”. We may not be singing this at the Oriana Christmas concert, but we will be regaling you with “Embellish the Interior Passageways”, “The first person nominative plural of a triumvirate of far eastern heads of state”, and happily, “Obese personification fabricated from compressed mounds of crystalline structures”**. Bet you can hardly wait now.
*If Simon Funnell points out that it’s actually Bethlehem and not the donkey that is supposed to ring the bells, you will be ruining my favourite and most enduring Christmas image and therefore getting your name on the Fuss-budget List.
**With thanks to Christmas Songs for the Intellectual” http://www.oocities.org/timessquare/8965/newsonga.htm
However, one thing that always worries me about Christmas is the way it reveals my populist musical bent. Everyone else loves singing In Dulci Jubilo and frightening things in 13/8 by Russian men in horn-rimmed glasses, but for me its “Frosty the Snowman” and Giles Swayne’s “Starlight” every time (“People of planet Earth, hear what I say!”). Try as I might to raise a sardonic eyebrow as we belt out “We’re sending a message by Starliiiiiight, and the message is Luuurrrrrrrrve”, I can’t help but grin widely and dance a little bit.
So you can imagine my despair when I was looking up “In the Bleak Midwinter” for blogging purposes, and came across the following list of Best Carols of All Time, as voted for by assorted respectable musicians and choirmasters. They are thus:
1) In the Bleak Midwinter
2. In Dulci Jubilo (See? Told you)
3. A Spotless Rose
4. Bethlehem Down
5. Lully, Lulla
6. Tomorrow Shall be My Dancing Day
7. There is No Rose
8. O Come All Ye Faithful
9. Of the Father's Heart Begotten
10. What Sweeter Music
Cough, excuse me? What? No Hark the Herald Angels? No Little Donkey? No …. (sob) … Starlight? Admittedly Bethlehem Down and Lully Lulla are nice pieces, but they’re not exactly the kind of thing Santa would burst out of the chimney to, are they? And what’s all this stuff about roses?? Where’s the holly and the ivy? This is Christmas with the Christmas taken out of it, as though sleighbells and chocolate and happy songs about snow are beneath our musical intellect.
However, even these stuffed shirts pale into insignificance next to “Hymnologist and theologian Ian Bradley” who according to Wikipedia has questioned the theology of “In the Bleak Midwinter” thusly:
"Is it right to say that heaven cannot hold God, nor the earth sustain, and what about heaven and earth fleeing away when he comes to reign?"
What?????? It’s a Christmas carol, not a PhD thesis in bible studies. Similarly can it be right to exhort the hooved and probably tone-deaf Little Donkey to “ring out those bells tonight”?*. Is it correct form to expect Jesus to arrive on no less than three sailing ships on Christmas Day? Of course it isn’t, but what’s wrong with a bit of festive licence? Honestly, when did Christmas become the time of pernickety fuss-budgets? (Try rhyming that, Sir Cliff)
Well if you can’t beat them, join them. I typed intellectual Christmas carols into Google, and would like to announce that my new favourite Christmas Carol is “Listen, the celestial messengers produce harmonious vocalization”. We may not be singing this at the Oriana Christmas concert, but we will be regaling you with “Embellish the Interior Passageways”, “The first person nominative plural of a triumvirate of far eastern heads of state”, and happily, “Obese personification fabricated from compressed mounds of crystalline structures”**. Bet you can hardly wait now.
*If Simon Funnell points out that it’s actually Bethlehem and not the donkey that is supposed to ring the bells, you will be ruining my favourite and most enduring Christmas image and therefore getting your name on the Fuss-budget List.
**With thanks to Christmas Songs for the Intellectual” http://www.oocities.org/timessquare/8965/newsonga.htm
Sunday 30 October 2011
The chaos of flats
I had my second experience of being an audience member at the Oriana concert early this month. And once again they were marvellous without me. This is starting to get disturbing. In the a capella pieces they were full and sonorous, and in the accompanied pieces they manfully ignored the organist’s occasional attempts to throw them off by playing a different piece entirely, and stayed with David-the-Conductor throughout. It was a tour de force of singing, and I was very proud of them.
Particular highlights were Byrd “Sing Joyfully” – what an amazing rendition – and Purcell “Hear My Prayer” which was stunning. And if there were any lowlights, for me it would have been Wood and Ireland and their anthemy ilk. David-the-Conductor will hate me for saying it, but seriously, get a choir to sing some traditional English Pantserie and throw in an “um-cha” organ and we might as well have been promenading in Blackpool on a bank holiday weekend. I could practically see the front row getting out their buckets and spades. The choir still did an amazing job of course, so at least we can now move on to more interesting repertoire feeling like we’ve shown Songs of Praise how it should be done.
Anyway, I’ve been mulling over something David-the-Conductor said in rehearsal a few weeks ago, when once again we were struggling to keep the pitch up on a dreary October evening. Anyone that has ever sung in a choir will have experienced this challenge. David kept yelling and doing his upwards finger-point, but we stayed flat as a souffle. (I am no cook, it must be said). Finally, in despair, David said that he didn’t know why choirs drop the pitch so often, but maybe humanity is just attracted to the chaos of flats. Isn’t that rather a lovely idea? But it’s an interesting point; why do choirs go flat rather than sharp? I decided to do some investigating, and found a veritable smorgasbord of finger-pointing to explain the reasons. Ready?
1) It’s physical. There seems to be a strong lobby for pitch depending on good support and breathing, so that pitch will drop when your muscles are tired. Or it could be that the barometric pressure is low. Or your muscle tension is too high. Or you haven’t laughed enough that day, so your soft palate hasn;t been raised enough.
2) It’s the key signature. C major and F major have come up as keys that humans just aren’t designed to sing in. Damn F major.
3) It’s the conductor! I had a good laugh over the following passage by Margaret Nesse:
“Some choral directors have a tendency, especially during performance, to point upward surreptitiously with a finger when the choir as a whole, or a particular section, is singing flat. Blackstone notes that a conductor who points his finger upward encourages singers to tilt their chins back, thereby constricting the vocal mechanism, causing a squeezed sound, and increasing, rather than decreasing, the likelihood of a poor intonation.”
Sound familiar, fellow Orianites? Tee hee! But I’ve just remembered that I have to re-audition for David-the-Conductor this year, so I’d like to point out that it is DEFINITELY not David’s fault when we’re flat, and furthermore, he is the best conductor ever in history. Moving swiftly on...
4) It’s all lies! Choirs can go sharp just as easily as flat, but sharpness tends to be heard more as overtones and threrefore brightness of sound, meaning that the listener notices more if the choir is flat than if they are sharp. Isn’t that interesting?
5) I knew we’d get here eventually – it’s the sopranos! we go flat at the top and drag everyone else down with us. I would have been offended at reading this, except that I’m friends with enough altos to have heard it all before. But how’s this for an argument as to why this is the case?
“No one has yet brought up what I have found to be the MOST common reason for choirs, and sopranos in general, to go flat. U.S. society values a low speaking pitch rather than a high one in women (attributing idiocy and flightiness to women with high speaking voices), and most singers are sufficiently sensitive to this to keep their speaking voices down. Unfortunately, if in singing the vowels are placed in the same place they are in speaking, the head resonance will be insufficiently active and the notes around the register break at the top of the treble staff will SOUND flat from a lack of upper overtones. (Try them against an oscilliscope. They won't test out nearly as flat as they sound.) This makes it harder and harder for the soprano to sing up into the top of her range, and she will tire quickly - all of which contributes to further flatness of pitch. THE OTHER SINGERS IN THE CHOIR HEAR THE APPARENTLY FLAT PITCH, AND PROMPTLY MATCH IT.”
Ooooh. So…
6) It’s society’s fault! I blame the government. What’s the solution?
“Promise the sopranos that no one in the group will impugn their intellect, and exercise sufficient tyranny to make that stick.”
Heh heh heh! I love it!
Particular highlights were Byrd “Sing Joyfully” – what an amazing rendition – and Purcell “Hear My Prayer” which was stunning. And if there were any lowlights, for me it would have been Wood and Ireland and their anthemy ilk. David-the-Conductor will hate me for saying it, but seriously, get a choir to sing some traditional English Pantserie and throw in an “um-cha” organ and we might as well have been promenading in Blackpool on a bank holiday weekend. I could practically see the front row getting out their buckets and spades. The choir still did an amazing job of course, so at least we can now move on to more interesting repertoire feeling like we’ve shown Songs of Praise how it should be done.
Anyway, I’ve been mulling over something David-the-Conductor said in rehearsal a few weeks ago, when once again we were struggling to keep the pitch up on a dreary October evening. Anyone that has ever sung in a choir will have experienced this challenge. David kept yelling and doing his upwards finger-point, but we stayed flat as a souffle. (I am no cook, it must be said). Finally, in despair, David said that he didn’t know why choirs drop the pitch so often, but maybe humanity is just attracted to the chaos of flats. Isn’t that rather a lovely idea? But it’s an interesting point; why do choirs go flat rather than sharp? I decided to do some investigating, and found a veritable smorgasbord of finger-pointing to explain the reasons. Ready?
1) It’s physical. There seems to be a strong lobby for pitch depending on good support and breathing, so that pitch will drop when your muscles are tired. Or it could be that the barometric pressure is low. Or your muscle tension is too high. Or you haven’t laughed enough that day, so your soft palate hasn;t been raised enough.
2) It’s the key signature. C major and F major have come up as keys that humans just aren’t designed to sing in. Damn F major.
3) It’s the conductor! I had a good laugh over the following passage by Margaret Nesse:
“Some choral directors have a tendency, especially during performance, to point upward surreptitiously with a finger when the choir as a whole, or a particular section, is singing flat. Blackstone notes that a conductor who points his finger upward encourages singers to tilt their chins back, thereby constricting the vocal mechanism, causing a squeezed sound, and increasing, rather than decreasing, the likelihood of a poor intonation.”
Sound familiar, fellow Orianites? Tee hee! But I’ve just remembered that I have to re-audition for David-the-Conductor this year, so I’d like to point out that it is DEFINITELY not David’s fault when we’re flat, and furthermore, he is the best conductor ever in history. Moving swiftly on...
4) It’s all lies! Choirs can go sharp just as easily as flat, but sharpness tends to be heard more as overtones and threrefore brightness of sound, meaning that the listener notices more if the choir is flat than if they are sharp. Isn’t that interesting?
5) I knew we’d get here eventually – it’s the sopranos! we go flat at the top and drag everyone else down with us. I would have been offended at reading this, except that I’m friends with enough altos to have heard it all before. But how’s this for an argument as to why this is the case?
“No one has yet brought up what I have found to be the MOST common reason for choirs, and sopranos in general, to go flat. U.S. society values a low speaking pitch rather than a high one in women (attributing idiocy and flightiness to women with high speaking voices), and most singers are sufficiently sensitive to this to keep their speaking voices down. Unfortunately, if in singing the vowels are placed in the same place they are in speaking, the head resonance will be insufficiently active and the notes around the register break at the top of the treble staff will SOUND flat from a lack of upper overtones. (Try them against an oscilliscope. They won't test out nearly as flat as they sound.) This makes it harder and harder for the soprano to sing up into the top of her range, and she will tire quickly - all of which contributes to further flatness of pitch. THE OTHER SINGERS IN THE CHOIR HEAR THE APPARENTLY FLAT PITCH, AND PROMPTLY MATCH IT.”
Ooooh. So…
6) It’s society’s fault! I blame the government. What’s the solution?
“Promise the sopranos that no one in the group will impugn their intellect, and exercise sufficient tyranny to make that stick.”
Heh heh heh! I love it!
Wednesday 21 September 2011
Sorry, who am I? Where is this? Choir, you say?
I’m not quite ready for choir restarting after the summer break. We’re now nearly three weeks in to the autumn term and I’ve been at rehearsal in body, but I don’t think my spirit has quite got the point yet. David-the-Conductor stands at the front and waves his hands about, and I sit and watch vaguely as though he’s just doing modern dance. All these women are sitting around me, and they keep all singing in unison, and I sort of jerk to attention and mumble along. It’s like being at a Communist rally. And I was plagued by a nagging suspicion all the way through choir last Wednesday that there was something I’d forgotten – other than all my music (oops). And then I realised this morning, rather belatedly – of course! The Blog!
So apologies all you hardy blog followers, nearly three weeks have already gone by and I have failed to report that once again Oriana are in full song, and sounding rather glorious. And good thing too, because this term we are doing three concerts, a TV appearance, recording a CD and going on tour to the Isle of Wight. Do we know how to challenge ourselves or what? (musically, that is – I’m not insulting the Isle of Wight which is, I’m sure, very lovely). So we haven’t got any time to rest on our laurels, and have got straight into the music.
Happily the music for the first concert is glorious. Really and truly amazing. It’s a bible-themed concert in some vague and murky way, which means fabulous text in many and varied arrangements by the full gamut of British composers. We were working on John Ireland’s ‘Greater Love Hath No Man’ on Wednesday, which set me to musing about Ireland. He seems to have been a man divorced from his geographical destiny. He started badly by being born in England (doh!) of Scottish descent (doh!), and spent much time flirting with visits to the Channel Islands before realising that they were spelt wrong. He was briefly excited to form a United Kingdom at the Royal College of Music when Britten arrived, but the two found it hard to overcome their musical differences and devolution was the only solution. At this point, desperate and broken, Ireland decided to branch out to the Netherlands and spent the rest of his life in a windmill.
He was basically the living embodiment of the EU, and I had a sudden urge as the music swirled around me on Wednesday to get this piece adopted as the European Anthem. However, it appears that some feckless German (or “fellow citizen of the EU”)was ahead of me with a rival campaign, as apparently the EU Heads of State have already opted for an Ode to Joy by someone called Beethoven. Well for heaven’s sake, what do they know?
So apologies all you hardy blog followers, nearly three weeks have already gone by and I have failed to report that once again Oriana are in full song, and sounding rather glorious. And good thing too, because this term we are doing three concerts, a TV appearance, recording a CD and going on tour to the Isle of Wight. Do we know how to challenge ourselves or what? (musically, that is – I’m not insulting the Isle of Wight which is, I’m sure, very lovely). So we haven’t got any time to rest on our laurels, and have got straight into the music.
Happily the music for the first concert is glorious. Really and truly amazing. It’s a bible-themed concert in some vague and murky way, which means fabulous text in many and varied arrangements by the full gamut of British composers. We were working on John Ireland’s ‘Greater Love Hath No Man’ on Wednesday, which set me to musing about Ireland. He seems to have been a man divorced from his geographical destiny. He started badly by being born in England (doh!) of Scottish descent (doh!), and spent much time flirting with visits to the Channel Islands before realising that they were spelt wrong. He was briefly excited to form a United Kingdom at the Royal College of Music when Britten arrived, but the two found it hard to overcome their musical differences and devolution was the only solution. At this point, desperate and broken, Ireland decided to branch out to the Netherlands and spent the rest of his life in a windmill.
He was basically the living embodiment of the EU, and I had a sudden urge as the music swirled around me on Wednesday to get this piece adopted as the European Anthem. However, it appears that some feckless German (or “fellow citizen of the EU”)was ahead of me with a rival campaign, as apparently the EU Heads of State have already opted for an Ode to Joy by someone called Beethoven. Well for heaven’s sake, what do they know?
Friday 24 June 2011
Bloggiana is all proud of the Oriana choir at Gerontius
At its first ever outing in 1900, The Dream of Gerontius was a famous disaster, causing Elgar to declare "I have allowed my heart to open once – it is now shut against every religious feeling & every soft, gentle impulse for ever."
"Bit hysterical, old chap," murmured the rest of Victorian Britain, shuffling uncomfortably from foot to foot at this alarming display of feeling. "Stiff upper lip, what?"
Luckily Elgar's drama-queen moment stopped short of destroying all the copies of Gerontius in his despair. Otherwise I would have been watching the Oriana choir stand on the Barbican stage in communal silence for an hour and a half on Wednesday. Probably that would have got a bit dull about half way through.
This was the first time I've actually sat in the audience for an Oriana concert, and I was very much looking forward to viewing from the outside. Particularly as I'd seen all kinds of interesting instructions coming frantically around the choir email list in the days preceding the concert. Would the choir be able to gracefully split into two choirs during the performance? How on earth were the semi-chorus going to surreptitiously change into surplices while on stage? And how, pray tell, can a choir "stand demonically"? I couldn’t wait!
Well I have to say the choir surpassed themselves. Even drama queen Elgar would have been nodding contentedly in his grave. We'd been rehearsing the demons chorus pretty much every week since January, and come the night it was so sharp the audience was practically bleeding in the stalls. I didn’t notice any demonic standing, but there was definitely some snarling and I'm pretty sure I saw the tenor section trying to make off with some souls. And kudos to the semi-chorus - I had advance warning that they were going to change into surplices in full view of the audience, and yet I still didn’t see them doing it. It was a moment of glory when they suddenly appeared in bright white at the top of the ranks of choir dressed in black. How on earth did they manage it?? They must have laid down on the floor and shuffled into them sleeping bag-style.
But the bit I was looking forward to most was the choir attempting to split into two choirs during an orchestral passage of play in the sceond half. I was practically dancing on my seat with excitement at the prospect of the choir shuffling sideways with fixed grins, looking more and more nervous as the end of the orchestral passage approached, abandoning all restraint in the last two bars and diving through the wind section in order to make it across the stage in time. So you can imagine my disappointment when the choir came back on for the second half already split into two choir formation, the plan having been sneakily abandoned before the performance. Damn you, David-the-Conductor, for thwarting my enjoyment! I paid good money to see that.
All in all, though, it was a brilliant performance and I was very proud of the choir indeed. (Although my nose is slightly out of joint that they were so good without me. But probably it was all the sterling work I put in at rehearsals that made the difference. Yep, that'll be it.)
We're about to break for summer, so no blogs for the next couple of months. Thanks for following the adventures of the choir this year and see you all in September!
"Bit hysterical, old chap," murmured the rest of Victorian Britain, shuffling uncomfortably from foot to foot at this alarming display of feeling. "Stiff upper lip, what?"
Luckily Elgar's drama-queen moment stopped short of destroying all the copies of Gerontius in his despair. Otherwise I would have been watching the Oriana choir stand on the Barbican stage in communal silence for an hour and a half on Wednesday. Probably that would have got a bit dull about half way through.
This was the first time I've actually sat in the audience for an Oriana concert, and I was very much looking forward to viewing from the outside. Particularly as I'd seen all kinds of interesting instructions coming frantically around the choir email list in the days preceding the concert. Would the choir be able to gracefully split into two choirs during the performance? How on earth were the semi-chorus going to surreptitiously change into surplices while on stage? And how, pray tell, can a choir "stand demonically"? I couldn’t wait!
Well I have to say the choir surpassed themselves. Even drama queen Elgar would have been nodding contentedly in his grave. We'd been rehearsing the demons chorus pretty much every week since January, and come the night it was so sharp the audience was practically bleeding in the stalls. I didn’t notice any demonic standing, but there was definitely some snarling and I'm pretty sure I saw the tenor section trying to make off with some souls. And kudos to the semi-chorus - I had advance warning that they were going to change into surplices in full view of the audience, and yet I still didn’t see them doing it. It was a moment of glory when they suddenly appeared in bright white at the top of the ranks of choir dressed in black. How on earth did they manage it?? They must have laid down on the floor and shuffled into them sleeping bag-style.
But the bit I was looking forward to most was the choir attempting to split into two choirs during an orchestral passage of play in the sceond half. I was practically dancing on my seat with excitement at the prospect of the choir shuffling sideways with fixed grins, looking more and more nervous as the end of the orchestral passage approached, abandoning all restraint in the last two bars and diving through the wind section in order to make it across the stage in time. So you can imagine my disappointment when the choir came back on for the second half already split into two choir formation, the plan having been sneakily abandoned before the performance. Damn you, David-the-Conductor, for thwarting my enjoyment! I paid good money to see that.
All in all, though, it was a brilliant performance and I was very proud of the choir indeed. (Although my nose is slightly out of joint that they were so good without me. But probably it was all the sterling work I put in at rehearsals that made the difference. Yep, that'll be it.)
We're about to break for summer, so no blogs for the next couple of months. Thanks for following the adventures of the choir this year and see you all in September!
Saturday 21 May 2011
Way haul away to the Barbican
As rehearsal for our sea-themed concert started last Friday, one of the other sopranos sidled up to me, clutching her folder with a worried expression.
“How many pieces have you got?” she hissed.
I looked in my folder, just to recount one more time. “Five,” I murmured back.
She nodded, relieved, and I patted her shoulder reassuringly. This was the lowest number of pieces we’ve done at a concert in quite some time, as we normally like to challenge ourselves with at least 15 pieces, all in different styles. So we were all fighting the insecurity that our lightweight music folders were instilling. If we aren’t risking a hernia, it just doesn’t feel like an Oriana concert.
Luckily, what we lacked in sheer numbers of pieces, we made up for in complexity. The Bruckner is superb but it’s not easy to sing well, and we were all desperate to do it justice. The Willcocks was tricky in many places, and the Bingham (I just can’t hide my feelings here) is the stuff that pelagic nightmares are made of. And we were rehearsing with an excellent but entirely new brass, wind and percussion section, so precious rehearsal minutes trickled by while we tried to get used to each other’s sound.
So come the concert we were once again in the throes of panic, but as always we rose to the challenge and pulled off a passable performance. The Bingham was a little seat-of-the-pants, but falling back on an old Oriana stalwart trick, we plastered grins on our faces, picked any note at random, and sang it out confidently. The resulting dissonant clashes may or may not have been as written, but at least we sang something, and to be honest I think that’s more than the piece deserved. (Sorry Bingham. It might grow on me. Eventually.) And once it was over we got to reward ourselves with the Wreck of the Hesperus, which was loads of fun.
Even the stress of the Bingham paled into insignificance next to the tension at the interval, when we discovered that our changing room at the back of the balcony was locked, with all the second half music inside. What were the chances we could sing the Bruckner Mass from memory? We were hastily comparing notes (“Yes, it definitely starts with Kyrie …. something …..”) when the church verger calmly removed her shoes, scaled the walls of the church, abseiled from the roof, crashed through the changing room window, and blew the door with some plastic explosive.* She is clearly a true Bruckner fan. The second half was saved.
So we’re now into rehearsing for our final concert of the season – Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius at the Barbican on June 22nd. Rehearsals have been going really well, and it is going to be a stunner of a concert. But just when we were being lulled into a false sense of security, David-the-Conductor was struck by a vision at Wednesday’s rehearsal. Part of the score is written for double choir, but due to the practical difficulties of getting a large choir to change formation on stage during a performance, it’s never really performed as a double choir. Well, as all our stalwart fans know, the Oriana laughs in the face of practical difficulty. Let’s face it, we began one concert with children lying in piles in front of us pretending to be dead, so do you really think a simple thing like shuffling about the stage is going to thwart us?
Unfortunately we don’t have a completely unblemished track record when it comes to moving while singing. Anyone that came to our Christmas concert will remember our efforts to process into the church while singing. The plan was to enter in formation, and surround the audience with the sops on one side, the altos on the other, and the men at the front. Or the back. Or something. We actually ended up with the sopranos in the middle of the bass section, which was quite a feat given that there are about five times more sopranos, and I didn’t see the tenors at all so I think they might have accidentally processed out of the church and into Costa Coffee next door. Let’s just say it wasn’t a complete success, so there is a certain level of nervousness about trying to manage another complicated manoeuvre with the whole Barbican watching. But I have every confidence. If we made it all the way to the end of the Bingham without stopping, we can accomplish anything.
*There may be an element of poetic license in this description.
“How many pieces have you got?” she hissed.
I looked in my folder, just to recount one more time. “Five,” I murmured back.
She nodded, relieved, and I patted her shoulder reassuringly. This was the lowest number of pieces we’ve done at a concert in quite some time, as we normally like to challenge ourselves with at least 15 pieces, all in different styles. So we were all fighting the insecurity that our lightweight music folders were instilling. If we aren’t risking a hernia, it just doesn’t feel like an Oriana concert.
Luckily, what we lacked in sheer numbers of pieces, we made up for in complexity. The Bruckner is superb but it’s not easy to sing well, and we were all desperate to do it justice. The Willcocks was tricky in many places, and the Bingham (I just can’t hide my feelings here) is the stuff that pelagic nightmares are made of. And we were rehearsing with an excellent but entirely new brass, wind and percussion section, so precious rehearsal minutes trickled by while we tried to get used to each other’s sound.
So come the concert we were once again in the throes of panic, but as always we rose to the challenge and pulled off a passable performance. The Bingham was a little seat-of-the-pants, but falling back on an old Oriana stalwart trick, we plastered grins on our faces, picked any note at random, and sang it out confidently. The resulting dissonant clashes may or may not have been as written, but at least we sang something, and to be honest I think that’s more than the piece deserved. (Sorry Bingham. It might grow on me. Eventually.) And once it was over we got to reward ourselves with the Wreck of the Hesperus, which was loads of fun.
Even the stress of the Bingham paled into insignificance next to the tension at the interval, when we discovered that our changing room at the back of the balcony was locked, with all the second half music inside. What were the chances we could sing the Bruckner Mass from memory? We were hastily comparing notes (“Yes, it definitely starts with Kyrie …. something …..”) when the church verger calmly removed her shoes, scaled the walls of the church, abseiled from the roof, crashed through the changing room window, and blew the door with some plastic explosive.* She is clearly a true Bruckner fan. The second half was saved.
So we’re now into rehearsing for our final concert of the season – Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius at the Barbican on June 22nd. Rehearsals have been going really well, and it is going to be a stunner of a concert. But just when we were being lulled into a false sense of security, David-the-Conductor was struck by a vision at Wednesday’s rehearsal. Part of the score is written for double choir, but due to the practical difficulties of getting a large choir to change formation on stage during a performance, it’s never really performed as a double choir. Well, as all our stalwart fans know, the Oriana laughs in the face of practical difficulty. Let’s face it, we began one concert with children lying in piles in front of us pretending to be dead, so do you really think a simple thing like shuffling about the stage is going to thwart us?
Unfortunately we don’t have a completely unblemished track record when it comes to moving while singing. Anyone that came to our Christmas concert will remember our efforts to process into the church while singing. The plan was to enter in formation, and surround the audience with the sops on one side, the altos on the other, and the men at the front. Or the back. Or something. We actually ended up with the sopranos in the middle of the bass section, which was quite a feat given that there are about five times more sopranos, and I didn’t see the tenors at all so I think they might have accidentally processed out of the church and into Costa Coffee next door. Let’s just say it wasn’t a complete success, so there is a certain level of nervousness about trying to manage another complicated manoeuvre with the whole Barbican watching. But I have every confidence. If we made it all the way to the end of the Bingham without stopping, we can accomplish anything.
*There may be an element of poetic license in this description.
Thursday 5 May 2011
Avast ye, concert lubbers!
According to good old Wikipedia, Percy Grainger’s comment on his first ever sexual encounter with a woman was "I thought I was about to die; If I remember correctly, I only experienced fear of death. I don't think that any joy entered into it". Ouch, poor lady.
Oddly enough, though, that sums up exactly how I felt while rehearsing Grainger’s piece “We Have Fed Our Sea For A Thousand Years”. There’s usually at least one piece I can’t stand in every concert, and this time Grainger has drawn the short straw, much as I enjoy some of his other music. “We have fed our sea…” is unabashedly nationalistic - the kind of piece that makes me feel like I should be wearing union jack knickers and voting BNP. Oh well, it’s on the programme for our concert next week, so I’ll just have to grit my teeth and get through it somehow. Lie back and think of England, as it were.
Luckily, I’m very excited about all the other pieces on the programme, so I’m really looking forward to singing our hearts out in Greenwich next week. I’ve already banged on about how much I love the Bruckner, so I won’t repeat myself (but it IS really really great!) Also on the programme is Hamish McCunn’s setting of the Longfellow poem “The Wreck of the Hesperus”, which is loads of fun. Legend has it that Longfellow was due to sail on the Lexington on its fatal voyage, but missed the departure because he was discussing the poem with his publisher. Oooh, spooky. And according to Wikipedia, “the wreck of the Hesperus” is a colloquial term for “dishevelled in appearance”. Not a term I have ever heard or used, personally, but let’s see how often I can get it in to the rest of the blog.
MacCunn seems primarily famous for having forced Hubert Parry to admit publicly that his personal life was falling apart, after taking umbrage at not being invited over for a visit. I assume the revelation went something like this:
MacCunn: Och, you haven’t invited me over for a wee dram
Parry: I’m sorry, my life resembles the wreck of the Hesperus right now
MacCunn: ah ya wee scamp!
David-the-Conductor: Stop pretending you can do a Scottish accent, Bloggiana
Also on the programme is Judith Bingham’s Salt in the Blood. It is my considered opinion that Bingham hates female choristers. Salt in the Blood is definitely a piece for the men, who get to sing jolly hornpipes while the women have to waft boringly about, being wind and waves and pelagic storm petrels, whatever they are. The exciting part is going to be trying to find our entry notes. At one point the altos are having to pitch their entry from a glissando augmented fourth whistle in the soprano part, which could be exciting. We had our first attempt at a full run-through last night, and – yes - it resembled the wreck of the Hesperus. Basically, the piece will go really well as long as David-the-Pianist comes to the concert and plays our parts along with us. If we’re on our own, we could well be heading fast for the reef of Norman’s Woe. Keep your fingers crossed for us!
Oddly enough, though, that sums up exactly how I felt while rehearsing Grainger’s piece “We Have Fed Our Sea For A Thousand Years”. There’s usually at least one piece I can’t stand in every concert, and this time Grainger has drawn the short straw, much as I enjoy some of his other music. “We have fed our sea…” is unabashedly nationalistic - the kind of piece that makes me feel like I should be wearing union jack knickers and voting BNP. Oh well, it’s on the programme for our concert next week, so I’ll just have to grit my teeth and get through it somehow. Lie back and think of England, as it were.
Luckily, I’m very excited about all the other pieces on the programme, so I’m really looking forward to singing our hearts out in Greenwich next week. I’ve already banged on about how much I love the Bruckner, so I won’t repeat myself (but it IS really really great!) Also on the programme is Hamish McCunn’s setting of the Longfellow poem “The Wreck of the Hesperus”, which is loads of fun. Legend has it that Longfellow was due to sail on the Lexington on its fatal voyage, but missed the departure because he was discussing the poem with his publisher. Oooh, spooky. And according to Wikipedia, “the wreck of the Hesperus” is a colloquial term for “dishevelled in appearance”. Not a term I have ever heard or used, personally, but let’s see how often I can get it in to the rest of the blog.
MacCunn seems primarily famous for having forced Hubert Parry to admit publicly that his personal life was falling apart, after taking umbrage at not being invited over for a visit. I assume the revelation went something like this:
MacCunn: Och, you haven’t invited me over for a wee dram
Parry: I’m sorry, my life resembles the wreck of the Hesperus right now
MacCunn: ah ya wee scamp!
David-the-Conductor: Stop pretending you can do a Scottish accent, Bloggiana
Also on the programme is Judith Bingham’s Salt in the Blood. It is my considered opinion that Bingham hates female choristers. Salt in the Blood is definitely a piece for the men, who get to sing jolly hornpipes while the women have to waft boringly about, being wind and waves and pelagic storm petrels, whatever they are. The exciting part is going to be trying to find our entry notes. At one point the altos are having to pitch their entry from a glissando augmented fourth whistle in the soprano part, which could be exciting. We had our first attempt at a full run-through last night, and – yes - it resembled the wreck of the Hesperus. Basically, the piece will go really well as long as David-the-Pianist comes to the concert and plays our parts along with us. If we’re on our own, we could well be heading fast for the reef of Norman’s Woe. Keep your fingers crossed for us!
Tuesday 29 March 2011
Bruckner and his masses of sound
I’ve never especially liked Bruckner. It’s the huffing and puffing enormous symphonies that put me off. Blah de blah de blah, I think, before drifting off to think about what happened in last night’s Waking the Dead. At the end of a concert my friends burst into rapturous applause and I jerk awake, pretending I just closed my eyes to listen more fervently. Mike-the-bass will then point out the bit in the third movement that reminded him of the clarinet theme of Mahler’s umpteenth symphony, and wryly question the conductor’s interpretation of some important 16-bar moment. And I will only be able to contribute to the discussion by saying I liked the lead violinist’s shoes and that I thought the timpanist fell asleep. Bruckner really does nothing for my ability to bluff it as a musician.
So the E minor Mass, which we’re performing in our next concert, came as a massive shock to me. I love it. It’s a truly glorious mix of the simplicity of renaissance polyphony and expressive romantic Bruckner-ish harmonies. Just gorgeous. If he could write music like this, why on earth did he mess around with those awful symphonies? (Sorry Mike-the-bass, I just couldn’t pretend to like them any longer).
I blame Wagner. In the 1860s Bruckner fell in love with Wagnerian harmony, and began to pal around with Wagner, probably gushing constantly about how marvellous he was. Rudiger Bornhoft’s preface to our copies of the E Minor Mass talks about Bruckner’s “inbred obsequiousness” and backs that up with a saccharine quote from his letter to Adalbert Schreyer – “Crying from the depths, I once again send you my most heartfelt thanks and my deepest admiration for your heroic artistic exploit.” Pass me a bucket. (although Bornhoft goes on to describe the E Minor Mass as “tower[ing] like a mountain peak far above the sacred vocal music of the nineteenth century” so Bruckner’s not the only one prone to effusive enthusiasm). Bruckner’s humility does seem to be genuine though – he just doesn’t seem to have been very good at expressing himself in terms that a normal human being would expect. My favourite anecdote is about him tipping Hans Richter after a rehearsal of his Fourth Symphony - pressing some money into his hand and telling him to buy himself a drink. How marvellous!
So I’ve started to think of Bruckner as a sort of Wagnerian henchman - Smithers to Wagner’s Mr Burns, if you will. And I’m sure it will come as no shock to you that I’m no fan of Wagner either (Mike-the-bass is probably scribbling me off his Christmas card list even as I type). I guess the Wagnerian influence explains why his symphonies are so vast and unwieldy. But there’s more to Bruckner than this heavy German romanticism – his religious music often hung onto older musical traditions in structure, topped by luscious Brucknerian harmony. And a superb combination it is. I can’t wait to sing the E Minor Mass - even only two weeks in to rehearsals it’s clearly going to be a highlight of the year. I urge you to come to Greenwich on May 13th to hear us sing it. And if you do, please get into the Bruckner spirit and try to tip David-the-Conductor at the end of the concert. Oh go on. I’d really like to see what he does.
So the E minor Mass, which we’re performing in our next concert, came as a massive shock to me. I love it. It’s a truly glorious mix of the simplicity of renaissance polyphony and expressive romantic Bruckner-ish harmonies. Just gorgeous. If he could write music like this, why on earth did he mess around with those awful symphonies? (Sorry Mike-the-bass, I just couldn’t pretend to like them any longer).
I blame Wagner. In the 1860s Bruckner fell in love with Wagnerian harmony, and began to pal around with Wagner, probably gushing constantly about how marvellous he was. Rudiger Bornhoft’s preface to our copies of the E Minor Mass talks about Bruckner’s “inbred obsequiousness” and backs that up with a saccharine quote from his letter to Adalbert Schreyer – “Crying from the depths, I once again send you my most heartfelt thanks and my deepest admiration for your heroic artistic exploit.” Pass me a bucket. (although Bornhoft goes on to describe the E Minor Mass as “tower[ing] like a mountain peak far above the sacred vocal music of the nineteenth century” so Bruckner’s not the only one prone to effusive enthusiasm). Bruckner’s humility does seem to be genuine though – he just doesn’t seem to have been very good at expressing himself in terms that a normal human being would expect. My favourite anecdote is about him tipping Hans Richter after a rehearsal of his Fourth Symphony - pressing some money into his hand and telling him to buy himself a drink. How marvellous!
So I’ve started to think of Bruckner as a sort of Wagnerian henchman - Smithers to Wagner’s Mr Burns, if you will. And I’m sure it will come as no shock to you that I’m no fan of Wagner either (Mike-the-bass is probably scribbling me off his Christmas card list even as I type). I guess the Wagnerian influence explains why his symphonies are so vast and unwieldy. But there’s more to Bruckner than this heavy German romanticism – his religious music often hung onto older musical traditions in structure, topped by luscious Brucknerian harmony. And a superb combination it is. I can’t wait to sing the E Minor Mass - even only two weeks in to rehearsals it’s clearly going to be a highlight of the year. I urge you to come to Greenwich on May 13th to hear us sing it. And if you do, please get into the Bruckner spirit and try to tip David-the-Conductor at the end of the concert. Oh go on. I’d really like to see what he does.
Tuesday 15 February 2011
Oriana Choir leaves no stone unturned
Hand on heart, singing with the Oriana is a sublime experience, a joy to be part of. Whenever we finish a good concert, I come out and ask myself: “Bloggiana, what could possibly better the experience of singing stunning pieces with other like-minded, talented people, all working together for the glory of the music?” And I always answer myself the same way: “percussion, that’s what!”
I hold that there is no piece, however beautiful and ethereal, that wouldn’t be bettered by a bit of solo triangle or a guest appearance from my old primary school friend, the guiro. My absolute favourite concert of the whole last season was performing Whitacre’s “Cloudburst” in a church in Segovia, complete with hand chimes, random clapping and a huge cymbal that Angela-the-Alto had to somehow hide between her legs until the appropriate moment. Random percussion makes everything 10 times more fun, it really does.
So you can imagine my excitement when I saw the rehearsal instructions this week from David-the-Conductor: “Please bring two stones to bang together. They should be resonant.” Hurray!!!! Percussion time again. And this time it’s DIY percussion – even better! I instantly fell upon my copy of “Musical Instrument Design: practical information for instrument making” by Bart Hopkin, to look for ideas. I would like to share the following useful information:
“Instruments using stone as the initial vibrating element are called lithophones. Many different sorts of stone marimbas and chimes have been made, as well as some stone whistles. The resonant qualities of stone vary substantially from one sort to another; most are extremely dull, while some, like travertine marble, and some slates and volcanic rocks, produce a fairly bright tone quality.”
It was as I ran out of the front door, giggling like a schoolgirl, to look for volcanic rocks in the garden, that I remembered I’m not doing the next concert. I am actually genuinely gutted to be missing it now. I know this is going to disgust the musical purists among you, but for me, missing the opportunity to sing some fantastic and little-performed music by women composers, sad though it is, simply pales in comparison to missing out on banging some stones together. At heart I am still a 6-year old and those times with the guiro were the best of my life.
Ah well, at least this way I don’t have to be worried that my stone will be the wrong sort of stone. If everyone else has managed to find travertine marble, would my pebbles from the front garden shape up? I wouldn’t want to sound extremely dull if everyone else was resonating with a bright tone quality. Go on choir, put some effort into it and choose those stones carefully. My top tip – pop into Heals and pick up some designer stones. The tone quality might be variable, but at least you’ll look good.
I hold that there is no piece, however beautiful and ethereal, that wouldn’t be bettered by a bit of solo triangle or a guest appearance from my old primary school friend, the guiro. My absolute favourite concert of the whole last season was performing Whitacre’s “Cloudburst” in a church in Segovia, complete with hand chimes, random clapping and a huge cymbal that Angela-the-Alto had to somehow hide between her legs until the appropriate moment. Random percussion makes everything 10 times more fun, it really does.
So you can imagine my excitement when I saw the rehearsal instructions this week from David-the-Conductor: “Please bring two stones to bang together. They should be resonant.” Hurray!!!! Percussion time again. And this time it’s DIY percussion – even better! I instantly fell upon my copy of “Musical Instrument Design: practical information for instrument making” by Bart Hopkin, to look for ideas. I would like to share the following useful information:
“Instruments using stone as the initial vibrating element are called lithophones. Many different sorts of stone marimbas and chimes have been made, as well as some stone whistles. The resonant qualities of stone vary substantially from one sort to another; most are extremely dull, while some, like travertine marble, and some slates and volcanic rocks, produce a fairly bright tone quality.”
It was as I ran out of the front door, giggling like a schoolgirl, to look for volcanic rocks in the garden, that I remembered I’m not doing the next concert. I am actually genuinely gutted to be missing it now. I know this is going to disgust the musical purists among you, but for me, missing the opportunity to sing some fantastic and little-performed music by women composers, sad though it is, simply pales in comparison to missing out on banging some stones together. At heart I am still a 6-year old and those times with the guiro were the best of my life.
Ah well, at least this way I don’t have to be worried that my stone will be the wrong sort of stone. If everyone else has managed to find travertine marble, would my pebbles from the front garden shape up? I wouldn’t want to sound extremely dull if everyone else was resonating with a bright tone quality. Go on choir, put some effort into it and choose those stones carefully. My top tip – pop into Heals and pick up some designer stones. The tone quality might be variable, but at least you’ll look good.
Tuesday 25 January 2011
Female composers and International Women's Day
2011 is here! Here’s hoping for another year of glorious and diverse music from the Oriana Choir. And we’ve certainly got an eclectic mix coming up in the first half, until we break for the summer. We’ll be rounding off the 2010/11 season with Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius at the Barbican, which is very exciting, and before that we’ll be performing a concert in Greenwich with the exciting working title “Bruckner, Brass and Boats”. I’ll look forward to seeing what makes the programme there. But our first concert this year, to mark International Women’s Day on the 8th March, is a celebration of female composers.
David-the-Conductor spent about 20 minutes at the beginning of last week’s rehearsal arguing simultaneously that women both are and are not prejudiced against in classical music. It was a bit confusing, but that seems about right. Women have been active in music throughout history, but in terms of performance, the works written by women that are regularly heard are a tiny drop in an ocean of standard repertoire by men. Music has been dominated by men through the whole of our living memory.
It seems to me that the prejudice is largely structural rather than individual. Fanny Mendelssohn’s parents educated her in music, but her father famously told her "Perhaps for Felix music will become a profession, while for you it will always remain but an ornament; never can and should it become the foundation of your existence." Says it all really. And success in the musical world comes down to performers being interested in performing your music. No-one will ever hear it otherwise, and how can you develop your craft without feedback? So certainly historically, and perhaps to an extent today, women have been unsuccessful because of a resistance to performing their music and fewer opportunities to persuade people to do so.
And even if you do get it performed, what if people don’t like it? We watched Sian Massey put not a foot wrong in her line-judging of the Liverpool-Wolves match this week, making the Sky Sports commentators look ridiculous in their out-moded comments about women’s understanding of the offside rule. But if she’d slipped up and made a mistake on that close-to-call Liverpool goal, as even the best referees and line judges do occasionally, how many frustrated Liverpool fans might have said something similar in the heat of the moment? To succeed in male-dominated professions women have to work that bit harder. So does this mean that music by women has to be mind-blowing from the start in order for that composer to be listened to again?
Perhaps the most annoying thing is that women still seem to be seen not just as composers, but as female composers, which in itself is a prejudice that’s unworthy of the diversity of music they produce. Diana Ambache, formerly musical director of the Ambache Chamber Orchestra says “In 1995-7 we did a concert series in London featuring music by women composers, presenting several premières of music by women of the last 250 years. BBC Radio 3 producers were invited to every one of the nine concerts, but didn't come to any - in other words they were not willing to listen to any of this music. This looks like prejudice.”
I am determined to stand out from the crowd and judge female composers on their own merits, not letting my feminist tendencies get in the way of my musical opinions. So here we go: I can’t stand Lutyens. There. She’s credited with bringing Schoenberg’s serialism to the UK, which in itself is enough to put me off. I blame YOU for that hideous A’level experience of trying to compose with a tone row, Lutyens! We’re singing her “Verses of Love” at the concert, for our sins, and by the end of rehearsing it last week I was tempted to kick myself in the head to distract myself from the horror. Maybe it will grow on me.
We also ran through a couple of pieces by Boulanger, which were very French and quite lush with gorgeous thick harmonic texture. Difficult, but once we’ve got them nailed I’m sure they’ll sound fab. And we finished with a look at a piece by Rehnkvist, of which my overwhelming impression was that it’s a bit hard. So I’m quaking in my boots a little for this concert. That’s 18 new pieces to learn and so far they’ve all been technically challenging. Gulp. Let’s hope the rest are all about Three Blind Mice level (which is actually what my tone row composition most sounded like. I may not have fully grasped the technique of serialism).
David-the-Conductor spent about 20 minutes at the beginning of last week’s rehearsal arguing simultaneously that women both are and are not prejudiced against in classical music. It was a bit confusing, but that seems about right. Women have been active in music throughout history, but in terms of performance, the works written by women that are regularly heard are a tiny drop in an ocean of standard repertoire by men. Music has been dominated by men through the whole of our living memory.
It seems to me that the prejudice is largely structural rather than individual. Fanny Mendelssohn’s parents educated her in music, but her father famously told her "Perhaps for Felix music will become a profession, while for you it will always remain but an ornament; never can and should it become the foundation of your existence." Says it all really. And success in the musical world comes down to performers being interested in performing your music. No-one will ever hear it otherwise, and how can you develop your craft without feedback? So certainly historically, and perhaps to an extent today, women have been unsuccessful because of a resistance to performing their music and fewer opportunities to persuade people to do so.
And even if you do get it performed, what if people don’t like it? We watched Sian Massey put not a foot wrong in her line-judging of the Liverpool-Wolves match this week, making the Sky Sports commentators look ridiculous in their out-moded comments about women’s understanding of the offside rule. But if she’d slipped up and made a mistake on that close-to-call Liverpool goal, as even the best referees and line judges do occasionally, how many frustrated Liverpool fans might have said something similar in the heat of the moment? To succeed in male-dominated professions women have to work that bit harder. So does this mean that music by women has to be mind-blowing from the start in order for that composer to be listened to again?
Perhaps the most annoying thing is that women still seem to be seen not just as composers, but as female composers, which in itself is a prejudice that’s unworthy of the diversity of music they produce. Diana Ambache, formerly musical director of the Ambache Chamber Orchestra says “In 1995-7 we did a concert series in London featuring music by women composers, presenting several premières of music by women of the last 250 years. BBC Radio 3 producers were invited to every one of the nine concerts, but didn't come to any - in other words they were not willing to listen to any of this music. This looks like prejudice.”
I am determined to stand out from the crowd and judge female composers on their own merits, not letting my feminist tendencies get in the way of my musical opinions. So here we go: I can’t stand Lutyens. There. She’s credited with bringing Schoenberg’s serialism to the UK, which in itself is enough to put me off. I blame YOU for that hideous A’level experience of trying to compose with a tone row, Lutyens! We’re singing her “Verses of Love” at the concert, for our sins, and by the end of rehearsing it last week I was tempted to kick myself in the head to distract myself from the horror. Maybe it will grow on me.
We also ran through a couple of pieces by Boulanger, which were very French and quite lush with gorgeous thick harmonic texture. Difficult, but once we’ve got them nailed I’m sure they’ll sound fab. And we finished with a look at a piece by Rehnkvist, of which my overwhelming impression was that it’s a bit hard. So I’m quaking in my boots a little for this concert. That’s 18 new pieces to learn and so far they’ve all been technically challenging. Gulp. Let’s hope the rest are all about Three Blind Mice level (which is actually what my tone row composition most sounded like. I may not have fully grasped the technique of serialism).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
