{"id":444,"date":"2011-01-19T10:47:21","date_gmt":"2011-01-19T10:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/cantusfirmus\/?p=444"},"modified":"2011-01-19T10:47:21","modified_gmt":"2011-01-19T10:47:21","slug":"the-agony-and-the-ecstasy-madrigals-tippett-and-jackson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/cantusfirmus\/2011\/01\/19\/the-agony-and-the-ecstasy-madrigals-tippett-and-jackson\/","title":{"rendered":"The agony and the ecstasy; madrigals, Tippett and Jackson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two ends of the spectrum at last night\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"The flowering of madrigal composition in England yielded a rich variety of works, and our selection includes Sing We and Chant It<\/em> by Morley, Bennett\u2019s profound misery in Weep, O Mine Eyes<\/em> and Weelkes\u2019 Hark, All Ye Lovely Saint Above<\/em>. The Bennett piece is often performed at a slow two-in-a-bar pace \u2013 there\u2019s no tempo marking, the score simply says \u2018Sadly\u2019 \u2013 but we\u2019re 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\u2019re working hard to capture \u2013 the rhythmic lilt and dip often going over the bar-line.<\/p>\n

Hark, All Ye Lovely Saints Above
\n<\/a>(a rather brisk performance by Cantabile<\/em>!)<\/p>\n

Tippett\u2019s treatment of the Welsh folk-song \u2018Gwenllian\u2019 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 \u2013 and once they\u2019d sung through that fragment of melody on their own \u2013 things became rather more secure, although there\u2019s still some way to go. The tenors have a recurring splinter of a theme that rises E \u2013 C \u2013 F and occurs sporadically; it\u2019s a challenge to pitch the first note and then get the intonation exact over the rising phrase.<\/p>\n

I’ve remarked before<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re also going to be getting slightly creative with some of the repertoire in the concert: there\u2019s going to be some unusual and unexpected realisations of a few of the pieces, details of which we can\u2019t reveal here as that would ruin the surprise. You\u2019ll just have to hear it for yourself on the night\u2026.<\/p>\n