The Choir - Sunday 7th July

[ardcarp]

Poet and author Ruth Padel asks: what is the 'voice' of a choir?

[DracoM]

Well, I must have seriously misunderstood what ardcarp has correctly identified as today's The Choir.
'What is the 'voice' of a choir?' was not actually what we got, but moments when the choir expressed particular sentiments, and developed into Ruth Padel's Most interesting bits sung by all manner of different collections of voices. Sounded a LOT like an edition of 'Something Understood' on R4.

OK, so what did SHE intend us to think a 'choir' is? Or was that not the question she thought she was tackling under the title the BBC had given the programme?
Or is a choir merely a collection of voices singing together? Many of the pieces she chose had a lot of solo voices in and around and in the middle of. So, Schutz, Guys and Dolls, Bach, Jamaican folk music etc etc - yes, much of it VOCAL, but does that mean that what we heard were 'choirs'?

Genuinely puzzled.

[decantor]

Or is a choir merely a collection of voices singing together?.........

Genuinely puzzled.

I shouldn’t comment at all. I tried to listen to R3 while watching the climax of events in SW19. They went together about as well as rhubarb crumble and mustard.

Despite the distractions, I thought Ruth Padel had some interesting points to make about the nature of a choir – which she interpreted to mean a group with a single identity impinging on an audience, though that identity could transmute and fragment (as in a Passion). I formed the impression that she was presenting a sort of ‘Private Passions’ show, where all vocal ensembles were grist to the mill. She found a sort of logic for all the music included.

I’m inclined to think that the Beeb shares her broad interpretation of “choir” – and the etymology of the word supports their view (if one discounts the ‘dance’ element). Like Draco, I would like The Choir to provide more insights into the workings of conventional ‘choirs’, here and abroad, but that is just my private passion. I do believe the programme has the right – even the duty – to explore more widely the phenomenon of singing in harmony. I did not feel Ruth Padel overstretched her brief.

Then again, perhaps the words "Advantage Murray" clouded my judgement.