Something for Bastille day

Belated ANZAC day posting

Not bad for a group of 19 year-olds!

St Cecilia II: Benjamin Britten posting

All Souls day

All Saints day

St Cecilia's day

The time of year

In Safeway it's been Christmas for a little while already.  At the end of October, there was a distinct feeling of dissonance as imported Hallowe'en "traditions" vied for aisle space with way-way early Yuletide goods. But now it's just back to the pre-emptive flogging of festive paraphernalia.  This is that odd time of the year, where we're stuck between seasons.  Summer has arrived -- at least psychologically -- since the Melbourne Cup was run.  People are beginning to see that the end of the year is near, and in a week or two the end-of-year break-up party round will be starting up.

If you sing in a choir, then you'll most likely be getting into the swing of knocking off the easy bits of your coming carols services and other December commitments.  I've been practicing carols with a couple of choirs lately, although things only seem to start coming together after the racing carnival is done.  This year I only have to worry about getting the performance of a few things to work well, rather than generating the structure for the whole shebang, as has happened in the last few years.

The hardest task in any carol for most choirs is remembering that there are vowels in the phrases below.  Best to practice it nice and s l o w l y...

Practice aides

Music in the bear-pit: a modern parable in aid of funding policy...?

Five minutes a day

At the moment I'm taking care of two groups of adult singers while a couple of colleagues are away.  Both groups cover the generational spectrum, and include people ranging from 20-somethings up to 80-somethings.

When I do these sorts of locums, a couple of consistent questions crop up in conversations with the singers.  How do we sound?  What can I do to improve my performance in the group?

One of the particular challenges of singing in a church choir is that Sunday morning simply must mean business.  In twenty minutes there is a lot to be dealt with.  If there is no weekday rehearsal there is a further degree of intensity to ensure everything is covered in time.  One aspect of a singing group's corporate habits that invariably goes by the board is technical development, both of the group as a whole and for individuals who might want to address specific issues.  Over the last fifteen years I have often found myself recommending a five-minute routine for the weekdays, and it goes something like this:

1. Open up the body by stretching gently and slowly for a minute.  Make sure your feet are planted securely at shoulder width.  One sequence I use a lot is the three trees: stretching up like a Cyprus (with children: "pencil tree"); stretching outwards like an Oak tree, gently swaying in the breeze; and stretching downwards like a Weeping Willow.  End by standing tall and rolling the shoulders forwards and backwards.
2. Practice deep breathing.  This step can take up to two minutes.  Breathing through the mouth, try to place your breath so that it feels like you're filling your body right down to the toes: try to make your big toes tingle while feeling your back lengthening and your jaw relaxing downwards.  Let the breath go with a sigh, then make a siren sound, starting high and gliding downwards.  Activate the sound from the belly (if you're having trouble finding this sensation, try breathing deeply and letting it go with a series of short sharp hisses). Do this four or five times, starting higher each time.  Through all of this, check that your posture is relaxed and tall, and that your face is stretching vertically.
3. Sing something familiar.  Sing it with words, on a vowel, or humming (lips closed, making a ng sound).  This step can become the link to practicing new repertoire, or sustaining existing pieces.

There are lots of things one can do to build on from this very basic routine.  You could add vocalises, or do some specific voice-building exercises.  In a rehearsal situation, I usually follow step 1 with a series of non-vocal sounds that focus on building up breath placement and control, moving through sirens and humming to definite pitch before carrying on with the work of the rehearsal.  In this case, the warmup is part of a larger task -- encouraging creative perception and responsiveness towards the music we're singing.

Something you don't see every day

Further thoughts on organ practice

Over the last few years I've had leisure to listen to other organists at work.  It's often been edifying, and I seldom come away with some sort of insight that helps me along my stumbling road when next I mount the organ bench.

I'd like to broach a topic that I am convinced few people consider.  It's the issue of where and how one listens while playing the organ.

For many organists, the primary challenge is to get fingers and feet in the right place at the right time.  So many people have basic technical problems that much of their performance energy is burnt up keeping the piece going that external issues, such as how the performance actually sounds, go by the board.

When I was preparing for a competition several years ago, my teacher rounded on me in frustration and exhorted me to listen to the room -- to put my ears on the back wall of the large cathedral where I was practicing -- and stop obsessing on console management.  He was right.  As soon as my concentration shifted out to the space, all the console management issues and technical problems resolved themselves.

I won yet another of my second prizes in that competition, and with my prize money I went out and bought a minidisk recorder.  This has proved to be one of my best investments over the long term, and has allowed me to focus on the details of performance goals while not loosing sight of the whole.  Another of my teachers announced herself as virtually redundant when she saw how I generated useful score markings resulting from a probing listening session of a practice tape.

I use three steps when listening to practice tapes.

First, I look for what happens when problems arise.  This step must be taken away from the instrument, preferably sitting at a table with the score and a pencil.  A mistake is usually prepared about a bar or two before it occurs, so careful listening can reveal the roots of the problem.  These problems are often technical rather than accidental.  These sorts of issues can then be isolated in practice and dealt with.

Secondly, listening to practice tapes allows me to assess registration schemes.  Sometimes it is necessary to make subtle changes to stops in order to keep the whole effect sounding consistent, for example, where regulation across the whole compass of a group of stops is variable, leading to a lack of cohesion in the bass while the treble blends effectively.  Sometimes combinations that sound good at the console just don't work in the building, and the recording device provides an audience-ear perspective.

Finally, articulation and phrasing.  In a large, resonant building more articulation may be needed in order project a clear legato line, or non-legato lines may need to be joined up to sound effective.  Equally, in a small room with no resonance there may need to be some compromise to achieve a good musical effect.  A practice tape will tell you all you need to know.

The last two steps can have implications for one's understanding of the structure of a piece.  Registration can be used to amplify phrasing, or to help delineate structural markers in a piece.  For example, much of the music by French symphonic organ composers uses registration directions to mark transitions between sections.  Equally, understanding the large-scale musical periods of a piece can inform detailed phrasing decisions by highlighting thematic material passed over in the process of note-learning.  These steps ought to be the tools by which one increases analytical awareness of musical structure.

There are a number of organists around the world who post their weekly postludes on parish or personal websites.  I think this is a useful exercise, as it can provide an overview of one's larger program, but often wonder if they are using these tapes to critique their own work.  For example, I can think of one Melbourne-based organist who tapes his weekly performance without seeming to give much thought to the fact that most of his postludes sound the same.  Every recording in the website archive uses the same sort of full organ, and I wonder if there are any softer registers in the instrument at all.  After listening to three or four pieces, I have to admit that the sound began to pall on my ear.  For my own taste, there's nothing more thrilling than a rapid passage played on 8' and 4' flutes, or something with a stateley swing using the foundation stops, or contrasting effects that play off reeds against flues.  I have no doubt his congregation appreciates him, but wonder if anyone wishes he'd play the occasional non-loud postlude.  Using this sound record would help him to vary the texture, thereby enriching the experience of his listeners.

Listening objectively to one's own playing is a vital step in the practice routine, and too few organists do it.  If you're wondering what do to improve your own performance, my advice is simple.  Buy a decent recording device, learn how to adjust it, and listen to the results.  Learn to be your own most demanding critic.

Doppelganger

Doing some cooking

Every now and then, I end up playing the organ for some intriguing occasions.  Funerals and weddings are pretty normal fare, but it's rare to be asked to work up a day's worth of music.  One of these latter types of invitation landed on my mailbox a few months ago, so today I found myself returning to an old haunt to help entertain the punters at St Peter's, Eastern Hill, for the National Trust Open House weekend.

Putting a large amount of music together isn't a hard task in itself -- for me, the biggest question is how to limit the material.  Fifteen years of producing the goods on a weekly basis means a big repertoire, although today I tried to focus on a blend of complete works with a good dose of lollipops.

One of set of the lollipops resulted in a flash mob.  I had a set of pieces focusing on John Stanley and G.F. Handel.  For a lark I decided to include Theodore Dubois's transcription of the Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah.  The group of Stanley voluntaries in the first part of the set ended up gathering an audience response, so I was half-expecting some sort of a response when I got to the Handel piece at the end.  By about halfway through the chorus I could hear the building filling up, and when I got to the short fugue I found I suddenly had an impromptu choir joining in.  What a thrill!

Mood music

Here is Pablo Casals playing the last two movements of Bach's first Gamba Sonata.

I first heard this recording in 1997, although I don't know much about the pianist.  Casals had recently come onto my radar via a documentary about his life.

These two movements catch a good amount of the Casals approach to Bach, and I still refer back to this recording when working on the G major trio sonata (same as the second movement in this video, but rescored for the organ).  Casals gives this such a deeply musical reading, taste and fashion in early music performance techniques just melts into insignificance.

Something for today

Today is the proper day for keeping the feast of Corpus Christi.  Those who watch the world of traditional Catholic goings-on will notice a swag of photographs of monstrances and canopies over the next few days, although most parishes will be keeping today's feast on Sunday.

Here's Jeff Buckley doing something ethereal with the Corpus Christi Carol.

The birthday boy

Johann Sebastian Bach was born 327 years ago today.

Why not visit James Kibbie's complete recording of Bach's organ music?  Go on, treat yourself!

Quote of the week

From Stephen Sondheim:

Music is a foreign language that everyone knows but only musicians can speak.

A song for Julia Gillard

Why the current government allowed itself to be shanghied by the opposition's humanly and intellectually incoherent stance on refugees arriving by boat is a question that defies all explanation.  The finding from the High Court last week simply underlines the arid worldview that has led the Prime Minister to defy even her own party's policy platform, which clearly favors onshore administration of asylum claims.

So far, the best moment in the rather breathless slather of press coverage was Tony Abbott offering to help the government legislate the Opposition's policy into place.  If you ever needed proof that the Liberals are being led by a complete stranger to the world of reality (as commonly accepted), there you have it.  Attempting to enact party policy in a permanent way when out of government is quite bold, even if the government has ended up capitulating to it anyway.

It's all a bit baffling, like the plot of an opera buffa or a court maske.  Which leads me to a musical free association that occurred to me while walking down the street today.

Nobody knows precisely why Dido fades out in Purcell's magnificent opera, although she does it with undeniable style.  In the modern setting, she'd probably find another boy to get infatuated with and carry on carrying on while carping about the iniquities of the male race.  Or, maybe, as a head of government (Queen of Carthage, after all!) she'd work on social policy and get hefty on border protection while wafting rhetorical nothings about people who set their alarm clocks in order to be up and ready for work three hours before they go to bed.

Anyhow, here's the result of my free association game from this afternoon.