Composer Eric Whitacre writes, in an article in Gramophone magazine, about his view that British choirs are the best in the world.
He narrows it down to four key areas: tuning, tone, sight-reading and knowledge, all combining to make the tradition of British choral singing a world-leader.
See what he says here.
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.
So, 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.
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.
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.
But 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.
From the wealth of auditions over a two-day period, this year’s Chamber Choir has emerged, phoenix-like, from the ashes of the last. This year the Choir is larger than in previous years, so much so that we’ve had to change rehearsal venue from the Old Telephone Exchange to Grimond Lecture Theatre II.
The new team!
Over the first two rehearsals, we’ve begun exploring the repertoire for this year’s series of concert engagements, which has grown to include ‘Advent by Candlelight’ in St. Mildred’s Church in Canterbury in December, and a concert at St. Gregory’s, Wye – these alongside the customary performances in the University Carol Service at the end of term, and the Cathedral Crypt concert in February. A packed year indeed… (More details on our on-line events calendar here).
The theme for this year’s Crypt concert is music from England, Wales and Scotland, and in the first rehearsal we worked through motets by William Byrd and Sir John Tavener; for the Advent concert, we began singing some Advent antiphons from manuscripts dating from the four-stave notation system popular until the sixteenth century; this gives the choir the chance to read from historical notation and an added sense of the past to the music being sung. We also began working at a carol I’ve written for the December Carol Service, a setting of A Babe is Born, which employs open-fifth pedal chords to create a medieval atmosphere.
Also bursting back to life this term is the Cecilian Choir, formed from Scholars, students, staff and alumni. The Cecilian Choir was a new venture last year, and is back by popular demand: rehearsals begin next week, and we’ll be working towards a very exciting programme for performance in the Spring term, about which more will be revealed later…
It’s an exciting time: new musical students, new ensembles forming, and the beginning of this year’s musical journeys exploring old and new repertoire. As a conductor, first rehearsals are terrifying: will everyone turn up, will they get on with each other, will the balance of the voice-parts work, will they like the repertoire I’ve chosen, how quickly will they learn the music, and, perhaps most importantly – will they enjoy themselves and want to come back next week ?
You can follow the story of the choirs here, from first rehearsal to final performance; we’ll also be bringing you audio clips of the choirs in rehearsal and sneak previews of some of the pieces being performed this year. Stay tuned…
(And if you’ve a fond recollection or stories from your experience with the Chamber Choir in previous years, get in touch: we’ll be featuring them in a regular column here.)