Feb 13th The Choir

[DracoM]

12 madrigal examples to be linked via chat between AJ and Emma Kirkby, including a sizeable chunk from the pen of Matthew Harris.

Also favourites from Tomkins, Bennet, Wilbye and Weelkes as well as Ferrabosco.

How many posters are in / have been in / run madrigal groups? Are they an endangered species?

[DracoM]

There is real material for a serious thread here.

We had a number of British, very tight, focused, mostly one or at the very most two voices a part ensembles, with terrific musicality, sharpenss of line and clarity of diction. Close recording, real fun and ebullient stuff. Female voices 'straight', very little vibrato, working the delicious, scrunching dissonances hard against other parts. Vocal chamber music and treated like it. Thrilling.

We also had a big chunk of the Phoenix Bach Choir, sounding about a mile away and recorded through cotton wool, and with what sounded like at least 4 voies per part if not more performing the Harris songs - modern, feeling influenced by Shaker tunes / harnonies, blues, modern 'torch songs', John Adams etc, but about as far from intellectually lively minded re-thinking of Shak lyrics as I am from Arnold Schwarzenegger. Was there knowing erotic charge? Zilch.

Now, changing tack a little, here's the question: why is it that many non-cathedral ensembles singing 16/17th century church music, getting wonderful notices and crits yet sounding like anaemic versions of the BBC Singers?

e.g. On CDR on Sat a.m. AMcG played us a sequence of choirs showcasing the music of Victoria and Vivanco. NONE of those versions would have sounded as far as we can judge remotely like performances Victoria himself would have sung in and / or heard at Jaen or in Italy. Boys just do not sing like that, not even the Regensburg, NCO, or the Monstserrat Choir.

So, what about historically informed VOCAL performances? which are more than just the sum of very learned, very expository material on text and method / editorial footnote writing? The closest we have had non-cathedral ensemble in my time actually singing the stuff seems to me to have been the famous Clerkes of Oxenford. Nowadays? The Sixteen? Tallis Scholars? Polyphony? Monteverdi Ch? Terrific and totally pro and musical in their own way, but just not HIPP.

In that sequence - OK, granted, not a new release I agree - but it would have been so good to hear Westminster Cathedral? NCO?

[Dilbert]

I hope this isn't off topic, but it was interesting to hear Emma Kirkby's reminiscences.

I, too, have the effervescent Miss Miller to thank for a life-long love of madrigals.

[DracoM]

Do tell more! How did she present them? Was there talk of their meaning? Was this only in two parts for the gels, or did the boys taken on when you eventaully reached the musty halls? Any teachers involved?

[rauschwerk]

There is real material for a serious thread here.

I started a thread on madrigal singing early in December and it expired three days later.

[Dilbert]

Do tell more! How did she present them? Was there talk of their meaning? Was this only in two parts for the gels, or did the boys taken on when you eventaully reached the musty halls? Any teachers involved?

It was a very long time ago, Draco! The girls sang in two parts and more; possibly four. "Talk of their meaning?" Well, not the sub-text of, say, El Grillo. I remember Fair Phyllis, Il est Bel et Bon and so on. It was a very competent group, and I was very much the weakest link.

In my time, the music with the boys was not confined to madrigals. We sang some jolly love songs by Brahms, and carols arranged by their singing master.

[DracoM]

So why do you think madrigal singing has slipped off the register? Or is it still going on in anad just not being showcased by BBC etc?

Do schools still see them as a real test of choral teamwork?

[Dilbert]

I'm not qualified to answer, but my guess is that nowadays the constraints of the curriculum, timetabling and so on make it very hard to run a minority interest group during the school day.

(Now there's a challenge for an enterprising music department!)

[Miles Coverdale]

So why do you think madrigal singing has slipped off the register? Or is it still going on in and just not being showcased by BBC etc?

Do schools still see them as a real test of choral teamwork?

Perhaps it's just a genre whose time has been and gone. Just not down with the kids. Or down with the lads and lasses, as Morley probably wouldn't have said.

They're the sort of thing I can imagine sounding rather twee to twenty first-century ears, even if there are coded references to love-making. And there are many other things one can use if one wants a real test of choral teamwork. Pieces of music that is.

[rauschwerk]

Once you have a reasonably wide knowledge of English madrigals, you realise that they are by no means all about nymphs and shepherds and fa-la-la-ing. The finest serious pieces (I think of Weelkes's O Care, thou wilt despatch me and Thule, the period of cosmography, and several by Ward and Wilbye are very demanding and not in the least twee!

[DracoM]

Which is why I asked above if the music lady had explained the meanings, because I agree with rauschwerk.

The use of themes much reflected on by Elizabethan / Jacobean writers in other genres makes them complementary to, and not apart from the literature of that age, and as such, truly worthy addenda in their own right.

[ardcarp]

Rauscwerk. Couldn't agree more. Shame about madrigals being a bit out of fashion. Most good CDs available now are OVPP, which is fine and no doubt 'authentic'. But like other contributors I also sang in a magrigal choir (all male) at school and loved it...and not just for the doubles entendres. There is something very special about a chamber-sized choir, very well drilled, doing madrigals and part-songs with loads of dynamics, phrasing, articulation and so on. It's a sort of antidote to Renaissance sacred polyphony which...even though we love it... can be rather 'samey'.

[DracoM]

And most the very best madrigals are a kind of mini-play scene - call and repsonse, or anguished dialogue of one whose drama can catch the young imagination, particularly teen imagination if properly presented.

Trouble may be that madrigals can require a fairly high degree of musical skill or nerve - so exposed are the parts. Ahem! To coin a phrase

[rauschwerk]

Trouble may be that madrigals can require a fairly high degree of musical skill or nerve - so exposed are the parts. Ahem! To coin a phrase

Absolutely. Now is the month of maying is harder than it sounds, while No, no, Nigella has many traps for the unwary in its cross-rhythms and deft counterpoint.

[listen2counterpoint]

I was delighted to hear Dame Emma's lovely commentary on the madrigal and indeed her sinigng of some of them as part of the Consort of Musicke. I was a touch disappointed in most of the other examples used however. I guess that the Beeb and the Welsh Wonder have to play performances from different parts of the globe and also professional and amateur spheres, but I really felt that the Phoenix Bach Choir and the Dutch Ensemble really didn't show off their pieces to the very best of what they are.

It was a great relief when we finally heard Fag towards the end. I fagiolini and Robert Hollingworth, are without a doubt the best British modern interpretors of the madrigal - English or otherwise - and it was a shame that we didn't here more of them. I also missed the King's Singers (Current configuration or more historical) interpretation of the English repertory, with their excellent intonation and perkiness of interpretation. 'Twas a beautiful 'Come Sable Night' from the Hilliard lot though. All those extra hours of working on temperament and tuning paid off in those few mins.

All-in-all, one of the more relevant and enjoyable episodes of the choir. Would've liked to hear that Athalia with EK and AJ though - did he sing Blooming Virgins?!

L2C