Critical coniptions, continued

Following on from the link I posted the other day, here is a response to Everett True's Crikey piece.

The nature of criticism, particularly music criticism, is a thorny one.  One nineteenth century journalist asked whether it was possible for "any section of the public to be lectured to death by wild critics," and opined that the role of the music critic is to be "the public's guide, philosopher and friend."  A question that always comes to my mind when the discussion turns to the nature and role of critics in the modern media is: in a postmodern (possibly even post-postmodern) world, what might that idea of criticism mean?  After all, there is value in a distinction between critics of the calibre of Richard Taruskin or Norman Lebrecht, for example, and the sorts of opinions that pass for criticism in the world of bloggery.  In Melbourne, none of the daily newspapers publishes the complete run of reports from their music critics on the website; this is especially the case with 'classical' concerts.  I wonder if the room for specialization opened up by the Web might be unhelpful to someone wanting a bigger picture of the nature of art and culture, but on the other hand, I can see that the possibility for addressing the local absence of serious musical writing in web formats might be the most powerful upside of this bind.

We live in an age where the media for disseminating critical opinion is mushrooming in various ways.  I am sympathetic with the model of criticism True identifies with, and it has to be said that criticism on the web does seem to have a shorter half-life.  Perhaps there's room for the critical equivalent of slow food.

Another Nickson essay

Below the jump you'll find another paper I wrote during my masters studies.  It started life as a seminar paper, then it was accepted at an international conference (which gave me my first trip to the UK -- in winter, of all times!), and eventually formed the basis of a couple of sections of my dissertation.  After that, I was invited to submit it for publication in Organ Australia.

This is the final version of the paper, as it was published in OA.

Many musicians who did their training in Melbourne between the 1930s and the 1950s recall Nickson as a hugely influential figure.  His students included a few well-known composers, many performers and a very large cohort of teachers.  A good number of Nickson students took the Clarke (Southern Provinces) Scholarship at the Royal College of Music as organists, some of whom subsequently carved out important careers in Europe and the Americas.  Student reminiscences of Nickson range from the profoundly appreciative to lukewarm.

One of my firmest memories of piano exams was meeting with an examiner who had been a student of Nickson's in the '30s, found his idealism incomprehensible and thought it a waste of time taking an interest in him.  My meeting with this examiner was in the early-1990s, following my earliest awareness of Nickson's work as a church musician: I was an incorrigible 14 year old.  That examiner later became my most influential piano teacher, and revealed a whole other type of idealism through her teaching.  Undoubtedly, I perplexed that teacher greatly, but the influence has stuck.  I think this is why I still spend half my practice time trying to make beautiful lines.  As a random thought, it sort of begs the question of whether it is better to know what a beautiful line is, and fall short, or to not know, and blunder through without insight.  That's a thought for another time.

I think the biographical paragraph reveals some of the scope of Nickson's activities, although to the full text of the dissertation reveals all at much greater length and profound depth (you'll find a link to the digital copy through my CV page).  Nickson is an interesting character, if only because his ideas remain challenging to our prevailing attitudes to aesthetics, whether we understand them in general terms or through a specifically religious or theological framework.  That's not to say that there's any lack of problems in the way he worked out his ideas in particular cases -- and you'll see one of these below -- and in many ways this is exactly what gives his ideas a continuing relevance even more than fifty years since his active teaching career came to an end.  The problems are certainly what made my research worthwhile.

Music for Sunday 2 May 2010

It's back to the usual program this week, after all the togetherness of the joint service at St George's last week.  This means that the choir will again be divided into two "branches," one at All Saints and the other at St Georges.

The readings for the week are available here.

The psalm setting we're using for this week is here.

The mass setting is Christ Church Mass by Philip Mathias.

Hymns:

Introit:  Come let us join our cheerful songs [204]
Gradual: Where there is charity and love [434]
Offertory: Jerusalem the golden. [It's outrageous that this wasn't included in Together in Song!]
Communion: Author of life divine [506]

Organ music at All Saints will be:

Prelude: Rhosymedre -- RalphVaughan Williams
Postlude: Sketch IV -- Robert Schumann

If you're in the area on Sunday, do come along!

St Mary Star of the Sea

I play for the vigil Mass once a month at St Mary Star of the Sea, West Melbourne.  The building is one of Melbourne's largest Catholic churches, and until recently, one of the dullest.  When I first knew this church, the interior was painted in a colour that can be politely described as "mustard," with detailing in a low-grade white paint.  It was really quite awful.  Here are a couple of picture that gives you an impression of the effect.

The parish was entrusted to the care of a small community of Opus Dei priests a few years ago.  It is said that this order was chosen to balance out the offerings of the comparatively liberal parish down the road, which is under the care of another order.  I often find it puzzling that what Anglicans would refer to as squabbles over churchmanship play a role in the Catholic parish system, given that much of the liturgical expression is meant to be prescribed by the Missal.

The first thing the new priest at St Mary's did was initiate a grand restoration scheme, leading to this:

[This is the same chapel as the "before" photo above, believe it or not...]

The parish has come to life over the last few years, and I'd really encourage you to have a look at their website to discover more.

Critical coniptions

Everett True has published this article over at Crikey.  There are several points there that are quite true, and a few with which one might disagree.  Have a read, and see what you think.

Who Suffers from Performance Anxiety?

Below the jump is a piece I wrote in frustration after attending a local organ competition in 2005.  I watched the whole field landmine their own performances with silly errors that could have easily been avoided; the winner, in the end, was the one who gave the least discomfort!  It was a most perplexing result, and one that the adjudicator was not completely happy in delivering.

This article was published in the June 2005 edition of Organ Australia, which elicited a reply from Robert Ampt, Sydney City Organist, pointing out that good learning and practice strategies would be more productive than the ideas I put forth here.  I don't think there's anything I wrote that would go against that -- after all, it is better to get the piece learnt properly to guarantee a smooth performance, than to have to make it up on the spot to get out of a self-inflicted pothole.  All the same, my original point was that the players in the competition went to such unseemly (if unconscious) lengths to torpedo their own performance that it would have been better for them to have tricks like these up their sleeves.

It's worth noting that that competition hasn't been held since 2005, but that's a whole other rant.

Upcoming recital

I'm playing a recital at St Gabriel's Catholic Church in Reservoir at 3pm on 6 June.

So far, the programme is going to include the following:

Toccata and Fugue in F [BWV 540] -- J.S. Bach
4 Sketches (Op. 58) -- Robert Schumann
Overture in C (Hommage a Handel) -- W. Steff Langston
Fantasia Cromatica, Study for "Pedale Doppio" -- Otto Olsson

More details, including some photos and recordings of the organ, as the date draws nearer.

Holy, Catholick and Apostolic: St Peter’s Eastern Hill and Arthur E. H. Nickson’s Ideal in Church Music

Below the jump you'll find a piece I wrote for Apostrophe, the parish magazine of St Peter's, Eastern Hill.  This short essay is based on a section of my masters thesis.

[Left: William McKie, then organist at Westminster Abbey, with his former teacher, Arthur E.H. Nickson, circa 1953]

Tour of the Anglican Parish of Jika Jika, part 2

St George's, Reservoir, is the second large church in the Parish of Jika Jika.  The parish was founded in 1917, although land for the purposes of establishing an Anglican church in the area was donated by Mr Thomas Dyer Edwardes some thirty years previously.  Dyer Edwardes was also a benefactor of St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne, where he donated the bells and the organ.

The present church was built in 1963-64, and dedicated as a memorial to those fallen in the two world wars.  The building is remarkable: clean lines with ample natural light make it a very noteworthy space.  The architects were Mockridge, Stahle and Mitchell, a local firm that was leading the way with innovative modern church designs during the 1950s, '60s and 70s (you can find a list of their work in the period here).  The shape at St George's is a large square, oriented along a diagonal line -- the sanctuary and baptistery are built into the north-eastern and south-western corners.  It's a very well thought out design for a contemporary liturgical space.  I think the best part of the building is the 7' line of coloured glass that tops the walls: the light in the building changes as the sun moves around, which brings a stunning effect.  The pictures of the interior show the building in twilight and daylight, and the effect of light in the glass.

[St George's, Reservoir, from the street]

[St George's, Reservoir, interior facing east]

[St George's, Reservoir, interior facing west]

 
[St George's, Reservoir, organ]

[St George's, Reservoir, organ console]

The organ was built in the 1950s by Charles Dirksen (Brisbane) for a church in Blackburn (Victoria).  By the time St George's was built, the original owners of the instrument had decided to dispose of it, and so it came to Reservoir.

The instrument consists of two extended ranks, these being a diapason and a flute.  The extensions on both manuals are identical, although the rank producing the upper work above 4' is different on each manual.  The specification is as follows:

Manuals: 16', 8', 8', 4', 4', 2 2/3', 2, 1'.

Pedal: 16', 8', 8', 5 1/3', 4', 4'.

The most surprising aspect of this instrument is its clarity, aided by a very generous acoustic.

[St George's, Reservoir, interior facing east]

[St George's, Reservoir, glass above the baptistery in morning light]

There are two carvings that catch the eye, one of the Annunciation (see below), and another frieze containing a set of stations of the cross.

[St George's, Reservoir, Annunciation carving]

Wedding Music

Check out my wedding music page to see the first round of tracks.  More is on the way...

Rondeau in Abdelazar

Here is the Rondeau from Henry Purcell's Abdelazar, which was the opening item from a recital I played in Sydney last year.  The programme consisted of works by composers marking anniversaries of birth or death in 2009, and included a couple of pieces that are not frequently heard in Australia, such as the Prelude and Fugue in d minor by Mendelssohn, and the even rarer final movement of Basil Harwood's Sonata in C#.  I hope to have the latter loaded up here in a few days.

For a basic biography of Purcell, see this Wikipedia page.  For information about Abdelazar, see here.

Links about one of my recent reads

On the sidebar, you'll see a reference to this: John Hopkins, with William Cottam, The Point of the Baton. (Melbourne: Lyrebird Press, 2009). I happened across this when I was browsing the Melbourne University Bookroom shelves last year. I spent much of my undergraduate years passing Professor Hopkins in the corridors of the Conservatorium, and had the privilege of playing for the conferring of his honorary DMus at Melba Hall a few years ago. His eminence as a conductor was well known to me, but beyond that I had little idea about much of his story beyond a few stories I'd heard about his work as the founding head of the School of Music at the Victorian College of the Arts. Musicians' autobiographies can be a variable stock. It is fair to say that the more glamorous the subject, the less likely they are to be able to tell a story well on the page. Among those that spring to mind, the variety ranges from those that need to be read with a generous dose of salt (one thinks of Melodies and Memories), confrontingly honest (think Michael Tippet's Twentieth Century Blues), to those that practically require party drugs just to get through the opening chapters without acting on a sudden compulsive urge to blow the library up (take your pick). Once I started reading this book, the story proved engrossing and, dare I say it, seductively written. Hopkins -- with Cottam's assistance -- writes candidly about many of his life experiences. One of the career hazards of being an organist is occasional engagements by Christian Science churches; I was fascinated by Hopkins's chapter about his relationship to that group, given my rather indifferent encounters with them. I had heard Hopkins speak at a seminar about his experiences in South Africa, but this brought things to life much more readily than my dimmed perceptive capacities before morning coffee. When I bought the book, the intention was to take it on the plane to while away the 25-hour trip to Dublin, where I was going to attend a conference. It was well and truly finished before I had to leave for the airport. It has held up extremely well to a second and a third reading, which is surely the ultimate test. So, here are a couple of links related to the book for anyone interested in the reception so far: This is the publisher's page. William Cottam writes about his friendship with Hopkins HERE.

That Ph.D. feeling

I lodged the final copy of my thesis for the library on Tuesday, which finally brings the whole to-ing and fro-ing process to an end. I'll probably graduate in August, but the list of dates hasn't been sent through yet. This puts me in mind of the feeling I had when I submitted the thesis at the end of August 2009. My desk was piled high with library books and all manner of papers -- it had well and truly become an archeological project! I even had a subsidiary pile growing on the floor, in a bid to keep personal books and library books apart. Nothing in the process of amendment and final submission involved piling the books and papers to the same heights. My thesis looked at the development of the music courses at the University of Melbourne up to around 1914. My choice of subject was driven by a deep curiosity about the history of the content of the music degree courses, which came to include practical studies as a graduation elective after 1904. There is a rich vein of historical writing about the University Conservatorium (established 1895, but known as the Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts and Music since 2009), but little has been done on the contents of the courses taught in the institution. It was an engrossing subject, although I'm trying to think about it as little as humanly possible at the moment. Because I started my candidature before the University of Melbourne started maintaining a consistent digital archive of recent theses, you won't find my dissertation on the web. There is some prospect of turning it into a book, but that's a while off. So...here it is. I had it bound in lilac, which is the colour of the music degree at Melbourne University.

Music for Sunday

Here's a taster of music in the Anglican Parish of Jika Jika for this week.

As this Sunday is close to St George's day, there is a joint service at 9.30am to mark the patronal feast at St George's, Reservoir. This means that there will be no morning services in the other centres of the parish. The hymns for the week give some reference to St George, although the readings of the day will be used, so it's a kind of hybrid selection for the week. The parish hymn book is Together in Song, so the numbers given here refer to that book. Procession: Lord God of hosts, within whose hand [tune: Melita] For the Psalm: All people that on earth do dwell [59] Sequence: Praise to the Lord, the Almighty[111] Offertory: Halleluja, sing to Jesus [517] Communion: This joyful Eastertide [381] The mass setting is the Christ Church Mass by Philip Mathias [TIS, 757]. The choir will also sing the Gregorian communion chant for the week, Ego sum Pastor Bonus, using the edition from the American Gradual. It'll make a nice change from the usual psalm tone that we use for singing the communion sentence. Incidentally, I'd like to sing a quick phrase in praise of the Church Music Association of America, whose website can be found here. They have been making all sorts of wonderful resources available for a long time; since arriving in my job in the parish I've made good use of their English language chant publications, which are ideal material for a small choir where the skill levels and learning habits are quite disparate. Given that most of the texts for the major propers are the same between the Roman books and the current Australian prayerbook, it all dovetails quite nicely. Finally, the organ music for the week is as follows. Prelude: Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann -- Edmund T. Chipp (1823-1886) Postlude: Toccata [BWV 540] -- J.S. Bach (1685-1750) If you're in this part of Melbourne, do come along!

Tour of the Anglican Parish of Jika Jika, Part 1

One of the career hazards of being an organist is the amount of time one spends around churches! My current post is as Director of Music in the Anglican Parish of Jika Jika. The parish is a recent amalgamation (2008) of three formerly independent parishes in the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne -- St George's, Reservoir, All Saints, Preston, and St Mary's, East Preston. The process of amalgamation is still in progress: the three centres still have a core group of people who regard their church as an independent entity, with all the jostling for resources that entails. I am 'resident' as organist at All Saints, Preston, but my remit extends to the musical resources of the whole parish. This means that I put the music list together, and conduct a joint rehearsal for the two choirs in the parish each week. If you're in this part of the world, and you'd like to join a choir, please get in touch! I'd like to share some images of All Saints. The building was designed by Louis Williams, one of Australia's most prolific church architects, and built in stages from the 1930s. While the exterior is OK -- the tower is a real disappointment, hence the screen of trees along the fence line -- the interior is magnificent, if a bit plain. This gives you a panorama of the interior looking east (the church is built along a geographical east-west axis). When I first saw the building, I was immediately reminded of the cathedral at Wangaratta. Williams was the architect who oversaw the completion of that cathedral, so it's tempting to see All Saints as a reflection of that influence. Among the furnishings, the church has a very handsome pulpit, and amply proportioned pews. And here is the view looking in the opposite direction. Before describing the organ, here is a view that shows what could be. Below is a photo of the south wall of the chancel, where the openings for the organ chamber are bricked up. Had the money held out, there would have been a nice large and open chamber here, but -- alas! -- it was not to be. The organ was built by a local firm, George Fincham & Sons, and installed at All Saints in 1949 to mark the diamond jubilee of the founding of the parish. It's your standard bed post-style case, with the swell box buried away in the aisle. Unusually for an instrument of this vintage and style, all the facade pipes speak.

Here's the specification:

Great	Open Diapason Clarabella Dulciana Principal Fifteenth Swell to Great Swell Superoctave to Great Swell Suboctave to Great	8’ 8’ 8’ 4’ 2’	A A A
Swell	Open Diapason Gedeckt Gamba Voix Celestes Clear Flute Oboe Swell Superoctave Swell Suboctave	8’ 8’ 8’ 8’ 4’ 8’
Pedal	Sub Bass Bass Flute Great to Pedal Swell to Pedal	16’ 8’	B B

I will post a sound sample or two when I get round to it. This instrument does soft sounds quite nicely, but anything beyond about mezzo forte is reliably disappointing. Having a principal chorus built out of an extension rank doesn't help; using a "gapped" registration (eg: Gt 8' +2') is OK as long as the swell octave to great is drawn in order to fill the gap. The most frustrating aspect of the instrument is the Oboe: it sounds like a dead cat being re-strangled! It's a very modest instrument, and hasn't worn well with time. There's also some very fine glass in the windows, so here's a selection.

[Epiphany window, north aisle] [Christ in Glory, north aisle] [St Peter, south porch] [St Cecilia, north porch. ] One of the daughter churches of All Saints was St Cecilia's, West Preston, now closed. The chapel in the base of the tower is dedicated to St Cecilia, and the window in the porch also marks the connection. [Christ the King, chancel window]

All seasons, many parts -- the first entry.

Having spent the last couple of years exploring the world of bloggery from the perspective of the reader, I've finally decided to throw my hat in and give it a shot. This is the "hello world" post! I am a Melbourne-based musician and researcher. This blog is intended to cover a number of my personal interests. I have just finished my Ph.D. in musicology at the University of Melbourne, where my thesis looked at the development of the music courses in that university. My broad area is the history of music education in the British Empire; right now I've spent four years focussing very narrowly on Britain and Victoria (Australia) -- I'm hoping to expand that focus over time. Among my other activities, I am also a professional organist, so I will be posting tracks from my practice sessions here from time to time, excerpts from upcoming recital programmes, and samples of wedding and funeral music. There will be a donation button soon: the principle will be that the tracks are free for you to download and share, and if you like what you hear, please buy me a beer (or two). I have a strong interest in Melbourne's history, so there will be entries here exploring the sights and sounds of the place, and the odd effort at sharing my work on certain historical figures. If you're looking to visit Melbourne, I hope you will find plenty here to spur your enthusiasm for the place. While I don't buy all the marketing fluff about Melbourne's livability, it is true that this has to be one of the best places on earth. So, welcome to my blog!