Monthly Archives: October 2010

Trust me, I’m a conductor

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A series looking at the art of the choral conductor.

It’s hard, as an ensemble musician, to trust a conductor; you know and trust your own abilities, you know how a piece goes if you’ve performed it before, you’ve learnt it if you haven’t, and you also know that the success of your performance is now dependent on the person standing up in front of everyone. If they get it wrong and you all fall apart, then you personally will look silly, even if you were where you were supposed to be, playing what you were supposed to be playing.

ConductingThe rehearsal process is about establishing trust between performer and conductor; going in to those first rehearsals, as a conductor, you already have to know the pieces inside out. It’s a very scary moment: everything you do at that first meeting will define the whole process to come: how well you handle the group socially as well as musically; how you establish your musical authority in such a way as to convince the group that you know what you’re doing; how you communicate your ideas and intentions in such a way as to allow them to understand. There’s no time to be learning the pieces on the hoof, as it were, whilst trying to use rehearsal time effectively.

As with standing in front of a class of children or a group of students in a lecture theatre in the first term, part of the initial process is helping the group learn how to learn. The way in which you impart your ideas at the beginning needs to be done in such a way as to help them realise “Ah, right: that’s the way I will pick up information; that’s the way in which I’m going to be asked to produce results.” As you continue to develop your rehearsals over the ensuing weeks, you will be reinforcing this process: the sooner you can help them understand how you work and how you will ask things of them and how they can demonstrate them, the sooner they will start to respond.

All of this goes towards establishing trust, a crucial factor in the working relationships in rehearsal and performance. If you cannot convince the group that you know what you are doing, and that you have the means to guide them towards achieving the outcomes you want, they won’t place any trust in you: that lack of faith will destroy any chance of working together and producing a great performance.  That doesn’t mean imposing your authority: in fact, trying to do so will actually be as counter-productive as not being any good at your job in the first place.

I’ve sat or stood in front of conductors who have shown me, within the first five minutes, that they either don’t know the piece or that they don’t know how to rehearse; sometimes, that they don’t actually know how to conduct either. It doesn’t take long to come to this conclusion – as musicians, we work with a variety of other people, and have to assess and adapt pretty quickly – and once it’s set in, it can be very hard to shift.

How do you convince your choir that you know what you are doing, and how do you get results out of them in a positive manner ?

That’s for the next post.

Poulenc and Victoria: sunlit music

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A gloriously sunlit October day, suitable for rehearsing the first part of Poulenc’s Exultate Deo. This piece really has the light of the sun glowing through it in the second section, ‘Jubilate Deo,’ with Poulenc’s trademark musical language of added-sixth and seventh chords and prominent major second passing notes; there’s a terrific sense of freedom to the piece, both harmonically and rhythmically in the way the time-signatures changes between three, four and five crotchets in the bar.

Circle Time followed, where we broke ranks and stood around in a circle to sing the section of the Poulenc that we’d learned; it was amazing to stand surrounded by the colourful chords and exuberant harmony of the piece. And a great way to test the integrity of the voice-parts: in general, a fairly sound effort – the odd, typically Poulenc, dissonant sonority needed careful attention, but otherwise an exciting start.

Victoria’s Ave Maria is another motet which has great rhythmic freedom – occasionally there’s a dance-feel that interrupts the regular metric feel, as though he is eager to dance but feels he can’t within the confines of a formal sacred motet, but it’s uncontrollable and sometimes can’t help but burst through. Unlock the dance-rhythm in music, and it comes alive…

Cecilian Choir

Hail, Bright Cecilians!

And here are some of us: Reading Week and flu claimed the others.

A medieval summer, Bethlehem Down and dancing with Shakespeare

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Credit to the choir for this latest rehearsal: we worked through a lot of repertoire in a very short time.

Time to re-visit the Advent antiphons, and to capture some of that floating effortlessness that sounds so easy, but is hard to achieve; you can’t really conduct them too much lest you destroy the sense of freedom that they seem to occupy, so the choir have to trust one another to come in after the pauses and have confidence in the phrases; in other words, they have to know the music really well!

History on the page: Sumer is icumen in

From a wind-swept and rainy late October, we moved through the seasons to the approach of summer with Sumer is icumen in, with its lusty dance-rhythms and its rustic celebration of the turning of the season to herald the beginning of summer. We’re working on a medieaval English style of pronunciation – ‘Sumer is icumen in, lhude sing cucu; growth sed and bloweth med and spring be wude nu.’ I firmly believe in performing ancient and modern music side by side, a terrific way of glimpsing the sounds of the past and sometimes showing that some modern music sounds as ancient as medieval manuscripts, whilst some ancient music can sound as modern as contemporary pieces. We’re working on creating a vibrant, lively sound – no ‘received pronunciation’ here! – to bring it to life. There are also sacred words to the song, ‘Perspice christicola,’ which we’ll perform later in the same February programme with a wholly different and more appropriate sensibility.

Thence to the last of the Vaughan Williams Shakespeare Songs, ‘Over hill, over dale,’ which in its 6/8 rhythm dances along over bush and briar; we worked at it slowly, and then sang it through at a rough mid-tempo pace – it’s nearly there, another rehearsal will have it dancing off the page. We also returned to the first half of ‘Full Fathom Five,’ and really worked to make the bell-peal imitations ‘ping’ off the page with a percussive start to each ‘ding.’ We also explored the rich chords clothing the word ‘strange,’ and immersed ourselves in the chords by prolonging them, to get used to the sound of the flattened sixths and added seconds and the way the notes beat against one another.

After the break, we entered the almost mystical landscape of Warlock’s Bethlehem Down, and it was here that the choir started to come together for the first time that evening. Something obviously clicked – several of the choir have sung the piece before, admittedly – but somehow the atmosphere created by the text and the harmonies Warlock spins around the words came straight off the page. We explored dynamic contrasts between verses, as well as between lines in the verses; the greatest challenge was to get rid of the bar-lines, and sustain the long phrases across the bars without breaking the line and losing the impetus.

A brief recap of the opening sections of the ‘Gloria’ from the Jackson Edinburgh Mass; difficult music, rhythmically challenging and harmonically, lots of cluster chords to get right.

We ended by singing Today The Virgin and A Babe is Born; lots of rhythmic drive needed for the Tavener, and a richer sound required, whilst A Babe is Born needs plenty of bounce and energy to help it dance along.

Some really good work here, particularly the Warlock: with all its meandering lines and harmonic twists, it came alive almost immediately and was a joy to work up. Next week ? Hopefully the carol books will have arrived, so we can prepare the more traditional carols for the Advent concert.

Advent by Candlelight: forthcoming concert

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Advent posterThe first concert commitment in the Chamber Choir’s diary is now only six weeks away, and is a new addition to the Concert Diary for the department.

We are delighted to be launching the Advent season for St. Mildred’s Church on Stour Street, Canterbury this year, in a programme that includes popular seasonal music and readings.

We’ll be performing Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin, Tavener’s Today the Virgin, giving my carol A Babe is Born an outing before the Cathedral Carol Service the following week, as well as an array of traditional carols to welcome the beginning of the Advent period.

There will also be a selection of poetry and scriptural readings on the Advent theme, and the concert will be threaded through by the wonderful Advent antiphons. With the whole church lit by candlelight on this winter’s night, when the past, present and future will, for a short moment in words and song, come together, it promises to be a wonderful occasion

Tickets are now on sale: details on the What’s On calendar on-line here.

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Bass Desires

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Fourth-year Drama student Dave Newell reports from the bass section.

2pm, Saturday 16th October 2010. A lecture theatre on The University of Kent Campus turns twenty six students mad, as they are heard to be singing “I’m a train!”.

One of the big problems with university choirs is the ever-changing membership; student lives usually last at the most four years, after which people graduate and thus void their entry requirements to join student choirs. From a chorister’s point of view, this means that friendships between choir members are often short-lived, and at only two-hour rehearsal a week (squeezed into the busy schedule of not doing much and sitting…;-)) can take some time to begin. This however is not the case at The University of Kent Chamber Choir.

Alastair Hume

King's man: Alastair Hume

Early in October every year the choir welcomes Alastair Hume, ex-King’s Singer counter-tenor, for a fun-filled day of singing. It was this day, in my first year, when I really began to feel a part of the choir, and four years on, things have changed little. The first few rehearsals are, as I am sure Dan (our director) will corroborate, some of the most important of the whole year, not only because it is crucial to get off to a flying start on learning the repertoire, but also because the choir must feel like a choir to sing like one, to sit together and blend, rather than sounding like a lot of people singing.

Alastair’s day certainly fulfils both of these criteria. This year we focussed on three pieces:  Hark, All ye lovely Saints Above by Weelkes, Gibbons’ O Clap your Hands and I’m a Train originally by Albert Hammond, but later covered by Al’s own King’s Singers, and it was the latter we practised. These were interspersed with much laughter and banter and it must be said that the pieces were sung with… let’s say varying levels of success, but all were thoroughly enjoyed. The Weelkes is one which is to go into the choir’s line-up for a concert in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral in February, and “I’m a Train” is to be performed in November as part of a Kent Music Society showcase.

WorkshopThis is all well and good, but the true success of the day is surely bringing the choir together. In the middle of the day we have a picnic, organised this year by Nicola Ingram, which adds to the charm of the day, gets the choir used to each other and used to singing together.

This being my last year I would like to extend my personal thanks to Alastair, whose workshops are great fun. I will never forget Seaside Rendezvous, The Humpty Dumpty Jazz or your startling array of pretty stonking trousers.

David Newell, 1st Bass, University of Kent Chamber Choir 2007-2011.

The eyes have it: the conductor’s arsenal

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A series looking at the art of the choral conductor.

As remarked in the previous post, the conductor’s job is made difficult by the fact that, of all the performers, you are the only one unable to make a sound. All those exhortations you’ve given in rehearsals, all those encouragements you’ve uttered, all those points you’ve flagged up as looming up ahead whilst in mid-phrase – you can’t do any of that in performance.

ConductingSo, what have you got as a conductor ?

Your hands are the most obvious tools: at their most functional, the right-hand articulates the beat, the left-hand gestures to bring people in. The left-hand has an additional role, in also crafting the nature of the sound. But the expression comes in the beat as well, in the manner in which the right hand beats the time. Depending on how you give the beat with the right hand, the resultant sound will be different: a brisk beat will engender a crisp sound in the performers, a gentle beat will elicit a more languid sound and so on. The left hand adds an additional dimension to the shaping of the sound, and can also be used to guide the unfolding phrase, leading the singers through a sustained phrase, or drawing them together for sudden silences; opening wide for greater forte or closing gently for a delicate pianissimo.

The conductor’s eyes are a particularly effective tool of communication; you use them to glance at a voice-part to alert them to the fact that they are coming in shortly, and look directly at performers when they come in; they can also express the nature of the sound you’re expecting – a fierce glare for a dramatic moment, half-closed eyes for a moment of profound beauty, and so on. I recall once playing the piano in a contemporary music ensemble, and waiting to come in; at the moment I was due to play, the conductor’s gaze struck me like a blow and the conducting hand shot out like a rocket towards me: I played the chord with perhaps more percussive force than in rehearsal, which was just the effect he wanted in the performance.

The conductor’s face is  also important, and is perhaps the least voluntarily controlled yet most responsive aspect; as you are moved by what you are conducting, so your face can’t help but respond to the emotional nature of the moment.

Here’s an example of Leonard Bernstein conducting with nothing but his eyebrows, almost: from 3′ 46” onwards, in the encore, he gives the orchestra complete freedom, and gestures only with his face: and how exuberantly the orchestra responds.

You might not be able to make a sound, as a conductor, but you can certainly articulate, through your eyes, your hands and your face, what sound you want everyone else to be making!

In the next post, I’ll be looking at establishing a rapport with the choir in those early rehearsals.

Hail, Bright Cecilians!

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Cecilian Choir logoThe Cecilian Choir drew its first breath this week, launching into its programme of repertoire for the year and beginning with Tallis and Lassus.

Lassus’ Adoramus te, Christe is a very strange little motet: it moves harmonically into places where, tonally, the ear is expecting something else, and voice-parts occasionally introduce flats that steer the harmony into unusual corners. All of which makes for challenging sight-reading, but to which the choir rose with aplomb.

Tallis’ popular If Ye Love Me offers the opportunity for the singers to relish consonants and vowel-shapes, particularly on the words ‘love’ and ‘commandments.’

The choir has grown in size since last year, and we’ve changed the rehearsal layout and the space we occupy in Eliot College Hall, which allows a greater resonance; there was a point in the rehearsal at which the choir finished the Tallis anthem, and the final chord of F major suddenly rose into the roof and filled the entire hall: and the intonation was perfect as well.

A great start to the year, with lots more repertoire to look forward to, plus a few seasonal surprises. Stay tuned…

Let’s dance: rhythm in rehearsal three

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Our third rehearsal, and, without any conscious planning, it became apparent that rhythm was the key element to this week’s session. Each of the pieces the choir was rehearsing this week featured prominent dance rhythms or flexible time-signatures.

We began feeling our way through the ‘rich and strange’ sonorities of Vaughan Williams’ setting of Shakespeare’s Full Fathom Five, the first of his ‘Three Shakespeare Songs.’ We started by putting together the wonderful eleven-part chords on the word ‘strange’ at roughly the mid-point of the piece; not only is it my favourite moment, but it’s a way of showing the group what the key moment of the piece is that we’re heading for. The rhythmic feel to the piece is entirely flexible, moving in different fashion in each part at the same time: the altos are steadily tolling the crotchets, the sopranos moving in triplets across the half-bar, and the basses moving in triplets on every other beat. This creates a wonderfully loose sense of movement, not wholly dissimilar to the ebb and flow of the sea – the key element of the poem – and you really have to keep your head in order to make sure your part is moving correctly in time with everyone else.

Changing time-signatures also feature in the ‘Kyrie’ of Gabriel Jackson’s Edinburgh Mass, which we looked at next. It opens with a section that, although notated in different time-values, is endeavouring to capture the ebb and flow (again) of plainchant, the timelessness (in both senses) of monodic chant that seeks to escape the tyranny of the bar-line and a regular beat. The middle section, ‘Christe eleison,’ moves in contemplative homophony in the lower voices, before a sprightly closing section that again features different time-signatures before gradually subsiding back to the plainchant style of the opening. Some gloriously colourful chords in this movement: something of a challenge to the choir, especially the final section.

For the first time, we revisited repertoire we’d already looked at: I’ve felt it’s been important to give the choir a sense of the repertoire for the entire concert in February by moving through as much of it as possible in these early rehearsals, but it’s also time to start working in greater detail on music for the Advent concert at the start of December. We returned to my carol, A Babe is Born, in which dance rhythm is key; a lively 6/8 feel that changes from 1-2-3 / 4-5-6 to 1-2-3 / 1-2 / 1-2 / 1-2 / 1-2-3 in miniature hemiolas to keep the momentum and give life to the sense of expectation and excitement at the birth of the Christ-child.

Finally, we looked again at the Tavener Today the Virgin, in which dance rhythm is again the key element; the unison melody that moves between the voice-parts moves between duple and triple-feel rhythms, so the line really does dance. There was a sense that this piece is starting to lift off of the page ever so slightly: the choir are really starting to feel this piece and grasp its rhythmic vitality and tremendous energy, which bodes well for a fantastic performance…

In order to give the choir a sense of the collective sound they were making, we arranged ourselves in a horseshoe shape; normally arranged in rows, it’s difficult for the back rows to hear the front, and get a sense of how their line fits rhythmically and harmonically with everything else going on. We convened in the horseshoe shape for each of the last two pieces, and boy did it make a difference. Getting the choir to move around is an important part of rehearsals: a subject for a future post.

Not drowning but waving: the conductor

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A series looking at the art of the choral conductor.

What exactly is the job of a choral conductor ? There are quite a few things a choral conductor needs to do: make sure the group are in tune, singing rhythmically accurately, have the correct vowel  shapes, are pronouncing the text correctly, are balanced between the voice-parts, observe phrases and dynamics, and so forth.

ConductingBut then there’s something more; and this is where the job starts to become really interesting. Once the ensemble is working as a unit, the conductor starts to craft the performance of a piece – the point at which the music lifts off the page and becomes a real experience.

It’s hard to define exactly when this moment occurs; usually, you find that you haven’t noticed when it happened, and you suddenly realise that both you and the choir have left the printed score far behind and are moving into new territory. It usually occurs at the point when both the conductor and the choir are really no longer referring to the score any more: all the tempi, dynamics, the phrases and articulation are all ingrained, and all these different elements have been combined into the piece in a manner that has become instinctive.

The most obvious sign that this point has been reached is when both you and the choir are moving and breathing as one; you trust the choir to produce the sound, and they trust you to guide the performance.

This allows a marvellous freedom and adaptability into the performance now: you start to explore new things together with each performance. Some performance spaces require greater time to be taken at the ends of phrases in order to allow the reverberation to recede sufficiently before beginning the next phrase; some spaces seem to ask for a fuller sound, some more intimate spaces need a smaller sound;  some performances become so engrossing that you dwell on a pause or on the silence at the end of a piece for just that little bit longer, to allow the full implication of the chord or phrase you have just sung to sink in before moving on. Sometimes a colour occurs in the sound that is new, engendered by the environment or the mood that day.

Sometimes (and these are the best times), you all just can’t help yourselves – the choir seem to be able to give more than they ever have before, you find you’re now cajoling more from them than you have asked for in rehearsal; you are all moved to greater emotional depth than before, or you find a dance-rhythm has just that little bit more lift and energy. It’s unpredictable; you can’t tell when it’s going to happen, you just have to be confident in each other enough to know that, if it does occur, you’ll all go with it together.

It’s difficult as a conductor because, of course, you’re the only one who’s unable to make a sound. So what can you use to communicate your intent ?

That’s for the next post.

Masses of colour: Jackson and Skempton

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Two pieces lie at the heart of this year’s repertoire, and at the second rehearsal last week we looked at both: the wonderful colour of Gabriel Jackson’s Edinburgh Mass and The Cloths of Heaven by a composer who will come as no surprise to anyone who sang with the Chamber Choir two years ago: Howard Skempton. Skempton arrived onto the scene with almost majestic grandeur when his orchestral piece Lento was premiered at the Barbican in 1991 (repeated at this year’s BBC Proms with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Ilan Volkov), and his choral piece shows the same effect of ‘profundity through simplicity.’ The Chamber Choir has previously sung his motet Beati quorum via, and the Cecilian Choir sang the Ave virgo sanctissima and Locus iste; I’m delighted to be able to continue our exploration of Skempton repertoire this year.  He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven features Skempton’s trademark simplicity of musical language that nevertheless is deeply moving. Fabulous rich harmonies clothe (no pun intended) W.B Yeat’s evocative poem.

Jackson Mass score

Published by OUP: the Edinburgh Mass

Gabriel Jackson’s Edinburgh Mass occupies a similar musical landscape to the Mass in G by Poulenc, and the Gloria begins with a terrifically affirmative gesture before a more contemplative passage for the text ‘et in terra pax hominibus.’ For me, this piece is like a stained-glass window: lit from behind, it glows with fantastic colour. The Gloria, sees rippling descending quavers passing downwards through the voices, like the pealing of bells, creating a wonderful shimmering texture. More about these two wonderfully evocative pieces as we work through them over the course of this term…

For the Advent concert, we started the antiphonal Hymn to the Virgin by Britten, a traditional seasonal favourite, written when Britten was just seventeen: it already shows a mature command of musical gesture, an assured harmonic palette and a quiet authority for such a youthful work.

About to begin on here is ‘Not drowning but waving.’ a regular column looking at aspects of the choral conductor’s art: expect the first article later this week.