Category Archives: In rehearsal

Rehearsals continue: Vaughan Williams, de Rore and a secret

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With last Friday’s concert still ringing in our ears, there’s no respite in rehearsals: with the University Carol Service in the Cathedral looming, time to look at the carols for the service and also to visit the repertoire for February’s concert, some of which has languished neglected whilst we worked on the Advent programme.

The Carol Service opens with that bastion of the season’s choral music, Once in Royal David’s City, requiring a solo soprano soaring effortlessly through the opening verse; second-year Economics student Marina is in fine voice. We’ll be singing the second verse unaccompanied; two challenges here, to pitch our opening chord from Marina’s last note, and to maintain pitch throughout our verse, such that the organ and congregation don’t come crashing in for verse three in a different key.

Two pieces by Vaughan Williams, the Elizabethan partsong-style Sweet Day, and the wonderful Rest followed; the key to unlocking both works is managing the dynamics, with Rest in particular demanding a tight control across a range of dynamic contrasts. Sweet Day similarly sees some ebb and flow in dynamic shading, and we need to resist the temptation to crescendo in the first line of the last verse, to make sure we keep the pianissimo until the second line crescendo. The last chord is marked pppp; that’s a challenge in itself!

The main focus of the rehearsal was on a piece I can’t write about here, as it’s a surprise for the February concert; suffice to say, it’s an arrangement I’ve written of a jazz piece for the encore (should one be required!) which requires the choir to rid themselves of their polished control, and develop a barbershop-style of singing, with swung rhythm and some colourful close-harmony sonorities, complete with do-wop vowels.  A tentative first try at the piece, but by the end it was starting to develop some style; tricky, after cultivating a fine level of control in the Vaughan Williams.

A return also to de Rore’s O Sonno, for which we’re exploring the changing rhythmic feel throughout the piece, combined with an atmosphere of profound serenity.

One of the sopranos turned up with a batch of home-made raspberry-and-white-chocolate cakes, which saw the tenors scrabbling for the tupperware and could perhaps set a demanding precedent for future rehearsals ?

Not long to go…

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It’s the morning of the concert: the programmes are printed, tickets are selling well, I’ve been going through all the music for tonight in my head as I took the dog roaming over the hills this morning, the Choir are chafing at the bit, ready to get to the church this afternoon for a short practice, and there’s little else to do.

Advent concertWe’ve had our final two rehearsals this week, and momentum is well and truly built: we’re full of potential energy (physics-at-school flashback), poised to begin the push through this afternoon into tonight’s performance. Even the Steve Martland carol, which has caused us some interesting moments, is reaching its zenith.

Looking back over this blog at the choir’s evolution over the course of this term, I realise how far we’ve come in a short space of time; I suddenly remembered that, until the first rehearsal back on October 4, this choir hadn’t met, hadn’t sung together, people didn’t know one another. In a mere seven weeks, they’ve turned from a nervous group of strangers into a fully-fledged choir; in the past two weeks especially, they’ve developed confidence in one another, and begun to develop a rounded, confident sound, flexible in its dynamic scope. They’ve learnt an entire programme for  concert performance, and have also been learning repertoire for the concert in February.

Not bad for a group that tends to meet only once a week…a testament to their commitment, and to Steph’s work with them as well.

The church people are currently setting the church for tonight, including (I hope) an array of candles, and possibly even a candelabra suspended from the roof mid-way down the nave. With the place a-glow with candles, hushed expectation in the audience, the first of the Advent antiphons is about to weave its magic through the air and really open the door into the season.

Here’s to tonight: stand by for a review afterwards.

Bass Desires: Eyebrow Action

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Bass Desires: third-year English student Charles Green reports from the bass section…

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Mixed formation has shaken things up in the Chamber Choir.

The eyes have it...

At practise, I no longer sit with Matt Norman, whispering the same old euphemisms and profanities; now I get to look at him on the other side of our horseshoe. Faces have replaced words, and not always distracting ones. It has changed the way we handle our line.

On Tuesday, at his suggestion, we laid aside our copies of Carol of the Bells and put in some physical expression rather than rigid folder-holding. Likewise, when Dan again proved his superfluity (but obviously only a tiny bit) in Remember, O Thou Man, there was an excellent moment in which we all looked eagerly to each other for entries and tempo.

We had a really good rehearsal. Last week at Blean we were suffocated not only by the dry acoustic of the church, but by our own lack of confidence in attacking phrases and singing with a bit of gesture, but this time we went for it. Actually, the first half was [censored for readers of a gentle disposition]  – only when Paris Noble made a startlingly inspirational appeal for positivity did we all begin to sing like we wanted to be there. For these Christmas carols (Ding Dong springs to mind), we can afford to overdo it, and this is particularly true for the cathedral service, where consonants need to be spat to be heard at all as our voices will wash over the Nave.

If we look and sound like overenthusiastic idiots, then we’re probably doing the right thing. I look like I’m about to burst into tears when I’m singing high, but I think I can be proud to look this way when everyone else does. That said, the horseshoe shape might prove our undoing if everyone looks like me while singing. It might just set Matt Norman off mid-concert.

A tale of two halves

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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… Last night’s rehearsal began, I think it is fair to say, pretty poorly. Tempi were dragging, voices were behind the beat, intonation wasn’t great, lines kept going flat, the words were lifeless, there was no story-telling; it felt like an uphill struggle.

And then, and then…

Before...

Midway through the rehearsal, the choir sang what has recently become its calling-card piece, the carol Remember, O Thou Man: they sing this piece extremely well, it has to be said – they breathe as one, they each commit to leading their voice-part, the words really come alive, and the piece works.

It’s as though the group suddenly remembered what they can do, and that they can do it well. The mood changed instantly after the piece, and the second half of the rehearsal worked like a dream. The antiphons had lilt and shape, the other carols came alive, and the prevailing mood was suddenly one of realisation: we can do this, and we are doing it jolly well! At the end of the session, we went back over two of the carols with which the rehearsal had started, and it was as though they were different pieces. Or perhaps we were a different choir.

What’s particularly exciting about this moment is that members of the group are starting to comment on how they can improve, and are starting to give highly motivational speeches – ‘Look, this is what we need to do…’ The first half had been full of my exhortations, trying to get them to do all those things that they hadn’t been doing; but in the second half, they were motivating themselves.

When the group are all working as one, when they are all breathing together, coming in confidently, positively, and telling the story, the results are electrifying. It’s this magic that elevates a performance from a good one to a great one; we just have to remember that we are capable of great performing… When the ideas are fizzing around amongst the singers themselves, when they’re starting to work out what is working well and how they can work to make it happen each time, that’s when things start to get really exciting; the group are learning much faster when they are realising things for themselves.

Such was the palpable enthusiasm that the group suggested singing one of the piece without copies; and did it work! As soon as heads are lifted out of scores, as soon as they are having to look up and sing out, the change in the level of performing is remarkable. You know things are starting to go well when the choir volunteer to sing pieces from memory!

We’ve worked out how to get rehearsals starting at the same standard as that at which last night’s ended: we’re going to start each rehearsal by singing Remember, O Thou Man¸as a reminder of what we should be doing.  As we all realised last night, we were a completely different group at the end of the rehearsal than we had been at the beginning. The trick now will be for us to remember how we were performing at the end, to capture that sense, and to bring it out at the start of subsequent rehearsals, so we start working at the improved level at which we have previously finished.

After...

If we can do this, and do it on Friday, then the concert promises to be something really quite extraordinary…

Mixed-voice formation: it’s official

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It’s official: we’re going to be standing in mixed-voice formation for the concert next week.

All mixed up: and loving it!

Working on the programme in rehearsal last night, we made the decision to run the entire session standing in mixed voice-parts, as we’re keen to develop this aspect of our performing, with a view to trying it out a week on Friday. A decision not without challenges, especially given that last night’s rehearsal was the first time we’d been in the church in which we’ll be performing, and given also that some of the Choir were seeing the music for perhaps only the first time, and we were three members short due to illness. (Look after yourselves, people, between now and next Friday!).

Some of the pieces were very good: the three that we’ll be singing in the Cathedral in December in particular are in robust health. Some are finding their way off the page a little less quickly; the up-beats in the soprano melody in The Angel Gabriel need taking firmly in hand in order to give each verse a confident start, which then reassures the accompanying voices that they are also coming in correctly.

In the Bleak Mid-Winter by second-year Rachel Richardson is beginning to ebb and flow nicely – and even had the composer’s approval last night! – as the voices become gradually more secure.

Steph Richardson stepped out to direct two pieces; the carol It Came Upon A Midnight Clear is developing well, but just needs more commitment to the story-telling; there’s a mixture of intimacty and celebration in the words that the group really needs to communicate. Carol of the Bells is a delight, and promises to be a highlight.

The biggest challenge left to us is the Martland carol; the refrains are beginning to develop a lively dance-feel, together with the dynamic markings that lead through a gradual crescendo as the phrase ‘Make we joy now’ is repeated. The verses, however, require supreme confidence both in knowing where the melodic line is leading, as well as in the words, a blend of Latin and English. I can see where the focus of our last few rehearsals is going to be…

In contrast, I proved myself to be utterly redundant in Remember, O Thou Man; as a test of the unity of ensemble, the choir faced not inwards but outwards, away from each other and unable to see one another, and sang the piece through. They have such a firm grasp of the piece that they sang without needing any conducting at all; listening to one another, breathing together and sure of the tempo, they delivered a pinpoint-perfect rendition that had them moving as one. It’s at this point that I feel my work is done.

Speaking to Janet, the extremely helpful Church Warden who looked after us last night, there’s also the possibility that the church will be candle-lit for the concert. Fingers crossed that this might be so: it would create a wonderful atmosphere…

A few rehearsals left before the day; some fine-tuning to do (and Martland to instil!), but we’re on track.

In the Mix

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It’s becoming increasingly clear, as rehearsals progress and the choir develops as an ensemble, that mixed-voice singing really suits the group. The strength and depth of sound, the richness of the chords and the accuracy of the ensemble, all are quite different – and vastly improved – when standing with the voices all mixed. Talking with some of the group afterwards, it seems that they prefer a mixed-voice formation – they like the sound that it produces, and they are keen to keep rehearsing as such, in order to see if we can perform in this fashion as well.( And when the group themselves are asking to keep doing something, you know it’s a good sign!)

In the mix

Image credit: Wikimedia

Last night’s rehearsal was a long one – lasting almost three hours – as we’re rehearsing in the church, at which we’re singing our Advent concert, next week, and it was important that the group had gone through all of the repertoire for the programme before adjusting to the performance space. We used the piano less and less during last night’s session, and I’m hoping to spend less time behind the piano and more time actually working with the sound between now and the coming performances.

The antiphons are starting to discover a sense of freedom; there’s a wonderful flexibility starting to emerge as we become more familiar with the lines they weave. There’s a lively sense of fun in The Holly and the Ivy and Ding, Dong, Merrily on High, and a lovely sombreness to Remember, O Thou Man.

We also looked for the first time at a carol written by a second-year student studying at the University; a serene and intimate setting of In the Bleak Mid-Winter, of which we’ll be giving the première at the Advent concert, by Rachel Richardson. It’s a great opportunity to be able to give a young composer the chance to hear their work performed, and her carol will suit the space in the church very well.

Last night, too, was the first time we’ve gone through Steve Martland’s Make We Joy Now, without the safety-net of the piano; a couple of hair-raising moments where the unity of the ensemble was, how shall I put it, not quite as tight as in other pieces, and there wasn’t quite the sense of confidence in some of the voices that there is elsewhere; but we’ve two weeks to go, and even by the end of last night, the improvement was considerable. (You have just got to go away and look at your verses in between rehearsals, tenors and basses!).

Overall, a really good rehearsal; time to start cranking up the momentum as we head towards the first concert in just over two weeks’ time.

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

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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…

Touching the past: the Advent antiphons

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And so, this week we ventured yet further into our Advent repertoire. With the concert looming at the end of November, time to start the great Advent antiphons. As written about in a previous post, the magic of these antiphons resides in breathing life and flexibility into them, finding a rhythmic freedom that will allow the lines to ebb and flow with a naturalness, whilst still retaining the integrity of the ensemble. We explored the first and third, ‘O Wisdom’ and ‘O, Root of Jesse.’ Singing this music is a direct link with the past; you really feel history coming alive as the music unfolds. The antiphons date from before the ninth century, culled from Old Testament texts to foretell the coming of the Messiah, and singing them puts one in direct contact with a tradition dating back over a thousand years.

From medieval simplicity to the rich, clashing harmonies of the carol, Remember, O Thou Man; we worked at particularly pungent chords, moving very slowly between particular dissonances in a way that rendered certain passages actually rather alarmingly modern.

Steph then led the group in their first look at the Carol of the Bells, getting the choir to sound like bells ringing. A sprightly piece, this, and popular with the group. Lots of words to get across, too…

Time also to get to grips with a tricky corner in Barnum’s Dawn, building some of the chords note by note, a real opportunity to revel in the rich colours of many of the added-note chords that require great commitment from the voice-parts: the chords need to be delivered with great conviction for the colours to bloom.

Brahms’ In Stiller Nacht is maturing nicely; just some pronunciation aspects to sort out, as there are also in Monteverdi’s Ecco mormorar l’onde. This piece is the hardest so far. By contrast, and as a respite from the linguistic minefields afforded by these pieces, we went back to Sleep Wayward Thoughts, which is starting to lift off the page and achieve some rhythmic grace.

A final return to Whitacre’s Sleep, to look at the climactic section towards the end; tricky lines for the choir, where each part has to have courage to follow their lines through and stand firm in clashing dissonances.

A great rehearsal, full of colour; next week, we’ll be getting seriously in the Christmas mood as we broach, for the first time this year, that harbinger of the Christmas season: Carols for Choirs…

Mighty madrigals to intimate Saint-Saens

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Extremes of contrasting repertoire this week veered from Monteverdi’s epic five-part Ecco mormorar l’onde, rich in textural contrasts, to the understated homophony of Saint-Saëns’ Calme des Nuits, by way of Vaughan Williams’ Rest, a revisit of Barnum’s Dawn, and our first footfall in repertoire for the festive season.

The Monteverdi is a mighty piece, a meditation on the approaching dawn, with the rustle of leaves, birds singing, and the colours of the sea and sky beginning to appear. Monteverdi uses the piece to demonstrate his consummate skill in textural writing, with imitation, stretto, echo, homophony and antiphonal passages breaking out all over the place; there’s never time to relax into one style, as a few bars later, you’re into a different one. The two soprano lines vie for supremacy as they duck and weave over and around each other, whilst the inner voices ripple with imitative runs or move in similar motion with one or other voice-part. And on top of all that, there’s the Italian pronunciation to get right as well.

Steve Martland

Steve Martland: image credit Schott International

Our first piece for the Christmas season this year is Make We Joy Now by the contemporary British composer, Steve Martland. Martland’s music can be brash, bold, and full of rhythmic verve, and this carol is no exception. Its terrific rhythmic impetus sees the melody in the verses bobbing and weaving, wrong-footing the regularity of the pulse with sudden accents or crotchets where you’d expect a quaver; this is interspersed with a chorus that moves into triple metre, and builds dynamically in a truly exciting fashion as the same phrase is repeated – ‘make we joy now.’ We’ve worked slowly through the first verse and chorus, and it’s starting to develop, although the unpredictability of the metre is proving something of a challenge.

Steph returned to The Long Day Closes‘and had the choir exploring the dynamic contrasts with different sounds – humming for piano passages, ‘eeh‘ for crescendi / diminuendi and ‘ah’ for forte passages, which revealed the dynamic contours to good effect. A very useful exercise: I might have to nick that one…!

The rich sonorities of Vaughan Williams’ gently flowing Rest were followed by the intimacy of Saint-Saëns’ Calme des Nuits, a marvellously understated piece which, apart from the central eight bars, never really gets above pianissimo: the challenge with this work will be to bring off singing very quietly with good ensemble and intonation. Oh: and the French pronunciation, of course…

We ended by returning to Eric Barnum’s Dawn, in particular the last page, which uses an aleatoric passage for upper voices: the sopranos and altos each take a single note from a collection of eight, which they then sing over and over again, breathing where necessary, but in a way that should not coincide with anyone else: the score talks about creating the effect of ‘golden light.’ This was definitely new territory for the group (that’s modern music for you), but they took to it well, and eventually it started to work. We talked about creating the effect of a shaft of light falling through a prism and breaking into rainbow hues, and this seemed to help them make sense of what they were trying to achieve. In the Cathedral Crypt, it could be an amazing moment…

This choir frightens me…

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This year’s choir is frightening.

At last night’s rehearsal, we covered six pieces in two hours. Four were new, and a further two were works we had looked at in last week’s rehearsal. And three of the pieces were in foreign languages: one French, one Italian, one German.

What’s frightening is the speed with which the group picks up repertoire, how rapidly they grasp the overall stylistic feel of a piece. To begin, we immersed ourselves in the gentle, somnolent harmonies of Brahms’ In Stiller Nacht, complete with all the linguistic trickery of singing in German, and the spirit of the piece materialised quickly. This was swiftly followed by a musically geographical shift to Elizabethan England, to Dowland’s Sleep, Wayward Thoughts, with its metric variety, moving between 3/4 and 3/2, and the group adapted to the deft changes with ease.

This year’s student conductor, Steph, then took the group through Sullivan’s The Long Day Closes, looking at the meaning behind the text and getting the choir to bring this out in the music.

Lassus’ Bonjour, et puis quelles nouvelles ? presented the most challenging material at this week’s session, with syncopation, free-flowing imitation and rapid changes from homophony to polyphonic and antiphonal textures. This was the most difficult piece, and there’s still lots of work to do; but a good first reading.

We literally danced through Tutto lo di when we revisited it this week; already the piece has great verve and rhythmic spring, even if the Italian isn’t quite as accurate as it might be! And to close, further exploration of the rich colours of Whitacre’s Sleep, building passages chord by chord and starting to develop a rich, sonorous sound.

The work-rate over these first two rehearsals has been intense – eight pieces in two weeks, lots of sight-reading, embracing foreign languages, notwithstanding the fact that the group is itself brand new and the members are mostly new to one another. And it’s alarming, how quickly the group is picking the pieces up and adjusting stylistically to each new work as it comes along. Yes, there’s still some note-bashing to do, some corners to tidy up and lines to clarify; there’s balancing to develop, dynamics to address and articulation to improve, not to mention vowel-sounds in the Italian and consonants in the German to correct. But what’s immensely reassuring is the fact that the group is reading through these pieces so quickly, and are prepared to have a bold attempt when confronted by new material.

It’s scary – and exciting. In equal measure. Hold onto your hats, this could be an electrifying year…