Choral music and Radio 3's priorities

[jean]

Exactly.

Even some amateur string quartets manage empathetic and truly musical performances.

To say that a dearth of top-rank choral directors means there can never be much half-decent choral singing seems to me pessimistic in the extreme.

(I think I replied before your edit, with which I entirely agree.)

[mopsus]

I'm coming rather late to this discussion so backtracking a bit.

Like others I sense a general move from larger choirs to smaller ones. Not necessarily a bad thing in all cases. I lived in Manchester in the 1990s and found that there were very few chamber choirs in the city. With some singers holding down places in more than one of them, it meant that relatively few people in the city had a chance to sing in this sort of group. I notice that several chamber choirs were founded there around the turn of the millennium, just after I moved away, so other people noticed the gap in the market too.

Around the same time the Cambridge University Musical Society Chorus changed from being predominantly 'gown' to predominantly 'town' as students lost interest in singing in it. I'm told that larger choirs are out of favour with students there now, which means that they are missing out on an experience which some might enjoy.

Like some others on this board I have experience of the Bristol choral scene and have been on waiting lists to join choirs there. The use of waiting lists is partly a question of choir administration. One choir there was rather notorious for some years for putting prospective singers on waiting lists and forgetting about them, because of a fierce membership secretary. They lost quite a few good singers to other choirs as a result! On the other hand, there was a time about a dozen years ago when there were too many choirs in Bristol for the number of singers available. An auditioned choir with a good reputation went under because it lost so many members it became unviable. Recruitment of singers does not seem to be a big problem there at the moment, but there are a lot of choirs and with that a struggle to avoid clashes of concert dates and duplication of programmes. Another discussion, I suppose! And there seem to be plenty of talented choral directors around, as recent vacancies in Bath and Bristol have had no shortage of impressive applicants.

And perhaps I've been fortunate, but actually I've found myself much less likely to have my head bitten off when posting on The Choir forum than when I've ventured on to other Radio 3 forums here.

[french frank]

And perhaps I've been fortunate, but actually I've found myself much less likely to have my head bitten off when posting on The Choir forum than when I've ventured on to other Radio 3 forums here.

I know - I got the rules wrong on Alphabet Associations right at the beginning and I've never dared venture back again

[antongould]

I know - I got the rules wrong on Alphabet Associations right at the beginning and I've never dared venture back again

I should think not Rules is Rules ......

[cloughie]

I should think not Rules is Rules ......

Flouting the Coleslaw is the only major offence.

Yes, but it can be fun!

Where else can you deliver a total and convincing answer, correct i all respects, and be totally wrong. I've run out of drawing boards to return to. And we're 1000% more welcoming than jazz boards.

[Gabriel Jackson]

Do you mean words in English or in Latin, Gabriel ? They're the most sung languages in this country.

I mean all languages really.
If, for example, a choir doesn't know what "Balulalow" means (as a choir I was working with didn't) they are not going to sing the relevant phrase as if it were a lullaby (which they didn't).

When I was working with the State Choir Latvija on what became this http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA67976; the title track, with a text by the Estonian Doris Kareva, is ostensibly a rather sad seascape but when I explained that the poem as written in Soviet times they immediately understood that the longed-for ship which may not arrive was...independence. Their performance after that was utterly transformed. It was quite extraordinary.

I have never been in a rehearsal yet when talking with the singers about the meaning of the text (on a micro- or macro- level) and how they might convey it as vividly as possible hasn't changed their performance for the better.

[jean]

...a text by the Estonian Doris Kareva, is ostensibly a rather sad seascape but when I explained that the poem as written in Soviet times they immediately understood that the longed-for ship which may not arrive was...independence...

A bit like the way your performance of Civitas Sanci tui is transformed when you realise that Byrd was a Catholic recuant.

[teamsaint]

One important reason, I believe, why youngsters are not seen in choirs much nowadays is that their jobs are more demanding than, for example, the ones which my wife and I had 30 or more years ago. Even after ferrying the kids to music lessons etc. we still had the time and energy to go to a weekly dancing class and I pursued my musical activities (choral singing and playing the piano) with vigour. In my job it was considered ok to work ones contracted number of hours and to take an hour for lunch (seems like another world now). Nowadays all the employees I know, such as schoolteachers, social workers and managers, are under the most ridiculous pressure and have little or no time or energy to spare from work and family life.

absolutely, Rauschy.

pressures in the jobs you have mentioned, as well as many others, and the rewards offered, are way out of line with anything approaching a work/life balance.
and sadly, i don't see things getting any better right now.

[light_calibre_baritone]

A bit like the way your performance of Civitas Sanci tui is transformed when you realise that Byrd was a Catholic recuant.

Or when you get to "asperges me hyssopo et mundabor" in James MacMillan's Miserere mei and there is his faith in musical form. Astonishing.

[mercia]

at the risk of being facetious (or simple-minded), different composers set the same words in very different ways, don't they? (e.g. the mass). The words don't change their meaning from one setting to the next, but the way we sing them surely does.

[WmByrd]

Well yes, except that a group of people used to singing together, senritive to each other and to the significance of what they are singing, will sometimes manage to rise above the fact of not being directed by one of the handful of truly inspired choral directors available.

If it were not so, how would Stile Antico manage?

Do they?

[Gabriel Jackson]

at the risk of being facetious (or simple-minded), different composers set the same words in very different ways, don't they? (e.g. the mass). The words don't change their meaning from one setting to the next, but the way we sing them surely does.

That doesn't seem facetious or simple-minded! But, surely, meaning is not fixed, and the way that different composers set the same text can change the meaning as can the differing emphases and approach of different singers?

[ardcarp]

The words of the Mass surely elicit different responses from composers. For some (Stravinsky?) they did not try to express anything, let alone word-paint. An emotional froideur can strangely be just as much a vehicle to faith as attempts to capture everything from the grandeur of the Gloria to the sanctity of the Sanctus.

[Gabriel Jackson]

For some (Stravinsky?) they did not try to express anything, let alone word-paint.

I don't think any composer tries not to express anything.

An emotional froideur can strangely be just as much a vehicle to faith as attempts to capture everything from the grandeur of the Gloria to the sanctity of the Sanctus.

Is the froideur in the music, though, or in the imagination of the listener as s/he experiences it?

[jean]

I was very shocked when I first sang Josquin's setting of the Easter sequence Victimae paschali, which includes the words Credendum est magis soli Mariae veraci/Quam Judaeorum turbae fallaci which were rightly expunged from the Misal as early as 1570 and which I had never heard.

How to express properly such a text?