Festival of Nine lessons and Carols 24th / 25th Dec 2010

[Magnificat]

[QUOTE=cheryltweedy;17797]

I went to evensong this year for the first time in a while and two things struck me compared to when I went regularly in the late 80's.

cheryl,

I haven't been to KIng's for ages but when I used to go regularly it was always very difficult to hear the spoken parts of the services and the readers always seemed to be shouting to make themselves heard. On radio and TV you can always hear the lessons etc, perfectly an entirely different experience to being there in person it seems to me.

Am I mistaken about this? Are things better in this respect now than they seemed to me years ago? If they haven't got a sound system surely it would be possible these days to have something that is discreet enough not to offend any aesthetic sensibilities and make a visit to the chapel for aesrvice a better experience all round.

[cheryltweedy]

The accoustic of the place did - if I remember rightly- encourages people to speak in a rather affected, dramatic, and overly formal way - so that much of the intimacy of the liturgy was lost. Inversely it encouraged the choir to sing very quietly.
On my recent visit the readers spoke normally - alas i could not hear them, and I most definitely heard the choir. If you are looking for something spiritual not really the place to go to- particularly as the congregation are herded in like cattle. The places where you could actually hear the choir and all its parts equally (up in the stalls) were usually taken by severe looking fellows.

[cheryltweedy]

Also, VCC very astute of you to point out that layton's boys were poor at Temple - it does not always hold that because you can conduct boys you can conduct adults and vice versa. Is it something about Cambridge men that they sing in this rather emboldened and faux operatic way? I noticed this at King's and SJC as you noted earlier.

[Vile Consort]

Kings experimented with a sound system some years ago but it didn't become a permanent feature. But the readers do need to declaim in a rather act-or ly fashion and the congregation have to sit very still and listen very hard. People aren't used to having to do that. I imagine if you are at all hard of hearing, it is impossible.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Did anyone (other than myself) like the new Cleobury descant for "O Come, all ye Faithful"?

[cheryltweedy]

I grudgingly admit to liking it. It seems strange that he wrote so many bad descants before and then came up with that one!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Yes indeed. His strike rate it fairly shocking: 2 bad ones for "Once in Royal", an even worse one for "Hark, the Herald", and a poor one and a good one for "O Come..."

[jean]

Someone posted this on TCIY:

I'm trying to find a choral piece I heard on Nine Lessons and Carols this year, but it's eluding me. It started (I think it was the start) with the phrase "Lux, lux". I've re-listened on i-player and scoured the web site (link below) but can't seem to locate it at all. Can anyone help?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbradio4/NF2766774?thread=7960815

[DracoM]

New College Oxford began their Advent service with O Nata Lux by Campkin?

IIRC, nothing in R4 / 3 Fest Lesson / Carols that began 'Lux, Lux'.was there? One of the other televised KCC broadcasts?

[Lizzie]

Someone posted this on TCIY:

I'm trying to find a choral piece I heard on Nine Lessons and Carols this year, but it's eluding me. It started (I think it was the start) with the phrase "Lux, lux". I've re-listened on i-player and scoured the web site (link below) but can't seem to locate it at all. Can anyone help?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbradio4/NF...thread=7960815

Might it have been Eric Whitacre's Lux Aurumque on the tv broadcast of Christmas Eve rather than the radio service? Best. Flu-ridden Liz!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The other thing I noticed was that that the singers (boys included) used a great deal more vibrato in their singing. This supposedly free sound caused the sound to blur and distort in the space of the chapel - my general feeling being that it was more exciting and gripping but far less blended than under Willcocks.

This is disappointing. Some like the earthiness of boys singing in the Russell Burgess Wandsworth School Choir style. But it isn't right for a cathedral/chapel choir. The purer Willcocks style is much to be preferred - call it "cooing" if you wish. I'd rather call it perfect.

[cheryltweedy]

This is disappointing. The purer Willcocks style is much to be preferred - call it "cooing" if you wish. I'd rather call it perfect.

I agree with you Eine, but in all fairness to King's they are often criticised from two completely different sides.
One such side appears nostalgic for a return to the Willcocks style, and others who bemoan a choir they hear as anaemic whose weak sound is anachronism in modern choral singing. All in all it seems they can't avoid criticism whatever they do. I belong firmly to the first camp and prefer a good number of other choirs in the UK - but I thought I would point out that King's development to a more virile approach has hardly drawn the praise of those on this board continually praise the likes of NCO, Westminster Cath, SJC and Hereford for singing in a manner -which to my ears- sounds near identical.

Anyway I'm with you on this one Eine, if I want to go hear 'earthy' singing from a bunch of children and men barely out their teens I'll go to my nearest football match.

CT

[DracoM]

To get the sound DW wanted with KCC, by and large it meant that the men sang down a notch or two, and it was deffo a treble-led sound. Recordings made in his time seem to go for rendering the acoustic, creating the ethereal sound many people remember and more than a few cherish.

Hearing the latest Fest 9 Lessons etc it seemed to me that miking was closer, voices more projected and not floated, men not required to sing down.

Ironically, in the DW CE, recorded Jan 2010, we seemed to be back in the resonant acoustic days - OK, far bigger numbers to accommodate singing, but all the same, felt like of another age.

Didn't much care for throwaway 'joke' [?] on earthiness of boys and men scarcely out of their teens being better heard at football matches. Rather a silly remark? The notion that the choirs specifically mentioned are by general consent held to be among the best around at the moment by many, and many more well beyond these threads indeed might suggest they will probably survive the sneer.

[Simon]

And I'm with you both! In my opinion, the reason that Kings under Sir David grew as famous as it did was, (in addition to some clever marketing and Roy G's Miserere!) because, more often than not, they were about as good as it got. Helped of course by the ready availability of a good back row and by money and the acoustic and the position, but that in no way takes anything away from the choir's consistent superb performance. And I say that as a member of a "competing" choir elsewhere in the country, that most certainly at times matched them - not just my view but the view of many visitors - but not as consistently as we would have wished: they were, at the time, the undisputed No 1 and had every right to be proud of that fact. And the reason that they were as good as they were was, in my view, because of the way Sir David taught them to sing.

There are, indeed, other ways of producing the sounds that a choir makes, and we'll all have our preference - and our own sound was similar to Kings, as was Wells at the time I recall, among others - but for me the traditional "English" way takes some beating. And those that talk about the "continental" sound being oh so different may be basing their views on a false impression: some of the choirs over there that I've heard, including Regen, have been very like the Kings that I knew about at the end of the Willcocks era - and, indeed, like the Johns with GG. West Cath has always been a bit different - as has St Pauls - I've always assumed they needed to be a bit sharper because of the acoustics, but I'll stand correcting by anyone who has sung there. (NCO is one on its own, as is of course Chapel Royal.)

But as far as I can hear there are still many choirs now that produce something very much like the old Kings sound, if we may call it that - including a good number of the ones that have been on CE this year. So I wonder why there seems to be this perceived need, within the minds of a few, to believe that the sound that has done us proud - and that, I expect, many of us who read on here have in the past had a part in making - is in some way "anaemic" and needs to be changed? I don't actually believe that there are many DoMs who would take this view. Certainly the ones I talk to don't!

[cheryltweedy]

Draco -A number of things; Firstly apologies, it was only a light-hearted joke- and let it be known that I sang in two of these 'continental' choirs as boy and man (Pseudonym!) so I would hardly do them down, I was just merely indicating what I prefer listening to - (the question of what kind of choir I prefer to sing is a different one entirely) Secondly the point you make about recording is I think very astute. I think the fact that most people listen to a choir via CD's and the like, rather than a live performance has perhaps changed the way that directors approach the sound they are trying to create - for a recording rather than what suits the building best. Thirdly the idea of a 'general consensus' as to what the best choirs are simply does not exist - people's opinions on the sounds they prefer and relish are entirely subjective.

Simon -you make a number of interesting points. As I stated earlier I enjoy listening to KCC 60/70's LP's so my quotation of 'anaemic' was not my own opinion but one articulated many times to me by musicians about the King's sound of yore. Personally there are things that I enjoy about the new sound over the old and vice versa. In September when I heard them they were performing some Stanford in X and some 19th century piece I thought the bigger more robust sound more suited to the music - however, I thought the men's sound completely unsuited to some of the carols sung last week. Does anyone know of a choir that has the flexibility to change its style in view of the piece it is performing? IMHO I find generally that the adult professional choirs more proficient at this style change (bar BBC singers) than Cathedral choirs.

Let me know your thoughts.

CT