Tag Archives: Advent

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…

Bass Desires at Christmas

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

Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the choir is so delightful. Christmas in The Chamber Choir is the most terrific time of year. Spring term is always seen as being the biggie with the Crypt Concert and end of season outings to Canterbury village churches, but Christmas magic grips me time and again every year and makes me smile.

Filled with...angels...singing ?

Understandably, the 5 November fires were still being extinguished when our Christmas season crackled into view, and initially was met with some scepticism. I mean, let’s face it, who wants Christmas n early November, but needs must and we did and now we are here.

I write this on the morning of the University Carol Service in the Cathedral; until recently the Chamber Choir’s only formal booking over the Christmas season. But this year we have added another string to our bow. On the afternoon of a snowy December 6, the Chamber Choir arrived at St Mildred’s Church for a rehearsal of Advent by Candlelight. The rehearsal lasted a few hours before we retired to The Old Buttermarket Public House in the City Centre for a hearty meal (and perhaps the odd pint of ale). Then, bellies full, we headed back to the church, which by now had been transformed from a cold church with scaffolding holding up the north aisle into a sparkling Christmas card scene with candles, and as the audience slowly drifted in the atmosphere became warm, even if the church itself wasn’t, and full of anticipation. It was a concert full of scintillating moments; highlights including I Saw Three Ships, my friends’ favourite The Holly and the Ivy and the debut performance of Dan’s A Babe is Born. Obviously I was in the choir, and so only got part of the picture, but we received nothing but praise from those in the audience (except some excellent mince pies and nibbles provided by the church at the end).

By no means the choir’s only bookings over the festive period; we were excited to be offered the chance to sing at the turning-on of the Christmas lights alongside the Cathedral Choir and Sid Sloane  – a “celebrity”… apparently. It must be said, whilst the performance itself was enjoyed and appreciated by the audience of shoppers, the best bit was mince pies and German sausage in Whitefriairs afterwards, where jolly onlookers and slightly bemused stall holders were treated a bunch of students singing this, that, and the other.

Tonight is to the big one however, the largest congregation the choir ever performs to; The Carol Service. From my years of singing as a boy chorister in Wakefield Cathedral, and thus performing endless concerts and services in countless venues, especially at Christmas time, you, and I would expect there to be a dulling of the excitement for such an occasion, but the exact opposite is true. Standing up on the steps looking down on the brass band and beyond them hundreds and hundreds of students and staff with flickering candles and the large Christmas tree, belting out O Come all ye Faithful, it send shivers up the spine to say the least.

For those of you coming this evening, I hope to see you there, and it only leaves me to wish you a very merry and musical Christmas!

David Newell

Trolling the ancient Yuletide carol: Chamber Choir at St. Mildred’s

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Touch and go, this week, as to whether the concert would even happen. Heavy snow since Monday, icy roads and dodgy travelling conditions meant it wasn’t until ten o’clock on the morning of the concert, with event organisers exchanging phone-calls like Nato Superpowers planning a strategic response, that the green light came on.

Digital communication then came to the fore, with texts, e-mail and Facebook being deployed to tell performers and potential audience-members alike that the concert was still on. Choir and readers travelled gingerly along icy roads to rehearse at the church in the afternoon, before repairing to an hostelry in the centre of Canterbury for dinner; treacherous travelling meant that most people preferred not to have to go back to campus or home betwixt rehearsal and concert.

And what a concert it was. The Chamber Choir rose to the occasion and unleashed a sound quite unlike anything they have ever delivered in rehearsals hitherto; ensemble was tight, intonation excellent, and well-worked diction meant the words were clear. The readers, including staff from the University, an alumnus and members of the choir, provided some thought-provoking reflections on the Advent season, and the church community provided wine and mince pies for the benefit of all afterwards.

And the aspect most commented upon about the concert ? Not the performing (about which the feedback from the audience was highly enthusiastic afterwards), but the attire: how smart and professional everyone looked. New ties for the chaps and scarves for the ladies, matched and co-ordinated, added to the visual presentation of the performance, and was remarked on by nearly everyone with whom I spoke afterwards. It’s the details that count, just as much as the performing; in fact, perfecting the look and visual presentation of the group already establishes a level of professionalism even before a chord has been sung. Look organised, and the audience already believe you will sound thus, before hearing a thing.

Well done to all, who worked to make the concert a success, and thanks to St. Mildred’s for their support and for the opportunity to perform in their historic church. They’ve asked us back again in the future: the bar has now been set pretty high! The ensemble has flexed its muscles in public on three occasions now, and has grown to become a fully-fledged choir, with a rich and exciting sound. And I confess: I’m proud of what we’ve achieved, proud of the choir and the commitment they’ve shown, and of the heights to which they have risen and the standards they’ve reached.

Next up: Canterbury Cathedral, for the University Carol Service. Bring it on!

A church, some carols…and Skempton

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A miserable night yesterday: dark, windy, cold and raining.

Inside St. Mildred’s Church, however, light, music and jollity abounded; we had battled the elements in order to hold our customary Tuesday night rehearsal in the church, in order to work without a piano and to get a sense of the space and the acoustics for the concert.

The antiphons are developing: a little more confidence in delivery is needed here; singing plainchant is a skill that requires initial groundwork, and many have not sung this style of music before; a combination of flexibility in the line, following the rise and fall of the speech, as well as confidence in taking responsibility for the line and doing so at the same time as everyone else. Tricky – it requires a lot of work to appear effortless!

The carols are progressing, too; singing in the acoustic of the church meant we could really start to draw forth a full ensemble sound from the group, balance the parts, and begin to explore bringing out specific notes and phrases in particular voices. Bethlehem Down especially is starting to develop some three-dimensionality as it lifts off the page, and with some sensitive dynamics starting to be included, it’s going to be a treat.

The final singing of the evening was a chance to re-visit Skempton’s He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven. It’s not a Christmas piece, it’s not in the Advent service in a few weeks’ time – in fact, we’re not actually singing it until February. But this was too good an opportunity to miss: the chance to sing it in a sonorous acoustic, arranged in a crescent-shape similar to the way we’ll be standing to perform in the Cathedral Crypt. (And besides, I love the piece, so any opportunity to sing it is welcome indeed…). We took it a fraction under-tempo, as it’s been several weeks since we first sang it, and this is only the second reading; this meant the chords hung in the air for just a little longer than usual, and the colours really had a chance to blossom. It worked so well, in fact, that I’m wondering whether it shouldn’t go at that speed in performance; it’s marked Andante, but perhaps my enthusiasm has pushed the speed slightly ? Something to think about…

(Don’t tell the composer…).

Sweet singing in the choir: carols in rehearsal five

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Ah, the carols for Christmas. Comfortingly familiar, and yet so familiar that everyone sings what they know, which occasionally isn’t necessarily what’s on the page!

Carol singersThe anthologies having arrived, this week was the chance to get in a festive mood by working on the carols for the Advent service looming around the corner. To start, Ding, dong merrily on high! and the opportunity to work on sustaining the long phrases on ‘Gloria,’ and to get the bell-sounds pinging off the page – as with the Vaughan Williams ‘Full fathom five,’ there needs to be a really percussive ‘d’ to the ‘ding’ and bright vowel-shapes to get the notes crisp and vibrant, rather than heavy and dragging.

The Angel Gabriel from heaven came needs real shape and direction in the long, legato wordless chords in the lower three voices; in order that the phrases have some meaning and don’t lose momentum, we worked on pointing them towards particular chords. The carol is full of lovely accented passing-notes and dissonances resolving as the parts keep moving, with florid lines in the alto and tenor voices in particular.

The Holly and the Ivy offered a multitude of land-mines: there are crisp dotted rhythms in some bars that need to be quite different to the gentle triplets sung in other voices at the same time. There are some terrific flowing lines in the lower voices, although sometimes the basses weren’t always quite sure where the lines were going – there were some moments where they weren’t quite as confident as they were elsewhere, and sometimes one heard ‘Oh, the ner ner hmm hmm da di  SUN! And the hmm pom some-thing da di DEER!’ which caused some hilarity. However, by the time we’d finished working on it, the carol was in great shape, in particular the delicate coda that extends ‘sweet singing in the choir’ with some lovely harmonies.

Thence to a first look at one of the Crypt concert pieces: Gabriel Jackson’s To Music.  This is a marvellous piece, full of rhythm and dance and joy; it moves at a terrifying pace as well! But this was our first encounter, so we started halfway through (reasons for this in a forthcoming post in the ‘Not drowning but waving’ column) and looked at the ‘Fall down’ section rather slowly. The divisi soprano parts peal like bells over one another throughout, with tolling chords in split tenors and basses and altos chiming their descending phrases in the middle – a terrific passage, that came together very quickly at rehearsal tempo. We then took a cautious dip into the opening 5/8 section to get a sense of what is to come.

The last two carols, I saw three ships and O Come, o come Emmanuel having been sung as well, we’ve now covered all the music for the Advent concert. We ended the rehearsal by singing through Ding, dong merrily… again – it’s always good to end with something the choir can sing well, to end on a positive note – and, with heads now out of the copies and the choir looking up and singing out, the transformation was immense. It will be the last piece in the concert, and promises to be a vibrant finish.

Hopefully, the rehearsal either next week or the week following will be at the church itself, St. Mildred’s, which will give us the chance to explore the acoustic properties of the performance space and get accustomed to the sound in the church before the concert; exciting times…

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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