What do London and Florence have in common?
1) They’re both cities in the northern hemisphere.
2) They have a wealth of culture, art and glorious music under their belts.
3) Hitting someone on the head with a fish will not make you popular in either. And
4) they are, together, the subject of Oriana’s next concert.
It’s to be a celebration of these two marvellous cities, a programme in no way contrived to shamelessly curry audience favour when we go on tour to Florence at the beginning of June.
On the setlist we have a couple of Oriana repertoire stalwarts – Leonardo Dreams by Whitacre and the fabulous Madrigali by Lauridsen – hurray! And then a welter of new music, all modern, all a bit complicated, and some of it saxophone-based. Which is lucky, because otherwise John Harle would only get to stand at the front and look pretty when he joins us on stage at the next concert.
I’ve only seen John Harle once before, when I turned up on a whim at a little-advertised concert in the wilds of Leicestershire to find him tootling a few tunes, accompanied unexpectedly on the piano by Richard Rodney Bennett. So I’m very excited to see him again, when I can fawn upon him in a manner that more befits such a famous saxophonist. And to set myself up for proper John Harle fawning opportunities, I’ve been reading all about him on his website. Did you know he wrote the theme tune for “Silent Witness”? I LOVE that theme tune! I mean, obviously it’s not in the same league as my all time favourite TV theme tune ever - Mr Ben - but it’s not far off.
Other exciting John Harle facts: he is the world’s most recorded saxophonist (says his website). He was a clarinettist in the Band of the Coldstream Guards (Wikipedia, that one). He was born on the same day as Matti Häyry, Professor of Bioethics and Philosophy of Law at the University of Manchester (that was just random googling).
And if all that wasn't versatile enough for you, I found out the following exciting fact from his website: “his activities have taken him from the Last Night of the BBC Proms and the podium of the London Symphony Orchestra to the boardrooms of major international organisations.”
I was overcome! On top of being the world’s most recorded saxophonist, John Harle also runs some major international organisations! Do his talents know no bounds? I can just see him bouncing into a boardroom, sax in hand, shouting “Buy coffee! Sell dotcom shares! Clean up that oilspill!” Or maybe, just maybe, he never actually says anything, and instead he expresses his orders to his minions through an impromptu saxophone solo.
Well, with this in mind, I’m looking at his “City Solstice” in a whole new light. It masquerades as a piece inspired by the history of London Bridge, but when you look carefully, it actually contains coded messages to all of John Harle’s acolytes in the City of London.
“Dance over my Lady Lee” - buy property in the Lee River Valley.
“Gold and silver, pen and ink” - invest in Bic. And
“Who is there to count the cost? My fair lady” - hire me an attractive new accountant.
Get your tickets for the concert now, and bring a notebook. You never know what get-rich-quick tips you might pick up.
Monday, 30 April 2012
Tuesday, 13 March 2012
Concert schmoncert. There are far more important things afoot!
Fine though the music we’re currently singing is, and much as the concert on March 30th means to us, I’m afraid it all pales into insignificance next to the far more important issue currently occupying Orianan minds: who will be the next choir chair?
After many years of sterling service to the cause of keeping the London Oriana Choir in good voice and solid drinking opportunities, our esteemed co-chairs Fiona and Simon have decided to take their final bow and retire to the back row of the chorus. Welcome back to the ranks of giggling, note-passing, pencil-forgetting sinners, Fiona and Simon! But someone needs to take on the mantle of keeping us all in check and sorting out concerts for us, and a couple of weeks ago our outgoing chairs gave an impassioned, twenty minute long joint plea for someone else to stand forward and take the reins. A ringing silence filled the room at the end, and some tumbleweed rolled past. It wasn’t looking good.
However, those in the know say that at least two possible teams of candidates have now thrown their hats in the ring, so it looks like Oriana will indeed continue and we might actually have enough interest in the position to run a vote! I simply can’t imagine it. Will we have hustings? Policy documents? Will it be a secret vote or public? Will it be decided by a sing-off? Can we vote them off one-by-one? I can’t wait!
To help anyone who may still be wavering about whether to put themselves forward, I thought it might be useful to take a look at the good old interweb and see if I could find some tips about what might be required. The entire interweb seems mysteriously silent about how to run a choir. But leadership qualities are probably the same no matter what the task – right? Working on this basis, Greenstein, Rogoff, Olsen and Co (my go-to source in such matters) mention the following qualities that make a good leader.
“A good leader has an exemplary character.” Ah, well that cuts out the entire choir already, shady bunch that we are. So maybe we’ll just overlook that one and move on to number 2.
“A good leader is enthusiastic about their work or cause.” I think most of us could fulfil that 95% of the time – just don’t make me sing any John Gardiner or songs about rainbows and I’m there.
A good leader is able to think analytically.” Hmm, but what exactly does this statement MEAN? Let’s break it down into parts…
“Good leaders are tolerant of ambiguity” – Ambiguity? I’m afraid I don’t know his music, but I’m sure I can tolerate it if necessary.
“A good leader is confident.” I, ladies and gentlemen, assert with confidence that I would be a GREAT choir chair.
Well look at that – I’m the obvious choice. I’m now officially declaring myself as a candidate. As it happens I am also running for American President, but that’s okay, I can do both. In fact, to save on time I think I’ll just use the same manifesto – it’ll probably fit perfectly with the odd tweak here and there. So here are my election pledges:
• Free healthcare and sheet music for everyone with an income lower than mine. (Before you get excited about this, bear in mind I work in the charity sector)
• A fixed, 20 minute long tea break in the middle of every rehearsal - and a harbour shall be provided for people to pour the dregs into.
• By the end of the year we will have invaded Iran and forced them to adopt a new democratic system. I mean, diatonic system.
• Extended drinking hours in all pubs, so that we always have time to get squiffy after a concert no matter how many encores David-the-Conductor makes us do.
• And finally, the opportunity to vote on every piece of music selected for a concert. “No harmonisation without representation.”
There you are. Clearly the perfect candidate. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m just off to pitch myself for England manager.
After many years of sterling service to the cause of keeping the London Oriana Choir in good voice and solid drinking opportunities, our esteemed co-chairs Fiona and Simon have decided to take their final bow and retire to the back row of the chorus. Welcome back to the ranks of giggling, note-passing, pencil-forgetting sinners, Fiona and Simon! But someone needs to take on the mantle of keeping us all in check and sorting out concerts for us, and a couple of weeks ago our outgoing chairs gave an impassioned, twenty minute long joint plea for someone else to stand forward and take the reins. A ringing silence filled the room at the end, and some tumbleweed rolled past. It wasn’t looking good.
However, those in the know say that at least two possible teams of candidates have now thrown their hats in the ring, so it looks like Oriana will indeed continue and we might actually have enough interest in the position to run a vote! I simply can’t imagine it. Will we have hustings? Policy documents? Will it be a secret vote or public? Will it be decided by a sing-off? Can we vote them off one-by-one? I can’t wait!
To help anyone who may still be wavering about whether to put themselves forward, I thought it might be useful to take a look at the good old interweb and see if I could find some tips about what might be required. The entire interweb seems mysteriously silent about how to run a choir. But leadership qualities are probably the same no matter what the task – right? Working on this basis, Greenstein, Rogoff, Olsen and Co (my go-to source in such matters) mention the following qualities that make a good leader.
“A good leader has an exemplary character.” Ah, well that cuts out the entire choir already, shady bunch that we are. So maybe we’ll just overlook that one and move on to number 2.
“A good leader is enthusiastic about their work or cause.” I think most of us could fulfil that 95% of the time – just don’t make me sing any John Gardiner or songs about rainbows and I’m there.
A good leader is able to think analytically.” Hmm, but what exactly does this statement MEAN? Let’s break it down into parts…
“Good leaders are tolerant of ambiguity” – Ambiguity? I’m afraid I don’t know his music, but I’m sure I can tolerate it if necessary.
“A good leader is confident.” I, ladies and gentlemen, assert with confidence that I would be a GREAT choir chair.
Well look at that – I’m the obvious choice. I’m now officially declaring myself as a candidate. As it happens I am also running for American President, but that’s okay, I can do both. In fact, to save on time I think I’ll just use the same manifesto – it’ll probably fit perfectly with the odd tweak here and there. So here are my election pledges:
• Free healthcare and sheet music for everyone with an income lower than mine. (Before you get excited about this, bear in mind I work in the charity sector)
• A fixed, 20 minute long tea break in the middle of every rehearsal - and a harbour shall be provided for people to pour the dregs into.
• By the end of the year we will have invaded Iran and forced them to adopt a new democratic system. I mean, diatonic system.
• Extended drinking hours in all pubs, so that we always have time to get squiffy after a concert no matter how many encores David-the-Conductor makes us do.
• And finally, the opportunity to vote on every piece of music selected for a concert. “No harmonisation without representation.”
There you are. Clearly the perfect candidate. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m just off to pitch myself for England manager.
Thursday, 23 February 2012
The unknown history of Scarlatti
Now that the Christmas CD is in the bag, we’ve finally kissed Christmas goodbye and moved on to the music for the next concert, which is a concert largely of Stabat Maters. Did you know there are actually two versions of the medieval Stabat Mater text? The “Stabat Mater dolorosa” is all about Mary’s suffering when Jesus is being crucified, and the “Stabat Mater speciosa” is a joyful text about the nativity. For a moment, when I discovered this, I had a suspicion that David-the-Conductor had found a sneaky way to extend Christmas EVEN LONGER by doing a nativity-themed concert in March, but it turned out we are actually singing versions of the dolorosa, so phew, Easter is on the way. Bring on the eggs.
The concert comprises three Stabat Maters by Scarlatti, Palestrina and Kats-Chernin (of Lloyds bank advert “oh oh oh ohhhh, oh oh, oh oh oh ohhhhh, oh oh” fame). We were going to do a fourth, but there was a “technical issue” (in this context, the phrase “technical issue” means “the problem was fully explained to me and the rest of the choir at break, but I was busy coveting my neighbour’s cup of tea and therefore can’t remember a word of the explanation”) so we had to drop that piece. So, with a little bit of space in the running order, we’ve pushed the boat out and crammed an entire requiem mass into the programme too. You certainly get your money’s worth at an Oriana concert. Happily, it’s Faure’s Requiem, which is an absolutely glorious piece, so the technical issue has worked out well.
We’ve been concentrating a lot on the Domenico Scarlatti Stabat Mater, which is beautiful and somewhat complex. Jurgen Jurgens, who wrote the forward to our edition, tells us that the “discriminately organised doublechoir writing manages to combine the old, strictly handled contrapuntal technique with a motivically almost deliquescent modern melodic style.” Got that everyone? Make sure you get that into all your conversations with your friends when you’re talking about the concert – the ticket sales will simply soar.
But there’s some quite interesting information bundled up in the forest of words too. No-one’s sure when the Stabat Mater was written, but it was certainly relatively early in his career, while his father – famed composer Alessandro Scarlatti - was still alive. And this is a surprise, because Domenico suffered from Overbearing Parent Syndrome, being expected to become a musician from birth and to compose the kind of music his father wrote. But the Stabat Mater is very different from the other music he was writing at the time, so he probably wrote it secretly, in dead of night, hiding the manuscript in opera librettos and up the chimney so Alessandro wouldn’t stumble across it. Barry Creasey, the Chairman of the Collegium Musicum of London, says that Domenico was entirely dominated by his father until the age of 32, when he was legally emancipated. Good grief. When his father finally died, Scarlatti breathed a sigh of relief, threw the only copies of his last four operas into the fire (I’m guessing) and refused to write anything that wasn’t for harpsichord for the rest of his life.
Handel, born the same year, had completely the opposite problem. His father was so against him being a musician that he had to smuggle a harpsichord into the attic and stuff live mice inside to dampen the sound of the strings (again, I’m guessing). So this leads me to the obvious conclusion that Scarlatti and Handel were accidentally swapped at birth. There’s definitely a PhD thesis in that.
Inevitably, for two such star-crossed musicians, they soon met and hated each other on sight, each suffering from the certainty that their respective fathers preferred the other (I have now moved from the realm of “guesswork” into “complete lies”, by the way). But they pretended to be good friends, and instead of outright warfare they carried on a campaign of secret intimidation, sleeping with each other’s wives, doctoring each other’s manuscripts with jazz harmonies, and secretly putting salt into each others’ entries into the Roman Women’s Institute Baking Competition.
Things came to a head when they were encouraged to face each other in a keyboard duel … to the DEATH!!! At high noon they met. Scarlatti unholstered his impressively large harpsichord, and struggled to show no emotion when Handel turned up wheeling an organ. The music began; semi-quavers peppered the air and every escape route was barred by a tierce de Picardie. Handel pulled out all the stops (little organ joke there) but Scarlatti was voted the better … harpsichordist. The judging panel then hastily awarded Handel the “Best Organist” prize, before running off down the street shouting “everyone’s a winner, it’s just a matter of finding your strengths” before raiding the Department of Education and forcing through a bloody reorganisation of the GCSE marking criteria. Left alone, Handel and Scarlatti shrugged and went to the pub for a Peroni, and their lifelong enmity was finally laid to rest.
Well I think that’s enough nonsense for this blog entry. Next time: A full rundown of how Palestrina discovered America.
PS the Handel/Scarlatti keyboard duel is actually true.
The concert comprises three Stabat Maters by Scarlatti, Palestrina and Kats-Chernin (of Lloyds bank advert “oh oh oh ohhhh, oh oh, oh oh oh ohhhhh, oh oh” fame). We were going to do a fourth, but there was a “technical issue” (in this context, the phrase “technical issue” means “the problem was fully explained to me and the rest of the choir at break, but I was busy coveting my neighbour’s cup of tea and therefore can’t remember a word of the explanation”) so we had to drop that piece. So, with a little bit of space in the running order, we’ve pushed the boat out and crammed an entire requiem mass into the programme too. You certainly get your money’s worth at an Oriana concert. Happily, it’s Faure’s Requiem, which is an absolutely glorious piece, so the technical issue has worked out well.
We’ve been concentrating a lot on the Domenico Scarlatti Stabat Mater, which is beautiful and somewhat complex. Jurgen Jurgens, who wrote the forward to our edition, tells us that the “discriminately organised doublechoir writing manages to combine the old, strictly handled contrapuntal technique with a motivically almost deliquescent modern melodic style.” Got that everyone? Make sure you get that into all your conversations with your friends when you’re talking about the concert – the ticket sales will simply soar.
But there’s some quite interesting information bundled up in the forest of words too. No-one’s sure when the Stabat Mater was written, but it was certainly relatively early in his career, while his father – famed composer Alessandro Scarlatti - was still alive. And this is a surprise, because Domenico suffered from Overbearing Parent Syndrome, being expected to become a musician from birth and to compose the kind of music his father wrote. But the Stabat Mater is very different from the other music he was writing at the time, so he probably wrote it secretly, in dead of night, hiding the manuscript in opera librettos and up the chimney so Alessandro wouldn’t stumble across it. Barry Creasey, the Chairman of the Collegium Musicum of London, says that Domenico was entirely dominated by his father until the age of 32, when he was legally emancipated. Good grief. When his father finally died, Scarlatti breathed a sigh of relief, threw the only copies of his last four operas into the fire (I’m guessing) and refused to write anything that wasn’t for harpsichord for the rest of his life.
Handel, born the same year, had completely the opposite problem. His father was so against him being a musician that he had to smuggle a harpsichord into the attic and stuff live mice inside to dampen the sound of the strings (again, I’m guessing). So this leads me to the obvious conclusion that Scarlatti and Handel were accidentally swapped at birth. There’s definitely a PhD thesis in that.
Inevitably, for two such star-crossed musicians, they soon met and hated each other on sight, each suffering from the certainty that their respective fathers preferred the other (I have now moved from the realm of “guesswork” into “complete lies”, by the way). But they pretended to be good friends, and instead of outright warfare they carried on a campaign of secret intimidation, sleeping with each other’s wives, doctoring each other’s manuscripts with jazz harmonies, and secretly putting salt into each others’ entries into the Roman Women’s Institute Baking Competition.
Things came to a head when they were encouraged to face each other in a keyboard duel … to the DEATH!!! At high noon they met. Scarlatti unholstered his impressively large harpsichord, and struggled to show no emotion when Handel turned up wheeling an organ. The music began; semi-quavers peppered the air and every escape route was barred by a tierce de Picardie. Handel pulled out all the stops (little organ joke there) but Scarlatti was voted the better … harpsichordist. The judging panel then hastily awarded Handel the “Best Organist” prize, before running off down the street shouting “everyone’s a winner, it’s just a matter of finding your strengths” before raiding the Department of Education and forcing through a bloody reorganisation of the GCSE marking criteria. Left alone, Handel and Scarlatti shrugged and went to the pub for a Peroni, and their lifelong enmity was finally laid to rest.
Well I think that’s enough nonsense for this blog entry. Next time: A full rundown of how Palestrina discovered America.
PS the Handel/Scarlatti keyboard duel is actually true.
Saturday, 28 January 2012
Oriana goes on record, and Christmas finally ends
Last weekend Oriana went on a religious retreat. For hours we stood together, in silence, heads bowed, praying that God would send us the light. The little red light that signified “we are now recording”. And when God spaketh unto us, through the Holy Speaker of Gentle Criticism, it was in a mellifluous, timeless BBC voice. Dimbleby-esque, in fact, as you would expect from a deity. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that God was actually called Alex, looked about 19 and was (annoyingly for one so young) a top producer for Decca. A God for our times, I think.
The bulk of Oriana had decamped to a church in Hampstead to record our Christmas CD, because January is the new December. And we had a pretty ambitious recording schedule, truth be told. We were recording some fiendishly difficult carol arrangements by our own David-the-Conductor, plus a few of our favourite Christmas-themed choral pieces by other composers which were also pretty hard going. And wehad to record more than an hour’s worth of music in a mere two days, which is rather more than a professional choir would expect to do. However, if there’s one thing to be said about Oriana, it’s that we like a challenge, and we bounced around punching the air and stamping our feet in a suitably positive and energetic manner. Admittedly this was only because the church was freezing and we were trying to keep warm, but it made us look like a force to be reckoned with all the same. Alex-the-God was, I’m sure, quietly impressed.
David-the-Conductor threw us in at the deep end with “Angels from the Realms of Glory”. Loyal blog readers will recognise this as our regular Christmas Oriana Audience Challenge, where the audience has to hold the tune throughout the carol while we do everything we can to put them off. We actually did rather a good job of the piece without the audience there getting it all wrong (apologies, loyal Oriana audience! You’ll be amazed at how it’s actually supposed to sound though – buy a copy of the CD immediately). But recording it took us some time, and when we’d finished we were well over an hour behind schedule, with only one piece recorded and another 25 or so to go. Gulp.
David-the-Conductor panicked not, and onwards we determinedly went. And as more and more pieces made it into the can, our confidence began to rise and our devotion to Alex-the-God began to recede. Sorry Alex, but if I ever again hear the phrase “Splendid! Can you just give me one more from the top?” I may have a psychotic break. I was the soloist in Leighton’s Nativitie, and I swear there were so many takes of that solo that they can probably take one note from each take and still have enough left over to create a short tone row piece in the style of Schoenberg. At least I wasn’t singing the Gaudete soprano solo; Margaret-the-Soprano had to sing a top C solo over and over while David-the-Conductor and Alex-the-By-Now-Fallen-Angel commented on her diction and asked for slight differences in her tonal shading. I honestly don’t know how she did it, she is a hero among sopranos everywhere.
But the weekend progressed and we just got better and better. There were moments of glory (the sops top B at 8 o’clock on Sunday after two gruelling days was pretty damn impressive), moments of annoyance (largely induced by the wind messing up take after take – it felt a bit like we were recording in a wind tunnel), moments of knackeredness (Allain’s Christ’s Love Song – my voice gets itchy just thinking about it), moments of comedy (Mike-the-bass forgetting where he was and shouting “Yeah!” loudly into the mikes after the sopranos’ aforementioned top B), and moments of Alex-the-God trying to outdo David-the-Conductor in the unusual-but-evocative-descriptions stakes (“It’s all a bit Eeyore. It doesn’t have to be Tigger, but if it could at least be a bit Piglet…”).
And hour after hour, we revelled in glorious, impressive singing. We made it through to the end of Sunday, only 15 minutes over time, and with all but one piece recorded. Unbelievable. I feel like we put everything we had into the recording, and I can’t wait to hear the CD! I hope you’ll join me in rushing to HMV and demanding they stock it at once. Or, possibly, when next Christmas comes around.
The bulk of Oriana had decamped to a church in Hampstead to record our Christmas CD, because January is the new December. And we had a pretty ambitious recording schedule, truth be told. We were recording some fiendishly difficult carol arrangements by our own David-the-Conductor, plus a few of our favourite Christmas-themed choral pieces by other composers which were also pretty hard going. And wehad to record more than an hour’s worth of music in a mere two days, which is rather more than a professional choir would expect to do. However, if there’s one thing to be said about Oriana, it’s that we like a challenge, and we bounced around punching the air and stamping our feet in a suitably positive and energetic manner. Admittedly this was only because the church was freezing and we were trying to keep warm, but it made us look like a force to be reckoned with all the same. Alex-the-God was, I’m sure, quietly impressed.
David-the-Conductor threw us in at the deep end with “Angels from the Realms of Glory”. Loyal blog readers will recognise this as our regular Christmas Oriana Audience Challenge, where the audience has to hold the tune throughout the carol while we do everything we can to put them off. We actually did rather a good job of the piece without the audience there getting it all wrong (apologies, loyal Oriana audience! You’ll be amazed at how it’s actually supposed to sound though – buy a copy of the CD immediately). But recording it took us some time, and when we’d finished we were well over an hour behind schedule, with only one piece recorded and another 25 or so to go. Gulp.
David-the-Conductor panicked not, and onwards we determinedly went. And as more and more pieces made it into the can, our confidence began to rise and our devotion to Alex-the-God began to recede. Sorry Alex, but if I ever again hear the phrase “Splendid! Can you just give me one more from the top?” I may have a psychotic break. I was the soloist in Leighton’s Nativitie, and I swear there were so many takes of that solo that they can probably take one note from each take and still have enough left over to create a short tone row piece in the style of Schoenberg. At least I wasn’t singing the Gaudete soprano solo; Margaret-the-Soprano had to sing a top C solo over and over while David-the-Conductor and Alex-the-By-Now-Fallen-Angel commented on her diction and asked for slight differences in her tonal shading. I honestly don’t know how she did it, she is a hero among sopranos everywhere.
But the weekend progressed and we just got better and better. There were moments of glory (the sops top B at 8 o’clock on Sunday after two gruelling days was pretty damn impressive), moments of annoyance (largely induced by the wind messing up take after take – it felt a bit like we were recording in a wind tunnel), moments of knackeredness (Allain’s Christ’s Love Song – my voice gets itchy just thinking about it), moments of comedy (Mike-the-bass forgetting where he was and shouting “Yeah!” loudly into the mikes after the sopranos’ aforementioned top B), and moments of Alex-the-God trying to outdo David-the-Conductor in the unusual-but-evocative-descriptions stakes (“It’s all a bit Eeyore. It doesn’t have to be Tigger, but if it could at least be a bit Piglet…”).
And hour after hour, we revelled in glorious, impressive singing. We made it through to the end of Sunday, only 15 minutes over time, and with all but one piece recorded. Unbelievable. I feel like we put everything we had into the recording, and I can’t wait to hear the CD! I hope you’ll join me in rushing to HMV and demanding they stock it at once. Or, possibly, when next Christmas comes around.
Friday, 30 December 2011
Starlight of Wonder in a Christmas Rainbow
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!
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!
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!
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