If this had happened on the previous day, could not the Olympic torch bearer passing through Wells have been persuaded to tuck the recording under their belt?
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How great to hear from the choir at Wells.
The Preces and Responses are among my favourites—though, in fairness, I'm not nearly so well-versed as most around here—and I was just a bit disappointed not to hear the compact, bombastic Dismissal that goes along with them. Though I doubt if the canticles will ever make my Top 10, I did enjoy them more than I thought I would, having read some of the comments here. The Finnissy piece (or what we heard of it), though, left me with a slightly creepy feeling. Unaccompanied introits often seem to me to set either a very peaceful or a very somber mood to start a service; this particular one, as other posters have pointed out, did the latter, which made the Goodall 'Love Divine' seem stunningly out of place later on.
I've admitted elsewhere to being sometimes a bit of a shill for the choir at Wells. I adored their sound—the sound of the trebles specifically—under Malcom Archer and think that Matthew Owens has done an excellent job at the helm, just as he previously did at St Mary's, Edinburgh. Contemporary choral music, though, for which Owens seems to have great affection and to which he gives great support, tends to be either a big hit or a big miss to my ears. I'd love to hear, just for a change, some of what ardcap's called the 'unashamedly populist' canon of motets and anthems from Wells.
...but not too populist. We bury my grandfather tomorrow morning, which I suppose means that, like all good modern Catholics, we'll be sniffling through a congregational 'On Eagle's Wings' after the communion. Even for one of those unashamed populists, some things just are just too much.Comment
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Please do not take this the wrong way, but the role of the Catholic church in the last 50 years in UK and Europe in terms of the music it has perpetrated - aside from the MacMillans et al - and they way it has reneged on centuries of fantastic choral tradition by discontinuing choirs as 'elitist' is for me one of the very great betrayals of a fine patrimony.
In many of the great Catholic cathedrals of Europe, even on some of the swishest Sunday celebrations, the music is lamentable and frankly embarrassing. Did a tour of Spain a few years back - a big tour - a number of the major cathedrals, not a choir in one of them, and in Avila, the early home of Victoria in his formative years, the guide taking us round did not know Victoria's name, let alone that he had been a boy chorister in the very building we were standing in.
Says it all.
Sorry - a hobby horse. Makes me almost weep every time I look back at my photos of the places and know that the music you hear as you walk round is canned. And you know what? Most of the canned music is by English Anglican Choirs. How about that for cruel irony?Comment
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The word 'contemporary' is a thorny one. Its dictionary meaning is clear enough, so applied to music it should simply mean that which is composed 'in our time' or even 'now'. Those of us who were students in the 60s have this nagging feeling that 'contemporary' ought to mean avant garde, difficult, unapproachable by ordinary mortals...what my friend Gordon Langford calls 'squeaky gate music'. The early minimalists made music much more approachable, and their choral heirs (the Taveners, Parts, Whitakers and many, many others) have no difficulty soothing the ear. The evangelicals use the word 'modern' to describe their praise songs, most of which are written in an outdated 'pop' style, but this is still being churned out and counts as 'contemporary' surely? Then you have John Rutter. And why not? His music is well-wrought and gives pleasure to millions. And it comes from the pen of an excellent choral conductor. I wonder if what terratogen is searching after is not-quite-Rutter, not fashionable minimalism, definitely not Goodall, but the sincere, easy-on-the-ear, rather small oeuvres of the likes of Malcolm Archer and (gasp) Barry Rose himself?Comment
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ardcarp,Originally posted by ardcarp View PostYou beat me to it, Draco. I was a bit underwhelmed, I have to say. The Skempton canticles sounded lacklustre. Is this because they are lacklustre or is it the way Wells sang them? The choir sounded as if it were treading through a field of rather ordinary chords in the hope of not disturbing any. And they sounded bored. Dear old Howard G. rode to the rescue, and whatever one might think about his unashamedly populist tendency, the choir warmed up a bit. Enjoyed the voluntary.
Is anyone's head going to roll about these breaks in transmission? It's becoming scandalous.
The Skempton was just a dreary plod. The singing in this and generally in the service just didn't flow at all
The introit was awful. The break in transmission was a relief frankly.
At least the Goodall was tuneful but I didn't much care for it.
I thought the best music in the service were the two hymn tunes. I love 'O For a thousand Tongues' as I always feel especially included by its reference to the humble poor!!
Since no one has mentioned it I see that the service according to the Wells music list was sung by the senior choristers ( presumably the older boys and girls ) and the lay clerks.
VCCComment
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How should it have "flowed"? You are presumably familiar with the Skempton canticles in order to find the lack of "flow" in the singing of them unsatisfactory?Originally posted by Magnificat View PostComment
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No wrong way taken. I wouldn't be entirely sure that the fall of the Catholic choir and the rise of congregational singing is completely down to suspicion of elitism, but it's a great pity, in any case, that so many magnificent (and even not-so-magnificent) buildings now go without any choral music at all. There was regular congregational hymn- and response(?)-singing in my childhood parish, but I remember being a bit afraid of (and reluctant to even look at) the the choir loft, which I naturally assumed must have been haunted, since nobody was ever up there.Originally posted by dracoM View Post
Of course, choral singing isn't entirely dead in the Catholic church; I imagine the Pope, when he retires, gets a choir and brass and a requiem mass. It's just that everyone else gets 'On Eagle's Wings.' Maybe 'Amazing Grace.'
Of course. 'Contemporary' is going to mean five different things to five different people. Whose contemporaries, after all, do we mean? Mine? Or my father's? Or my teachers'?Originally posted by ardcap View Post
But, to clarify: though I certainly wasn't a student in the '60s, this idea of contemporary as avant garde is about what I meant in my previous post. For instance: I was roundly unerwhelmed when a recent instructor spent two hours on Renaissance polyphony and three weeks on post-'80s, computerised compositions for choir with microphone feedback accompaniment. This isn't, of course, to say that I've disliked all experimental music; or all music written in the past ten years; or in the past twenty, but...
...it is, I guess, to say that I'm searching after those ear-soothing sounds you referenced earlier. Not Rutter, generally (but if I stumble upon some happy carolers doing a Rutter 'Jingle Bells' at Christmastime, who am I to bescrooge?), but fashionable, perhaps. Howells' 'sheer love of trying to make nice sounds', et cetera. Tidy polyphony: Bruckner's Ave Maria, or Lauridsen's. Or bombastic, squarely-in-the-cathedral-tradtion anthems: Elgar, Stanford, Bairstow.Originally posted by ardcarp View Post
I don't know art, in other words.Comment
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Gabriel,Originally posted by Gabriel Jackson View Post
To me the notes seemed to be just bashed out. If the composer intended it to be like this fair enough but to me it wasn't a very musical piece. I thought there was a lack of musicality generally in the choir's singing.
VCCComment
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I doubt that's what Howard intended, and it wasn't what I heard. In my own piece, which I know quite well, I found nothing unmusical about the singing - quite the opposite.Originally posted by Magnificat View PostComment
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I have to say that on two repeated hearings of both the introit and the canticles, the choir seemed to be somewhat wearily or warily trekking through thigh deep wet sand uphill. So laboured and literal, and sorry, but to my ears, just amazingly dull. Felt so sorry for such a talented choir. As ardcarp indicated, they sounded knackered. Nothing there to lift the spirit at all.Comment
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The sixth best choir on the planet*?Originally posted by DracoM View Post
Shurely shome mishtake?
* Gramophone, Jan. 2011Comment
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Neither did I. But I also agree with DracoM (and others) that the performance sounded laboured.Originally posted by Gabriel Jackson View Post
I feel that there is a difference here between not liking the music and being critical of the performance. Not all modern music can be enjoyed, or be moving in some way. But equally, in my own experience, composers do not always write in such a way to assist performers in creating such an atmosphere as to allow an audience (whether congregation, or radio listeners) to be moved.Comment
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Michael Finnissy is talking about his Choirbook piece here http://www.choirbookforthequeen.org.uk/book/Comment
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Thanks Gabriel - very interesting!Comment
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