Tag Archives: Warlock

So that’s how we can sound! A moment of realisation

There was a wonderful moment of realisation at the end of yesterday evening’s rehearsal.

We’d had a hard two hours, in particular looking at the rhythmic minefield that is Steve Martland’s Make We Joy Now. We’d also worked through a further four carols, including the rich sonorities of Peter Warlock’s heart-rending Bethlehem Down, a piece in which you have to be constantly on your toes to be ready for passing chords and leading passages that occasionally don’t do what’s expected of them.  Parry’s Welcome, Yule! Is a sprightly, consort-style carol that nevertheless has some tricky passages. We’d also looked at a new Advent Antiphon, O Clavis David, that doesn’t quite lie as easily as the earlier ones.

Looking beyond Christmas to the Crypt concert in February, we’d also begun working on O Sonno, a wonderful Italian madrigal with deeply sonorous harmonies exploring the plaintive text; more Italian vowel-shapes to perfect…

The final piece in the rehearsal, the rich and strangely haunting Remember, O Thou Man, we had looked at in a previous session, and the group sang it confidently. On the spur of the moment, to keep the choir on their toes and give them something new to think about, I asked them move into mixed formation, such that each member was standing next to someone singing a different voice-part, and we began the carol anew.

As soon as the first verse began, it was clear that something different was happening: the sound had changed and was deeper, richer and more sonorous – the result of each member suddenly having to take full responsibility for their line when they were unable to rely on hearing the same line sung by their neighbour. The transformation was immediate – and you could see an awareness of this gradually permeating the group as the verses unfolded. There was a palpable sense of excitement at the new sound, and some of the group started to smile without being able to help themselves.

When we finished, the atmosphere was electric: we’d stumbled across something quite dramatic, and something that made the whole group aware that there was a quite astonishing sound waiting to emerge. We’ve decided to explore this idea in future rehearsals: whether we use it in performance or not remains to be seen. Having written previously about the idea of moving the choir around in rehearsal, and the positive effect it can have, it was quite something to see it working, and to see the group as a whole come alive to its potential.

Great stuff: well done, team. (Just make sure you keep looking at the Martland in between rehearsals!).

And just to whet your appetites, here’s King’s College, Cambridge in Warlock’s carol…

A medieval summer, Bethlehem Down and dancing with Shakespeare

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.