Educational ear candy

If you're at all interested in music history, the BBC's 'Sacred Music' (2008) is an excellent documentary series, and it's all available on YouTube. It's nicely in-depth, and best of all, the musical examples are sung by The Sixteen, an awesome and very experienced early music choir.

The first series covers Medieval chant and organum through to Bach's cantatas and passions. It's great to watch for the music alone! There's also a second series which covers later music, which is on my to-watch list.
We're really enjoying our documentaries at the moment. :)

Episode 1: The Gothic Revolution

Episode 2: Palestrina and the Popes

Episode 3: Byrd & Tallis: Singing the Lord's song in a strange land

Episode 4: Bach and the Lutheran Legacy

Vespers I

My last two Wellington gigs (for a while, anyway) are both Vespers services, but rather different in terms of music, performers, and style!

On Saturday evening I took part in a semi-regular 'Bach Cantata Vespers' at a local Lutheran church. Different Wellington choirs are invited to sing at these, and this time the Tudor Consort provided the singers. We did Cantata No. 102, 'Herr, deine Augen sehen nach den Glauben', which has a great opening chorus, solos for alto, tenor, and bass, and of course a closing four-part chorale. On the instrumental parts, we had a quartet of modern strings, two modern flutes, and organ.

We were only two-to-a-part, which was nice - good clarity (which you really need in Bach choruses), and we each had a buddy to sing with. We weren't able to rehearse together except on the day of the Vespers, so we liked having that extra safety net of someone singing our part with us. If we'd had more time, we would have done most of the chorus with solo voices, with the others joining in when appropriate.

Here's a recording of the opening chorus by John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir. They have a larger number of singers (not my preference), and period instruments (jealous!):

As I said, it's an awesome chorus! Nice and fast and exciting to sing. Well worth the hour-and-a-half church service. ;)

Vespers II will be at St Mary's on Wednesday night. I'll get to sing solos in Mendelssohn's cantata 'Hear my Prayer', and Monteverdi's 'Ave Maris Stella'. Luckily we'll get a bit more practice time for this lot.

Out of my comfort zone

Yesterday afternoon my choir held an 'open day' - a concert with items from the choir, the kids' choir, and the two young organists, followed by mulled wine in the choir room. The main event for me (other than the really good mulled wine - lots of cinnamon sticks!) was singing the solo in Mendelssohn's "O for the Wings of a Dove". I don't usually tackle 19thC music - in fact I tend to actively avoid it - but the choir director Robert has a soft spot for what he calls 'chocolate box music', so I had to suck it up!

One aspect that differed from my usual Baroque fare was that I had to obey the dynamic and expression markings in the score, instead of making my own decisions about those things. And of course I didn't have to worry about adding trills etc, so it was actually a more straightforward process than I'm used to when I prepare pieces for performance.

In the end, it went really well! Luckily our organist Tom is a very experienced Romantic performer, so it was easy to really get into the music with him accompanying. And the choir sang well too. :)

In other singing news, I'm now on Day 27 of my self-imposed course of sight-singing Bach chorales. And I'm getting better! As with many things, doing a little bit each day does get results. I discussed it with Robert, and he suggested playing the bass line on the keyboard while I sing the other parts, to help give context. I tried it, and it makes the sight-singing so much easier it kind of feels like cheating. :p

I'm still having trouble with some of the larger intervals. It's pretty embarrassing, but I still can't reliably sing 4ths and 5ths! Playing the bass line does help, but I need to have another strategy so I'm not just guessing. I'm going to try 'filling in' the interval with a fast scale, out loud at first, and then in my head. Simple, and hopefully foolproof. We shall see...

Sight-singing

One of my weak spots in singing is sight-reading, i.e. singing what's on the page in front of you without having seen or heard it before. It's a very handy skill for learning new music in a group (saves time teaching each person/section their part), and it's a normal (and scary) part of auditions. So I've resolved to work at getting better at it, and I have a plan...

Robert suggested I practise sight-reading the tenor parts of Bach chorales, because they jump around in interesting ways, and so I acquired a book of Bach's chorale harmonisations. There are 371 in the book, so that's plenty to be going on with. My plan is to do one chorale per day, which should be easy enough to fit in. I'm up to Day 10 today. :)

I've been starting with the soprano part, as a gentle start - they're just simple hymn tunes, without many jumps. Then I do the alto part, the tenor part (which is usually the trickiest), and the bass part (up an octave). Bass parts tend to have big jumps, so they're good practice for me.

(a nice short one)

The only problem with the book I'm using (the old Riemenschneider edition) is that it doesn't have the text of the chorales written in. I'll have to find something else in addition to practise sight-singing with words. :p

Eargasm

Fellow Bach nerds, have you heard the new-ish Dunedin Consort / John Butt recording of the B Minor Mass? I listened to some of the tracks online, was mightily impressed, and have now ordered a copy of the cds. My old favourite recording is the Andrew Parrott version (I just love the one-voice-per-part sound), and I think this really gives it a run for its money. Wonderful clarity!

Here's a video of the Sanctus movement: 

The B Minor Mass is my 'official favourite' musical work - there's just so much in it, such a range of styles and textures, and lots of the vocal/instrumental interplay that's one of my favourite things about Bach's music. I love it to bits.