CE King's College, Cambridge 2.ii.11

[DracoM]

CE Chapel of King's College, Cambridge 2.ii.11
Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple

Order of Service:

Introit: Hodie Beata Virgo Maria (Byrd)
Responses: Smith
Psalms: 122, 132 (Wesley)
First Lesson: Malachi 3:1-5
Magnificat primi toni à 8 (Victoria)
Second Lesson: Luke 2: 22-35
Nunc dimittis tertii toni à 4 (Victoria)
Anthem: Videte miraculum (Tallis)
Hymn: Hail to the Lord who comes (Old 120th)


Organ Voluntary: Prelude in D BuxWV139 (Buxtehude)

Ben-San Lau and Parker Ramsay (Organ Scholars)
Stephen Cleobury (Director of Music)

[ardcarp]

I just love Videte Miraculum...that repeated phrase on 'cognoscit' is just heart-rending. Intersering to see what KCC does with it, including the plainsong.

[DracoM]

Bill of fare and team presenting it promised riches.

But as soon as the psalms started I began to have reservations. Psalms were a bit slow, and as heard on air, came across as just a bit muddy in articulation. I imagine on site they were crystal clear.

Introit is a gem, but again..........

Victoria is one of my serious favourites in the renaissance field, and the chance of hearing his music in that particular context, plus Byrd, plus Tallis was riches indeed. The airiness of Victoria's music, it's intensity and simplicity are all appealing, but.......could you feel a 'but' coming? But this was simply an exercise to be got through, even a rather bloodless exercise, and I found myself just beginning to wish that i could have heard Hereford, or St John's next door, or even NCO, or, above all, Westminster Cathedral doing it. Hey ho! Quot hoimines, of course
Still, the tenors and altos are clearly in very fine voice indeed, an adornment to any choir, and they were good to hear.

Lot more organ than in many CEs. Not my field, but I did feel that the opening Bach was a bit turgid and lumpy frankly, particularly in context against the ringing Buxtehude voluntary. TX highlighted some very quirky stops, but lent real colour to the final moments.
Unsurprisingly, a cappella, there was greater clarity - e.g. the Nunc.

But overall I'm still puzzled.

On the basis of what was heard on air, as said, altos and tenors were fairly prominently showcased, while trebles and basses acted more or less as a very pleasant halo round that core. Indeed, on occasions the trebles virtually disappeared when according to the scores in front of me, they were supposed to be singing. Why I am puzzled is that I suppose one could argue that the BBC broadcasts more services from KCC in any one calendar year than any other such foundation in UK, yet this TX had a very different 'feel' to the CE experience than say to the Christmas services, and actually, bits of the choir seemed remote rather than present.

[DracoM]

So nobody else listened?

[ardcarp]

I listened whilst/stuffing.a/chicken:
Supervising kids' music practice, and/trying.to/learn a/score;
Of Mendelssohn's Fair/Me-lu-/sine:
For rehearsing tonight (now done), Who/says men/can't.multi-/task?

My point being the pointing. What thinkest thou of mcuking about with the psalmist's verse structure? Is Kings trying out a new psalter?

I agree with Draco about prominent inner parts...I'd go further and say the altos were a tad over-prominent. Nice tenor 'cantor' in the Nunc though. I enjoyed the service overall, and think KCC is sounding better at the moment than for many a year. For me it's the big musical picture that's missing, and I agree NCO or The Drome would be wonderful in that repoertoire...but hey, they don't have a monopoly.

[decantor]

So nobody else listened?

I always listen, Draco. I don't normally post in the week's CE thread because you yourself usually make the points - give or take a bit - that I'd make.

As it happens, this week I disagree with you. For example, I thought the articulation in the psalms was just fine, but the chants were uninspiring and the pointing at times perverse. Nor did I find the Victoria 'bloodless' - occasionally (noticeably around superbos) I thought the passion might even disrupt the discipline - but in any case a decent choir doesn't have to inject a lot into Victoria, as he is quite capable of speaking for himself - and passionately! I did not have the benefit of a score to hand, but I was not aware of vanishing trebles - indeed, there was (at least) one treble whose voice was clearly on the bloom, and when he stepped on the gas he cut through everyone - being musical, he chose his moments extremely well. Needless to say, I hope, I also relished the Byrd and Tallis, but the Victoria Mag was the highlight for me. At least I agree with you about the opening Bach!

As regards the 'TX', I have come to regard the remoteness of choirs on CE as the norm - I blame the digital revolution, though to expalin quite why a choir should lack presence in a live broadcast when it's so vivid on CD is way beyond my technological pay-grade.

I might add this: I listened between 2.00 and 3.00pm to the BBC Singers singing Candlemas music in concert (including Videte miraculum). For me, female voices in concert, even when wobble-free, cut no mustard compared with a King's liturgy on a winter evening.

[bach736]

Lot more organ than in many CEs. Not my field, but I did feel that the opening Bach was a bit turgid and lumpy frankly, particularly in context against the ringing Buxtehude voluntary.

We've all been playing 'Mit fried und freud' this week, Draco, and this lacked a sense of occasion IMO. I much prefer Ton Koopman's grumpy but elated old man tottering wildy out of the temple in 1'40" - a sharp exit.
Marie-Claire Alain does it in 2'02" and Richard Marlow in 2'33" but, of course, it's not a race. The King's scholar clearly decided to let his 'servant depart in peace'.

[bach736]

Here's the link to Ton Koopman's Mit Fried und Freud ...

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mit+fried+und+freud&aq=f

[DracoM]

I know this is a hobby horse, but this business of how the BBC / its sub-contractors mikes these live CE TX is made all the more baffling in that we have now heard BBC relays from NCO, St John's Cambdridge, and St Thomas Fifth Ave NYC over the last eighteen months, all of whom now have their own internal systems for webcasting which I hear regularly.

The results on a day by day basis on webcast from those foundations are excellent, balance is great, clarity exemplary, and as a result the sense of immediacy is sometimes thrilling and dramatic. But hear those very same choirs in a live BBC relay and for some reason they sound insipid and just...well, sort of die. I do not get it.

A friend was at a KCC CE a week ago and reported them to be in fine voice, and it was a good service all round. And, sorry, but I am sticking to my guns on this, that latest KCC CE was not iMO best served by how the BBC engineers presented it - as ardcarp seemed to agree - and I simply do not know why. We need a technical expert here!

I can understand that King's is a hell of a daunting place to try to engineer for sound, and that goes for many cathedrals etc. But given the number of times a year the Beeb does relay events from King's.....? I would very much like to hear what some DoM's think when they listen back to the BBC TX of their own choirs singing live.

Glad we all seem to agreee about the Victoria Mag as the stand-out item.

And even gladder at how we agree about that earlier St Paul's Knightsbridge Candlemas 'Videte Miraculum' and much of the rest of that programme. Wobbly females singing over blasting men as if they were in an opera chorus doesn't do it for me in this repertoire at all. And what programming? Same anthem less than two hours apart? Rather like in the Mozart Fest, two Requiems ON THE SAME DAY! Erm......??

But it's all quot homies anyway. The innocent / subjective ear?

[ardcarp]

and the pointing at times perverse

I'm sort of answering my own (and deacantor's) point about pointing. I'm not complaining about the KCC psalms, but I wonder when they started using whatever psalter it was? Although all was clear and accurate, they were treading rather carefully I thought as if to be sure not to slip up.

Here is an extract from The English Psalter, produced by Messrs Macpherson, Bairstow and Buck in 1925:

The Lord is my shepherd;* therefore can/I lack/nothing.
He shall feed me in a green pasture,* and lead me/forth be-side the/waters of/comfort.
[only half a chant used so far]
He shall con-/vert my/soul:
And bring me forth in the paths of/righteousness/for his/Name's sake.

This was at the forefront of the natural speech rhythm movement, but there was (and is) much criticism about the destruction of the psalmists original verse structure...which often has a sort of 'question and answer' logic.

Any thoughts?

[decantor]

Any thoughts?

Yes: this could easily get too technical for me. But I’ve just had another listen to (part of) the King’s psalms.

The “Q&A” logic – the balance between the first and second half of each verse – is so distinctive a feature of the psalms that I feel it should be preserved. But sometimes the psalmist chooses to break that pattern. A case in point is v.2 of Ps.122 (sung yesterday), where the second half consists simply of the words “O Jerusalem”. At such a point, any pointing system has to modify itself. What King’s did was to incorporate the first three verses into the four sections of the chant. (This also removed the necessity to repeat half the chant in a nine-verse psalm.) There was a price to be paid for the modification – the opening of the psalm felt clumsy.

At other times, especially in Ps.132, they broke away from the reciting-note too early, IMO, leaving too many syllables per bar for the remainder of that section of chant. The result was ungainly and unnecessarily artificial. And now you’ve put the idea in my head, ardcarp, I can see what you mean when you say they were “treading warily” to avoid slip-ups.

Well, that’s a sort of response. I did feel that King’s were playing games with the pointing without gaining any advantage. Incidentally, the first line of Ps.23 that you quote looks hideous to me: surely “therefore/can I/lack/nothing” is closer to speech-rhythm?

[DracoM]

Do / can DoMs change psalm pointings to suit their own tastes/ forces / sense of the poetry, or do they have to have some agreed church authority / source?

[Miles Coverdale]

As a salutary lesson that things weren't necessarily better in the 'good old days', I would urge readers to click on the following link and listen to the choir of St George's Chapel, Windsor, singing psalms 23 and 111 under E H Fellowes from 1924. More bizarre and unmusical psalm-singing it would be hard to find. I think it's horrible. The few other recordings I've heard from that era would seem to suggest that that was how they all did it back then.

http://www.inquiresandplaces.com/id9.html

[DracoM]

Fellowes was a Tudor music editor and a lot of this sounds as if he wants a galliard or coranto or some such as the basis. Utterly bizarre. How the heck did any choir learn it like that? BUT interestingly, note how fast it is too?

[bach736]

I often change the pointing, Draco, because for me it's an ongoing process. I suppose it might depend on who your precentor is. Obviously, if you're a parish church that expects a congregation to strugggle through the psalms, you could have a problem with the clergy were you to abandon the RSCM Psalter for John Scott's.

Actually, I think the 'New St Paul's Psalter' was a great step forward and so rather liked the Kings' pointing - though Scott omits chords and even entire bars of the chant to match the text - which for me works better than simply redistributing the notes.

Thanks, Ardcarp, for the reference to the 1925 English Psalter. I found a copy on ABE so am looking forward to seeing it in detail.