silver (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silverflight8) wrote2012-07-22 05:00 pm
silverflight8) wrote2012-07-22 05:00 pm
Entry tags:
July 22: Sacred & Profane concert
Today was the choir concert. A mix of old and new, as the title suggested, and nothing particularly heavy for the summer season.
1:30pm
Arrive at Great Hall, discover that 80% choir is arrayed on the stone steps (no choir risers) already! The middle row, which is usually where I like to hide myself, is full, so I end up in the front row next to my friends. I'm standing directly behind a raised platform, which is where the soloists will sing.
about 1:40pm - 2:40
We finish warming up and start a run through. The very first piece is "Salvator Mundi", by John Blow (think sixteenth-century religious work - heavy and thick) and it kind of flops a little. It is very warm in the hall.
We run through all the pieces, one by one, stopping to go over the beginnings, mostly. All the pieces that have solo parts - "My Lord, What a Morning", "I Want to Die Easy", "Rolling in the Deep" get a run through and people practise moving through the choir. I don't think we actually ran through most of the pieces, just the beginnings and the ones that needed the most work. It's quite cramped; I'm almost touching the shoulders of the people next to me and I can smell someone's hair gel.
At around Jar of Hearts, the second last piece, I have to duck out, but once I'm in the hall, I feel better. (Having seen far too many people faint in parade, I am not willing to have the experience). Then the whole choir troops upstairs to wait for the concert to start. There are already people filling up the seats - maybe two dozen by then.
2:50pm
At the back of the room upstairs, there are seven or eight people standing in a row. At first I thought they were practising, and then I realized that there's a fan to the left of the first person, and they're all standing in the breeze :P
3:00pm
Showtime! We file very slowly out of the room and head downstairs. There must be fifty of us, all together, and the line snakes from the Great Hall, up the stairs, onto the landing, and up the second flight of stairs.
3:05pm
Concert starts. Sweating commences. I look up and realize that every seat is filled and there must be seventy, eighty people there? It's a big hall, as the name suggests, and is arranged with two sections of chairs with a central aisle. The piano, drum set, and bass/electric guitar are off to stage right, the choral conductor has a platform in the middle, and the soloists' little stage is on the left.
"Salvator Mundi" (John Blow), the hardest piece, goes first, and it goes off splendidly! (Even though the middle row of altos and the first row of altos were not together in some parts...*cough*) I was afraid it wouldn't, since there were some issues during the rehearsal before. Everyone remembers to hum oooh during the first pass of "Why fum'th in fight" (Thomas Tallis). No disasters occur for "O Nata Luxe", though man, I was still kind of sight reading that one. Because our choir suffers from a lack of men (I have not yet been in a choir that does not have a women:men ratio of 5:1), some of the altos sung the tenor line. That was very raspy and I don't think any of us hit the D below middle C.
"April is in my Mistress' Face" (Thomas Morley) was fun and "The Silver Swan" (Orlando Gibbons) didn't go badly - which is lucky; that was a last minute piece! "Fair Phyllis" was a delight. I never expected to actually sing Fair Phyllis! It's one of the pieces I studied for music history years ago and liked: for one, it's one of the few happy English madrigals. For example, the condensed text for April goes like this [it was a poem]:
Like many of the madrigals set in a minor key, it does resolve in a major key at the very very end, but it's clearly not a happy song. "Fair Phyllis" ends with "a-kissing kissing kissing" with all the voices are in counterpoint and tumbling over each other - it's a reunion of Phyllis and her lover Amenytas! Here's a brilliant rendition by the King's Singers.
Anyway. The next set of three is a Bach set, transcribed for voices.
Gavotte in G Major (from the French Suite). We sang this at about this speed (SO FAST) but it was light and airy and also we had the drum set and bass to accompany us, so that was fun. Singing this piece was deeply weird, because I played this as a piano piece (in the actual G major; it was transcribed a seventh down) years ago. Deeply bizarre.
Choral Prelude: Sleepers, Awake!. Originally a cantata, now scored for SATB choir. This is the 'original' version. (I have no idea if they used period instruments or the original instrumentation, ergo the scare quotes).
Bourrée. This is a video of the Swingle version, which is what we sang. Music starts about a minute and ten seconds in. Quality's a bit iffy though.
Then the spirituals! Some of my favourites. The contrast between a solo singer (melody) and then the sudden explosion of the whole choir (harmony!) was fantastic, for one. Unfortunately, none of the videos I looked through had that solo + choir contrast. Here's Marian Anderson's "My Lord, What a Morning" which is a bit different from what we sang. Here's a chorale version.
"I want to die easy" which I can't find a very good version for. Except this bluesy one, which is not very like what we sang, but is beautifully done anyway: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnpRupxozes
Last, "John Saw the Number". The rhythm on this one was horrible. My weakness through *counting* FOURTEEN YEARS OF PIANO has been rhythm, and the weakness extends into singing. I have no idea how well it went; it's a bouncy, quick song. Here's a similar choral arrangement.
Two strange, almost atonal pieces formed the second-last set. "Touch the Hand of Love" was the first. I don't have any commentary, except that I didn't like it much (it's a melancholy song.) But, even though I don't really like Renée Fleming either (sorry), she made a beautiful rendition with Yo-Yo Ma. The choral version brought out some more dissonant highlights; much of what she sings would have been split into four voices, with the sopranos and altos singing minor second intervals, for example.
I was feeling pretty sick by this point so I felt like the whole piece was coming apart, but I expect that's perception issues: we sang the Seeds of Love (Paul Halley). It begins with unison soprano and alto verse, then has two rounds with four sections; the round had such thick texture that I, in the middle of the choir, couldn't tell if we were doing well or not. (Oh well.)
And lastly, the popular music genre, which is where the 'profane' part of the concert title comes from! Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale", the original sung by Procol Harum. A tenor song! The song was a hit in the sixties, so the drums were fantastic for this. Just fantastic. Then the recent "Jar of Hearts" by Christina Perri (again, here's the original; we did the Glee rendition.) I don't think this one went off so well. The drums that worked so well for "A Whiter Shade of Pale" seemed out of place, and we were loud during the beginning so there was no room to get louder. Though the addition of men at the end did help ;)
The very last piece was "Rolling in the Deep". Since it's been played incessantly for about a year I'll assume you've already heard Adele sing it (ahhh); ours was based partly on the version that Mike Tompkins sings: this is an a capella version. Similarly, our arrangement had voices singing the chords (with the words "ow", mostly ;) I had to get up on that stage at the end to support the soloist and all I could think was to never audition for solo parts ever again.
4:00pm
And then it was over, and my knees were so happy to move, and the audience clapped like mad, flowers were presented to our accompanists, more clapping happened, and we all exited!
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I feel there's a reason that most concert halls are air conditioned. Holy. Too many bodies in too small a space, and of course the fans weren't on because they were loud. Nevertheless, it was a great concert (and the audience seemed to like it). I'm looking forward to the fall season!
1:30pm
Arrive at Great Hall, discover that 80% choir is arrayed on the stone steps (no choir risers) already! The middle row, which is usually where I like to hide myself, is full, so I end up in the front row next to my friends. I'm standing directly behind a raised platform, which is where the soloists will sing.
about 1:40pm - 2:40
We finish warming up and start a run through. The very first piece is "Salvator Mundi", by John Blow (think sixteenth-century religious work - heavy and thick) and it kind of flops a little. It is very warm in the hall.
We run through all the pieces, one by one, stopping to go over the beginnings, mostly. All the pieces that have solo parts - "My Lord, What a Morning", "I Want to Die Easy", "Rolling in the Deep" get a run through and people practise moving through the choir. I don't think we actually ran through most of the pieces, just the beginnings and the ones that needed the most work. It's quite cramped; I'm almost touching the shoulders of the people next to me and I can smell someone's hair gel.
At around Jar of Hearts, the second last piece, I have to duck out, but once I'm in the hall, I feel better. (Having seen far too many people faint in parade, I am not willing to have the experience). Then the whole choir troops upstairs to wait for the concert to start. There are already people filling up the seats - maybe two dozen by then.
2:50pm
At the back of the room upstairs, there are seven or eight people standing in a row. At first I thought they were practising, and then I realized that there's a fan to the left of the first person, and they're all standing in the breeze :P
3:00pm
Showtime! We file very slowly out of the room and head downstairs. There must be fifty of us, all together, and the line snakes from the Great Hall, up the stairs, onto the landing, and up the second flight of stairs.
3:05pm
Concert starts. Sweating commences. I look up and realize that every seat is filled and there must be seventy, eighty people there? It's a big hall, as the name suggests, and is arranged with two sections of chairs with a central aisle. The piano, drum set, and bass/electric guitar are off to stage right, the choral conductor has a platform in the middle, and the soloists' little stage is on the left.
"Salvator Mundi" (John Blow), the hardest piece, goes first, and it goes off splendidly! (Even though the middle row of altos and the first row of altos were not together in some parts...*cough*) I was afraid it wouldn't, since there were some issues during the rehearsal before. Everyone remembers to hum oooh during the first pass of "Why fum'th in fight" (Thomas Tallis). No disasters occur for "O Nata Luxe", though man, I was still kind of sight reading that one. Because our choir suffers from a lack of men (I have not yet been in a choir that does not have a women:men ratio of 5:1), some of the altos sung the tenor line. That was very raspy and I don't think any of us hit the D below middle C.
"April is in my Mistress' Face" (Thomas Morley) was fun and "The Silver Swan" (Orlando Gibbons) didn't go badly - which is lucky; that was a last minute piece! "Fair Phyllis" was a delight. I never expected to actually sing Fair Phyllis! It's one of the pieces I studied for music history years ago and liked: for one, it's one of the few happy English madrigals. For example, the condensed text for April goes like this [it was a poem]:
April is in my mistress' face,(My high school choir conductor's interpretation: wahh, she broke my heart!)
And July in her eyes hath place;
Within her bosom is September,
But in her heart a cold December.
Like many of the madrigals set in a minor key, it does resolve in a major key at the very very end, but it's clearly not a happy song. "Fair Phyllis" ends with "a-kissing kissing kissing" with all the voices are in counterpoint and tumbling over each other - it's a reunion of Phyllis and her lover Amenytas! Here's a brilliant rendition by the King's Singers.
Anyway. The next set of three is a Bach set, transcribed for voices.
Gavotte in G Major (from the French Suite). We sang this at about this speed (SO FAST) but it was light and airy and also we had the drum set and bass to accompany us, so that was fun. Singing this piece was deeply weird, because I played this as a piano piece (in the actual G major; it was transcribed a seventh down) years ago. Deeply bizarre.
Choral Prelude: Sleepers, Awake!. Originally a cantata, now scored for SATB choir. This is the 'original' version. (I have no idea if they used period instruments or the original instrumentation, ergo the scare quotes).
Bourrée. This is a video of the Swingle version, which is what we sang. Music starts about a minute and ten seconds in. Quality's a bit iffy though.
Then the spirituals! Some of my favourites. The contrast between a solo singer (melody) and then the sudden explosion of the whole choir (harmony!) was fantastic, for one. Unfortunately, none of the videos I looked through had that solo + choir contrast. Here's Marian Anderson's "My Lord, What a Morning" which is a bit different from what we sang. Here's a chorale version.
"I want to die easy" which I can't find a very good version for. Except this bluesy one, which is not very like what we sang, but is beautifully done anyway: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnpRupxozes
Last, "John Saw the Number". The rhythm on this one was horrible. My weakness through *counting* FOURTEEN YEARS OF PIANO has been rhythm, and the weakness extends into singing. I have no idea how well it went; it's a bouncy, quick song. Here's a similar choral arrangement.
Two strange, almost atonal pieces formed the second-last set. "Touch the Hand of Love" was the first. I don't have any commentary, except that I didn't like it much (it's a melancholy song.) But, even though I don't really like Renée Fleming either (sorry), she made a beautiful rendition with Yo-Yo Ma. The choral version brought out some more dissonant highlights; much of what she sings would have been split into four voices, with the sopranos and altos singing minor second intervals, for example.
I was feeling pretty sick by this point so I felt like the whole piece was coming apart, but I expect that's perception issues: we sang the Seeds of Love (Paul Halley). It begins with unison soprano and alto verse, then has two rounds with four sections; the round had such thick texture that I, in the middle of the choir, couldn't tell if we were doing well or not. (Oh well.)
And lastly, the popular music genre, which is where the 'profane' part of the concert title comes from! Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale", the original sung by Procol Harum. A tenor song! The song was a hit in the sixties, so the drums were fantastic for this. Just fantastic. Then the recent "Jar of Hearts" by Christina Perri (again, here's the original; we did the Glee rendition.) I don't think this one went off so well. The drums that worked so well for "A Whiter Shade of Pale" seemed out of place, and we were loud during the beginning so there was no room to get louder. Though the addition of men at the end did help ;)
The very last piece was "Rolling in the Deep". Since it's been played incessantly for about a year I'll assume you've already heard Adele sing it (ahhh); ours was based partly on the version that Mike Tompkins sings: this is an a capella version. Similarly, our arrangement had voices singing the chords (with the words "ow", mostly ;) I had to get up on that stage at the end to support the soloist and all I could think was to never audition for solo parts ever again.
4:00pm
And then it was over, and my knees were so happy to move, and the audience clapped like mad, flowers were presented to our accompanists, more clapping happened, and we all exited!
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I feel there's a reason that most concert halls are air conditioned. Holy. Too many bodies in too small a space, and of course the fans weren't on because they were loud. Nevertheless, it was a great concert (and the audience seemed to like it). I'm looking forward to the fall season!