Advent Carol Service St John's College, Cambridge

[Gabriel Jackson]

Oh come now, DracoM, don't be coy. Tell us what material you found 'over-blown and me-me-me'. I mean, I think I've worked it out by a combination of process of elimination and informed guesswork, but I think you should spell it out for us.

I expect it was "The Cherry Tree Carol". Or perhaps "A tender shoot"...

[underthecountertenor]

Of course, Gabriel! How silly of me.

[chitreb]

I had to listen to this on iPlayer in several chunks given the length of this service and, yes, there was the odd moment when the performance creaked a little but for me the whole thing was highly satisfying and given the amount of singing pretty well supported throughout. The most noticeable thing for me was the treble tone - good and rich but pure and without more than a hint of vibrato. A complete contrast to the top line singing earlier this year in the CE which was not to my taste at all. Oh, and another nice one Gabriel.

[Gabriel Jackson]

Oh, and another nice one Gabriel.

Thank you!

[underthecountertenor]

Oh, and another nice one Gabriel.

For the record, and lest there be any doubt,

[Gabriel Jackson]

the Britten in that guise inexplicable. Don’t understand the thinking: they had a harp, they have a pretty useful squad of trebles, the men sang whole chunks on their own elsewhere, why on earth not give the trebs the chance to sing the Deo Gracias on their own without the men? Weird.

Inexplicable? Really?? I can think of a whole host of reasons.

[ardcarp]

In the past, I've done The Ceremony of Carols with a boys' choir, a girls' choir, and with an adult SSA choir; with harp (when we could afford it) and piano when we couldn't. Only once did I do the SATB version (at that particular choir's own suggestion). While I can see the point of an arranger making such a great piece available to the most common form of vocal ensemble, I have to say it doesn't sound 'right'. I don't think this is just because the SSA is what we're used to; it's because of Britten's fantastic ear for texture. The harp complements the higher voices but gets a bit obfuscated (IMHO) when basses are involved.

There were clearly reasons why John's chose to do it that way, one of which I suggested in an earlier post.

[Gabriel Jackson]

There were clearly reasons why John's chose to do it that way, one of which I suggested in an earlier post.

That is certainly one - there are only fourteen boys at present and they are very young. Maybe Andrew thought that to ask them to sing in three parts in an exposed piece, and with everything else they had to accomplish in a long, major service, would be putting too much pressure on them. Maybe he wanted all the carols to be sung by the full choir. Maybe he thought that it would be interesting to perform very familiar music in a slightly different way (the other day I heard the Britten C Major Te Deum performed in an arrangement for strings and harp rather than organ. I'm not sure the arrangement worked entirely, but I was glad to have had the opportunity to have heard the piece performed that way). Maybe Andrew likes the Julius Harrison arrangement?

What I find dismaying is people who seem to think they know better than (in this case) Andrew Nethsingha what the choir is capable of, and what is the right thing to do. You did not make that assumption!

[Matthew Martin]

[QUOTE=DracoM;356599]

Don’t understand the thinking: they had a harp, they have a pretty useful squad of trebles, the men sang whole chunks on their own elsewhere, why on earth not give the trebs the chance to sing the Deo Gracias on their own without the men? Weird. Particularly early in the service as, to my ears at least, the boys very audibly seemed to tire later - quite understandably having to contend with exuberant muscle from the ranks behind them.

Why not simply email Andrew and ask him?

[decantor]

.....the boys very audibly seemed to tire later - quite understandably having to contend with exuberant muscle from the ranks behind them.

Why not simply email Andrew and ask him?

Andrew Nethsingha might reply out of courtesy, but he is not publicly accountable. If the Master and Fellows, or the Dean, were unhappy about the choral arrangement of Deo Gracias, they would no doubt take up the matter with their DoM over a glass of college sherry. We listeners can have our opinions, but have no right to explanations.

That "exuberant muscle from the ranks behind": if a choir is a team, how come that one element should tax another? I don't expect my opinion to count for anything, but I've worried for some time - long pre-Nethsingha - that St John's choral scholars do not temper their contribution relative to the trebles' capabilities. Now Gabriel tells us that the front row is reduced to fourteen - and still the back row is assertive. Yet maybe this is a problem for microphones, not congregations.

Personally, I found this an exemplary Advent service - yes, the Brahms was stodgy, yes the Harvey was moving, yes the Britten needed trebles only, yes Gabriel's piece was superbly right, yes the Gardner needed less percussion, yes the Parsons' rolling polyphony was the star of the show. Ups and downs of course, but still an Advent service of wondrous quality, and all the better for being live. Thank you, St John's.

[underthecountertenor]

The quote thing didn't quite work there, Matthew. What?
DracoM says that, to his ears, the boys 'very audibly seemed to tire later' in the service. Leaving aside the fairness (or otherwise) of that observation, doesn't it support one of the possible reasons for using that arrangement of the Britten DG? How much more tired would they have appeared to DracoM if they had had the additional pressure of performing the original version early on in the service?
That apart, what Gabriel said.

[Wolsey]

I could have done without the percussion in the Gardner. Did the composer authorise it?

I couldn't disagree more. The third of the composer's Notes on Performance on the first page of the music - which includes the tambourine and side drum parts - says, "Percussion can be omitted, but is better included". So there you are. It would be good if we heard more performances of this carol as the composer envisaged - complete with piano, not organ, accompaniment. It was written for a school, not an ecclesiastical building.

[ardcarp]

Someone somewhere upthread said they thought it ought to be faster. I think the fascination of this carol is that it hints at jazz, In other words it's sort of neo-groovy. If you fall into the trap of trying to 'swing it' beyond what the notation reqeuires, it loses its magic. Keep it poised (as St John's did) with or without percussion.

[Nachtigall]

It's good to see that descants from a previous regime are being used. There was a time, especially in another institution in the same city, where every new D of M seemed compelled to banish the work of his predecessor and introduce his own, often of inferior quality. Mr Nethsinga (apologies if he's Dr) doesn't seem to suffer from that complex.

Very true! I wholly agree and I'm a member of that "institution" (oh come on, let's name names, it's King's). Both Philip Ledger's and Stephen Cleobury's descants for well known Christmas hymns are inferior to those of David Willcocks.

[weston752]

[ Both Philip Ledger's and Stephen Cleobury's descants for well known Christmas hymns are inferior to those of David Willcocks.[/QUOTE]

Not sure that's entirely true. There's plenty of room for all of course, but personally I much prefer the Ledger descants for 'Once in Royal' and 'Hark! the herald' to the Willcocks versions. And John Scott's for 'It came upon the midnight clear' in CfC5 takes a lot of beating.