Something a bit mad

I've been visiting primary schools for the last few weeks as part of the annual recruitment campaign for the Australian Youth Choir.  It's always interesting to see what the policy is in various places about how the children are to address their teachers.  I try to fall in with whatever the prevailing policy is in the school, meaning I go from first name in one place to surname in another.

My name badge says "Dr," which can elicit some interesting responses from the under-10s.  So far I've been asked if I'm a mad scientist, whether I can prescribe drugs, and what sort of a doctor I am if I can't prescribe drugs (what is it about youngsters and drugs these days?!).

The first video below is a spoof, followed by a clip of the exchange that tripped the whole story off.

And here's the original encounter...

Music for Sunday 31 October

This week the parish is keeping All Saints day, given that it is the closest Sunday.  Because it's the patronal festival of one of the centres, it will be a joint parish service, which means a larger congregation than usual.

One of our clergy is moving on, so this is his penultimate Sunday.  He will be fare-welled with greater finality next week, but this is the only joint parish centres event before his departure, so doubtless there will be some bidding adieu this week as well.

The choir is settling back down into the term-time routine.  It's interesting how it can take a couple of weeks for things to come back to normal after a short break!

The mass setting will be Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).  Hymns are as follows:

Procession: For all the saints [455]
Sequence: Blest are the pure in heart [448]
Offertory: Jerusalem the golden
Communion: O what their joy and their glory must be

The choir will be singing a communion anthem: Jesu, joy of man's desiring -- J.S. Bach

Kangaroos on the Calder

On my rounds doing representation for a youth choir, I went to Sunbury today.

My first stop was in Diggers Rest, at the delightfully early hour of 9am.  I left home in South Yarra around 7.30am in order to be on time without paying for the toll road.

After forty minutes of weathering city traffic, I got on the Calder Freeway, which takes you to Bendigo and then a great deal further north.  It's a very scenic drive, particularly when you get to contemplate the frustration of being in gridlock facing the opposite direction.

You can imagine my consternation when I noticed a kangaroo sitting in the median strip.  Because the city-bound traffic was pretty much at a standstill he had managed to get halfway across the road without any problems.

I did what you do when confronted with a brute (he was huge) and slowed down.  Then he started moving.  One hop took him to the edge of the median, where he fixed me with a steely glance before taking off again.  I didn't think kangaroos normally do the "wait, look and listen" routine, but this guy seemed pretty with it.

Cue slamming on the breaks.  Fortunately not too hard, so no skidding -- the speedo had gone from near 100km/h to around 40km/h in the 20 seconds since the encounter began.

Kangaroo leapt nimbly across the road and off into the neighbouring paddock.

Driver took a deep breath, checked the road, and hit the gas.

Making the dead present

Heinrich Schutz's Musikalische Exequien has fascinated me for a long time.

This piece is interesting on many levels, and formed the basis of one of my undergraduate investigations. It was written at the time of the death of Count Heinrich Posthumous Reuss, one of Schutz's patrons. Reuss lived with a constant awareness of his own death, which was given concrete representation by the meticulous preparations for his funeral service. The coffin was engraved with all the texts of the Lutheran funeral liturgy, which were subsequently set to music by Schutz.

Now, this wouldn't be so remarkable in itself were it not for the third movement of Schutz's piece, which effectively brings the dead man to life. When you listen to the following track, bear in mind the physical disposition of forces around the church where the Count was buried. The main chorus stood in the usual place for the choir, by the organ. The three soloists -- accompanied by a separate continuo group -- walked around in the galleries of the church, creating the effect of disembodied voices in no fixed location.

To make sense of this piece, it is important to know that Count Reuss was a keen singer, and is said to have sung a good baritone.  Accordingly, Schutz's setting has one soloist singing in the baritone register, along with high voices that suggest angels. The texts they sing are as follows:

Chorus I:
Lord, now let you go your servant in peace
as you have said,
for my eyes have seen the Saviour
whom you have prepared for all nations
as a light to enlighten all gentiles
and as a glory for your people Israel.

Chorus II:
Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord,
they have rest after their works,
and their works will follow them.
They are in hands of the Lord
and there is no sorrow that them disturb.

Now, I didn't put this entry together as a document of my knowledge of seventeenth-century funerary music -- although this topic is engrossing.  Indeed, I think there's an important principle here that helps to animate present-day practices around the representation of the dead in funeral services.  A few weeks ago I wrote about the dilemmas of planning funeral services in light of republished documents from the local Catholic hierarchy.

At that time, I mentioned the practice of funeral directors providing photographic slide shows as a core part of their standard package.  I think there's an interesting parallel here between what Schutz was doing in 1635 and a funeral I played for this afternoon.

Schutz is one of the ultimate baroque musicians.  His music is every bit as dramatic as a painting by Caravaggio -- indeed, I would argue that while the northern German churches tended to avoid overtly dramatic visual art, this creative energy was more often than not channeled into literature, philosophy, and music.  The point of a painting by Caravaggio is that you are immediately hooked into the drama of the image; it engages you almost involuntarily, just by virtue of it's being there.  What's important is that the viewer is drawn into the drama of the piece, and invited to identify with one or other of the figures presented in the composition.  Who do you identify with in Caravaggio's depiction of Judas's betrayal of Christ?  Or, in what order of figures do you identify in this image?  Caravaggio has left the invitation open.

Similarly, Schutz's motet is an exercise in audience identification.  By the main organ, in an open gallery where the congregation could see them, is the large choir.  They sing the words of Simeon -- Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace -- a classical element in funeral liturgies from time immemorial, particularly at the deposition of the body.  The chorus represents the Count's family and his court.  Suddenly, the large chorus recedes, and in come the three soloists, who are invisible, and who were instructed to move around in the triforium of the church.  Disembodied voices, in no particular location.

Here is the Count made audibly present, accompanied by angels, essentially telling the gathered worshipers that things are OK: blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.  It is a stunning sleight of hand, which represents the dead Count at the moment of his burial.  Who do you identify with?  The chorus -- singing of commending the body and soul of the dead Count?  What must it have meant to hear a voice like the Count's singing of the blessedness of the dead?

It is now customary for funeral directors to provide a slideshow of family photos in the course of a funeral service.  This happens both in funeral chapels and in churches.

The standard slideshow consists of two contrasting tracks.  One is a soothing, consoling piece; the other generally more upbeat.  I would suggest that you go back and listen to the Schutz piece now: you will find that there is a similar contrast at work between the slow-moving chorus and the more agile lines given to the soloists.

The selection of photos is the usual life-and-times chronicle.  Childhood pictures, early adulthood, weddings, social occasions, relaxed family scenes, more formal portraits, and so on.  The slideshow does not merely document the deceased, however.  It documents the link between the living and the dead, because people sitting in the chapel are often featured in the photographs.  The slideshow goes well beyond an invitation to identify one's self with the deceased.  It is a document of relationships, and the music chosen is an essential element to reinforcing the emotions associated with this document.

A more subdued selection starts the slideshow.  This consists of early life photographs, although it quickly moves into the present generation of the family; photographs from the deceased's childhood are rapidly connected with pictures of their own children as infants, and that of any grandchildren.  Then there is a mixed selection of early- to mid-life photos.

Then the track changes.  We move into later life, with the odd flash back to wedding or debutante photos.  The kids grow up, the grandkids reach their present age, and finally, a photo of the deceased -- often in a pastoral setting, such as the beach or a paddock or park -- sitting alone.  This is often the only image where the subject appears alone; sometimes the image is tinkered so that the person disappears with the final chord of the music.

Some similar questions arise.  What does it mean to have the dead person made present in this way?  After all, in many cultures such a use of imagery would be highly disturbing, if not explicitly abhorrent.  What does the presence of these images mean for the content of funeral services?  Is the future of funeral ceremonies to be the telling of a lifestory, and little else?  How do photographic slideshows reinforce this trend?

I think this bears consideration in the light of the Schutz piece.  In both cases, there's an element of providing some consolation to the family through explicit representation of the dead, especially in the presence of a sealed coffin.  Where Schutz achieved this by using the Count's "voice," modern technology makes it possible to put the living in the frame with the dead.

Music for Sunday 24 October

Goodness, how the year is flying.  Only a handful of ordinary Sundays left, and then it's Advent again.

The readings for the week are linked here, and the psalm setting for this week is here.

The service setting will be Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).  Hymns are as follows:

Introit: Love divine, all loves excelling [217 ii]
Sequence: Father of heaven, whose love profound [131]
Offertory: All creatures of our God and King [100]
Communion: Here, Lord, we take the broken bread [523]

A re-telling

....In the end I decided to avoid handing out paper, so the translation didn't matter that much anyway.  In fact, I realized that there is a better way to do these miniature Bible studies in a choir rehearsal: to retell the parable in terms that convey the magnitude of the things concerned.

To someone aged 9 years, $1 million is a jaw-dropping, almost inconceivable, sum.  It's a lot of money.  They also know that $500,000 is a lot of money.  They know that $1,000 is a comparatively small amount.  So I did a currency conversion, and told them that the word used in the original to describe the amount of money is a talent -- just like the gift of music.  You can extrapolate where the session went from there.  All in all, it was ten minutes well-spent in the rehearsal.

More below the jump.

Brahms

I admit to being a Brahms chamber music junkie.  Don't ask why; it's just the way things seem to be.

It's a perverse fascination, because I really detested the Brahms pieces I studied as a piano student.  When played well they are utterly sublime, but I never really had the aptitude to make that possible.  The lack wasn't so much technique as the awareness of an aesthetic gap in my pianism.  My mood was always more attuned to Mozart and middle Beethoven, with generous lashings of Rachmaninov, Liszt, Ravel and Messiaen.  The organ chorales are a steady feature of my pre-service menu at funerals, but they belong to a totally different world.

My absolute favorite Brahms piece is the f-minor piano quintet, but that's a swoon for another day.  Instead, here's the Op 101 piano trio in c-minor.  The performance here is quite amazing in its intensity.


I: Allegro energico

II: Presto non assai

III: Andante non grazioso

IV: Allegro molto

The first time I heard the presto, I nearly fell out of my chair.  There's a couple of entrancing moments where the piano and violin play a modal mixture tag game.  It's a really elementary technique that's taught in first year harmony: a minor chord is followed immediately by the same chord using the major form.  The technique rests on the sense of a single chord being transfigured from a darker sound to a lighter one.  Brahms is the original master of springing the modal mixture on an unsuspecting listener.

This reminded me of a similar moment in Charles Stanford's motet, Beati quorum via, which I know from having sung and conducted quite a few times over the years.  So, as a little extension of the music appreciation session, here's the piece sung in a recent performance by the choir of Westminster Abbey.  The modal mixture comes at around 1.40 in the video, where the word beati is repeated in long notes.

Meditabor

I've been spending some time thinking about the parable of the talents over the last few days.  None of my young choristers have had the opportunity to talk about why we do what we do, and I think it's reaching the point where this would be useful.

Of course, some might say this is a complicated bit of writ to bring before young minds (incidentally, I'll be using the NRSV.  The KJV is linked here for a bit of whimsy).  I'm taking the parable as a springboard for asking the choristers to think in a bigger way: we can all be given money, and we can all spend it wisely or badly.  Music is similar -- the aptitude is given to everyone, but many people simply bury it.  If our voices have been given to us for worship, then we should make the highest possible use of them.

Hopefully the discussion will broaden out to questions of how we behave in church, allowing the opportunity to talk about overcoming restlessness.

There will be some space for talking about how we pray in our tradition.  Just lately, the parish sacristan has been hitting the roof when she finds a pile of half-burnt candles in the votive box.  Some of the kids think it's like having a birthday cake, so they light the show up and have a hearty blow.  Rather than forbid the lighting of candles, I'm going to aim for teaching the good use of these things.

A re-opening

Grainger-philes have had their temple restored to them after a seven-year closure, with last night's re-opening of the Grainger Museum.  I remember hearing that water had been found running down the wall in one of the storerooms, which led to what was meant to be closure for a matter of weeks -- which became months, and, ultimately, years.  In 2003 I was working with one of the collections in the Grainger, and closure came as something of a glitch in the research programme.  Fortunately, the curators took care to ensure that the various collections would remain available to scholars through reading facilities in the Ballieu Library.

This is a unique institution, established by Percy Grainger in 1935.  If you visit the Museum's website you'll find out about the aims of the collection, which includes documenting Grainger himself, and almost every aspect of music.

Today there was a half-day symposium at Melba Hall, a highly stimulating manner in which to while away a Saturday morning.  One of the highlights of the symposium was the launch of a new online journal, Grainger Studies, which aims to promote interdisciplinary scholarship along the lines of Grainger's multifarious interests.

The exhibition in the Museum is excellent, and I cannot recommend it enough.  The aim of the present display is to give an overview of Grainger himself (right down to the extensive collection of whips), and his context.  An interesting little detail is in the area of relics: when Rose Grainger died, Percy catalogued the items in her handbag and preserved them.  Similarly, when Grainger himself died, Ella Grainger preserved and catalogued the contents of his bedside cabinet and sent them to the Museum.  Both of these are displayed in the museum, a touching glimpse at mundane items made significant by association with a moment in a person's life.

My latest "interesting-but-why?" pieces of trivia was the discovery that Grainger stood at the manly height of 168cm.  I am nearly 10cm taller -- yet have always considered Grainger to be a big man, given his fanatical physical training regime, and the sense one gets from images that he filled a lot of space.  Yet he was relatively short.  There's a life-size mannequin of Grainger in the exhibition at the Museum, which serves to illustrate his slight stature.

All I can say is this: if you are in Melbourne, go and visit the Grainger Museum.

Mountain Goats

Did you know that Ibex goats can climb dam walls?

I suppose it all makes sense, given that their habitat is rocky mountain tops of around 1500 metres above sea level.  Normally you'd suppose they stick to places where it would be easy to get a foothold, but here's proof that they like a challenge.

The video below is a little unclear about the relationship of vertical to horizontal.  The goat is climbing the sheer outer wall of a dam.  A vertical wall, that is.

From what I can gather, the goat is climbing the wall to lick salt off the stones.

Enjoy the daggy soundtrack!

Music for Sunday 17 October

This week the parish is keeping St Luke -- having done St Matthew a month or so ago.  Curiously, we haven't had an observance of Mark or John among the Evangelists.

Readings are linked here, and the psalm will be sung to Anglican chant.

The service setting will be Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).  Hymns are as follows:


Introit: The Church's one foundation [457]
Gradual: Thou to whom the sick and dying ever came [tune: 379]
Offertory: Light's abode, celestial Salem [tune: 142]
Communion: Here we adore you, hidden Saviour, Lord [500]

The choir will be singing an anthem at communion: The Call -- Ralph Vaughan Williams

Those keeping the Ordinary Sunday will find the readings for the week linked here, and a setting of the psalm here.  Hymns on my alternative list are as follows:

Introit: Lord, your word abiding [427]
Gradual: Lord, your almighty word [447]
Offertory: Immortal, invisible, God only wise [143]
Communion: And now, O Father, mindful of the love [519]

La Stupenda -- the voice of the century

Dame Joan Sutherland died the other day.  You can find obituaries here, here and here.

Here are a couple of videos of Sutherland.  The first is the mad scene from Luccia di Lammermoor, sung at the Royal Opera House in 1959.  This is the production that launched Sutherland onto the international scene.  It's just the sound, rather than the stage action, but it's the voice that matters!

Incidentally, this is an aria that was also closely associated with that other Australian super star: Dame Nellie Melba.



And here's something from a bit later -- the bell aria from Lakme.




Addendum

Since putting this post together this morning, I've heard a couple of tribute comments in the news.  Perhaps the most cognitively dissonant one was Julia Gillard's description of Sutherland as a fine example of so-called Australian values.

This phrase is so hackneyed as to be practically meaningless.  Paradoxically, it's also one of the most ideologically-loaded phrases in the lexicon, much like Stalin praising Shostakovitch for being a good Communist.  To talk of Australian values in this way is to commit oneself to a dialogue of calculated vacuousness.

Is this really the highest winding-up praise the PM's back room boys and girls can come up with in drafting some comments about one of the greatest artists this country has ever produced?  I think it represents the harsh problem of a narrowly-defined national identity politics.

Sutherland was undoubtedly in a strange position in relation to her homeland.  A similar conundrum plagued Percy Grainger: how to identify as an Australian when one left in youth, never to return in any permanent way?  This is not to dismiss any sense of Australianness that Grainger and Sutherland expressed; it's just that they express a more cosmopolitan aspect of what this might mean.

So when Gillard spoke, there was barely a word about Sutherland's extraordinary artistry in the summing up.  Just narrow and robotic Orstrayan valyews, which had been absent hitherto.  Would Gillard have said the same thing if the death of the week were a footballer or cricketer?

Sportsmen can be had by the bushel for two dollars a throw.

Truly great artists come but once in a generation.

The old cycling debate

There was a tragic accident on Footscray Road the other day, when a cyclist was cleaned up on a blind corner.  This is not a new problem in that stretch of road, where I've had near-misses on both occasions when I've ridden that way.

There's a good little opinion piece in The Age about commuter cycling.  I don't think there's much to quibble over, with one exception.

One of the reasons commuter cycling is (supposedly) safer in Europe is that drivers are held to be at fault if they are involved in an accident with a cyclist.  The reality is that a car traveling at any speed over 5km needs a large margin for error, not to mention a good amount of stopping distance.  Given the difference in bulk, it is clear that a cyclist is more vulnerable to physical injury and death in any altercation with a moving vehicle.

Many of the comments below the article point out that there is a need for better information, and that drivers and cyclists alike need to modify their attitudes.  The usual cankers -- that helmets discourage riding, cyclists think they're indestructible, there's not enough cycling infrastructure (well, that's true enough) -- are proudly on display, but little consideration of who is truly at fault in cyclist-car incidents.  Speaking from my own experience, car doors are a major hazard of on-road cycling, and to be fair, driver fault is assumed automatically in these cases.

However, when the accident involves a moving vehicle, things are not so clear.  I would suggest that it is time automatic driver fault was legislated into the road rules in these cases.  Cyclists routinely deal with inadequate provision for their presence on the road in the form of cycle lanes that disappear suddenly, or where an off-road path terminates with no obvious onward link.  There are many more split-second decisions involved in this situation than most motorists would admit.

The reality which has been demonstrated yet again is that a cyclist gets squished; the most the vehicle requires after an accident is a little bit of panel beating.  The cyclist-motorist blame game is a cop-out when it's life or death.

A little dare

There will soon be a new translation of the Roman Missal, and one would expect music publishers to be updating their catalogues to provide for the newly translated rites.  Marty Haugen has updated his Mass of Creation (a.k.a. the Massive Cremation) to use the new words.  One of the good things about Rome is that they can be relied upon to shift things around just as the profit margins for some of the big publishing houses are getting a bit thin.  The new translation will be big business once it is promulgated for use across the English-speaking (and -singing) world.

As an example of the brave new world, here is the Gloria from a newly-composed mass setting.  I dare you to listen to the end, at least twice.  Physical self-harm constitutes a penalty if inflicted while the track is playing, and you must recommence the challenge once you have stopped bleeding.

Now, American Catholicism has its own very particular culture.  This Gloria setting expresses that culture very nicely -- if you would prefer to sit by the pool sipping on your preferred after-5 beverage instead of getting down and devotional at Mass.  The problem isn't necessarily the fact that the style of the music is more redolent of a bordello in the middle of Las Vegas than an encounter with the transcendent.  On the upside, at least it includes a part for (Hammond) organ.

The problem is that it's really an extremely ambitious piece of music for its purpose.  The refrain is highly syncopated ("swung" being the technical term).  Half the reason that performing medieval music is a highly specialized field is because it employs a sophisticated style of rhythmic notation that presents an intimidating face to the layman.  Rhythmic complexity is no bad thing, but it takes training in order to realize it properly, so you might consider that the performers in the recording are clearly conservatory-trained professional musicians.  The recording has been made using good technology, and there's a high likelihood that the finished product is the result of cutting and pasting three or four takes together.  Your average liturgy coordinator in a Catholic parish will use this as a guide for whether to include a piece like this in the mix for some special event, where there will be no chance to have three or four goes to get the piece right.

And here's where the real problems begin.  Catholic music is notable for its lack of professionalism at the parish level (and this is not a specific denominational problem).  It is very rare for a parish to have a properly trained music leader,* whether that person plays a keyboard instrument or not.  And if finding a music leader with some level of skill is hard, then it is extremely rare to find a good group of well-trained singers in a parish.  Parish music often suffers from being directed by the liturgy coordinator, for which the main qualifications are sincerity, prolixity, and high enthusiasm combined with general ignorance.  These people choose music using recordings, and then get all snarky when the real performance with their fellow amateurs doesn't measure up.  They set their musical forces up to fail by trying to be ambitious -- attempting to have a champagne party on a beer budget.

There is a further complication here as well.  Given the widespread insistence in Roman quarters on the congregation singing the whole of any given text in the Ordinary of the Mass, why does this piece appear to only give them a refrain?  Are the people too thick to learn a musical setting of the rest of the Gloria?  A through-composed setting that went straight through the text would be more in line with the longer-term thinking about the proper place of music vis a vis congregational participation.  The style itself asserts that the vocal group is not a choir -- indeed, it is distinctly anti-choral music.  So the setting takes all from everybody and gives nothing to anybody.  Hardly a positive statement about the place of the laity in the church.  Indeed, it makes me think of a certain Adorno quote about collectively willed self-deception I couldn't quite lay my hand on.

So, go back and listen to that recording again.  Ask yourself the following questions:

• Do I know any instrumentalists who could carry off the accompaniment?  Could I afford their session fees from week to week?
• Can I imagine the choristers in my parish performing the opening of Annie as the first sung item in the service?
• What would make this piece sustain repeated hearings?  Why?
• Could I listen to this for six weeks at a stretch without wanting to strangle everyone in sight?

Now, a challenge to any composers out there.  Here's the theme for your Agnus setting to dangle next to that Gloria....

------------------
* And by properly trained, I mean someone who has at least studied an instrument sufficiently to be able to read music fluently, and to sing with fair accuracy. While institutional training might be the ideal, the reality is that anyone who has passed through a few grades of public examinations or spent a few years with a good teacher is already miles ahead of the average practitioner on the ground right now.

Music for Sunday 10 October

Things are back to normal this week, with the resumption of the youth choir and all the rehearsal time that entails.  As usual, young folk are a bit restless in the first week: it takes a few days to perform the transformation from holiday mode to working mode.

I spent a good deal of time during the holidays sorting out Advent and Christmas music.  Joy of joys, we get to work on all of that for the next ten weeks or so.  This will be the first time in some years that the parish has had anything approaching a choir-led carols service during Advent.  It should be fun, whatever happens.

Readings for this week are linked here, and the psalm setting we will be singing is here.

The service setting will be Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).

Hymns are as follows:

Introit: Just as I am, without one plea [584 i]
Gradual: O for a thousand tongues to sing [210, tune 425]
Offertory: Your hand, O God, has guided [456]
Communion: God of mercy, God of grace [452]

Something stunning

I often joke that I can just about play the Schubert Ave Maria in about fifteen keys, which means that for at least three of those variants each hand is playing in a different key simultaneously.  This rather lovely contrafactum is a mainstay of just about any occasion in Romish worship, as Thomas Day remarks about the wedding and funeral of JFK, this song was sung by the same soloist on both occasions.  But this isn't a bashing up session about church music.

I've been spending a bit of time looking at the Five Mystical Songs of Ralph Vaughan Williams lately.  Part of the reason is to do with training a choir of young people.  The Call is an obvious item of repertoire to teach at the early stages, given the lovely modal character of the piece, and that the hymn version is relatively simple to prepare for performance.  Even if you regard this as a hymn, it still makes a very satisfactory unison anthem.  There's plenty of room for making artistry by insisting on long phrases and using dynamics to enliven the projection of the text.

Having done that, I'm now moving to introduce the song version, for which a score can be found here, and below you'll find a video of a performance.

I'll probably end up dividing the labour so that the adults get a chance to shine in the second verse, and making sure that everyone's on board for all the rhythmic changes on the final page.

Unison or harmony?

I was struck recently in a conversation with another organist who was expressing consternation at the lack of progress with her church choir.  It seems that the choristers are resisting every little project, but especially singing simple hymns in harmony. I'm posting this here because my friend was in a real funk, so what follows is really a summary of what might have been said.

Early on in an organist appointment it's quite understandable to want to move and shake, be it improving the performance of the organ tuner or introducing new music at the main service.  Each of these will gain both friends and critics, and it would be worrying if things were otherwise in that department.  However, one of the hardest things to attempt is bringing new momentum to a choir of enthusiasts that has found a comfortable set of habits.

Choirs like this are often peopled by lovely folks who have variable levels of musical skill, and who are frequently ripe in years.  The loudest voice is often the only one trusted for any cantorial tasks, such as responsorial psalms.  Some choristers are there because they joined long ago and found a wonderful social group -- but rarely does their musical presence register in the form of a respectable sound.  Many choristers don't read music, so insist on wanting to "hear it with the music" before having a shot at something simple.  A group of ten might be divided into three who sing, and seven who are tagging along for the ride.  These are very challenging groups to nurture: the musical value can only be compared to a dormant seed which lies on the ground waiting for the right conditions to come along before it germinates.

There is also a critical trust issue.  All choirs have a unique ethos, and a new director is always going to disrupt this ethos in some way.  Most of the choristers will view their primary role as leading the congregation, and therefore regard themselves as congregants who practice in order to perform this important task.  I've lost count of the introductions to new choristers where the conversation takes a worrying turn with comments along the lines of "I really enjoy singing in the choir but I'm not a musician..."

In a situation like this, attempting to sing hymn tunes in harmony at the get-go is a very steep ask for various reasons.  Leaving aside the aural skills involved in tuning a chord well in a group, the skill most lacking among untrained singers is basic vocal technique.  Training the voice and the ear is a complementary process: it is only by teaching someone how to hear themselves through singing the great scale and basic agility exercises that they begin to master intervals.  The trust issue raises its head when singing in harmony doesn't go well: if anyone in the congregation remarks adversely (as they will), then the scenario is that the director set the choristers up to fail.

It is far better to spend six weeks teaching a small group like this the foundations of how to sing in unison really well.  It's a surprisingly hard thing to do, if you combine teaching them the basics of good breath support, beginning to access the head voice, and using good vowel shapes as part of the process.  And you roll in learning how to sing in longer phrases -- so many choirs sing hymns on a strict one-word-at-a-time basis.  Very soon, singing a simple hymn becomes a more challenging task than before, but also a much more rewarding thing to work on once improvements have been observed and praised.

If you combine this with systematic teaching about the stave, a much-improved choir will emerge over six months.  Then singing in harmony becomes a natural development from everything that has come before.

A fun rhythm activity

Here's one to get choristers concentrating in the first week back.

Equipment:
Whiteboard or similar, plus something to write with.
Small pieces of paper.

Write up a series of one-bar rhythms on the board, and draw a box around each one.  Number them consecutively -- depending on the number of choristers, you may need anything between three and five sets of rhythms.

Clap each rhythm through a couple of times -- make sure it's absolutely correct before moving on! -- and then treat the sequence of boxes as one complete exercise.  It is vital that everyone is able to recognize each rhythm accurately.

Now, before the rehearsal you will have cut out your little pieces of paper, and on each one you write a telephone number" -- so, if you've got five boxes with rhythms, you can create the following set of numbers:

54321
15432
21543
32154
43215

....and so on.

Now, one person claps an arbitrary sequence making up a complete "telephone number." The person with the matching number then claps a different sequence, prompting someone else to "answer" by clapping yet another rhythm set.  This carries on until all the possibilities have been exhausted.

Everyone has to listen closely in order to recognize when their number is being dialed; equally, those clapping have to pay close attention to rhythmic accuracy.

Sumer is icumen in

Daylight saving has started, the cherry blossom is flowering and the air is heavy with pollen.  I have started taking the annual course of hayfever tablets (and to think I had the most recent bout of flu only a couple of weeks ago!), so it's fair to say that spring has sprung.  Sumer being the olde Englysshe for spring, here's a little bit of ancient polyphony to mark the turning of the year.

Words and more here.

Only six weeks to go...

...until the AFL preseason starts.

Music from the "Southern Cross Collection"

Ruminations – Paul Paviour

Marche Héroïque – Christopher J. Luke

These two pieces make an interesting pair in the Southern Cross Collection.  Both composers reflect the English tradition.

Paul Paviour is one of Australia’s most distinguished composers.  After training in London at the Royal College of Music, Paviour emigrated to Australia where he settled in Bathurst in 1969.  His long career includes appointments as Director of Music at Bathurst Cathedral, and as Director of the Goulbourn Conservatorium.  Paviour considers himself to be an all-round composer rather than a specialist: among his list of works there are seven symphonies, and many works for orchestra, and other combinations.

Paviour’s Ruminations on an Anglican Chant by Edward Elgar reflects the composer’s widely-acclaimed gift for improvisation, and one gets the feeling that this is where the origins of the piece lie.  One could put Ruminations in the same line as Basil Harwood’s Three Preludes on Anglican Chants, which have a similar improvisatory feel about them.  The chant which forms the basis of the piece is quoted in full at the top of the score: Ruminations commences in the same key – D Major – but turns to the tonic minor around the halfway point.  Given the richness and intensity of the harmonic language, this piece could almost be adorned with a second subtitle: “ways to walk around D.”  It makes for a scenic hike, or a fascinating study of musical thinking.

The performance directions call for a flexible approach, with generous indications for tempo rubato.  A pastoral atmosphere is evoked by Paviour’s call for a solo oboe.  Rapid build-ups around bars 32 and 44 make for an exciting peak-point to the piece, before the final melting-away in the final page.

The liturgical usefulness of Ruminations is considerable, a testament to the extraordinary craftsmanship on display.  Given the relationship to Anglican chant, one could always have the choir sing the original Elgar chant and use Paviour’s response as an interlude, prelude or quiet postlude.  Furthermore, anyone interested in the art of improvisation would do well to give this piece serious study.

Born and trained in Melbourne, Christopher J. Luke was organist at that Anglo-Catholic shrine, St Mark’s, Fitzroy, for ten years.  Under his able leadership the parish established a choral scholarship program, and acquired the splendid 1938 Harrison & Harrison organ from a redundant church in Oxford, UK.  Luke is well-established as a composer, arranger and clarinettist.  In 2009, Luke took up the position as Head of Music at the Hutchins School, Hobart.  Moreover, Luke has recorded CDs of his own compositions, as well as music sung by the choir of St Mark’s.  The Marche Héroïque was one of the joint second prize winners in the competition.

Luke’s Marche is dedicated to Father Philip Murphy, the Vicar of Fitzroy at the time of Luke’s appointment to Hobart.  The piece follows the familiar structure for a march, which is a simple ternary form where the outer sections exploit the bolder colours of the organ and the middle section contains a contrasting theme painted in softer tints.  This is such a well-established form that will be familiar to devotees of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance marches, or Herbert Brewer’s Marche Héroïque.  Luke clearly assumes the availability of a large instrument with tubas, although I heard him perform the Marche quite satisfactorily on the organ at Fitzroy shortly after the results of the New Organ Music Awards were announced in late-2008.  The confident craftsmanship on display in this piece means that this sort of reduction of performance means is not only possible, but potentially illuminating.  A useful piece for any grand occasion.

The Southern Cross Collection can be ordered here.

Repertoire notes

Here is the music from the internet section of my repertoire notes article for the current Organ Australia (methinks it is now the Spring, rather than the September, edition).

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Bolero for Organ – Thomas Mohr

250 Easy Voluntaries and Interludes – John Zundel

In some of my recent wanderings on the internet, I’ve noticed that there is a fair amount of new composition being published under Creative Commons licensing.  This is an important development for an aspect of the repertoire which remains largely unexplored by most organists.  In future columns, I hope to be able to include some of this material for the interest of readers of Organ Australia.

Thomas Mohr is an Austrian composer and organist, born in 1964.  He has a doppelgänger, in the form of a baritone of the same name, which makes finding information about him on the internet something of a challenge if you are not willing to join the Facebook cult.  There are a couple of youtube videos of Mohr’s playing, including a creditable performance of Theodore Dubois’ transcription of the Hallelujah Chorus.

Mohr’s Bolero for Organ is one of five pieces published through the International Music Score Project website.  This simple piece has three layers to the texture: the characteristic ostinato rhythm is maintained in the right hand, supported by long pedal notes.  The left hand contains the melodic interest, which is contained within the tenor register of the keyboard.  Mohr’s tonal language is decided diatonic, perhaps leaning towards the minimalist.  None of the modern music scary monsters lurk here.  The score contains no explicit performance directions, such as tempo or dynamic markings, nor is there any direction for the use of more than one manual.  One could treat this as a piece for a single manual, or play the left-hand part on a solo registration for a bit of variety.  One of the virtues of scores with so few directions is the implicit freedom to realize the music according to the immediate performance conditions.

When I played this piece through for the first time, I was reminded somewhat of other Austrian essays in dance genres, such as Peter Planyavski’s Toccata alla Rumba.  It has always seemed to me that Austrian organist/composers know how to have fun.  This Bolero would make an oddball postlude for an ordinary Sunday, or a useful standby in one’s list of pieces for playing during the prelude at weddings.  Toe-tapping is almost certain to ensue.

Many readers will be familiar with C.H. Trevor’s several collections of simple music for manuals only, and his anthologies of chorale preludes for the various seasons of the Church’s year.  These remain an important ingredient in any organist’s library, and when the copyright finally expires they will undoubtedly be uploaded by some diligent soul.  In the meantime, we must be satisfied with what is already out there – which in many cases includes some very substantial collections of music published prior to the 1930s.  One of these is John Zundel’s 250 Easy Voluntaries and Interludes, published in Boston in 1851.

Zundel was born in Germany in 1815, and emigrated to America in 1847.  He had a substantial career as an organist, composer and teacher in New York.  He published several treatises on aspects of music theory, as well as instructional manuals on playing the organ and allied instruments.  Zundel returned to Germany some time before his death in 1882.

This collection of voluntaries is useful to the present-day organist in search of gebrauchsmusik.  The whole collection is indexed by liturgical use, time signature and key.  Nearly all of the pieces are original compositions, with a couple of transcriptions from Mendelssohn and Haydn – very much a reflection of contemporary taste.  While there are directions for the use of pedals, all of the pieces can be played on manuals only.