I'm in a bit of a slow period with my attempt to learn Spanish, because I'd been mainly studying on the train, but I've been at home for the past three weeks, so no train journeys! Must get back to it soon. Three weeks from this moment, my train will have just arrived in Barcelona. Three weeks from today is also the Champions' League Final, which I always knew United would be in because I wouldn't be able to go! (Mind you, I was sure we'd be in the FA Cup Final for the same reason - it's on 30th May - and that didn't work...) It's still very possible that Barcelona will be our opponents - they just need to beat Chelsea (at Chelsea) tonight. (Actually a score draw would be enough, due to the away goals rule.) I do hope it's Barcelona, it will add to the atmosphere in Spain if it is! And just in case you feel the urge to burst into song, here is some music for you:
(Higher quality version here in case you want it!)
Before I leave football, I can't resist mentioning last week's story from the Newcastle-Portsmouth game - the "swearing opera singer" was one of the soloists when we did St Cuthbert! He was very nice too - I seem to remember he saw me taking pictures and offered to take a photo of the choir for me (on my camera).
I have an mp3 that I'd love to share with you, but I think the people involved might not be too impressed, so I won't! But I do want to mention it anyway. It's a great example of how it's possible for a group of a cappella singers can rescue a song that's gone horribly wrong, just by listening to each other and not giving up! I did a couple of 6-part a cappella arrangements almost two years ago for my band, but for various reasons we never managed to get six of us in the same place at the same time till last week. I had been DESPERATE to try these two songs, but since we had a gig a couple of days later, we mainly had to concentrate on that - but we tried the two 6-part songs right at the end. Unfortunately no-one had had a chance to look at their part - or, at least, maybe they looked when I first gave them the music but forgot in the following two years! This meant that things did not go well.
One song wasn't too bad, because at least everyone knew the tune, but the other was so bad it was hilarious! Despite that, I'm quite proud of the recording of our attempt at sight reading it. Why? Well, the first two notes are fine. Immediately after that, things start to go wrong, but because there was one person singing who DID know their part (me, because I wrote it!), it didn't totally fall apart, just sounded awful. When the song reaches its last verse, there is a complicated key change, which you'd think would make things worse... but the person who has the tune at that point came in very confidently on what FELT like the right note (he had few other options, since most of the notes he was relying on for his cue didn't happen) and everyone else recognised his confidence and pitched their next note from his. Immediately there was audible harmony, which increased everyone's confidence - and the last couple of bars were perfect. To cap it all, when we checked with the guitar, we'd ended perfectly in tune! So the message is: any performance can be rescued, if you trust each other :-)
I have a lot of links to share, but first I wanted to mention All the Small Things, which finished its first series last night. I imagine lots of you watched it - what did you think? I expected to hate it, but actually I really enjoyed it. It even brought a tear to my eye once or twice. There were a few things that annoyed me, though... Mainly, the fact that they made classical music slightly evil. (Well, not really, but if you watched it I'm sure you know what I mean.) The breakaway choir was made to seem more fun partly because they sang choral arrangements of pop songs, and the original choir (with the nasty people in it) was shown singing classical stuff most of the time, except for a couple of occasions when we were plainly supposed to be slightly sympathetic, and then they sang pop! But I suppose this was to be expected from a primetime BBC1 programme.
(Just to be clear, I love pop songs as well as (if not more than) classical, so I'm not saying they should have reversed their portrayal - it just seems a bit unreasonable to give the impression that pop is fun and classical isn't.)
There's also the fact that the main choir only sang one piece of music most of the time (Haydn's Creation) - which I suppose is fairly realistic, because the series didn't last very long - except that they only ever rehearsed one movement of it! And then, at the last rehearsal before the contest they'd been working towards, the conductor abandoned Haydn and gave them a pop song to sight read (not just for fun, they performed it in the contest final). Uh huh.
However, I did really like the fact that they concluded that contests were not the be-all and end-all of choral singing, and also that they showed that even the best singers can fall apart in auditions! And I loved the fact that they filmed the finale on my platform at Victoria Station. I felt so proud to see it! Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with the next series - maybe they might even learn another movement of The Creation...
(Talking of Haydn, have you seen the official website of the RNCM's imminent Haydn fetsival? And, while we're at it, have you seen what they're doing - non-Haydn-related - at Piccadilly Station on 4th July? I wish I could see that - very mean of them to do it while we're singing elsewhere!)
The other main thing I wanted to mention here today is Spotify. I've been hearing about this for ages, but I only tried it a few days ago. Until fairly recently you could only sign up if you had an invite, but this is no longer the case - go to the official page to start an account. I'm very impressed with it - it gives you the option to listen (legally) to full pieces of music (both pop AND classical). Those of you who use iTunes will be aware of how useful it is to be able to listen to 30-second clips of music before buying it... Spotify lets you listen to the WHOLE THING. It also gives you links to buy the music if you want to, but you don't have to. So, what's the catch? Lots of you won't even think it's a catch, because it's just this: you can't save the music to your own computer, you have to go online to hear it every time. But there's no limit to how many times you can do this, and you can save the link so that you don't have to search for the song again. There is one more tiny catch if you sign up for the free account, which is that after every few songs you have to listen to a short advert before you can play your next song. They don't interrupt the song to play an advert, and each time you have a forced ad break it's only ONE advert. I've found it a small price to pay for such a good service. Try it and see!
On a related note, the Overgrown Path blog tells us about things you can download from the British Library. I haven't tried this yet but I plan to do so soon. (I'm also amused by his post about music journalists! But I particularly liked his post about the difference between "lean-forward music" and "lean-back music". Food for thought.)
TV things coming up: I think I mentioned a while ago about the Birth of British Music series - well, it starts this Saturday (BBC2, 8pm). The first episode is about Purcell, and there's also a performance of Dido and Aeneas (from the Royal Opera House) on BBC4 next Friday night (15th May, 8.05pm). (I had an unexpected job interview just after I last posted, during which - amongst other things - I had to identify a couple of musical scores from untitled pages. One of them was Dido, and I knew the others too. Needless to say I still didn't get the job! I must admit I'm curious about whether or not the successful candidate got all the questions correct....)
Oh, and also on Saturday - and also at 8pm - there is a Radio 4 programme about John Barbirolli. Bit rubbish of them to put it on then, but thank goodness for iPlayer! (If you can't use iPlayer, it's repeated on Monday afternoon.)
What else? The blog at ChoralNet has moved, and I didn't realise until Podium Speak pointed it out. I've fixed my link now, but there have been lots of articles posted there in the meantime, of which the ones that caught my attention for longest were the ones about Germanic Latin and singing styles you may never be able to master.
Via Eine Kleine Nichtmusik, this thing about Mahler's markings made me laugh a LOT :-)
Here's a delightful video of a load of buskers round the world playing Stand By Me. Do watch the whole of it, it will put a smile on your face. And, entirely coincidentally, here's another performance of Stand By Me, together with a nice article about the wonderful Gareth Malone, which explains very well what effect a good choirmaster can have on many lives. (I had tears in my eyes watching this video, but that's mainly because I remember crying my eyes out when I saw it at the time, and THAT was because I'd watched what they'd gone through to get to that point - I'm glad that series won a BAFTA, it was great!)
And a few quick links to finish, in no particular order:
Interesting article about the power of live performance (prompted by the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, but the point is more general).
Norman Lebrecht wonders how much justification there is for calling London a music capital.
Another alarming article about libraries - this one tells us that some Gloucestershire libraries are to have piped music! Argh!
Not three tenors any more: Placido Domingo has switched to baritone.
An article about playing Bach to hippopotamuses (mentioning our very own orchestra).
Ben Folds has released an album of his own songs covered by university a cappella groups. More pop stars should do this!
The Guardian points out that the UK's last piano maker is to cease production soon. Very sad.
Manchester Confidential tells us of a charity karaoke day in Manchester next Wednesday (13th May): 24 Hour Karaoke People at Tiger Tiger. (They also mention that karaoke was born in Stockport!)
And some non-musical links: the Manchester Evening News says it was 40 years ago yesterday that G-Mex stopped being a train station. Some interesting facts, most of which I didn't know!
Blackle is an alternative to Google which claims to save energy.
And finally, a game for you to try: Foldit. It's a bit of a time sink (like all the best games!) but at least it's all for a good cause (unlike most other games!)
5 comments:
Re G-Mex - I assume you realise that The BWH is on the site of the former long-distance coach station (Lower Mosley Street). I have a couple of slides somewhere taken when Central Station was derelict and spaces between the platforms were used for car parking.
And before I went to WHGS (School all day on Saturdays then) my brother-in-law often used to meet me in Manchester and we went from Central Station to Manchester United's ground by steam train on match days.
Hey -- I'm a sporadic reader and a choir dork from New York, and I like your blog rather a lot. The article on lean-forward/lean-back music reminded me THIS piece of music news that you might find interesting; this is the very very wonderful project that I'm nevertheless very angry at because they're stealing away our choir director, but I figure most people without that associate will just find this project impressive. Anyway, I wanted to send that link your way, to do with what you will. Keep writing!
We are not Manchester. We are Bolton.Something curiously Borg-like about that utterance ;)
Graham, I had no idea about the BWH site, so thank you for that!
Maia, thank you for saying such nice things! And for telling me about the Miami Choral Project. It does indeed look great. Oh, and I *love* the name "Seraphic Fire"!
Chris, I'm confused about the Manchester/Bolton thing, because if it refers to what I assume it does, that was in a different post. But I agree about the Borgness of it :-)
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