More Holst and Elgar this week. The Holst is as fabulous as ever, and I wish it was that we'll be singing for months and months and months. But sadly it's the Elgar, which I'm no more enthusiastic about than last time we tried it. This week we actually rehearsed a lively bit - the only one in the piece, I suspect - and it transpired that there had been a suggestion of the Youth Choir doing that bit, but it was decided that it was inappropriate due to the lyrics (which are about wine). I think I would really have lost the will to live if we'd had the only non-funereal bit taken from us! Oh well, no doubt it will get more likeable. (I should confess at this point that I never really liked The Kingdom, even in the performance - I haven't even listened to our recording of it yet - and The Apostles just feels like more of the same, but longer and with fewer lively bits. *sigh*)
I have all sorts of other singing going on at the moment, but I'm in a hurry so maybe I'll tell you about that next time. I mainly wanted to post before my collection of links got out of hand again!
The reason for the title of this post is that I've just discovered that Tuesday is the centenary of the song It's a Long Way to Tipperary, and there is to be a celebration at 11am at Stalybridge Civic Hall - what, you didn't know that the song was written and first performed in Stalybridge? Neither did I until recently!
I forgot to post this at Christmas - I remembered it the other day when I was telling a friend about it. Via Stephen Hough's blog, here's the organist Cameron Carpenter playing the campest version of Sleigh Ride you're ever likely to see!
Also via Stephen Hough, a term I've never encountered before: the Russian crescendo.
Rupert Christiansen, in the Telegraph, is unimpressed with Alfie Boe.
Something I found on Wikipedia while looking for something else (this happens a lot!) - a list of list songs.
A thoughtful article on the BBC News site about unwelcome noise, by historian Lisa Jardine.
Also from BBC News, a fascinating article by Kevin Connolly about water shortage in the Middle East. I hadn't realised, in particular, that the River Jordan has hardly any water in it these days. That's an oddly upsetting thought, in view of the number of times I've sung about that river.
Details are starting to emerge about the Olympic opening ceremony. It will have The Tempest as its theme (particularly Caliban's line "Be not afeared, the isle is full of noises") and it will feature Europe's largest bell, which is being cast specially.
Manchester Confidential has a load of fascinating photos of the current state of the inside of the Central Library.
Last Wednesday was St Dwynwen's Day, which I'd never heard of before. It seems that St Dwynwen is the Welsh patron saint of lovers, so the day is sort of like an extra Welsh Valentine's Day.
You'll be aware that both United and City are now out of the FA Cup, I'm sure, but this still seems wrong: it is very likely that the cup final kickoff time will be moved from the traditional 3pm to 5.15pm. IS NOTHING SACRED?!?
YouTube has long been one of the world's biggest websites, but did you know that currently there is a total of one hour's worth of video uploaded to it every second?
The mathematics of Sudoku: it's recently been proved that there have to be at least 17 digits given at the start of the puzzle. If there are any fewer, there will be more than one possible solution.
It would be hard for anyone to miss the fact that we've just had the Chinese New Year and are now in the Year of the Dragon. I'm a dragon myself (which has always pleased me, because it's clearly the best one!), so this is a bit depressing, because the mathematical part of me keeps reminding me that this means my age this year must be a multiple of 12, and that reminds me that I'll be 48 in October, and I don't feel a day over 24! However, I had never previously realised that there are different types of dragon: this year it's a Water Dragon, and I'm a Wood Dragon. (You'd think the fire-breathing aspect would make this a bit of a problem, but what do I know?!?) Anyway, if you want to know what your element is as well as your animal, Wikipedia has a handy list.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Fain would I be eaten
I enjoyed last night's rehearsal far more than last week's, because it involved singing The Hymn of Jesus for a large part of it, a bit of Beethoven, and no Elgar (I've listened to The Apostles all the way through now, and I can't see myself becoming unbored with it any time soon!) I've done Beethoven 9 several times before from memory, so it's quite firmly ingrained, and I was a bit put off to discover that there's one bar in the edition that is being used this time (Bärenreiter) that's DIFFERENT to the edition I've got (Novello). It's not very different - just the underlay of the words - but I don't think I'll ever remember to do the new version!
I was telling Fanny about The Hymn of Jesus being my very favourite piece, and she told me that the recording she's been listening to has at least one glaring mistake on it. I realised that I've never actually heard a commercial recording of the piece, because I have a live recording of my last ever Chet's concert (in which The Hymn of Jesus was the finale), so I always just listen to that! If you want to hear it, there's a link on my mp3 page. This performance took place in the RNCM concert hall on 9th July 1982, and involves the Chetham's School of Music Symphony Orchestra and Senior Choir, with the Manchester Cathedral Choristers doing the boys' choir bits. I think the conductor must have been Mike Brewer, because he was certainly Director of Music throughout my time at Chet's, and usually conducted the choral parts of the end-of-year concerts.
Manchester Cathedral also played a major part in my memories of leaving Chet's, so I was sad to learn that not only did they have a valuable silver cross stolen the other day, but they have been burgled so many times that they can no longer claim on their insurance.
Here's a lovely Telegraph article about Kathleen Ferrier. (Although, it says that the contralto voice is 'out of fashion'. I think it's more accurate to say that fewer singers seem to be referring to themselves as that - they all seem to want to be mezzo-sopranos!)
The Guardian tells us what it's like to be in an opera chorus.
Have you recorded your Virtual Choir submission yet? I did mine tonight. I do hope that his next project involves a fast piece though - all the three Virtual Choir pieces so far have been very slow, and this is not good with my breathing!
Eric Whitacre mentioned online the other day how much he liked the music of John Williams, and - predictably - some people told him that John Williams is a hack. So Eric posted a defence of him, which I think is great. It really irritates me when people make sweepingly condescending statements like this, regarding popular composers such as John Williams or Andrew Lloyd Webber or John Rutter. There's a reason they're popular!
Did you know that there's going to be a thousand-boat flotilla on the Thames on 3rd June, for the Queen's diamond jubilee? And there's new music being composed specially for it, a la Water Music. Should be fun!
Via the Guardian: the fifty most quoted lines of poetry. I was trying to think what mine would be, and realised that I don't actually quote poetry regularly - must rectify that :-)
And finally... my favourite new word: skeuomorph.
I was telling Fanny about The Hymn of Jesus being my very favourite piece, and she told me that the recording she's been listening to has at least one glaring mistake on it. I realised that I've never actually heard a commercial recording of the piece, because I have a live recording of my last ever Chet's concert (in which The Hymn of Jesus was the finale), so I always just listen to that! If you want to hear it, there's a link on my mp3 page. This performance took place in the RNCM concert hall on 9th July 1982, and involves the Chetham's School of Music Symphony Orchestra and Senior Choir, with the Manchester Cathedral Choristers doing the boys' choir bits. I think the conductor must have been Mike Brewer, because he was certainly Director of Music throughout my time at Chet's, and usually conducted the choral parts of the end-of-year concerts.
Manchester Cathedral also played a major part in my memories of leaving Chet's, so I was sad to learn that not only did they have a valuable silver cross stolen the other day, but they have been burgled so many times that they can no longer claim on their insurance.
Here's a lovely Telegraph article about Kathleen Ferrier. (Although, it says that the contralto voice is 'out of fashion'. I think it's more accurate to say that fewer singers seem to be referring to themselves as that - they all seem to want to be mezzo-sopranos!)
The Guardian tells us what it's like to be in an opera chorus.
Have you recorded your Virtual Choir submission yet? I did mine tonight. I do hope that his next project involves a fast piece though - all the three Virtual Choir pieces so far have been very slow, and this is not good with my breathing!
Eric Whitacre mentioned online the other day how much he liked the music of John Williams, and - predictably - some people told him that John Williams is a hack. So Eric posted a defence of him, which I think is great. It really irritates me when people make sweepingly condescending statements like this, regarding popular composers such as John Williams or Andrew Lloyd Webber or John Rutter. There's a reason they're popular!
Did you know that there's going to be a thousand-boat flotilla on the Thames on 3rd June, for the Queen's diamond jubilee? And there's new music being composed specially for it, a la Water Music. Should be fun!
Via the Guardian: the fifty most quoted lines of poetry. I was trying to think what mine would be, and realised that I don't actually quote poetry regularly - must rectify that :-)
And finally... my favourite new word: skeuomorph.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Ye who dance not know not what we are knowing
I haven't updated here for a while – I kept meaning to, but since I haven't had any comments since August, I didn't think anyone was reading anything I wrote, so I couldn't get motivated! But my blog was mentioned in last night's choir rehearsal, so I thought I'd better update on the offchance that anyone actually came to investigate :-)
We are learning three works over the rest of this season: two that I know very well indeed, and one that I've never done before. (The title of this post is taken from one of them - guess which one!) The two I know very well are Holst's The Hymn of Jesus (which was the finale of my last ever concert as a Chetham's pupil) and Beethoven 9. The one that's new to me is Elgar's The Apostles, which seems very boring so far, but maybe it will grow on me! Currently the main thing that's interesting me about it is that it features a shofar. When this was mentioned at last night's rehearsal, it seemed that most of the choir had never heard of a shofar. Wikipedia has a particularly interesting (and thorough) article which tells you everything you need to know.
I'd better do a recap, though, hadn't I? December was the usual musical madness. This year my tally was 15 performances in an 18-day period, which I think might be a personal best. Several of those were with my band (pictured below at the annual Shouting in the Library gig).
I enjoyed those more than any of the choir ones, but the choir gigs had their moments too. Messiah was the one that started the 18 days of madness, and I enjoyed it even more than last year's. We even had a female alto instead of a countertenor! I was beginning to think we never would again. And the conductor did not ruin the Hallelujah Chorus, as so many of them do (including last year's) by their attitudes to standing audiences. I've heard recently that our 2012 Messiah will be conducted by our 2010 conductor, so I will have to prepare myself for disappointment. Maybe this will be the year I can finally find some cast-iron reason not to sing.
The carol concerts – all five of them – were fun (nowhere as good as last year's, but a million times better than the previous year's), although it felt very odd having Sleigh Ride as a regular programme item rather than an encore. Still, at least they did play it. Remember the year the powers that be decided not to include it? I still haven't recovered from the trauma!
Picture below is courtesy of one of the orchestra's horns on Twitter. Oh, and you may have missed this MEN article about our compere, or this Oldham Chronicle review of the concerts.
The other big choir-related news story of December was undoubtedly the Military Wives and their quest for the Christmas number one single (in which they were successful). I enjoyed the Military Wives TV programme much more than I expected to (I cried my eyes out several times!), but even if I hadn't it would have been great to see a choir in the charts. There have been loads of great stories in the media, but here are some of my favourites: a Guardian editorial in praise of Gareth Malone; a Telegraph article about the series (I was very disappointed to find that Keep the Home Fires Burning, described in this article, never made it into the finished series, though. I love that song. Perhaps it was too emotional?); and another Telegraph article which features Gareth explaining to the writer how to sing better and talking about why carol-singing is so great; a Guardian article about the feelgood factor of the series in general; and, finally, yet another Telegraph article, this time listing a few other choirs that have been in the pop charts (I didn't know about lots of these!)
Actually, there was one little thing that fascinated me about the Military Wives song after I saw the sheet music. Here's the first page. Here's the recording. What the soloist sings in the third bar isn't quite what the music says, is it? The same thing happens on the last page, and she does it differently then too. This creates a dilemma for choirs who've bought the sheet music in order to perform the song: do they do what the composer actually wants, or do they copy the recording? If they do the former, everyone will think it's them that are wrong! And I felt particularly sorry for the deputy soloist that the Military Wives had when their usual one was on holiday, because she did it perfectly correctly (i.e. she sang what the music says) but I bet most people think she didn't!
I think it might have been on Strictly Come Dancing that I saw the Military Wives with their stand-in soloist. I mention this mainly so I can point out that my beloved McFly are finally starting to conquer the world: Harry won Strictly, and Dougie won I'm a Celebrity. And they're just the drummer and the bass player! Who knows what Tom and Danny have in store for us?
I have quite a few other links I've been saving - I think I'll use the remaining seasonal ones first. Here's one: hands up who knew that the original lyrics of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas were really morbid and depressing? It starts: "Have yourself a merry little Christmas - it may be your last" and gets worse from there! The whole story of the song's evolution surprised me greatly when I read about it a few weeks ago.
Here's a Telegraph article about John Rutter, in which we learn a bit more about him, including his favourite Christmas songs. (Coincidentally, one of them is Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, and it sounds as if he's well aware of the original version. Another is O Magnum Mysterium, which we sang in our carol concerts this year, but I don't share his enthusiasm for it - sorry, John!)
The Boston Globe had an article explaining why we're all confused about how to pronounce 2012.
The ever-wonderful Neil Gaiman always has wise words to bring in the new year, but I particularly liked his message this year.
Not seasonal as such, but timely: Eric Whitacre is running another Virtual Choir project (his third), and you have until the end of January to become part of it. The song this time is Water Night, and full details are on his website. I think I was the only member of my choir to be in the last video - I'm hoping there'll be a few more of us this time!
I hope lots of you saw a programme that was on last month, called Come Bell Ringing with Charles Hazlewood. It's no longer on iPlayer, but if they repeat it (which I'm sure they will), do watch it if you missed it. It's mainly the last ten minutes of the programme that I fell in love with: they had all the church towers around Cambridge, plus a load of handbell ringers in the market square, all performing together in an arrangement of Greensleeves for bells only. It was absolutely magical. I'm wondering whether or not there'll be a similarly magical effect on the morning the Olympics start (Friday 27th July)... in theory, all the bells in the country (yes, I said ALL THE BELLS IN THE COUNTRY) are going to ring nonstop for three minutes, starting at 8am. It might work... but already there have been arguments about it, and only yesterday another group of bell-ringers announced that it isn't very practical! I can see their point, but I do sort of hope it works anyway :-)
This is great: 11 sounds that your kids have probably never heard. There are one or two of them I haven't heard, which reassures me that I can't be quite as old as I thought I was!
A while back, I heard a very excited Radio 3 presenter talking about how fragments of a possible 8th symphony by Sibelius have been discovered and played. But I think I'm in agreement with the viewpoint of On An Overgrown Path - it seems very sad that we're doing exactly what Sibelius clearly didn't want us to.
I'm a big fan of TED talks, and this is a particularly interesting one: David Byrne talks about how music is shaped by architecture. Summary: "Does the venue make the music? From outdoor drumming to Wagnerian operas to arena rock, he explores how context has pushed musical innovation."
This is a bit scary: would I survive a nuke?
In November, the London Philharmonic Orchestra did a concert featuring Bruckner and Tchaikovsky. The Guardian review mentioned that a member of the audience stormed out, yelling criticism as he did so. Norman Lebrecht received an eye-witness account of what happened, but the most unbelievable part is that the culprit then wrote to Norman Lebrecht to explain why he believed he was in the right... and then argued with everyone in the comments!
I can't decide whether this is more or less offensive: this week, the New York Phil had to stop a performance during the last few minutes of a Mahler symphony because someone's phone was ringing (in the FRONT ROW!) and they didn't do anything about it until the conductor stopped, turned and looked at them.
Speaking of conductors, this is interesting: a New York music critic decided to try to learn how to conduct.
I love this: these people went round the world and filmed buskers and other street performers everywhere they went. The results are fabulous.
Here's a great BBC news feature about illnesses that exist only in Italy.
Have you heard of the vocal fry register? I hadn't either. But apparently it's the latest American language fad.
Normally I think Tom Service is great, but I have to disagree with him here: in his post about the 21st anniversary of Symphony Hall, he says it's "the country's best, big acoustic for orchestral music" and that it "shames any other big hall in the country". Shame on you, Tom! I actually have proof (well, sort of!) that the Bridgewater Hall is better. One of my best friends used to play in the Royal Opera House orchestra, and years ago they went on a tour round the country, while the ROH was being refurbished or something. Anyway, they happened to play the same programme in Symphony Hall and the Bridgewater Hall on consecutive nights, and they all agreed (she said) that the Bridgewater Hall was superior. So there :-)
(Although, I will admit that Symphony Hall has better paintings!)
And finally: the unreasonably amusing Norwegian butter crisis! I first read about this in the Vancouver Sun, but there was an update in the Guardian a few days later, and - also in the Guardian - a Swedish writer explaining how delighted her country is about the whole thing!
We are learning three works over the rest of this season: two that I know very well indeed, and one that I've never done before. (The title of this post is taken from one of them - guess which one!) The two I know very well are Holst's The Hymn of Jesus (which was the finale of my last ever concert as a Chetham's pupil) and Beethoven 9. The one that's new to me is Elgar's The Apostles, which seems very boring so far, but maybe it will grow on me! Currently the main thing that's interesting me about it is that it features a shofar. When this was mentioned at last night's rehearsal, it seemed that most of the choir had never heard of a shofar. Wikipedia has a particularly interesting (and thorough) article which tells you everything you need to know.
I'd better do a recap, though, hadn't I? December was the usual musical madness. This year my tally was 15 performances in an 18-day period, which I think might be a personal best. Several of those were with my band (pictured below at the annual Shouting in the Library gig).
I enjoyed those more than any of the choir ones, but the choir gigs had their moments too. Messiah was the one that started the 18 days of madness, and I enjoyed it even more than last year's. We even had a female alto instead of a countertenor! I was beginning to think we never would again. And the conductor did not ruin the Hallelujah Chorus, as so many of them do (including last year's) by their attitudes to standing audiences. I've heard recently that our 2012 Messiah will be conducted by our 2010 conductor, so I will have to prepare myself for disappointment. Maybe this will be the year I can finally find some cast-iron reason not to sing.
The carol concerts – all five of them – were fun (nowhere as good as last year's, but a million times better than the previous year's), although it felt very odd having Sleigh Ride as a regular programme item rather than an encore. Still, at least they did play it. Remember the year the powers that be decided not to include it? I still haven't recovered from the trauma!
Picture below is courtesy of one of the orchestra's horns on Twitter. Oh, and you may have missed this MEN article about our compere, or this Oldham Chronicle review of the concerts.
The other big choir-related news story of December was undoubtedly the Military Wives and their quest for the Christmas number one single (in which they were successful). I enjoyed the Military Wives TV programme much more than I expected to (I cried my eyes out several times!), but even if I hadn't it would have been great to see a choir in the charts. There have been loads of great stories in the media, but here are some of my favourites: a Guardian editorial in praise of Gareth Malone; a Telegraph article about the series (I was very disappointed to find that Keep the Home Fires Burning, described in this article, never made it into the finished series, though. I love that song. Perhaps it was too emotional?); and another Telegraph article which features Gareth explaining to the writer how to sing better and talking about why carol-singing is so great; a Guardian article about the feelgood factor of the series in general; and, finally, yet another Telegraph article, this time listing a few other choirs that have been in the pop charts (I didn't know about lots of these!)
Actually, there was one little thing that fascinated me about the Military Wives song after I saw the sheet music. Here's the first page. Here's the recording. What the soloist sings in the third bar isn't quite what the music says, is it? The same thing happens on the last page, and she does it differently then too. This creates a dilemma for choirs who've bought the sheet music in order to perform the song: do they do what the composer actually wants, or do they copy the recording? If they do the former, everyone will think it's them that are wrong! And I felt particularly sorry for the deputy soloist that the Military Wives had when their usual one was on holiday, because she did it perfectly correctly (i.e. she sang what the music says) but I bet most people think she didn't!
I think it might have been on Strictly Come Dancing that I saw the Military Wives with their stand-in soloist. I mention this mainly so I can point out that my beloved McFly are finally starting to conquer the world: Harry won Strictly, and Dougie won I'm a Celebrity. And they're just the drummer and the bass player! Who knows what Tom and Danny have in store for us?
I have quite a few other links I've been saving - I think I'll use the remaining seasonal ones first. Here's one: hands up who knew that the original lyrics of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas were really morbid and depressing? It starts: "Have yourself a merry little Christmas - it may be your last" and gets worse from there! The whole story of the song's evolution surprised me greatly when I read about it a few weeks ago.
Here's a Telegraph article about John Rutter, in which we learn a bit more about him, including his favourite Christmas songs. (Coincidentally, one of them is Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, and it sounds as if he's well aware of the original version. Another is O Magnum Mysterium, which we sang in our carol concerts this year, but I don't share his enthusiasm for it - sorry, John!)
The Boston Globe had an article explaining why we're all confused about how to pronounce 2012.
The ever-wonderful Neil Gaiman always has wise words to bring in the new year, but I particularly liked his message this year.
Not seasonal as such, but timely: Eric Whitacre is running another Virtual Choir project (his third), and you have until the end of January to become part of it. The song this time is Water Night, and full details are on his website. I think I was the only member of my choir to be in the last video - I'm hoping there'll be a few more of us this time!
I hope lots of you saw a programme that was on last month, called Come Bell Ringing with Charles Hazlewood. It's no longer on iPlayer, but if they repeat it (which I'm sure they will), do watch it if you missed it. It's mainly the last ten minutes of the programme that I fell in love with: they had all the church towers around Cambridge, plus a load of handbell ringers in the market square, all performing together in an arrangement of Greensleeves for bells only. It was absolutely magical. I'm wondering whether or not there'll be a similarly magical effect on the morning the Olympics start (Friday 27th July)... in theory, all the bells in the country (yes, I said ALL THE BELLS IN THE COUNTRY) are going to ring nonstop for three minutes, starting at 8am. It might work... but already there have been arguments about it, and only yesterday another group of bell-ringers announced that it isn't very practical! I can see their point, but I do sort of hope it works anyway :-)
This is great: 11 sounds that your kids have probably never heard. There are one or two of them I haven't heard, which reassures me that I can't be quite as old as I thought I was!
A while back, I heard a very excited Radio 3 presenter talking about how fragments of a possible 8th symphony by Sibelius have been discovered and played. But I think I'm in agreement with the viewpoint of On An Overgrown Path - it seems very sad that we're doing exactly what Sibelius clearly didn't want us to.
I'm a big fan of TED talks, and this is a particularly interesting one: David Byrne talks about how music is shaped by architecture. Summary: "Does the venue make the music? From outdoor drumming to Wagnerian operas to arena rock, he explores how context has pushed musical innovation."
This is a bit scary: would I survive a nuke?
In November, the London Philharmonic Orchestra did a concert featuring Bruckner and Tchaikovsky. The Guardian review mentioned that a member of the audience stormed out, yelling criticism as he did so. Norman Lebrecht received an eye-witness account of what happened, but the most unbelievable part is that the culprit then wrote to Norman Lebrecht to explain why he believed he was in the right... and then argued with everyone in the comments!
I can't decide whether this is more or less offensive: this week, the New York Phil had to stop a performance during the last few minutes of a Mahler symphony because someone's phone was ringing (in the FRONT ROW!) and they didn't do anything about it until the conductor stopped, turned and looked at them.
Speaking of conductors, this is interesting: a New York music critic decided to try to learn how to conduct.
I love this: these people went round the world and filmed buskers and other street performers everywhere they went. The results are fabulous.
Here's a great BBC news feature about illnesses that exist only in Italy.
Have you heard of the vocal fry register? I hadn't either. But apparently it's the latest American language fad.
Normally I think Tom Service is great, but I have to disagree with him here: in his post about the 21st anniversary of Symphony Hall, he says it's "the country's best, big acoustic for orchestral music" and that it "shames any other big hall in the country". Shame on you, Tom! I actually have proof (well, sort of!) that the Bridgewater Hall is better. One of my best friends used to play in the Royal Opera House orchestra, and years ago they went on a tour round the country, while the ROH was being refurbished or something. Anyway, they happened to play the same programme in Symphony Hall and the Bridgewater Hall on consecutive nights, and they all agreed (she said) that the Bridgewater Hall was superior. So there :-)
(Although, I will admit that Symphony Hall has better paintings!)
And finally: the unreasonably amusing Norwegian butter crisis! I first read about this in the Vancouver Sun, but there was an update in the Guardian a few days later, and - also in the Guardian - a Swedish writer explaining how delighted her country is about the whole thing!
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