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.

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!

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.

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.

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).

Merry Christmas Everyone!

The blog wasn’t here on time last week due to adverse weather conditions. Which is actually true as I was planning to write it on Saturday, but was thwarted by almost getting snowed in at Louise-the-Soprano’s wedding. An intrepid band of Orianans had braved the cold and the unknown horrors of the world outside the M25 in order to sing some choir classics at the ceremony. But the snow caused some problems as the bridal car couldn’t get up the hill, and so there was an uneasy half an hour of waiting in choir formation in the church until Louise finally trudged in on foot, wearing a fetching wedding-dress-and-welly combo. It was a lovely wedding though, and as a bonus we had the spectacle of men in morning suits digging cars out from under a good foot of snow – and many thanks to the posh-frocked lady in heels and fascinator who obligingly gave our car a push up the hill.

Wedding high-jinks weren’t the only Oriana occasion this week, though, as it was our Christmas concert last Thursday and it was fab. We were unusually well-prepared this time – we’d sung through everything on the programme AT LEAST once, and we didn’t have to use the interval as extra rehearsal time, so it was most relaxing for a Christmas concert. The Audience Challenge went smoothly, although everyone at the front was quite clearly wishing they’d sat further away from us when David-the-Conductor explained they were going to have to hold the tune by themselves while we harmonised around them. But we clearly attract a better class of audience, and they made it through to the end no matter what we threw at them. Or at any rate, they all sang the last note in a confident manner! The Poulenc Christmas Motets were magical and an absolutely joy to sing. But my highlight of the concert was Giles Swayne’s Starlight, which is a very simple piece for unison voices and piano accompaniment, written in the 1980s while Swayne was busy paring down his sound. It’s the most Christmassy song I’ve ever heard, and David-the-Conductor bangs it out on the piano with an infectious enthusiasm. Every year I cross my fingers and fervently pray we get to sing it, but last year we had a medieval-themed Christmas concert so it wasn’t on the programme, to my despair. I very nearly forged a copy of it arranged for sackbutt and lute in the hopes that I could fool David-the-Conductor into including it as an original by Henry VIII, but Giles Swayne falls into the “alive and therefore able to sue me” category of composers, so I forebore. Although given that Private Eye described him as “amiably bonkers” he may have enjoyed the intrigue. Anyway I welcomed “Starlight” back by bopping and grinning inanely all the way through, which I think is perfectly acceptable in a Christmas concert, and we finished with a rollicking Hark the Herald Angels which is always how I know that Christmas is here. So I’m feeling all Christmassy and goodwill-to-all-men-y now, so have a fantastic Christmas, and the blog will be back rather more intermittently in the new year so hope you’ll keep reading then.

Christmassy Poulenc

Calling all local hospitals, last week’s alert to be on stand-by during our concert is cancelled. I repeat, hospitals, stand down!

After this week’s rehearsal I am now confident that we won’t require their aid after all during Angels from the Realms of Glory. David-the-Conductor has made some changes to his arrangement to simplify it for us, and as we get more familiar with the trickier harmonies and cross rhythms they’re really starting to fall into place. So carnage is unlikely to rule our performance of this piece, although it might well be worth still having a St John’s Ambulance stand, just in case. But that’s an impressive improvement in just one week, isn’t it? And we’ve still got two weeks to go until the concert. If we continue the same rate of improvement maybe we’ll end up being able to heal the sick ourselves.

We actually had an extremely successful rehearsal this week despite sub-zero temperatures in the church which acts as our back-up rehearsal venue. Even this provided a good opportunity to get to know new people in the choir, as all 60 of us tried to crowd onto the 6-by-4-foot heating grate at half time. Survival of the fittest and judicious use of elbows reined. Once rehearsal resumed we raced through lots of music, targeting improvements until it all started to sound fantastic. The Poulenc Christmas Motets were especially beautiful. Poulenc of course was one of Les Six, a group of composers pulled together by Cocteau for little reason other than that he thought it would be a great marketing ploy and they’d make loads of dosh. Kind of like a chic 1920s Simon Cowell. Poulenc happened to be standing in front of Honegger in the baguette queue at the local Carre-Four when Cocteau was passing, and a phenomenon was born. The group unsurprisingly fell apart almost before it was formed, citing “musical differences”, and they all went off to have solo careers of varying success. Poulenc managed to successfully shake off his siX-Factor associations and underwent a bit of a religious conversion, becoming a composer of some of the most glorious sacred music ever written. The Christmas Motets are up there with the best, and are the cherry on top of a fantastic Christmas programme. I urge you to come to this year’s concert, it’s going to be a stunner.