Berberis' World

Saturday, 30th June 2007, Blackheath Halls.

I loved singing this. Loved it, and would jump at any chance to sing it again. From the loud declamation of the opening 4 bars of the Kyrie to the slow, almost sensuous build to the climax of the Dona Nobis Pacem at the end (the Appendix of Et in unum Dominum is best left unsung), the B Minor Mass contains some of the most glorious music I have heard or sung.

Okay, so after the first 4 bars the first Kyrie does ramble a bit, but the melodies and harmonies and phrasing are wonderful, it ebbs and flows like a tide and is, overall, splendid stuff.

The second Kyrie follows a sop/alto duet, and is also full of lovely swooping lines for altos, including a feisty D#, which is always fun. What follows is the awesome Gloria in excelsis, the altos starting low and loud in a movement which motors along in an almost bouncing 3/8 before being brought to an abrupt halt by the beginning of the Et in terra pax. The start of this movement is one of those gear changes in singing that requires conscious thought for the early rehearsals, and is also the first time that you encounter the long semi-quaver runs which are very prevalent in this piece.

These are best known off by heart. Trying to sight read, at speed, whilst watching the conductor (something most amateur choirs can NEVER do enough of) is impossible. Repetition, repetition, repetition.

The soprano then warbles on for a while before the Gratias agimus tibi. This and the Qui tollis peccata mundi make a soprano/tenor sandwich, the Qui tollis being one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever sung. It’s slow and emotive – and probably a bit cheesy because of this – but you have to be pitch perfect, your breathing inaudible and your F below bottom C (which is low, even for an alto) has to be spot on.

So, you’re basking in the afterglow of the Qui tollis, feeling very pleased with yourself that it sounded that good, when the counter-tenor stands up. And what follows is the Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, just under five minutes of the kind of singing usually done by angels. When the soloist sang this at the first tutti rehearsal we just looked at each other, open-mouthed in amazement, and I’ve adored the voice since then.

The next choir involvement is the Cum sancto spiritu,which has more of those semi-quaver runs you really need to know by heart so that you can focus entirely on the conductor, some lovely swooping phrases and twiddly bits without the distraction of having to look at the music. It’s a wonderfully invigorating sing.

After the interval are the Credo in unum Deum and Patrem omipotentem. There’s something about the Credo which jars – I think it’s the accompaniment, which stomps around rather clumsily under the singing – and, thankfully, both it and the Patrem are over in three minutes. To me, both these movements sound off, like Bach wasn’t quite on his game when he wrote them. Actually, it’s probably just as well, or I’d run out of superlatives.

The sop/alto duet is followed by Et in carnatus est, during which I forget how much I didn’t like the previous few minutes. Bach completely redeems himself with some glorious harmonies in both this and the subsequent Crucifixus. Tuning is crucial here, as is breathinginthe…. right place.

Wholly different is the Et resurrexit, another vocal gear change. It bounces along in 6/8, with a lively bass solo in the middle, and some more (by now) familiar semi-quaver runs. The bass gets to sing some more before the choir are back with the Confeeteor… sorry, Confiteor. Italian style vowels, not Sarf Lanhdahn. It really does make a difference. (We were once encouraged to rehearse something in the Sarf Lahndhan stylee and then in Italian just to hear how much better it sounded when sung properly. I couldn’t stop laughing). The Confiteor is similar to the Credo, and is another of these keep-your-eyes-on-the-conductor pieces as there is a massive rit at bar 118 into the Et expecto. It’s best to know this by heart as you need to be ready for the much quicker Et expecto resurrectionem at bar 147.

The Sanctus gives you 48 bars to catch your breath before going into Plenisunt coeli et terra, more semi-quaver runs and something to get your teeth into from bar 148. Being able to count is helpful.

You get to sing the Osanna in excelsis twice, with a tenor solo the filling in the sandwich. Or you can skip that and go directly to the penultimate movement. This is the achingly beautiful solo Agnus Dei, sung by the counter-tenor. Of all the solos, it’s only the counter-tenor’s that I can remember.

Lastly, but by no means least, is the Dona Nobis Pacem. I shall always be grateful to Bach for being forward-thinking enough to recycle, because this tune demands to be sung twice, and is absolutely the best way to end this Mass. It starts softly, the intensity and the volume building and building, until you simply have to let the music wash over you. You have to know at least the last 13 and a half bars from memory, in order to fully wallow in the surely obligatory (and humungously cheesy) rit of the final bar and a half, the aural equivalent of an orgasm.

Now, when can I sing it again…?

Saturday, 24th March 2007, St Paul’s Church, Deptford.

Tallis: Spem in alium

Tavener: Ikon of Light

Pärt: Seven Magnificent Antiphons

Monteverdi: Quattro Canzoni

Sweelinck: Ballo del Granduca

Tallis: Spem in alium

Violin: Caryn Cohen

Viola: Melissa Bastin

‘Cello: Sheida Davis

Organ: Andrew Dutson

Conductor: Stefan Reid

Spem in Alium was written for 40 voices, split into 8 choirs of 5 voices (soprano, alto, tenor, baritone and bass). Even with 40 voices, this becomes an undulating wall of sound. With a choir of 150+ this split becomes a bit unwieldy, as you need every person singing each voice part to be exactly on time and in tune. I was in choir 1, one of 3 voices who started the piece. I sang this, first time round, standing on the far corner of the stage, unable to see Stefan, hoping that I didn’t fall off the edge of the temporary trestle.

Tavener’s Ikon of Light was a real challenge. Pitching every note was really difficult, as there were so few clues in the rather sparse accompaniment, and it was sung in Greek, not a language I am particularly familiar with. I quite liked it, though.

Arvo Pärt is the man responsible for Fratres, probably the most melancholy music ever written. Seven Magnificent Antiphons is (are?) beautiful, and less jarring than Ikon. I love this orthodox style of singing. It’s so precise, relying on each voice part to be perfectly in tune, and not just musically. With unaccompanied music, you have to almost be able to sense when to sing.

For the repeat performance of Spem, the 8 choirs were placed strategically around the church, as Tallis himself may have had his singers stand. Apparently, it made a difference to the overall sound. Whether or not it made it sound better I don’t remember, but it was good to be able to sing it again.

Saturday, 16th December 2006, St Mary’s Church, Lewisham.

Handel: Arrival of the Queen of Sheba

Vivaldi: Gloria

Cecilia McDowall: Magnificat

Carols for choir and audience: Unto us is born a Son/A Child is born in Bethlehem/The holly and the ivy/The Sussex carol/Quelle est cette odeur agreable?/O come, all ye faithful

Soloists: Joanna Gamble (mezzo-soprano). Caroline Lenton-Ward (soprano).

The Aurelian Ensemble.

Organist: Andrew Dutson. Conductor: Stefan Reid.

Cecilia McDowall’s Magnificat was a first for me. Looking at my score, I think I should have returned it at the end of the concert, but somehow the infamous green Waitrose bag eluded me.

I’ve only listened to it once since the performance, and I can only put this down to the fact that it’s modern. Written in 2003, to be exact. In a nutshell, the reason I don’t like modern religious music is that I think it tries too hard.

Back in the 1980’s, when I was still something of a believer, the church we attended held a more modern service than I was used to, during which we were required to ‘share a sign of peace’. This involved turning to those nearest to us, shaking hands and saying “Peace be with you”, or something similar. I found the whole process embarrassing and artificial. A test of faith too far, if you will.

Anyway, I had a similar reaction to Magnificat. It sounded forced, as if it was trying too hard to prove itself. The odd phrasing, the text, the twee accompaniment. I find the woodwind instruments particularly irksome. And there are places where it sounds as though the more interesting phrases have simply been connected by strings of random notes, much the same way as arias are connected in opera. Just not my cup of tea.

Vivaldi’s Gloria, on the other hand, is old religious music. And I really don’t like it at all. I will go out of my way to not sing it if I possibly can. I’m not sure exactly what it is that I find so irritating; I’d need to hear it again, which I’m not keen to do.

The carols were the usual fare; we giggled like schoolchildren at the one we renamed ‘What’s that smell?’ but otherwise this was an uninspiring concert for me.

Saturday, 11th November 2006, St Paul’s Church, Deptford.

Rachmaninov: Suite No 2 for two pianos
Rossini: Petite Messe Solennelle

Soprano: Caroline Lenton-Ward
Mezzo-Soprano: Joanna Gamble
Tenor: Philip O’Brien
Baritone: Philip Tebb

Harmonium: Andrew Dutson
Pianists: Robert Hunter, Annabelle Lawson

Conductor: Stefan Reid

Gioachino Rossini definitely had a sense of humour. This is the opening of his Petite Messe Solennelle:

Not content with calling this huge (in full, the performance time is nearly two hours) and, at times, very jolly piece ‘little’ and ‘solemn’, he chucks in a few bars that could easily double for the opening to ‘My old man said follow the van’.

No? Just me, then. Fair enough. Anyway, you sit through a number of solos – all wonderfully performed, as expected –  until the Cum Sancto Spiritu, which is best sung from memory, and is a brilliant, exhilarating sing.

The next major choral bit is the Et Resurrexit. I’m now convinced that the solos are only there to allow the choir to recover its collective breath between bouts of exertion because, from fig. 42, it’s all long phrases, fff, and watching the basses go blue with the effort of sustaining those 16 bars. I’ve done gym sessions that are less tiring.

To stretch the metaphor further, the Agnus Dei is the cool down. The contralto soloist is interrupted every now and again by ‘donna nobis pacem’ until 15 bars after fig. 51, when it starts to build towards the key change at fig. 52, and the final seven and a half bars of Rossini basically chuckling to himself.

‘Petite Messe Solennelle’ indeed.

The Suite No. 2 for two pianos is Rachmaninoff in a good mood, which makes a change.

Sunday, 2nd July 2006, London Coliseum.

This was fun. No, seriously, it was. If you ignore the after-show unpleasantness involving some alcohol, a mobile phone and a nearly deserted railway station (no, not a bad remake of Brief Encounter, just a misunderstanding) I have to say I enjoyed myself. And, despite what I might have written elsewhere, I actually enjoyed singing the new, quasi-religious work that had been commissioned for the occasion.

A bit of background. Sing! (the exclamation is obligatory, like Tally Ho!) was organised by the redoubtable Mary King, and was a day spent at the London Coliseum with some of the members of 8 other non-professional choirs and choral societies from all over the UK. The first half was the individual choirs singing works from their repertoire, and the second was all of us singing 3 pieces – ‘Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves’ by Verdi, ‘The Voyagers Chorus’ by Mozart and the new work, ‘genesis’ (fashionably lower case) by Richard Taylor.

We’d had a few rehearsals of ‘genesis’ before a Saturday workshop at Goldsmith’s College, and had been provided with a score and a rehearsal CD for homework. On this were the voices of professional singers (Mary included) and 5 different versions; 1 with all the parts at the same level, the other 4 each with one voice part louder than the rest. The score had to be returned, but I still have the CD, and occasionally put it on in the car. It’s a good one to warm up to, if you ignore the odd looks you get from pedestrians.

Those of us from Lewisham Choral Society who had agreed to sacrifice this Sunday in early July had chosen to sing ‘Who is Sylvia?’ and ‘Live with me and me my love’, as we had recently performed these in concert. We were thwarted as regards the latter, however, when we found out that another choir had chosen it, and earlier. We plumped for ‘Hey, ho, the wind and the rain’ instead – no-one’s favourite, but beggars etc. In the end, it went very well, we sounded lovely, and the interval was reached without incident.

I like ‘Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves’. I make no apologies for this. However, it was treated as something less than worthy during rehearsals, which irritated me. It’s lovely, moreso than the Mozart, in my opinion. And, en masse, ‘genesis’ was superb. I have dismissed modern religious music elsewhere, but I found this much less… pretentious?… twee?… pompous?… I’m not sure any of those words are right, but I liked singing ‘genesis’ in the same way that I’d not liked the other ones.

Whatever the day’s content, it was a really good experience to sing in such a large choir – I’d not done so before: the buzz at the end is worth all the cramped dressing rooms and overpriced refreshments. It’s also great to walk amongst the general public with your badge and your score and know that you are part of the show rather than a spectator. Don’t get me wrong: I love going to concerts. Being in the audience at the performance of a favourite work is hugely emotional, but there is a special thrill from being in the cast.

Minor unpleasantness aside, a most wonderful day.