Category Archives: In rehearsal

Mozart and Saint-Saens: the face-off

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As a companion and a contrast to the Saint-Saens setting of the Ave Verum Corpus, the Cecilian Choir today began rehearsing Mozart’s setting of the same text. Two very different treatments of the text: Saint-Saëns’ quite straightforward response to the words, Mozart’s much more lyrical and impassioned. I find programming two contrasting settings of a piece of text to be a interesting feature of concert-planning; each throws up facets of the other that listeners might not have otherwise noticed, or be able to compare a setting they might already know with one they’ve not heard before.

We gathered in the round – Circle Time! – to sing the Saint-Saëns, and also to re-visit the plainchant ‘Ubi Caritas’ and Duruflé’s setting from last week. We took the plainchant more slowly than we have done before; I find that slowing pieces down just a little opens up a conversely larger amount of space in music – there’s time to really feel the phrases finish, to let the notes die away in a resonant acoustic before moving on. Getting the choir to stand in a circle really makes for a rich sound; suddenly, people can hear and relate to other voice-parts moving that they hadn’t previously really been aware of; they also feel more a part of the collective whole, rather than standing strung out in two lines as we are when we are seated in rehearsal.

We’ve now got so much sheet music that we’ve had to resort to folders for everyone to be able to keep all their music together: a sure sign that the choir are able to work swiftly through repertoire and a tribute to the ease with which they pick new pieces up quickly; good news, indeed!

Singing spirits: Finzi, Skempton and Vaughan Williams

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You’d have thought persuading the gentlemen of the choir to sing in a lusty and bawdy fashion would be no problem. The opening of the setting of Mother, Make My Bed which I’ve written for the concert starts with a rambunctious repeated pattern for the tenors and basses, which needs to be delivered in not quite a thigh-slapping manner, but not far off. And yet…they were terribly polite and mannered about it; it was far too refined. More loose living before next week, chaps, maybe ?!

Finzi finesse

It was back to England this week, after last week’s rehearsal of Scottish pieces, and a chance to dance with Finzi’s My Spirit Sang All Day. This piece is a complete joy, full of life and bursting with sheer delight in its harmonic revelry. It’s also the last new piece to prepare for the end of the month (apart from the encore, should we need one, which is a popular favourite that we can learn at the drop of a hat nearer the time); from now on, it’s all consolidation, which makes me feel an awful lot better!

Whenever I start to become nervous about the concert – it’s a big programme, with challenging works, in an awe-inspiring venue – I should just get the choir to sing the Skempton Cloths of Heaven, and all shall be well. We looked at if for the third time last night (that spreadsheet I wrote about keeping earlier is really starting to pay dividends – I can see which pieces we’ve neglected in a trice!), concentrating now on balancing the chords and making sure all the lovely semitone clashes between the inner voices are brought out, or making the sure the basses’ sustained pedal notes can be heard. The basses are, at several points, the driving force behind the emotional impact of the piece; they either underpin the gently breathing harmonies with a solid pedal-note, or at crucial points rise up over an octave to really push the texture upwards.

Although I’m endeavouring now to try and provide as little support on the piano as possible, to get the choir accustomed to singing without any accompaniment, there’s a danger that the pitch can drop and you can end up a good semi-tone lower at the finish, something we’ll have to work on improving.

We revisited the Vaughan Williams songs to finish the rehearsal, endeavouring to impart a sense of rhythmic vitality into the sprightly ‘Over hill, over dale,’ whilst contrastingly making sure the bell-like effects of ‘Full fathom five’ were working. The chords struck in the four-part divisi sopranos throughout the opening section need to begin percussively with a crisp ‘d’ on the words ‘ding’ and ‘dong.’ The altos really showed themselves to be solid masters of the beat, holding the straight crotchet beats against the triplet rhythms in the other voices: I’m beating with one hand in six and with the other in four, so it’s certainly a piece to keep everyone on their toes, including me…

(Preview tracks via LastFM).

A la mode: Durufle, Poulenc and plainchant

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The Cecilian Choir reached the French stage of their concert programme this week, with motets by Duruflé and Poulenc. Duruflé’s achingly beautiful Ubi Caritas et Amor is part of a set of four motets using Gregorian themes, clothing pieces of plainchant with wonderfully rich colours.

As part of the programme, we will be singing the piece of plainchant itself separately, followed by the motet; the intention is to telescope the medieval and modern, juxtaposing the ancient modal chant with the modern exoticism of Duruflé’s setting. We began the rehearsal with the plainchant, learning to follow the natural rise and fall of the phrases and leave a measure of flexibility in singing through the lines.

Duruflé gives the plainchant melody to the altos at the start of Ubi Caritas, so the alto section were grateful for having learnt their line already when we came to learn the motet. There are some lovely cluster-chords in the piece; the plainsong grounds the tonality firmly in Eb, whilst the accompanying sonorities clothe it with all manner of jazz-indebted, added-note harmonies. We were short of several people this afternoon – the Housing Fair had students flocking to it in order to organise their accommodation for next year – but the choir still managed to bring out most of the colour. The tenors and basses were underpowered, though: talking to some of the group afterwards, most of the sopranos had already arranged their accommodation: are women more organised and efficient than men, perchance ?!

Using my trick of learning new pieces backwards that I’ve talked about before, we started halfway through Poulenc’s Exultate Deo, which we’d briefly started last term. It’s jolly hard: Poulenc’s trick of swinging through adjacent or parallel harmonies that are not necessarily related to each other makes for some angular lines in the voices; quite often, the altos and sopranos are having to leap over augmented fourths or fifths, and the score includes a fistful of double-sharps or enharmonic changes that mean what appears to be two different notes are actually the same one. We learned a section carefully, practicing moving between difficult chords to make sure the voices knew where they were going.

With a great deal of slow note-bashing and difficult lines to sing, one could sense morale dropping slightly; working backwards in two-page sections made life somewhat easier, as we covered passages more familiar from last term. Recapping previously-sung sections and singing into and through the new passages meant the piece gradually began to come together: there was definitely a sense of ‘Ah, I recognise this bit from last term!’ followed by ‘Ah, now I’m starting to recognise the new bit as well!’ which meant dipping spirits began to rally.

We ended by singing through Ubi Caritas once more, in order to reassure ourselves that we had learned something well enough at this rehearsal, and to lift morale – “We can DO this!” I’ve altered the planning of rehearsals this term – we’ll be looking at chunks of the Poulenc each week, along with the other repertoire to learn, and be working on it as more of a long-term piece. But parts of it are already starting to sound excellent, and I’m sure we’ll get there. It’s such a great piece, it will be worth it…

And just to demonstrate what we’re working towards, here’s the choir of Kings’ College, Cambridge, singing the Duruflé (with what appears to be a young David Tennant in the alto section…). The singing, like the piece, is exquisite.

(Preview extracts via LastFM).

North of the wall: weaving Macmillan and counting in Jackson’s Edinburgh Mass

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It was going to be a challenging rehearsal, I thought: two pieces by Scottish composer James Macmillan, the canonic Gallant Weaver and heart-rending A Child’s Prayer, and the ‘Gloria’ from Gabriel Jackson’s Edinburgh Mass. These are difficult pieces – hard enough to realise at the piano when there’s no closed-score piano reduction to aid rehearsing! – with complicated rhythmic interplay, angular lines that aren’t necessarily leading where you might expect them to go, and modern harmonies rich in added-note chords and eight-part vertical sonorities. I expected it to be something of a difficult rehearsal.

It just shows how wrong one can be.

Having kicked off in lively fashion with Perspice Christicola, better known as Sumer is icumen in but with a sacred Latin text, to get everyone warmed up, we sojourned north of Hadrian’s Wall with Macmillan’s A Child’s Prayer. This has been a favourite piece of mine for a while – it’s one of those pieces that, at first hearing, reaches straight into your soul. We built the three main chords from the basses upwards to get them balanced and in tune, and practiced moving from one chord to the next to make sure the singers knew where they were going. And then – we sang them as written. It’s one thing to know and love a piece that you’ve listened to many times, but to be in the midst of the sound the first time it comes off the page and into the air is a thrilling moment. We then added the two (patient!) solo sopranos, and set off through the whole piece. In the rich and resonant acoustic of the Cathedral Crypt, it will be overwhelming…

Macmillan’s Gallant Weaver is a richly polyphonic treatment of a Scottish folk-song, with a three-part canon in the sopranos – no closed-score, what a challenge to play! – literally weaving the melody amongst the divided upper voices; the lower three voices provide gently lulling sustained chords beneath, before the whole choir burst out into individual part-writing for a sumptuous second verse. It’s certainly difficult, the sopranos having to have the confidence to sustain their own lines against not only the same melody in canon but the colourful harmonies beneath. And it worked very well.

The Jackson Gloria represents the greatest rhythmic difficulty in the entire programme; leaping between 5/8, 3/8 and 2/4 or ¾ bars is taxing; added to which are the tumbling lines in the sopranos and altos like bells pealing, and the fact that the tenors and basses move at different times to both soprano and alto lines. We’re two-thirds of the way through the movement; there’s still work to do, but the effort will be worth it if we can capture the luminous colour and brightly-lit harmonies of the piece as it comes off the page.

Some hard work last night, and some excellent results; quicker than I thought possible. Here’s hoping it continues over the coming weeks; with only five rehearsals left before the concert, we can’t afford to waste a single moment.

(Preview clip via LastFM).

Circle in the Round: moving the choir in rehearsal

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A series looking at the art of the choral conductor.

ConductingIt’s important, in rehearsals, to move the choir around. Too often, voice-parts grow accustomed to hearing the same singers around them each week which, if it’s their own voice-part, can lead to a great sense of security and, sometimes, a reliance on that other singer.

Moving the singers around in practice sessions means they hear a different voice-part singing next to them; breaking up the group, such that they stand in a circle but aren’t standing next to someone who is singing the same part as they are, means they suddenly don’t have the comfort-blanket of being surrounded by others singing the same line. Not only do they have to work a bit more to keep their own line, but they can suddenly hear another line next to them, and can start to hear how their line moves in relation to another. (It’s also a great way of showing singers who don’t quite know their line that they need to learn their music, without pointing fingers at individuals…!).

Socially, too, it’s a useful tool to deploy: people suddenly have to stand and sing next to others whom they might not know so well, and it’s a great way of getting them working with others.

Arranging the choir in a circle, rather than in lines, means that the sound is directed into the centre; everyone can now hear the complete sonority to which they are contributing, focusing the sound and also making them aware of balancing the parts: at particular points, one vocal line may be more important than the others, key notes in the chord colour the balance and influence the harmonic motion, and a moving line leads from one chord to the next. All these factors are significant, helping the singers understand the importance or the relevance of their contribution, and hence give meaning to their line and the way they sing it.

In our rehearsals, it’s become known as ‘Circle Time;’ a chance for everyone to get out of the rows in which they sit, to stand together and to hear a different sound. Move your singers around, and see how it affects the way they sing and the sense of ensemble the ensues: it’s sure to be different, and a positive experience.

Travels on the Continent: : Saint-Saens, Victoria and Brahms

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Ave verum corpus is best-known in a setting by Mozart, but the Cecilian Choir began their spring rehearsals with a version by Saint-Saens, that I confess was a recent discovery for me. It’s a wonderfully simple setting in Eb major, which in the more colourful second section, at the words ‘Cujus latus perforatum,’ moves to chords of Db and Gb major, climaxing in the relative minor before subsiding to a gentle ending.

(Unfortunately, there’s a phrase in the middle that is identical to the opening phrase in ‘Tale As Old As Time’ from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1′ 43” in the video above), but we’re hoping listeners don’t notice…).

We renewed our acquaintance with the Victoria Ave Maria we’d begun last term, with its terrific rhythmic flexibility; the phrase ‘Sancta Maria, mater Dei’ is set in triple-metre instead of the compound metre up until that point, which imparts a lovely dance-feel.

Circle-time ensued: we moved away from the piano and gathered in a circle in the middle of the hall to sing it through – it really means you have to get used to not relying on a supporting instrument playing your line, and start listening to the other voices around you. It worked, too: some lovely chords echoed round the hall, and the tuning was spot-on.

Finally, a return to the drama of Brahms’ Ach, arme Welt, with its sudden crescendi and unstable harmonies.

All bodes well for the concert, which is currently being finalised: more details coming soon!

The agony and the ecstasy; madrigals, Tippett and Jackson

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Two ends of the spectrum at last night’s rehearsal: a selection of English madrigals celebrating the joys of singing and the agonies and the ecstasies of love, a thirteenth-century Welsh folk-song re-invented in the mid twentieth-century by Tippett, and music by Gabriel Jackson from the twenty-first century.

The flowering of madrigal composition in England yielded a rich variety of works, and our selection includes Sing We and Chant It by Morley, Bennett’s profound misery in Weep, O Mine Eyes and Weelkes’ Hark, All Ye Lovely Saint Above. The Bennett piece is often performed at a slow two-in-a-bar pace – there’s no tempo marking, the score simply says ‘Sadly’ – but we’re working on a slow four-in-a-bar feel that will really elongate the chromatic dissonances and tonal clashes between the voices; hopefully it will be a much more anguish-ridden meditation at a slower tempo. To balance this, and make sure neither choir nor audience are riddled with abject misery, the other two pieces are lively, with a dance-feel that we’re working hard to capture – the rhythmic lilt and dip often going over the bar-line.

Hark, All Ye Lovely Saints Above
(a rather brisk performance by Cantabile!)

Tippett’s treatment of the Welsh folk-song ‘Gwenllian’ is, at first meeting, rather alien; seemingly atonal fragments of line are scattered between the voice-parts, as though deliberately working to hide the actually rather tonal stretches of folk-melody that occur. Once the different parts realised that, at a particular point, they had the melody – and once they’d sung through that fragment of melody on their own – things became rather more secure, although there’s still some way to go. The tenors have a recurring splinter of a theme that rises E – C – F and occurs sporadically; it’s a challenge to pitch the first note and then get the intonation exact over the rising phrase.

I’ve remarked before on the value of learning new repertoire backwards; the psychology of already having seen the ending of a piece means it doesn’t seem so mammoth at first rehearsal, and we adopted this tactic with the Tippett. Because the final section is a recurrent one that appears throughout, working in two-page sections from the end backwards balanced the difficulty of the music with the sense that there was a part of it that was (comparatively) familiar.

We finished by returning to the Jackson piece we had started looking at last term; lovely, colourful sonorities but fiendish to be able to hold your own line and establish rich cluster-chords.

We’re also going to be getting slightly creative with some of the repertoire in the concert: there’s going to be some unusual and unexpected realisations of a few of the pieces, details of which we can’t reveal here as that would ruin the surprise. You’ll just have to hear it for yourself on the night….

No time to rest: Vaughan Williams and Jackson to finish the term

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No time for the choir to rest on the laurels of their successful concert last week: as I said to them, the hard work starts here! Notwithstanding we’ve performed thrice already and have the University Carol Service on Friday, last night was the last rehearsal of the term, and a chance to return to the challenging repertoire for February’s Crypt concert.

I’ve written a setting of the folk-song Mother, Make My Bed, for the choir to sing in February – the text concerns messengers rushing to tell a lord that his wife is dying, and by the time he reaches her, she is dead – he dies the following day. Not exactly cheerful stuff… The piece starts with a lively dance-like rhythm in the lower voices, but as the narrative darkens, the altos introduce a pedal-chord that becomes progressively more dissonant. The harmonies then start to slow down, until a six-part chord in the lower three voices becomes the tolling of funeral bells. The choir picked it up quickly, and it promises to work well in the evocative surroundings of the Cathedral Crypt.

Gabriel Jackson

Gabriel Jackson (photo credit Malcolm Crowther)

Thence back to the two Shakespeare settings by Vaughan Williams, and the first two movements of the Jackson Edinburgh Mass; a hard slog here, with much note-learning required for the individual voice-parts. ‘Full fathom five’ splits at one point in to an eleven-note chord, which needs absolute accuracy to work. The inner-voice parts of the Jackson are also rather tricky, and needed much part-by-part learning. Having worked on the Advent antiphons for last week’s concert, though, the opening plainchant of the ‘Kyrie’ came much easier than last time, and had a fluidity about it that it needs.

The rhythmic vitality of the ‘Laudamus Te’ section of the ‘Gloria’ also presented a challenge – there was much head-scratching amongst the basses, although in fairness there’s no constant pulse, and the tied notes across the bar-lines in bars changing between 5/8 and 3/8 beats do make life rather interesting…

It’s difficult, particularly after the euphoria of a recent concert, to get back to note-bashing and maintain the momentum; but the choir set to; there’s more to come in early rehearsals next term if we’re to do justice to these pieces, as I’m sure we will.

(And a happy birthday to Paris in the sopranos, to whom the whole choir sang a resonant ‘Happy Birthday’ at half-time: you don’t get the University Chamber Choir singing to you on your birthday that often, do you ?!)

Our last commitment is Friday’s Carol Service: stand by for feedback on it afterwards.

(Listening extracts via emusic.com; you can hear sections of the whole Mass here.)

Mostly medieval, with thigh-slapping

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History on the page: Sumer is icumen in

The Choir are singing as part of the Music Society Showcase on Saturday, for which we rehearsed last night two lusty medieval pieces – the French song Tourdillon, which we’re singing with English words in praise of English booze, and Sumer is icumen in in four parts with a medieval-style pronunciation of the text; ‘Sumer is icumen in, lhude sing cucu! Groweth sed and bloweth med and spring be woode nu.’ The tenors and basses were reduced to thigh-slapping bombast and peasant dance-style footwork to relieve the monotony of their repeated two-bar accompaniment, which actually did much to get the lively, robust style into the piece that it needs. Will you do the same on the night, chaps ?!

For the Crypt concert, we looked at Britten’s early, antiphonal Hymn to the Virgin; dynamics are the key to bringing this piece to life, the crescendi in the second choir that lead into the beseeching harmonies of the first choir’s reply, and the diminuendi  that lead into the more intimate passages – ‘Darkest night – then comes the day,’ to which the second choir respond in Latin.

Continuing the medieval theme were the Advent antiphons, which  are finally starting to come together; the group are beginning to feel the ebb and flow of the phrases, and to take responsibility for delivering the line; a confident start to each one with clear vowel and positive first gesture means the rest of the phrase comes together well.

Thence back to carols, and time to check some of the intonation in the inner voices in The Holly and the Ivy. The Choir are now delivering this with real character, the driving conviction with which the refrain bursts into life at ‘O, the rising of the sun’ and the syncopated inter-play between voices at ‘the playing of the merry organ’ contrasting with the legato lines of ‘sweet singing in the choir.’ There’s real spirit about it now.

A Babe Is Born has at last found some real shape, some real conviction about the final page with its widely-spaced dissonant chords reflecting the angel’s cry, and some genuine energy in the Latin phrases, ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’ and ‘A solis ortus cardine,’ and so on. It’ll be a nerve-wracking experience, presenting a piece of mine in performance and wondering what sort of reception it will receive, but it will at least have great energy and commitment in its delivery that might win people over!

The Advent concert is in two weeks on Friday: after this evening, and with a couple of rehearsals to go, I’m starting to be confident in that fact that we’re going to be fine. And, in the case of A Babe Is Born and The Holly and the Ivy, some genuine craft and musicianship to demonstrate.

I’m not sure about the thigh-slapping, though…

Knocked for six: the Cecilian Choir

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It struck me, talking with people after the recent Cecilian rehearsal, that we’ve already got to grips with the best part of six pieces for the concert programme. For a choir that meets for only an hour once a week, and after only four rehearsals, that’s a pretty impressive amount of music.

Fair enough, work still needs to be done on them, but we’ve broken the back of all six works: Tallis, Brahms, Bruckner, Victoria, Lassus and Poulenc. That bodes well for the remainder of the programme, and is a tribute to how quickly the members of the choir can pick pieces up and rehearse them efficiently.

Well done, the Cecilians. The next fourteen pieces will be a piece of cake.

(Joke).