many choir directors continually strive to achieve it
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....not to mention chamber music players, orchestral musicians and AFAIK gamelans and Andean nose-flute ensembles. -
LTFCOriginally posted by LTFC1990 View Post
If you take choirs that have girls up to age 18 on the top line, for example, it is ridiculous to try to compare these with choirs that use much younger girls ( usually aged 10 to 14 ) Older teenage girls are bound to be much more accomplished in all sorts of ways. Some of the younger girls will be better than some of their peer top lines especially if they have a preponderance of girls at the top end of the age range and that is about the most you can say.
As for boys: the main consideration for me is that their voices and characters are so much more unreliable than girls of the same age range ( immaturity and lack of concentration for example ) which makes them much more difficult to train and cajole into becoming a really top class ensemble. The really first rate boys top lines stand out by a mile from their peers.
Most lay clerks are very capable singers but even here some cathedrals/colleges will clearly stand out from others.
You really could establish a Premier League of choirs of boys and men in our cathedral and college foundations.
Like football clubs, some will be much better resourced than others but some will punch considerably above their weight. The latter are the truly outstanding choirs.
VCCComment
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Don't quite agree with the idea of the back row "striving" to blend with front - surely that's the Director's doing.
Blend makes me think of mixing paint... I don't want to stand looking at one colour, I'd like a vast palette.Comment
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Some directors clearly don't choose to tame the Fat Bulls of Basan.. Anyway, dance away on the head of a pin about my casual use of the word 'blend'. Everyone knows what I meant even if they pretend they don't. Who hasn't heard a choir with a tenor (for instance) sticking out like a sore thumb? Or one soprano who doesn't 'fit' with the rest? And I recently attended a CE in person at one of the flagship places where the top line was drowned by the AT+B and the whole choir was drowned by the organ. Talking of 'palettes' is to muddy the waters. A choir as a body can produce many different colours ranging from soft and husky to loud and bright with all sorts of variation in between. There are times when individual lines...individual voices even...need to come to the fore. This is stating the b******g obvious, isn't ti? Choral singing generally involves matching your sound to others around you...doesn't it?Don't quite agree with the idea of the back row "striving" to blend with front - surely that's the Director's doing.Comment
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Hear, hear!Comment
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Have just heard the repeat broadcast. Nothing alters my enthusiasm for Wells' psalm-singing. Thanks again.Comment
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Mrs Ardcarp's father, of fond memory, was passionate about Psalms of the Anglican variety. He was the proud possessor (in the 1950s) of a Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder. He would record the Psalms from Choral Evensong (then 2X per week and on the Home Service, I think) via a mike near the radio. He gained great solace from listening to them over and over again. He was less interested in other parts of the service, though he was fond of hymns too.
He had fought in Burma as an officer in the Royal Engineers during WW2, and amazingly his wind-up gramophone plus a case of shellac 78s survived the jungle and is now a hallowed possession in our attic. So also reel upon reel of Psalms...not, alas, of hi-fi quality.
I should add that he was a regular attendee at Wells Christmas Carol Service which was always (quite correctly some would say) on Boxing Day.Comment
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Why not? The text for any piece of music should dictate the interpretation... From Schubert songs to Murrill in E, I expect a plethora of colours! I often find quite a few (but certainly not all) interpretations of early choral music to be very monotone.Originally posted by Vox Humana View PostComment
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By "wall" I meant any given piece of music; but perhaps I should have written "at any one time". I am certainly not against tonal variety (depending on the piece at hand), but I do expect a choir to sound like a unit, not a collection of individuals. I agree that one or two professional early music choirs can sound very bland, but that is, as you point out, a matter of interpretation and has nothing to do with blend. I could name choirs who sing in a very similar style, but whose performances are as engaging as the one or two are not. Two that come to mind are the late, lamented Clerkes of Oxenford and Stile Antico, but they are not the only ones. David Wulstan's ideal with the Clerkes was that each voice part should have a certain individuality of tone, but in such a way that they all still nevertheless formed a coherent unit - a rather different concept of blend from trying to get everyone to sound as closely similar as possible, but a very practical approach nonetheless.Originally posted by light_calibre_baritone View PostComment
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Like that careful exegesis, VH.Comment
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All I meant was that Wells, a very tiny place compared with most of where you London-centric posters listen to choirs, is a fantastically exciting choir to listen to on a wet Tuesday in November. And to hear them last week on top form on CE was a privilege. And their organist was very, very good indeed.Comment
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Indeed, but unlike a number of foundations, Wells has access to the terrific Wells Cathedral School talent - one of the nation's foremost 'music schools'. So, in a sense, maybe they should be jostling for top spots with that at their disposal, shouldn't they? Just a thought. More power to them, I say.
I just thought they were all having to be a bit shouty here and there.Comment
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Sorry to be off topic but anyone who enjoyed this evensong because of the Finzi (I include myself here) might be interested to know that stained glass honouring his memory is to installed in Gloucester Cathedral in June 2016, near the recently dedicated window for Ivor Gurney. The Finzi Trust has details:
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