Berberis' World

Tuesday, 10th March 2015, Royal Festival Hall.

LCS joined forces with the Hackney Singers to amass a 300+ voice choir for this concert. Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ is well-known and much-loved. I’ve sung it on a number of occasions and, until now, there have been two sections which I’d not yet mastered, despite innumerable rehearsals: the two ‘Osanna‘s. I’ve always had to mime my way through all but the first and last bars. This time, I knew the notes, I could count to three, and I was note perfect.

Well, almost.

The common cold. A virus gets left on an easily accessible surface by a selfish git, gets picked up, mutates, gets passed on, gets left on an easily accessible surface etc., etc., ad infinitum. I usually manage avoid them before a concert. Unfortunately, there have been a lot of viruses recently and one of them got lucky. At the rehearsal on the day of the concert, I involuntarily blurted out some really bum notes, and it was only by concentrating on proper breath support that I didn’t do the same in the performance.

Brahms, then. ‘Nänie’. It’s a short piece, and very reminiscent of parts of his ‘Deutsches Requiem’.

The Wikipedia entry starts thus:

Singing in an internationally known venue always ups your game. You definitely reap what you sow and there’s no doubt that the collaboration with the Hackney Singers (a very friendly bunch) made a big difference to both choirs. The audience was amazing – as many if not more as the LPC managed to draw – and very appreciative. All in all, a wonderful evening.

Saturday, 5th July, 2014 to Saturday, 28th February, 2015.

I was sitting in the pew at St Stephen & St Mark in Lewisham waiting for the rest of the Lewisham Hospital Choir to arrive when I finally decided to tell Dan that I wouldn’t be attending any more rehearsals for Lewisham Choral Society’s July concert in Cadogan Hall. The programme included James Whitbourn’s ‘Luminosity’, Vaughan Williams’s ‘In Windsor Forest’ and ‘Serenade to Music’.

I’d started practicing these during the rehearsals for Verdi’s Requiem at Croydon and had been, frankly, underwhelmed. However, this wasn’t the main reason for deciding to not participate. The truth was that I’d let the many problems I was having at work affect my not-work life. It seemed easier to ditch the two hours a week I spent doing something I enjoyed for more time doing something I didn’t.

Put like that (and, if I’m going to be honest, this is being written very retrospectively) it sounds mad. I hated ‘African Sanctus’, but went to every rehearsal and gave it my all. I wasn’t even close to hating this programme yet I abandoned it to spend more time in the office. (Cadogan Hall, though lovely, is acoustically dead. This is not a valid reason for not singing there.) Not just that, I was abandoning something that gave me joy for something that was, at the time, quite literally making me ill.

Actually, if that honesty clause is still in effect, it wasn’t something. It was someone. I won’t name them. Not because I’m scared of being sued. I just don’t want to have to type the name and then have to see it in black and white. Or black and blue. (Or is it gold and white..?)

[That last, parenthetical, comment shouldn’t even be here unless I’m time-travelling. Which I’m not. If I could this post wouldn’t exist.]

So, getting back on track. From the start of 2014, the admissions team (which will be referred to henceforth as ‘we’) had had new managers. Both of whom were, by a daily vote with a show of hands, the worst we’d ever known. Ever. Even the one before the one before one of them had been better, and they’d outright lied to us, so that was saying something.

It wasn’t just the emails (each with an unreadable spreadsheet attached) per day, it was that they would then (a) ring to ask if we’d read the emails and the attached unreadable spreadsheet and, after an hour or so, would (b) come to the office to discuss said email and the attached unreadable spreadsheet, now helpfully printed on A4 paper with a font size so small you needed a microscope.

[By ‘unreadable’ I don’t mean it was in a foreign language. That I could have coped with. No, I mean that 95% of the information it contained was irrelevant, and it was set out in such a way that the relevant 5% was almost impossible to find. By ‘helpful’ I mean very, very unhelpful.]

On its own, this was impediment enough to a job that is full-on, head-down, non-stop from 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. If you add to this having the one member of the team on whom I could really rely being on various types of leave for six weeks out of the first twelve of 2014, as well as being regularly prevented from leaving on time by a “2 minute” dissection of an unreadable spreadsheet starting at 4.55pm (in reality 30 minutes of the same question being asked over and over again), together with being prevented from leaving the office by someone sitting on the floor with their back to the closed door then you have some idea of the pressure I was under. It wasn’t pretty.

I was, by turns, deeply depressed, extremely angry, and lost-for-words frustrated. In May I fled, in tears, to the HR department where I was almost incoherent in my attempt to try to get someone – anyone – to understand what I was putting up with.

[Just noticed that the word count at the end of that paragraph was 666. If I was superstitious, I might read something into that. I’m not. I do, however, say “Hello, magpie” to solitary magpies. So perhaps I am.]

The cherry on the cake was that, around this time, the one member of team on whom I could really rely told me they were leaving. There would, of course, be a handover to the new team member. Given the complexity of the job and the knowledge which needed to be passed on I suggested two weeks. Not unreasonably, I thought. I was told we could have one. In reality, what we got – what the new team member got – was two and a half days. And that was with the departing team member already doing their new job.

[Later, I learned that, had the incompetent bunglers who called themselves managers and who drew a salary for being thus, the handover could have been four weeks. At this point, I felt that it wasn’t just appalling management, it was an actual conspiracy.]

I took a week off, expecting, on my return, to feel better. I went back and things were, unbelievably, worse.

In August, I learned that a patient with whom I’d had dealings was at death’s door. This is never good to hear, but how much worse it was when I realised that I might have been partly to blame. I was devastated. I’d been asked to do one thing and I’d not done it. And now this patient was dying. It was that simple. It seemed that simple. Of course, these things rarely are and this was no exception.

[I’m not going into detail, save to say that the investigation is nearing its end. The patient reached theirs on Boxing Day, 2014.]

Luminosity, then. Astronomically, 4πd²b. ‘The intrinsic brightness of a celestial object (as distinct from its apparent brightness diminished by distance)’. Or: ‘The rate of emission of radiation, visible or otherwise.’ As opposed to illumination, which is what I badly needed as far as the job was concerned, and which was sadly lacking.

I still have the music. I’ve always purchased scores, only ever hired when purchase – even on the vast-and-getting-exponentially-vaster interweb – wasn’t an option. I may even, as in the case of Elgar’s ‘Dream of Gerontius’, get to sing it at some point in the future.

[What was the point of this? Hang on.]

Drift. Actually, I’m not sure this has a point, or even that it needs one. I’m listening to the audio book of Robert Pirsig’s ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ at the moment. You have always to bear in mind that it was written in 1974, otherwise it’s just some biker dude banging on about how a cheap brand of baked beans is not, can not, and will never be, as good as Heinz.

It’s not. It’s a lot more, and then some. For those who care, I can be found walking to work with a frown on my face occasionally saying out loud “I have no idea what you’re talking about”. I understood most of Parts 1 & 2. It’s Part 3 that has me frowning.

I also finished listening to ‘Catch 22’. I wasn’t sure what to make of this for a long time. Then there was a lightbulb moment when I actually started to care about the characters. I felt sad when they died. I felt happy when they got a break. And just when I wanted to find out more, it ended. Damn you, Heller. Write more next time. And make me care about them sooner, you bastard.

Audio books do force my thought to focus. And it’s only when they focus that things like this happen. A random focussing of seemingly unfocussed ideas amounting to over a thousand words. I wish my other writing was as easy right now. I’ve heard it said that writer’s block happens because a story isn’t ready. There are analogies to which I will not allude.

The source of many of my work woes actually appeared in the office recently. In person. Even though I expressly asked that they be kept away from me. To my surprise, the urge to punch was absent, even if my fingertips tingled ever-so-slightly. I could not, in all conscience, bid them welcome. This, I am pleased to report, was noticed. You? Yes, you. You sweaty, whey-faced, panicky, incompetent excuse for a human being. I am SO over you. I have more space now, and daylight, and fresh air. And I will have a plant soon. One I have propagated myself.

And you have Croydon.

I win.

Saturday, 13th December 2014, Great Hall, Goldsmiths College.

Carols for choir and audience: It came upon a midnight clear / Gloria in excelcis Deo / Stille Nacht / Benedictus from Christmas Oratorio / Sing Joyfully / Susanne un jour / O come, all ye faithful / Deck the hall / In dulci jubilo / A great and mighty wonder / In the bleak mid-winter / Christmas Night / Good King Wenceslas / What cheer? / Nativity carol / Joy to the world! / Snow / Coventry Carol / I wonder as I wander / Hark! The herald-angels sing

Piano: Joshua Kelly
Piano/Organ: Nico de Villiers
Conductor: Dan Ludford-Thomas

Ah, another LCS Christmas Concert! Another chance to ignore the jolliness of the season and be miffed that the sopranos get all the decent tunes and, hence, the glory. That said, I like It came upon a midnight clear, as the altos get a nice line in the last verse, and Rutter’s Nativity Carol is beautiful.

Saturday, 29th March 2014, Fairfield Halls, Croydon.

2331 days since I first sang this with Lewisham Choral Society – 265 since I sang it with the Really Big Chorus at the Royal Albert Hall, and 168 before I hope to be singing it with Crouch End Festival Chorus – I found myself on stage at the Fairfield Halls in Croydon singing Verdi’s Requiem.

Croydon’s a bit of a dump, and the venue is far too big for a choral society, even one augmented by sixty or so singers from Derbyshire. When we filed on for the performance, I was a bit worried that we’d outnumber the audience but it was a fair turnout in the end, and enthusiastic. I was expecting Pete to turn up, and kept an eye out for him until the last minute, but he didn’t show. (Turned out he had ‘flu. He was also being bitten by children. I’m fairly sure that this is not a vaccination method NICE recommend…)

You would be right in thinking that I like singing this work. It’s either that or I’m a masochist. That last part’s true – I once ran a half marathon – and, in its way, Verdi’s Requiem is quite similar. However, it’s less a marathon than a series of sprints: a choral ‘fartlek’, if you will. The opening ‘Requiem/Kyrie Eleison’ is – literally – a vocal warm-up at 80-88bpm, but Verdi clearly knew nothing about workouts because the ‘Dies Irae’ that follows doubles the pace to 160bpm until Fig. 9, when it drops back to 80bpm until Fig. 16. Admittedly, this drop in pace is not accompanied by a drop in intensity; the 14 bars of actual singing are at a volume and pitch it would be difficult to sustain for many more.

Back to 88bpm at Fig. 18, and a chance to breathe between ‘Di-es i-rae’s until Fig. 21, when you can sense that the mezzo-sop is building up to something. This happens seven bars after Fig. 21, and we jog along with the orchestra until Fig. 22, when the bpm goes back up to 160 until the low intensity of the last 5 bars when we are allowed to sit down.

The soloists then waltz along at 6/8 time (one dotted crochet = 100). There’s probably a website that would allow me to convert this to bpm but I can’t be bothered to look right now. At Fig. 27, the basses thunder in at ff with ‘Rex tremendae’ at a very stately 72bpm into the ‘Salva me’ which may be slow but is very intense… a bit like Callanetics, if I remember rightly. At 3 before Fig. 32 we sit down again, standing at 8 before Fig. 47 with no chance to warm up for the run that is the second ‘Dies Irae’.

At Fig. 50, things slow down to the speed of a tectonic plate: the 60bpm ‘Lacrymosa’, all grace notes and heartache. At 3 before Fig. 53, the altos come in on a B with the phrase ‘parce Deus’ (spare [me], Lord). At this point in the concert, I lost my voice. Not through over-use, thankfully, but it was a choice between singing or a coughing fit. Luckily, the end of part one was only 8 pages away, and I managed a couple of ‘Requiem’s before the end.

We start the second half seated, leaping to our feet with no warm up for the 138bpm ‘Sanctus’. This ends with the sopranos on a top F. Immediately after this, ‘the Agnus Dei’ calms things down to 84bpm, and this should be a slow and peaceful walk. The solo soprano should float in on a top E, with the mezzo an 8ve down. The second they started singing, Dan’s head turned towards them. They were flat, and not by a smidgen but by almost a whole tone. Had I not heard it with my own ears, I’d have said it was impossible, but there it was.

The ‘Lux aeterna’ that follows is a mezzo/tenor/bass effort, and it was at this point that I decided that I knew which soloist had probably been to blame for the earlier tuning issue. The soprano gets all agitated at the start of the ‘Libera Me’ and even though the choir tries to stay calm we end up following suit with another rendition of ‘Dies Irae’. This is followed by the 80bpm ‘Requiem’. But the Verdi Workout isn’t finished. No sooner do our heart rates slow than the soloist is off again and, this time, we have to keep up because at Fig. 100 the pace jumps to a ridiculous 232bpm, where it stays until the Fig. 114, at which point – if you’re not careful – you can fall of the treadmill.

You need supreme breath control for the last page. Thanks to the previous 24 pages, you probably don’t have it. A proper vocal workout.

8th April update: It turns out that both soloists were responsible for the tuning issue. No-one seemed to notice and Dan wasn’t bothered – “live performance”. So I felt like an idiot for mentioning it at the rehearsal today, where I spent two hours going “Me sir! Pick me! Pick me!”

Saturday, 16th November 2013, Great Hall, Goldsmiths College.

Ralph Vaughan Williams: O, Clap your hands!
Percy Whitlock: Plymouth Suite
John Rutter: Gloria
Joseph Jongen: Mass Op. 130

Onyx Brass

Organ: James Orford, Nico de Villiers
Conductor: Dan Ludford-Thomas

O, Clap your hands is actually written by the same person who composed The Lark Ascending. Rutter’s Gloria has brass accompaniment and percussion. The Jongen Mass is, apparently, rarely performed and less often recorded.

James Orford and Nico de Villiers were the highlights. Nico is always brilliant, and James is far too young to be as good as he is.