{"id":178,"date":"2010-10-27T12:00:16","date_gmt":"2010-10-27T12:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/cantusfirmus\/?p=178"},"modified":"2010-10-27T11:15:04","modified_gmt":"2010-10-27T11:15:04","slug":"a-medieval-summer-bethlehem-down-and-dancing-with-shakespeare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/cantusfirmus\/2010\/10\/27\/a-medieval-summer-bethlehem-down-and-dancing-with-shakespeare\/","title":{"rendered":"A medieval summer, Bethlehem Down and dancing with Shakespeare"},"content":{"rendered":"

Credit to the choir for this latest rehearsal: we worked through a lot of repertoire in a very short time.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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!<\/p>\n

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History on the page: Sumer is icumen in<\/p><\/div>\n

From a wind-swept and rainy late October, we moved through the seasons to the approach of summer with Sumer is icumen in<\/em>, with its lusty dance-rhythms and its rustic celebration of the turning of the season to herald the beginning of summer. We\u2019re working on a medieaval English style of pronunciation \u2013 \u2018Sumer is icumen in, lhude sing cucu; growth sed and bloweth med and spring be\u00a0wude nu.\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

Thence to the last of the Vaughan Williams Shakespeare Songs<\/em>, \u2018Over hill, over dale,\u2019 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 \u2013 it\u2019s nearly there, another rehearsal will have it dancing off the page. We also returned to the first half of \u2018Full Fathom Five,\u2019 and really worked to make the bell-peal imitations \u2018ping\u2019 off the page with a percussive start to each \u2018ding.\u2019 We also explored the rich chords clothing the word \u2018strange,\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

After the break, we entered the almost mystical landscape of Warlock\u2019s Bethlehem Down<\/em>, and it was here that the choir started to come together for the first time that evening. Something obviously clicked \u2013 several of the choir have sung the piece before, admittedly \u2013 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.<\/p>\n