Berberis' World

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.

Saturday, 6th July 2013, Cadogan Hall, London.

Leoš Janácek: Otce Náš
John Carmichael: Hommages
Eric Whitacre: Cloudburst
Eric Whitacre: When David Heard
Leonard Bernstein: Chichester Psalms

Tenor: Paul Austin Kelly
Countertenor: Roderick Morris
Harp: Alison Martin
Piano/Organ: Nico de Villiers
Percussion Leader: Matthew Turner

Conductor: Dan Ludford-Thomas

This was not my introduction to Eric Whitacre – that was Lux arumque back in 2008 – but it was my first hearing of the transcendent When David Heard. Go and listen.

I’ve listened to the Janácek piece a couple of times since this concert and still don’t like it. I can only put this down to having learned the Lord’s Prayer by rote as a child and, to my ears, anything other than a spoken version just sounds wrong. I would have preferred to sing it in Czech, but I suspect that was deemed too difficult. It’s not, but it wasn’t my decision.

An homage is an odd thing. If you don’t know the original piece, then all you see is other people nodding and making ‘oh, that’s so clever!’ faces. If you don’t, then just close your eyes and listen to the music. You’ll either like it or you won’t, but at least you don’t have to look at people being smug.

Cloudburst does exactly what it says on the tin, but it’s the sort of weather we rarely get in the UK. The rain is warm, and you inhale that smell from hot pavements, and the world afterwards seems lighter and fresher. I was even okay with the thigh-slapping and finger-clicking.

Chichester Psalms are lush and lovely, especially the final psalm. It’s film music, and in a good way. In my Boosey & Hawkes score, two bars before fig. 60, under where the C flat becomes a B natural, I wrote ‘it’s the same note, doofus’. Which it is. Only it isn’t. The sopranos (sorry, Maestro Bernstein) go from A flat to G natural at the same time, and this is also the same note. Only it also isn’t. It’s all in the accompaniment. Beautiful stuff.

And then there’s When David Heard. If only to do justice to three bars – 17, 18, and 19 – this needs a vaulted ceiling high enough to allow it to take flight, to rise, to soar, to ring around carved stone, to rattle stained glass windows. From the first chill of bereavement, to the anguish that – literally – stops you in your tracks with tears coursing down your face, to the unreasonable and incoherent rage that surges though you, to the intense sorrow that settles and, with time, becomes a shadow, When David Heard is months – sometimes years – of angst distilled into a few minutes of astonishing beauty.

“Above all, trust the silences.”

Saturday, 23rd March 2013, Great Hall, Goldsmiths College.

Henryk Górecki: Totus Tuus
Igor Stravinsky: Ave Maria/Pater Noster
John Tavener: The Lamb/The Tyger/Song for Athene

Frédérick Chopin: Polonaise in E flat Minor Op. 26 No. 2
George Gershwin: Prelude No. 1 in B flat major
Piano: Andrew Dutson

Arvo Pärt: Sieben Magnificat-Antiphonen

Fratres
Piano: Nico de Villiers
Violin: Sebastian Müller

De Profundis
Magnificat
Nunc Dimittis

What I really loved about the music for this concert was its precision. The main problem with it was its precision. You have to be supremely confident to stay in tune whilst first one person, then those around them, then half a section, and finally the entire choir, sags half a tone, then another half, and finally into another key entirely. It’s also very melancholy, which – in my opinion – makes any deviation from the score not just inconsiderate, but insulting.

It’s not difficult to stay in tune. It just takes care and concentration. I get irritated with people who either can’t or won’t take the time to learn their parts. I get annoyed when they get phrases wrong despite having the tune played to them repeatedly. I get angry when they refuse to take any notice when they’re told they’re wrong. If you end a phrase a tone lower (and it’s always lower) than it should be, then you need to be paying more attention to what you are singing. You should also be paying attention to what your neighbour is singing. If they’re out of tune, they need to be told.

I have the word PITCH!! written like that in the last three systems of the Górecki. It matters. If you now can’t reach the notes you once could, consider moving to a lower voice part. Don’t think of it as a failure, think of it as a new adventure. These are the notes the composer wrote – please sing these, and not the notes you think they are.

Rant over. Don’t get me started on counting.

Transfixed utterly by the Fratres. Damn.

The Universal Edition scores we used for the Nunc Dimittis and the Antiphonen have the number of beats in the bar helpfully indicated by a big number above the bar, whereas the other pieces have the much more subtle time signature. Not sure why there’s a difference: if you can count, it doesn’t matter.

There are some really oddities in the Antiphonen. In the premiere, the sopranos and basses aren’t singing what is printed in the score. From bar 46, they sing what is not printed. This might explain why this is called the original version, although why Arvo Pärt would rewrite his own composition – or allow it to be changed – is strange. A cursory look online doesn’t reveal any clues, but I’m happy to be proved wrong.

There is a wealth of Pärt analysis online: in just one search, I found a bewildering doctoral dissertation by Allan J. Ballinger DM that I’ve set aside a day or so to read, and a more accessible Guardian piece by Tom Service. I can only comment as an amateur alto, and say that we got to explore the depths of our range with the first tenors in the O Adonia, as well as treating our vocal chords to a nice top E  in the O Schlüssel Davids.

All of this should really be hanging around a church vault for a few seconds after the singing has finished, not being stifled somewhat by the ceiling of Goldsmiths Great Hall, but the venue is what it is, and at least the sight lines are generally good so you can keep an eye on Dan.

Of the Pärt, I think my favourite was the Nunc dimittis. From the 2001: A Space Odyssey opening few bars, to the Gloria Patris, where the melody is passed seamlessly between voice parts, it’s gorgeous. Special mention goes to bar 93 – which is hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck-raising, spine-tinglingly beautiful – and bars 103-105; I have a version on my phone where these bars are the musical equivalent of having the best chocolate in the world melt in your mouth. Stunning.

This was Andrew Dutson’s last performance with the LCS, and he received a lengthy round of applause following his performance. I often wonder what the audience thinks of the foot stamping that’s become something of a feature at the end of a concert. It’s something I’ve only come across in choirs and, although it’s mentioned in passing here, it doesn’t appear on this lovely little pic…

…although it’s less ‘lightly stamp’ than trying to split the floor. If I was inclined, I’d do some more research.

What else? Nothing useful. Find it all on YouTube and immerse yourself.

Saturday, 15th December 2012, St Mary the Virgin, Lewisham.

Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on Christmas Carols

Carols for choir and audience: Make we joy now in the fest/A Boy is born in Bethlehem/Wither’s Rocking Hymn/O come, O come Emmanuel/Quem vidistis pastores dicite/Hodie Christus natus est/A great and mighty wonder/Infant holy, infant lowly/Ding dong! Merrily on high/Deck the hall/I wonder as I wander/There is a flower/See amid the winter’s snow/O come, all ye faithful

Piano: Nico de Villiers

Conductor: Dan Ludford-Thomas