CE St Matthew's Church, Northampton 21st Sept 2011

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  • decantor
    Full Member
    • Dec 2010
    • 521

    #16
    Originally posted by ardcarp View Post
    Some good, well-directed singing from St Walt...sorry, I mean St Matthews's today. I expect there are a few of us who could have wished for a slightly 'cleaner' top line, but the female Cambridge sound seems to be going that way. At times, in fact, they did manage a purer sound in some quieter bits. The T & B made a lovely sound ...particularly good in the Britten...and there had obviously been some attention to blend. I love the Walton canticles. Pity they're so short.

    I DON'T LIKE HALF PAST THREE !!!!
    If I had the knack for conciseness, I would have written just what ardcarp wrote, including his final scream of irritation. I wonder how he read my mind - or I his.

    Being a wordier cove, I might have added that the Leighton was a very tasty hors-d'-oeuvre. I would certainly, like Draco, complain that cat Jeffrey had turned into a panther - still a noble beast, but not quite the elegant, every-day familiar that inspired Smart and Britten. Worse was to follow: boys fling themselves at the words "Silly fellow! Silly fellow!", and create pathos out of bathos in doing so (as Britten surely intended); that point was somehow missed today. Similarly, Walton knew he was writing for boys at Chichester, and played to their strengths as well as his own. Why do the mixed choirs elect to trespass so gratuitously? Clare have an impressively handy choir that delivered some gorgeous moments, especially at pianissimo, but I felt they suffered all the disadvantages of singing away from home.

    Yes, Draco - I too thought the engineering extraordinary. The spoken parts shook my neighbours' brickwork, while the choir were at times all but inaudible.
    Last edited by decantor; 22-09-11, 00:43.

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    • ardcarp
      Late member
      • Nov 2010
      • 11102

      #17
      Great minds and all that, decantor.

      Why do the mixed choirs elect to trespass so gratuitously?
      I have to demur ever so slightly here. I know what you mean of course, but I do think anyone's perfectly entitled to sing anything...and there is indeed an adult choir here in the West Country which makes a very good fist at the 'boys' own' repertory. There is one bit of Britten which just HAS to be sung either by a boy or by a pure, innocent and slightly vulnerable-sounding soprano; and that is the 'Oh dear white children casual as birds' from the Hymn to St Cecilia. I just want to die when I hear it done (for instance) by the BBC Singers.

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      • mopsus
        Full Member
        • Nov 2010
        • 833

        #18
        I would suggest another (though it isn't liturgical): the Te decet hymnus from the War Requiem. When sung by boys there is the poignancy that today's singers may one day be combatants. But the one time I sang the work this bit was performed by teenage girls (with hideous vowels, but that's another story).

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        • David Underdown

          #19
          Well of course women can now serve in virtually all branches of the armed services (they are still barred from explicitly combat roles in the army, but they have served as medics under fir with Michelle Norris being awarded the MC for her actions under fire. A female Typhoon pilot participated in operations in Libya - there's even been a female Red Arrow)

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          • Gabriel Jackson
            Full Member
            • May 2011
            • 686

            #20
            Originally posted by ardcarp View Post
            Great minds and all that, decantor.



            I have to demur ever so slightly here. I know what you mean of course, but I do think anyone's perfectly entitled to sing anything...and there is indeed an adult choir here in the West Country which makes a very good fist at the 'boys' own' repertory. There is one bit of Britten which just HAS to be sung either by a boy or by a pure, innocent and slightly vulnerable-sounding soprano; and that is the 'Oh dear white children casual as birds' from the Hymn to St Cecilia. I just want to die when I hear it done (for instance) by the BBC Singers.
            Britten, presumably, would not share that wish as the piece was premiered by....the BBC Singers!

            Comment

            • Simon Biazeck

              #21
              Originally posted by Gabriel Jackson View Post
              Britten, presumably, would not share that wish as the piece was premiered by....the BBC Singers!
              And if I'm not mistaken, A Ceremony of Carols was given its first performance by the sopranos and altos of St Bride's, Fleet Street, who still sing it every year. We composers are nothing, if not practical (or should be!) when it comes to performances of our works. If you aren't you will soon learn to be!

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              • mopsus
                Full Member
                • Nov 2010
                • 833

                #22
                If women can now serve in the armed forces, surely they should now also be recognised to be capable of appreciating and singing Anglican chant! So many of them do this now as girls in cathedrals and/or later in university chapel choirs anyway. I recall with horror an Evensong in Manchester Cathedral a few years ago when the psalmody I'd been looking forward to was replaced by a hymn because 'the congegation was mostly from the Mother's Union' (the presiding clergyman's words in the service).

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                • Simon

                  #23
                  Well, given that apparently we had to have yet another Oxbridge mixed choir singing in Northampton - who chooses these and why? one wonders - follow the money, eh? -they made a good job of it. Clare often impresses me and one of their recordings is a favourite - one can hardly tell there are women involved in that one.

                  But you could today, with soprano vibrato in some of the most appallingly boring and formulaic repertoire that I've ever heard in one short hour. Leighton's responses are among his worst compositions, the Walton Mag is nothing but irritating (though the Nunc is not as unpleasant) and Britten, for all his sparks of genius elsewhere, was surely having an off day when he wrote R/L, of which the best thing one could say is that it's a meandering, tuneless, disjointed mess. No wonder our DoM never scheduled it.

                  Thank heavens for the psalm - superbly sung, I thought - and a decent final hymn.

                  Comment

                  • Mary Chambers
                    Full Member
                    • Nov 2010
                    • 1963

                    #24
                    Originally posted by Simon View Post
                    and Britten, for all his sparks of genius elsewhere, was surely having an off day when he wrote R/L, of which the best thing one could say is that it's a meandering, tuneless, disjointed mess. No wonder our DoM never scheduled it.
                    Is this a joke?

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                    • DracoM
                      Host
                      • Mar 2007
                      • 12995

                      #25
                      Can't stand the way you sit on the fence, simon.

                      Actually, I would back simon up to a point: it was certainly noticeable how different the Clare Choir sounded under Graham Ross and how it sounded under Tim Brown, particularly on the top lines, and on that showing, by so doing, GR seems to be making the Clare Choir pretty well indistinguishable from almost any other of the hybrid rent-a-Cantab-choirs that seem to be proliferating. Bit of a shame. I truly appreciated the Tim Brown years. .

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                      • Simon

                        #26
                        Originally posted by Mary Chambers View Post
                        Is this a joke?
                        No Mary. No joke. He never did schedule it, at least whilst I was there.

                        I know that you revere all things by Saint Ben, but it is just possible, isn't it, that not all he wrote was at superlative, genius level?

                        Compared with Cecilia, which is a good work both to sing and to listen to, Rejoice isn't even in sight. In my opinion, of course.

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                        • Mary Chambers
                          Full Member
                          • Nov 2010
                          • 1963

                          #27
                          Originally posted by Simon View Post
                          No Mary. No joke. He never did schedule it, at least whilst I was there.

                          I know that you revere all things by Saint Ben, but it is just possible, isn't it, that not all he wrote was at superlative, genius level?

                          Compared with Cecilia, which is a good work both to sing and to listen to, Rejoice isn't even in sight. In my opinion, of course.
                          I was actually questioning your opinion of the piece, not whether your choirmaster scheduled it. You are quite right, of course, that Saint Ben varied. I can live without the organ piece played at the end of this CE, for instance. However, I think that Rejoice is easily as good as St Cecilia, and I've sung them both. They both date from his very fertile early period that culminated in Grimes. In some ways Cecilia is more rewarding to sing, simply because it's unaccompanied, but Rejoice is a very original and imaginative work, which I always found exciting and moving. Auden has a part to play in both, because he introduced BB to the Smart poem.

                          (I know I'm only a girl, and therefore in the eyes of some of you shouldn't be singing these things, but I assure you I don't have a wobbly vibrato-laden voice - at least I didn't when I was still singing - wouldn't be too sure now! )

                          Comment

                          • ardcarp
                            Late member
                            • Nov 2010
                            • 11102

                            #28
                            I have to agree with Mary C about Rejoice in the Lamb. A fine piece. And I agree too about Britten's 'fertile early period'. And wern't those singers called something like 'The Wireless Singers' in those days? One of Britten's very finest pieces dating from this earlier period is 'A Boy was Born' which is a set of choral variations. They too were premiered by those singers (along with the boys of St Mark's, Audley St [?]). The best available version is by Polyphony with St Paul's boys. Order it for Christmas! What a pity this difficult but very beautiful piece isn't heard more often.

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                            • Gabriel Jackson
                              Full Member
                              • May 2011
                              • 686

                              #29
                              Originally posted by Simon View Post
                              one can hardly tell there are women involved in that one.
                              Is that a good thing?

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                              • Simon

                                #30
                                Originally posted by Gabriel Jackson View Post
                                Is that a good thing?
                                Well, it depends entirely, I suppose, on your preference as to the sound that is made. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I prefer the sound made by the traditional English cathedral choirs of boys and men with which I grew up and in which I took part.

                                But that's not to say, of course, that those who like other sounds made by other vocal combinations aren't equally as entitled to their own particular preferences. Variety is the spice, etc.

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