On Saturday evening we (the
SSC) performed Handel's Messiah. This is pretty standard fare for choirs but in this case we did it without scores ie no music... by heart. Oh and by the way if you are late tuning into my life, this isn't some rinky-dink little church choir we're talking about... This is the Symphonic Choir and people were paying to hear us either succeed or fail gloriously.
To make a long story short, we didn't have any spectacular errors. Oh there were problems for sure. But nothing that the average concert goer would have been unnerved by. Still, maybe it's my imagination but the audience response seemed muted... well certainly compared to most of our other concerts.
The fact is that even though the group had to work harder for this work than anything we have done (Messiah is a LOT of music to memorize), without the benefit of the score, the result was below par. You lack a certain confidence on entrances without the music and this weakens the impact. For fear of coming in at the wrong time, you often fail to come in at the right time.
Quite frankly I never want to do this again. I don't regret giving it a go but it seems to be a lot of effort for the result.
What this did show me was how hard my fellow choristers were willing to work to pull this off. Those guys surprised me. I didn't think they had it in them and they really showed heart. Kudos all.
Labels: choir, music, ssc
This is a spin on
John Resig's bookmarklet which I could never quite get to work on my office IE.
This bookmarklet will tag a page in delicious without you having to load the delicious tag page. This speeds up the process considerably. How my bookmarklet differs from JR's is simply that (1)it prompts you to input the tags and (2)doesn't close the page upon bookmarking.
JR's bookmarklet called for a bit more tweaking than any of my non-geek friends could muster so this is the low maintenance version. It works on IE. I have not tested it on any other browser.
copy / drag this bookmarklet to your favourites:
delish!You obviously (1) have to change USERNAME to your delicious username and (2) be logged in to
del.icio.us for this to work.
The Code:
javascript:u="USERNAME";tags=prompt('Tags','');q=location.href;e%20=%20""%20+%20(window.getSelection%20? window.getSelection() : document.getSelection ? document.getSelection() : document.selection.createRange().text); p=document.title;window.location.href="http://del.icio.us/"+u+"?tags="+escape(tags)+"&url="+escape(q)+"&description="+escape(p)+ "&extended=" + escape(e).replace(/ /g, "+");
Labels: bookmarklet, music
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
On Saturday I performed Beethoven's Missa Solemnis with the SSC and SSO.
Missa Solemnis is a challenging piece of work. Besides being regarded as one of the greatest choral compositions, it is infamous for the technically difficult singing required in the third movement, Credo. I spent a long time wrestling my tongue around the fugue at bar 375 with moderate albeit not complete success.
Free Advice Worth Every Penny
In Missa, the bulk of the choir's work is over at the end of Credo but, as a singer, it is a mistake to breath a sigh of relief once this is done. On Saturday, we managed to pull through the first three movements with relative success (unless, of course, your relatives are the Chicago Symphony Chorus in which case we would have been judged a less favourably... but I digress...). Even Sanctus was handled fairly well. But our undoing was "the easy part."
In my yoga class, the instructor is always reminding us that lying on our back doing nothing is "the easiest position for the body, the hardest for the mind." Indeed the last movement, Agnus Dei, presented the same challenge. There is not much to sing and yet getting it right requires a mental focus we seemed incapable of producing on the evening. The choir has a number of entry points between long passages of instrumental bits and soloist parts. By the time one arrives at Agnus Dei, they've been on their feet for the better part of an hour, are fairly tired vocally, mentally, physically and... well perhaps not as on the ball as the movement requires.
We would have probably benefited from more time with the orchestra for this movement in order to get used to our cues... which we were quite used to coming from a piano but not necessarily so from the string section. Not that it was a train wreck - it wasn't. But it was not world class. The only consolation is that the whole piece is so complicated that few audience members, at this point, would have realised that this is NOT what it's supposed to sound like!
So my free advice is that if you plan to sing Missa Solemnis, don't assume that mastering the fugues is all that it takes. It takes a huge amount of concentration and a thorough understanding of how your part fits in with all the other parts, including orchestra and solos. Of course this is always true but factor in your general fatigue at the end of an hour of singing and you will realise that if you lie on your back, unless you keep your eyes open, you will fall asleep.
Labels: music
Last night the choir worked with John Nelson for the first time. Lim Yau has been preparing us for Elijah these last few month but has now handed over the reigns.
Usually when another conductor takes over from Lim Yau, we only get him for one rehearsal or less prior to the tutti rehearsals with orchestra and soloists. However Nelson is taking us for two full rehearsals before the SSO joins us. To this Lim Yau remarked "I suspect he's a choral man."
Nelson's directions to the choir were almost identical to Lim Yau's though expressed differently. While we acquitted ourselves well for the most part, I should think Lim Yau was rather embarrassed when the choir couldn't get their timing right on a passage with a basic 6/8 time signature; I know I was. Lim Yau had us work on it beforehand but even Nelson had to get people to tap it out by hand with limited success. The only other moment of cringing was when Nelson pointed in the general direction of the first sopranos and said he was hearing too much vibrato. Lim Yau had made this point several times and although he said he "didn't know who was doing it" he practically did a bee dance in front of the individual. He knows; we know; everyone knows.
Nelson was energetic and charming. Making the transition from one conductor to the next is not always straightforward but Nelson made it easy. He was very demonstrative of the passion he was looking for from us... this included a lot of entertaining hopping around, kicking Shane off the piano to bang out a few bars and even shouting at the top of his lungs a few times. It is a very different style of conducting to what we're used to!
The contrast of approach makes me understand Lim Yau's style more clearly. Nelson asks us to project the story through the music... he goes to the drama of the story line to illustrate the dynamics he's looking for.
Lim Yau, on the other hand, looks more directly to the music. It's as if the story is already saturated in the music and now all we need to concentrate on are the notes. When Nelson was describing the dynamics, he talked about the emotion of the story. When Lim Yau was describing dynamics, he talked about the colour of the music – the imagery evoked by the sound itself. It's probably a subtle difference that nobody paid much attention to but I now wonder how this has influenced me over the years.
I've come to regard music as a communication of emotions – ideas and concepts like "I love you" "this is fantastic" "the sea" are only derivatives of the direct communication which strikes our hearts and a very primal part of our minds. Trying to grasp an intellectual meaning from music is like trying to grasp streaming water in your hands. You can get your fingers wet but you can't really grab on to anything.
Words change all that. Focus on the words and the bird is caged. Focus on the words and you catch a thimbleful of the ocean.
For a non-christian who is rather uncomfortable with the messages Elijah has to offer on religious tolerance and the wrath of God, Lim Yau's approach is easier on my conscious. Communication of emotions seem to occupy a higher ground even if the underlying inspiration was, say, the slaying of pagans. The musical message comes from a timeless archetype. The specifics of the story are incidental.
Saying that, there's something very punchy about a direct reference to the story. Or perhaps that's simply a reflection of Nelson's style. I am happy for the exposure to both approaches as the contrast gives me a better understanding of each and in turn of the music.
Now if we could just get everyone to cope with compound timing, we might actually have something. One-two-three, one-two-three...
Labels: music
A musician I know, who shall remain nameless (you know who you are) said recently that "
a well sounded chord by a chorus of voices is better than really great sex." The point was made to emphasize where music fits into his hierarchy of priorities and no doubt
pleasure.
It is a sentiment that probably few would agree with (
great sex, after all, is so elusive) but really we should not be surprised to hear it. Those who have a strong reaction to music, body movement or color may well find themselves becoming musicians, dancers or artists respectively. Those of us with more common sensitivities naturally pursue our artistic interests with less passion.
Yet since it was uttered, I can't let the quip go. Not because of what was meant, but because it so perfectly illustrates an idea that underlies my beliefs about the forces that shaped human evolution – a topic I'm rather enamored with.
For the moment, let us leave aside all thoughts of divinity. Let's simply say that spiritual influences on man are part of the Polar system of mapping and for now we shall dwell on the Cartesian.
When we think about evolution, we tend to think about physical characteristics: why, say, I have blond hair, you have black hair and why we aren't all covered in fish scales. However the expression of genes extends beyond the boundaries of our bodies. The songs of birds, the nests they build, the architecture of beaver dams and the mating dances of spiders are all extensions of genetic code into physical space. They are what Richard Dawkins calls "the extended phenotype." (Our genetic code is our "genotype" ; the expression of genes as physical traits are the "phenotype"; their interaction with the world the "extended phenotype").
There is a grave misconception that evolution is a process that simply hones survival traits. It thus follows that all behaviour which cannot be attributed to enhancing one's chances of survival are either an accidental byproduct of nature or, in absence of any suitable scientific explanation, a gift from God (for time eternal, God has been the caretaker of mysteries – however dwindling that treasure trove has become).
The error in this thinking is elusively obvious. A peacock's tail does nothing for its chances of survival. In fact it makes him much easier prey to any creature with a taste for fowl. But it does make the peacock rather popular with the peahens and therein lies the answer. Survival doesn't matter much in the evolutionary sense if you are unable to pass your genes on to the next generation. If, however, you succeeded in prodigious copulation before the end of a short life, you will have qualified as a fit survivor in so far as the gene pool is concerned.
The whims of sexual preference thus have a huge impact on evolution. A characteristic that is attractive to the opposite sex may be as valuable as one that keeps you out of the clutches of predators.
What is the survival value of a head of thick, shiny hair? We are the only primates which sport such a display. You can spend all day long hypothesizing about its value as a protector from cold and sun... but none of these theories explain why an individual will spend $200 on an intensive conditioning treatment and dye job. Once sex becomes part of the equation, the significance is obvious. Our ancestors liked a full head of hair and we continue to do so in the present. Monitoring your likes and dislikes over the course of a day is as good a study in evolution as any.
But back to music. Am I suggesting that music is the result of a sexual manifestation – a bubbling over of sexual energy perhaps? Not at all.
Let us look for a more objective example. Humans are not the only artists in the animal kingdom. The male bowerbirds of Australasia have fairly well developed artistic abilities in the area of installation art. They create brightly coloured nests up to 9 feet high – a significant feet for a bird of only 6 ounces. But are the nests simply a means to an end? Are they built simply to lure female bower birds? Is this the epitomized love nest?
The desire to build such nests appear to be complex adaptations in their own right. Bowerbird are bent on building these creations whether or not the females show up.
Geoffrey Miller illustrates the point brilliantly in his book "The Mating Mind":
"Males of many bowerbird species spend virtually all day, every day, building and maintaining their bowers. If you could interview a male Satin Bowerbird for Artforum magazine, he might say something like
"I find this implacable urge for self-expression, for playing with color and form for their own sake, quite inexplicable. I cannot remember when I first developed this raging thirst to present richly saturated color- fields within a monumental yet minimalist stage-set, but I feel connected to something beyond myself when I indulge these passions. When I see a beautiful orchid high in a tree, I simply must have it for my own. When I see a single shell out of place in my creation, I must put it right. Birds-of-paradise may grow lovely feathers, but there is no aesthetic mind at work there, only a body's brute instinct. It is a happy coincidence that females sometimes come to my gallery openings and appreciate my work, but it would be an insult to suggest that I create in order to procreate. We live in a post-Freudian, post-modernist era in which crude sexual meta-narratives are no longer credible as explanations of our artistic impulses."
Fortunately, bowerbirds cannot talk, so we are free to use sexual selection to explain their work, without them begging to differ."
The bowerbirds do not build their nests to get laid, but it just so happens that those who are best at it, happen to get laid the most.
Would Mick Jagger be a musician if it didn't come with the fringe benefit of female groupies? We can debate it. Would Mozart?
Being a good musician is certainly an attractive quality. Whether a person is pursuing musical interests for the badge of sex appeal or for pure love of the art doesn't matter much. Sometime, long ago, those with musical ability were rewarded with a slight edge in their ability to get genes into the next generation. The genes propagated enough that today, all humans have basic music abilities (to appreciate if not to create) and generations of sexual preference for the best musical talent has resulted, in some individuals, what we recognise as musical brilliance.
If you have any doubt that as modern, rational creatures we have evolved beyond a primal reaction to musical talent, I have a group of sopranos to introduce to you not to mention an alto or two. I have
previously reported a slight mass hysteria with regards to one of our conductors and given the behaviour of a few others, I'd have to speculate that even our "weird" (his own description – I would have been kinder) resident conductor has a few of the ladies going soft on him. Then again, that also might be due to our genetic predisposition for great hair.
I wish I could get orgasmic over really great music but I cannot. I am certainly carried away by brilliant sound and would not be without music in my life, but I'm obviously not predisposed to this extreme reaction.
I will, however, trade a great idea for an hour of great sex - trade the musician for theories about his existence so to speak. If an idea captures my imagination, I can live off the rush for days. I trust, therefore, that having a restless mind once carried more sex appeal than it does today.
If not, God has a lot to answer for.
Labels: genetics, music
This blog entry details how I use
Noteworthy Composer ("NC") as a tool for choral practice. To learn more about Noteworthy Composer, visit their website
here.
NC is a simple program that lets you "compose" music on a computer by typing in notes using your computer keyboard. It also has the ability to open midi files and extract the music in those files into a score!!!
What a lot of people don't know is that a midi file may be composed of many tracks – one for each instrument or voice. When software such as NC is used to open the file, the tracks can be separated into different staves.
For instance, this is the result of opening a midi for "Be Not Afraid" from Mendelssohn's Elijah:
The first four staves are for the four vocal parts. The 5th line is for the drum beat and the last line is the tempo track.
Now that NC has loaded the midi, you can change the file: you can change the instruments used in play back, you can change the length of the notes, you can change the pitch, the dynamics... the list goes on. At times I've been keen enough to type in the entire piano accompaniment to a choral piece which originally only had the vocal parts programmed in! (This takes a long time and I don't recommend it!)
For the most part, I use NC to do the following:
- Change the notes when (1) the midi file has an error or (2) the score I'm working with has somehow been modified from the original.
- Practice singing along with the piece until I am very familiar with my notes
- Replaying particular passages which I find particularly difficult (because you can stop and start at any place in the music, you can focus on difficult sections during practice - fab)
- Turning off my vocal part and singing along with the other vocal parts (ie once I think I know it, I turn off the soprano line and sing that while the other three parts play).
Weaknesses:
- adjustments to tempo and dynamics are rudimentary. This is a basic tool for getting a grip with the notes - not with the music.
- Although it is a simple program, there is a learning curve to get used to how to amend files. I've used several professional composition programs and this is by far the easiest
- Getting a copy of the program is difficult because they only send it out by CD – it's not available over the net
I find the midi files I want all over the net though recently I stumbled upon this site which is totally awesome for choral singing: CyberBass . The other great place for midis is Classical Archives.
Of course once you've amended the file you can save it back into midi format or save it as an NC file.
Notes about midis:
- You cannot play these on a CD player without converting them to wav format. You may have some software that lets you do that but it's unlikely. It is possible to use WinAmp to do this (play the midi to output WAV) but it is time consuming and who really wants to listen to a midi on a CD player?
- You usually cannot play midis on your MP3 player. Again you'd need to convert the midi to MP3 and this requires that you have the correct CODEC. If you don't know what that means then honestly me trying to explain how to do this will give you a headache! Go to Download.com and search on "midi to MP3".
- Midis are very basic files. Use them at your PC while singing along with your score. When you leave your PC, leave the midi behind and be sure to expose yourself to a real music version of the stuff you're working on so you don't end up sounding like a computer.
If you have questions, drop me an e-mail and I will update this note to answer FAQs.
Labels: music
The Creator God of the Old Testament, the Demiurge, was generally regarded by Gnostics as not the genuine ultimate God who is the source and "the depth" of reality. Since the God of the Old Testament is jealous, vengeful, judgmental, and undoubtedly masculine, [...].
Kelley L. Ross , Ph.D.
Enter the story of Elijah brought to life by the music of Mendelssohn as an oratorio. Elijah is an old testament prophet who takes on the king of Israel who is following a false God: Baal. The true God, not impressed by this idolatry, shows his character early on in the story:
For I the Lord your God, I am a jealous God
And I shall visit all the father's sins
On the children to the third and the fourth generations
Of them that hate me.
- Elijah, "Yet doth the Lord"
The people of Israel are sentenced to drought and Elijah goes into retreat. After three years in the wilderness, Elijah returns to take Ahab, the king of Israel, head on in a religious bake-off: You and your prophets prepare a bull for sacrifice. I'll do the same and we'll ask our respective gods to provide the light for the fire. Whichever god answers by fire will be declared the true god.
This contest appears mid-way through the first half of the performance and is the highlight of the story's action. Mendelssohn illustrates the excitement well with three successive choruses of the prophets of Baal calling to their god. Each cry gets more desperate but the only response is silence.
The it's Elijah's turn and the fire rains down. Now the crowd is positively panicked as they see they've been backing the wrong deity. The music takes on a frenetic tempo (the composer's directions literally say – "con fuoco" – "with fire"). When finally they realise that Jehovah is the true god, there is a beautiful exclamation from the chorus of "Our Lord is One God." It is touching.
But no sooner is this sentiment laid down, than the mood is interrupted by the bellowing announcement of Elijah:
"Take all the prophets of Baal and let not one of them escape you! Take them down to Kishon's brook and slay them everyone!"
Elijah, "Oh Though, who makest thine angels spirits"
There is little room for universal love and religious tolerance in the name of Jehovah.
The slaughter ensues. God, thus appeased, finally gives into Elijah's pleas for an end to the drought. When the rain arrives, the people thank God for his mercy, not mentioning of course that he's supposedly the one who brought the suffering in the first place. Part 1 thus draws to a happy close.
It is quite apparent that the creator god who visits humanity with the disaster of the flood is not identical with the "true God" [...]. Viewing the character of the deity of Genesis with a sober, critical eye, the Gnostics concluded that this God was neither good nor wise. He was envious, genocidal, unjust, and, moreover, had created a world full of bizarre and unpleasant things and conditions. In their visionary explorations of secret mysteries, the Gnostics felt that they had discovered that this deity was not the only God, as had been claimed, and that certainly there was a God above him.
Stephen Hoeller
Notes:
- Felix Mendelssohn: born Hamburg, 1809; died Leipzig, 1847 after a series of strokes.
- Elijah was written in English from an English translation of a German libretto. It was given its first performance in English on 26 August 1846 at the Birmingham Festival, conducted by Mendelssohn himself. Mendelssohn (who spoke fluent English) took great pains that the English version would be as accurate as possible.
Labels: music
There were two ladies and a man. The two ladies ran the audition. The man just helped us relax... he pushed my shoulders down 'cus they were too tight. I saw him the week before conducting [at the SSO Beethoven's 9th concert]. I recognize him from his hair.
Diego Encarnacion, 9
The Children's Philharmonic Choir had auditions today at the YMCA. If you're interested in having your kid try out, there's more info here.
Slideshow
Labels: music
Ode Post Mortem
SSC 25th ANNIVERSARY
BEETHOVEN'S CHORAL SYMPHONY
DATE
May 6, 2005
FEATURING
Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Lim Yau conductor
Lim Yan piano
Tamara Matthews soprano
Graciela Araya mezzo-soprano
Paul Austin Kelly tenor
Johannes Mannov bass
Singapore Symphony Chorus
The Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Singapore
Singapore Bible College Chorale
Hallelujah Chorus
PROGRAMME
BEETHOVEN- Choral Fantasy (19')
BEETHOVEN- Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 (65')
The first half of the concert was Beethoven's Fantasy for Piano and Chorus. This is a simple piece which anyone can enjoy on first hearing. Lim Yan, Lim Yau's nephew, was the pianist. He is a fairly young guy (presently doing his national service I'm told) but in rehearsals he came across as confident and easy going.
The Fantasy went well. In rehearsals everyone had a lot of fun playing this piece. The theme is initially set by the piano then carried around the orchestra. I found the performance of the woodwinds particularly charming. I was sitting right behind the clarinets, and when they doubled up with the bassoons, they really found a groove that lifted the whole ensemble. It was great and the audience went into the intermission looking happy.
In the intermission, Nella Hunkin, the principal cellist said in all sincerity, "The sopranos sounded great this time: they're weren't flat! I guess they were saving it for the performance!"
In the second half we performed Beethoven's 9th. I say half but the piece is 65 minutes compared to the mere 20 minutes of Fantasy. The 9th is actually a tough one to do for this kind of audience. Most people show up because (a) they know somebody in the choir and/or (b) they know a few bars of Ode to Joy - the 4th movement of the Symphony.
There's a solid 50 minutes of music before you get to Ode. The second movement of the 9th is also fairly recognizable but really all these people want to hear is the last movement. People bring their kids 'cus they figure it will be an easy one to wean them onto classical music with... NOT. If they're lucky, the kids will sleep through the first three movements and not get restless.
In addition to the chorus, Ode includes 4 soloists. The first to sing is the bass. Johannes Mannov was absolutely brilliant - he has fantastic projection and tone. He was very quickly joined by the male voices of the choir who echo his shouts of "Freude" - Joy. He then sings the familiar tune and is joined by the entire choir for the "refrain." The four soloists then take over and there is a bit of this soloists - choir - soloists for the rest of the piece. OK these are seriously abridged programme notes. But you get the idea.
It struck me that on several occasions, when the soloists were singing, they seemed to be slightly out of phase with the orchestra. The choir might have suffered the same problem but when you're singing at the back of the stage, it's not that easy to hear what the rest of the orchestra is doing.
The other soloists were not as brilliant as Mannov on the evening. This is a shame because in rehearsal, the soprano, Tamara Matthews, was fantastic. On her first night of rehearsal even Lim Yau was charmed enough to give her a big hug and I have NEVER seen him do that before in rehearsal ! The second night, however, her voice seemed to be going. Performance night I was told she was a bit weak and it sounded like she dropped her penultimate note in the run-up to the choir's finale.
By this point the choir had already had one major flub which I was later told nobody in the audience picked up on. For those in the know, the second time we have to sing "Alle Menchen", everyone was hesitant and the volume was seriously impaired. It was bizarre because the whole choir held back and we'd never made this mistake in rehearsal. I can only assume Lim Yau did something we didn't expect or perhaps didn't give us a cue he usually gives because the reaction of the choir was too uniform and instantaneous to explain it on random behavior within the choir.
Of course we're supposed to be able to come in without being totally reliant on him - but we're not a professional choir. I think we constantly surprise him on how dependant we are for his guidance. This comes down to lack of confidence on our part.
I've pointed out all the weaknesses of the performance but generally it went well. The audience didn't exactly go wild but I think that was less in reaction to our performance as to the fact they were tired after sitting through 70 minutes of classical music when really they just wanted 20 minutes of Ode to Joy.
Personally, I cannot express what a huge privilege it is to sing this piece with such a brilliant conductor and fantastic orchestra. To me this isn't simply about making music, it's about reaching for something higher.
Technorati Tags: music, sso, limyau, beethoven, choirLabels: music
This Friday, May 6th, we (the choir) perform Beethoven's 9th as well as his Choral Fantasy. Last night was the first rehearsal held at the Esplanade (usually the SSC rehearses at the Victoria Concert Hall).
As usual, I arrived early in the hopes of catching the orchestra rehearsing. There is nothing more aurally exhilarating than listening to the SSO when you have the Esplanade to yourself. I've done it several times but it still makes my heart race.
I was the first to arrive and thus the first of the choir to discover that our security passes had been lost. The passes are pre-printed 8x5cm multicolor cards which you wear while backstage. A member of SSO admin was talking to the guard without much luck: the passes were gone and it was a public holiday so nobody was around to effect a proper search. I sat down to wait it out. A few other choir members drifted in and joined me.
Then Lim Yau arrived. I mentioned that the passes were lost, which I think he was aware of, but in typical fashion he didn't reply and walked straight through security with his SSO credentials. But something must have registered as a minute later he was back asking the guards to sort it out. LY was really the only one who could force some action: the situation needed a bit of fear factor to get the guards thinking creatively.
Eventually, he got them to agree to let us in based on the ID confirmation by an SSO staff member who would check our names off a list. We then got a sticker to identify ourselves (we looked like a tour group) and were allowed through.
When I got through to the concert hall, I discovered the orchestra wasn't rehearsing that evening. Instead, a group of "roadies" were tweaking the hall under the instructions of LY. The Esplanade has a lot of moving parts: a moveable ceiling, large doors near the roof, risers for the choir. There's a hell of a lot of hydraulics behind the pretty wood and watching it in action is quite cool.
Once that was settled, there was a fuss about the chairs. The first row of chairs had rubber feet. But the next three rows were wooden. Any time you sat down or stood up, there was a fairly loud grinding noise against the floor. It's probably something an audience wouldn't think about twice though it would sound horrible on a recording. Clearly it would be a distraction to the piece in progress - that is if you weren't already distracted by the fact 150 people just stood up.
LY was rather cranky about this as they (i.e. the Esplanade management) had supposedly promised to sort this out. And it seemed rather easy to sort too: give every member of the choir four felt pads to stick on the bottom of the chairs and within 15 minutes the volume of the chairs would drop appreciably. Anyway no such creativity was at hand.
I should point at that even though the upcoming performance is billed as "The SSC 25th Anniversary Concert", the chorus is actually an amalgamation of four choirs: the Singapore Symphony Chorus (SSC), The Philharmonic Chamber Chorus (TPCC), The Hallelujah Chorus and the Singapore Bible College. This is because the SSC at only 90 strong is too small to be a symphonic chorus. Ideally you need 180. There actually used to be as many as 140 people in the SSC but due to what Lim Yau candidly described one day as his "charming personality" numbers had dropped since he took over as conductor. The fact is, he set the bar higher and not everyone could make the grade or was inclined to. The standard has supposedly improved (I don't really know as I wasn't around then) but on the con side reinforcements are now required. Having dedicated Christians supplement your numbers also limits the possible repertoire but this is another story.
The TPCC is actually LY's own choir and it's understood that you have to be pretty good to get in there. In truth they are fantastic: I've been to several of their concerts and they've never failed to completely mesmerize me.
Our rehearsal started with the semi-chorus opening of The Choral Fantasy. The "semi-chorus" is a hand-picked subset of the larger chorus chosen to sing the solo parts as a group. Each participating choir nominated 2 people for each voice part. This meant that LY didn't hand pick the entire semi-chorus - half were chosen by the choral masters of the respective choirs.
The result was that in the choral opening for Fantasy, the sopranos were extremely weak. Even the dedicated semi-chorus rehearsal had not corrected this - their voices were lost in the great hall. No problem - some quick adjustments were made. LY started moving people around. He asked various women to sit to one end of the second row and join the semi-chorus. When the dust settled it was apparent that he'd deftly pulled together a cast of seven TPCC sopranos to carry the effort.
It worked - the section now sounded great. Plus there was a group of TPCC sopranos looking like a pack of cats who'd eaten canaries. They were definitely pleased to be in the semi-chorus. Meanwhile various members of the SSC were steaming. It seems that some of the altos were none too impressed that despite that this was the SSC anniversary concert, only 2 of their section made it into the alto semi-chorus of about 18.
I have no illusions about my diva status so I was just glad he sorted out the opening. The fact that less than an eigth of the semi-chorus is made up of SSC members is a footnote that concerns me not.
OK so the way rehearsal usually goes is this: We start at 7:30pm or a few minutes later in which case there's a mandatory lecture about arriving late which all the latecomers miss; then we run through a passage; the choral master (Lim Yau) has us work on a few problems; he works with individual sections on weak areas in such a way that each section (i.e. soprano, alto, tenor bass) gets a bit of a vocal break; occasionally he waxes lyrical about some topic and thus amuses us while we get a breather; after an hour and a half of this we get a 15-20 minute break; then we carry on for another hour and end by about 10:15pm.
This lets us get in about 2 1/2 hours of rehearsal with enough breaks thrown in that your voice isn't pushed too hard.
However last nights rehearsal went like this:
A number of people arrived early. LY wanted to get going so he started warming us up and thereby got an early start on being irritated that we weren't really ready. Finally the whole choir was in place 5 minutes early (this is a record) and we started with the Choral Fantasy. There was very little breaking into sections (semi-chorus reconfiguration aside) as at this point it wasn't so much that individual sections needed boning up but that we needed to come together as a choir. We needed to feel out our color, tempo and space in this new hall as the acoustics of the Esplanade are a bit tricky to get used to. It can be quite difficult to hear what's going on at the front of the stage when you're at the back and at times even hearing your cues from the other vocal parts is difficult. So we worked on this. It was full on.
Come break time, LY wasn't inclined to stop. The fact is that when you have 150 people head off in different directions for 15 minutes, the break can drag out. He proposed to the choir that we would press on but that he'd agree to let everyone go early. I can tell you that nobody in that room was under any illusion they were getting out of there a minute before usual. Anyway with rehearsal time so precious at this stage, who could argue?
Fantasy is not that demanding. Ode, however, is a serious piece of music requiring full use of your pipes. By 9:30pm my vocal chords were genuinely tired. I could hear a lot of voices around me start to fade. There's one section where we sopranos have to hold a high A for 8 bars. Most people have to take a breath in between but I find this no problem. I noticed, however, that as voices paused for breath, many weren't coming back in for the rest of the passage. At one point I was the only voice in a section of about 5 chairs. I realized that if I didn't adopt a similar strategy I would be putting my voice at risk for the efforts required later in the week. So I started to join them. LY wasn't totally oblivious to what was happening as at one point he asked us that if we were going to fake it at least try use the appropriate mouth position and not be so obvious.
So what time did we finish? 10:12pm. Technically we did finish early although it certainly wasn't quid pro quo!
Lim Yau's parting comment to the choir was that we should keep our Esplanade sticker as a memento of "Administrative Incompetence."
2 more rehearsals to go before Friday...
Tags: singapore, choir, beethoven, music, limyauLabels: music
The SCC Performed Janacek's Glagolitic Mass on Saturday 20 November.
I woke up with a bit of post concert depression yesterday. It wasn't as bad as in the past though. Perhaps I wasn't as attached to Janacek as Mahler (highly possible), perhaps I'm getting used to it (maybe) or perhaps I felt we did a better job at nailing this one (we did) so I could let go without regret.
In the end, everything seemed to come together. The orchestra was struggling at rehearsal Friday as were the soloists but on Saturday night, it was pretty tight. Our Veruju ("Credo") was still a bit blurry but overall I was happy with the performance. I don't think we ever really got what the maestro wanted from us on Veruju but otherwise I felt we were in sync.
My friends in the audience said that some of the soloists were pretty weak but from where I sat, they sounded clearer than they had during any of the rehearsals. It's safe to say, however, that the SSO doesn't have a huge budget for bringing in big voices so it's probably a good idea to sit a little closer to the front for such concerts. Anywhere in the first 20 rows should be a great performance no matter who is singing. The front of Circle 1 should also have a nice sound plus a great view of the choir.
Although we kept being told that The Glagolitic Mass was a bloody difficult piece, I found it the easiest thing I'd done so far (in my vast experience of 4 concerts). There wasn't a lot of singing, it was really a matter of getting used to the timing and few weird chords. After Mahler, it was a price of cake.
This was a great season largely because Lim Yau was such a prince. I don't know if he's found enlightenment or Prozac, either way, he was sweetness and light for the whole season. Some members of the choir figured he was just on "best behavior" because of the visiting choirs. But we had visiting choirs last season and he was frequently grumpy. No there seems like something fundamental has happened there and it's great to see. It's very easy to forsake every other demand on my time Monday nights when I have the chance to be in the audience of this guy's wit and talent. Last year I often left rehearsals feeling quite discouraged but this year I've mostly left my Monday nights feeling inspired. Quite frankly, when he's in form, the man is brilliant.
Several members of the choir skipped out for this season. They seemed to be voting with their feet on Janacek. I admit it took me a while to get into it, but in the end, Janacek won me over. But it never occurred to me to take a break if I didn't care for the piece. That seemed part of the challenge of it all, committing yourself to the choir regardless of the repertoire on offer. It just seems the professional thing to do and in any case, most rewarding because it takes you outside your box. I think I take all this more seriously than many of my peers!
So next season it's Beethoven's 9th and Choral Fantasy.
Janacek
Labels: music
After much searching, I have found it... The words to
Janacek's Glagolitic Mass is here:
MŠA GLAGOLSKAJA. This saves me typing it out in order to have a handy one pager for practicing. With far too many consonants and a famine of vowels, ancient Czech is a bit of a tongue twister and takes some effort to get used to.
But that is the job at hand! The SSC is performing this November 20th. It's probably an acquired taste for most, so if you are going to the concert, get a recording first and
practice listening - it's amazing how this can improve one's enjoyment of music
.
The piece has great feeling of space - of mountains and valleys. There's a lot of folk influence, but the story is told in such a strange musical language that the listener may be dumfounded.
The music has a lot to offer but if the message is religious, it is frightening. The plea for mercy is so desperate that it is as if the choir was expecting a shower of brimstone at any moment.
Perhaps it is not God the composer fears but lonliness. I find the music makes more sense if I don't think of it as a mass but as a piece about longing and torment - love unrequited. I suppose for a soul tormented, love unrequited has God to blame so it amounts to the same thing. Apparently that was
Janacek's state of mind and in that context, the music has a lot to communicate.
Failure
BECAUSE God put His adamantine fate
Between my sullen heart and its desire,
I swore that I would burst the Iron Gate,
Rise up, and curse Him on His throne of fire.
Earth shuddered at my crown of blasphemy,
But Love was as a flame about my feet;
Proud up the Golden Stair I strode; and beat
Thrice on the Gate, and entered with a cry—
All the great courts were quiet in the sun,
And full of vacant echoes: moss had grown
Over the glassy pavement, and begun
To creep within the dusty council-halls.
An idle wind blew round an empty throne
And stirred the heavy curtains on the walls.
Rupert Brooke (1887-1915). CollectedPoems. 1916.
Labels: music
I've had the good fortune to have rarely attended a concert that I did not enjoy. Last night's performance by
"Wayne Marshall Virtuoso Organist" was no exception. Unfortunately my enjoyment didn't stem so much from the performance of the soloist as from the performance of the audience.
Was Wayne Marshall good? Probably. It was just too loud to be able to appreciate the finer details of the performance as I had to resort to sticking fingers in my ears. Quite frankly the multitude of overtones emanating from the 20 tons of pipes created a sound I find very hard to describe as harmony. I don’t know what to ascribe this to. Was the hall not tweaked correctly? Was there too much room for echo? Do I just not know how to appreciate good organ music?
I’ve enjoyed the Esplanade organ on several occasions. At Mahler’s 2nd, at a few Margaret Chen performances and even as music accompaniment to the silent film Faust in the opening festival - it was all enjoyable.
But why was this experience so unpleasant? Was it just too loud?
Is there a volume dial on the organ? If so it was up full blast. Before I chose to enjoy the concert through fingers, I was having flashbacks to younger days stumbling out of rock concerts with my ears ringing.
There is, however, upside to very loud performances: no matter how much the audience coughs, talks, rustles plastic bags or snores, it is not disturbing.
And snore they did. It is amazing what people can sleep through. After the intermission I moved to the back of the stalls (it was relatively quieter) and virtually everybody in that section was asleep. It occurred to me that the performance would have had particular appeal to people half deaf or with aspirations of such a disability. This is a marketing angle the Esplanade should explore in future.
So what made the event so enjoyable?
The final number was an improvisation on the theme of West Side Story. This was by far the longest piece of the evening (was it me or did it actually last longer than West Side Story itself?). About four people seated near me were riveted to the performance. The rest were out cold.
When the piece ended and the applause began, heads all around snapped up. After a quick reality check (“oh yes I’m in the Esplanade… looks like the concert is over”) the newly awoken began to applaud with enthusiasm. People clapped wildly. People for whom the music was nothing more than a backdrop to their dreams brought their hands together with such energy and acclaim of triumph that surely, in the end, theirs was the better performance.
Now that's entertainment.
Labels: music
Cutting off the Finale
I can't stand the premature applause that greets the end of EVERY SSO performance. Are you trying to prove you know that the piece has ended? Here's a bit of news: it hasn't. One of the BEST part of a piece is the sound of the last note as it hangs in the hall. Watch how the conductor waits at the end of a performance to let that last note drift off. Please WAIT until he signals the end instead of killing that last note with your clapping! Coughing
Now that SARS is over the green light seems to have been given on coughing in public. The problem with the excellent Esplanade acoustics is that all the noise produced by the audience can be heard as clearly as the orchestra. Every time I attend a concert I leave questioning the health of the general population. Are there so many sick people? Does nobody carry cough drops?
Abigail Sin concerts.
I watched her perform twice. In my defence, the second time was because the concert was the first after the SSO summer holiday and I was feeling withdrawal symptoms. My problem with her concerts is not her performance but the crowd she draws. Parents bring their kids along in the hope that seeing an 11 year old play will somehow spark creative genius in their own offspring. The fact is, few 11 year olds have the patience to sit through 30 minutes of classical music. They will act out their frustration at the situation by kicking the seat of the person in front of them. That's where I'm sitting.
Just as an aside, watching her perform isn't very relaxing. You don't go to see her to enjoy a great pianist. This isn't like watching Lang Lang. You go because you want to see what an 11 year old can pull off and to be supportive of a young Singaporean prodigy. So you spend the whole concert rooting for her: "Come on kid, you can do it!" It's fascinating to see that someone like this even exists. You hope that she can find the emotional reservoir in puberty to become really great - but that's an unknown. Half an hour of sitting on the edge of your seat with your fingers crossed is rather exhausting! For the record: she did pull it off. Amazing. Kudos.
Interaction
It's apparent that one of the major reasons classical music is failing to attract younger audiences is that it seems so inaccessible. On the few occasions I've witnessed interaction between the conductor and the audience, the audience has left feeling a part of something special. They like it A LOT.
Locally we see Yeh Tsung regularly woo the SCO audiences which now has a regular following. He is quirky and humorous and his enthusiasm is infectious. I became a instant SCO convert when watching him conduct.
Despite his very soft-spoken nature, Lan Shui also has a knack for charming audiences with his boy next door persona. Unfortunately, this tends to only be seen in the pre/post concert talks when virtually nobody is around!
I haven't seen Lim Yau talk to an audience although it was relayed to me that there was one occasion when somebody sneezed very loudly right at the beginning of a performance as he was raising his baton. He paused, then turned around and said, "Bless You!" The audience found him quite amiable and were very happy to enjoy this bit of humour. His popularity went up several fold that day just from this small gesture.
I can think of other examples using visiting conductors but the point is the same. In my experience, conductors interacting with the audience ALWAYS improves the concert experience.
Now this may not be considered proper art music. It is not the done thing and I'm sure that many conductors would resist this as NOT music and NOT their job (not to mention that it requires a skill set that many conductors probably lack). It might even be seen as degrading to the sanctity of the concert. But if audiences don't feel that their presence is important to a concert, their numbers will continue to dwindle. People want to know that the orchestra is playing for them - not for some ideal. The idea that they are part of a unique experience needs to be conveyed otherwise they can simply enjoy classical music through a cd player in the comfort of their own homes.
This is the reality of classical music in the modern era. People have lots of entertainment alternatives. If they are going to pay money, they want some pay off in terms of emotion and involvement. I believe it is possible to cater to this and still preserve high standards of performance.
Labels: music
Is Somebody trying to tell me something?
I went to dragon boat practice yesterday with the Breast Cancer Survivors team. I've paddled with them a few times as a supporter.
At the beginning of practice the coach shouted out the dragon boater's motto: Timing is Everything.
You eventually learn that timing is not EVERYTHING because as soon as you get your timing right, they want you to improve on something else… But in any case, it's the first and most important thing.
It is more important that everyone paddles in unison than for everyone to paddle with strength at their own pace. Those struggling should always sacrifice effort for timing. The boat will go much faster with everyone together at 50% effort than everyone apart at 100%.
Getting 22 people to all have their oars hit the water at the same moment takes some skill. Each paddler has to watch the pace setters at the front of the boat and stay in time with THOSE TWO individuals (one on each side and those two are watching each other).
You can have the most beautiful stroke in the world - slicing the water without splash, pulling through with the depth force and speed to maximise the volume moved, exiting and returning to the entry point quickly - but it is not the BEST stroke in the world if you are not pulling as part of a team. It is the ensemble which is all important.
The two people at the front of the boat setting the pace will sometimes count out to assist the others with timing. However, as they are facing forward, people more than 5 rows back are unlikely to hear them.
This is were irony creeps in.
At practice yesterday I was there at the front calling out the timing. Another member of the boat, Angie about five rows back, called out in unison with me in order that the people behind her could hear as well. What happened next is a common occurrence.
She stopped counting with me and started simply counting. Her counting took on a momentum of its own. In fact when the coach asked me to stop, she carried on counting and the back half of the boat paddled along to the count until a few seconds later when she realised what had happened.
Maestro Lim said in choir practice once "You can count in your head, but do not count for the people around you - because no matter how accurate your counting is, it is not MY counting."
When Angie was counting she should have simply been calling out what she saw of my paddle going up and down. But rhythm has a way of spawning mutations which take on lives of their own. It takes a certain amount of practice to sacrifice your individual rhythm for that of the group.
The irony for me, if you can't be bothered to read "Luke Warm" below, is that on this point, there is little to distinguish a choir from a dragon boat team. At times on Friday, it was difficult to hear the orchestra. At that point we needed to take our timing cue from the Maestro… or even from the bows of the violinist moving in unison like a team of paddlers.
For most of the concert we kept it together. But in the excitement of the last movement, the choir ended up with their own timing which was slightly off that of the orchestra.
Without the musical accompaniment, we would no doubt have sounded fine. Our timing was OK in itself - but it was not the timing of the ensemble.
Angie later came up with an excellent solution to her timing challenge: she only counted out every 3rd and 4th beat leaving the 1st & 2nd beats unspoken. Both she and the other paddlers were therefore forced to take their cue on the first two beats from the front of the boat as a visual cue. I don't know if she realised what an eloquent solution that was to a common timing problem in a dragon boat.
It is important to develop good paddling technique. But ultimately, what makes a stroke great is the relationship between the paddler and the group. It is the quality of the relationship and not simply the quality of the indivdual which determines greatness.
Tonight I went for a night ride (cycling). I haven't done a night ride in several years. We started out at MacRitchie reservoir and did a big loop around to Yishun, Woodlands and then back to Bukit Timah. It was about 40km. Parts of the ride were though heavy traffic.
As a group, we are much more visible than as individual cyclists. A half dozen flashing lights are a lot easy to see than the one lone blinking one. So for a night ride, the safety of the individuals are enhanced by sticking with the group.
This means that the fitter cyclists might have to sacrifice some pace in order to keep the group together.
It was a very uncomfortable ride for me. While there were some individuals who were sensitive to the need to keep the pack together, there were others who were not. George, the leader, did what he could but it wasn't actually possible to tie people together.
It's one thing for a prima donna to below out her choir part in double volume vibrato and thus destroy the unison of voices. I don't enjoy it, but I can live through a disappointing choir performance (for the record, this has not happened but as I'm carrying on this theme of analogies, I'm using it).
I cannot, however, live through getting hit by a car because the group is spread 1km wide and I'm left on my own in heavy traffic.
So having got the message three times this weekend, I'm really wondering what is going on. Does Somebody think I've missed the point. If I have please explain it to me. I think the point is clear and I got it.
ZEN AND THE ART OF EVERYTHING
This weekend has left a very strong impression on me. And that is that quality is not a thing in itself but is a function of relationship.
Maybe I've answered my own question below. I asked, "how often do we get a chance to not be mediocre?" Relationships with objects, ideas and people are presented to us in every instant. If we can give our full attention to the present moment in which they occur, then surely quality will be a constant.
Won't it?
Labels: music
We performed Berlioz's Messe Solennelle tonight.
I feel we could have done better by young Hector.
Every time I come to this choir - every week - I feel I learn something new. Now I have to learn to let this go. It is rather hard after spending so much time with something and yet not conquering it. It has eluded us and there's no second chance.
I suppose I should feel good that, at the very least, I didn't short change myself by lack of effort. I spent my lunchtimes in the Esplanade library almost every day for the past month reviewing the score both with and without the CD. And I spent many hours each week practising at home. I even ripped the CD and played it back slow on the PC for the passages that were giving me real problems.
Given my lack of experience, I needed to put in more effort. Half the people in the choir had been singing over half their lives. I haven't even been at this half a year.
My goal was to ensure that I knew the material completely so that when we were asked to respond, I could respond and not get caught up in the notes. I did not succeed completely. Even at the end there were a few phrases that remained an effort. I certainly could not "sing it in the middle of the night if someone woke me up and put a gun to my head" which seems to be my voice teacher's barometer for really knowing something.
The chorus opens with Kyrie Eleison. We are pleading for mercy - and we needed it too. We were in luck as the audience provided. Whether God will remains to be seen.
Before things went horribly wrong, they were clearly not good. At bar 108 we watch the conductor for the cue to burst out in a cry of "Christe." He has told us many times to quickly drop into the diminuendo on the first syllable to provide the contrast to the second syllable. We have done it right as many times as we've done it wrong… but right seemed to only come when he reminded us. Before the performance we were reminded in no uncertain terms.
The choir did exactly what we did in the warm up… exactly what we did wrong the first time before being corrected. The best performance of that passage was left in the 6th floor rehearsal studio.
Most of the audience would have been none the wiser. But the opportunity to take things up a notch was lost. This was one of the early milestones on the path to a great performance and we missed it.
Kyrie had not reached its nadir however. The last 9 bars sounded like a fight had broken out in a baby's crib. We tripped all over the notes. It was so shocking it took all my effort to not show my disappointment and let the audience in on what was obvious to everyone on stage. We were out - way out. With each other and with the orchestra.
Lim Yau took a long pause after that. I'm not sure if it was so we could reflect upon our butchery or if he was simply composing himself for the next movement. Composure was certainly required. Gloria was up next and there were greater challenges ahead than Kyrie.
Amazingly, we negotiated Gloria with much more finesse. By the end of that movement I was still trying to let go of the initial disaster. This is a flaw of mine I know. The relative success of Gloria helped, but my heart was sinking.
We managed to get moving a bit after that. The score I held was so familiar to me that it was not so much a description of the music but a diary of influence and effort. Each passage brought back memories of guidelines we'd been given in rehearsal. I had notes everywhere but most were no longer needed to recall what had been said.
You need to add the colour here
The tempo is as solid as the metallic frame of this building (the Esplanade). You need to maintain its precision…
The passage here is rhetorical. You need to speak it. Speak! It's as if two old ladies are fighting over money on the void deck of an HDB… (I can't say I understood the hokkien demonstration that followed that description).
We were allowed to sit down at the beginning of Credo (#5) - just long enough to get some circulation going. Then were up again.
My notes read, "Stand - like a healthy person." Thus instructed, I did.
Resurrexit (#8) is the high point of the concert. It is also the most enjoyable to sing. There is a wonderful tempo and energy "Judicare vivos et mortuos cum gloria!" Something about judgement, living and dying - I guess. I don't need to know Latin to understand the music: It's the moment of truth. I've heard it hundreds of times and still haven't tired of it.
Gloria!
We were given the "keep smiling" signal. LY pleaded with us at Thursday's rehearsal to communicate to the audience. To present our best selves. I interpreted this in part as being more expressive, not only vocally but facially. However someone in the choir warned me that facial movement was NOT well regarded. I was confused. I decided to go with my own interpretation.
I was looking up at the audience, at the conductor. I was enjoying the movement. I was hopeful this would all turn out rather well. My confidence was premature.
Right in the middle of Resurrexit I suddenly swallowed a desert. Or it felt as I had. My vocal chords dried up completely over the course of 2 seconds. A huge coughing fit was welling in the back of my throat. I used all my control to fight instinct and swallowed. Was I going to cough in the middle of the high point of the concert at the Esplanade concert hall with 1100 people looking on?
This was a disaster. My eyes started to well with tears as I held back convulsions. Could people see I was struggling? My throat was so dry I didn't even think I could fake my way through the rest of the song.
But fake I did - for long enough to moisten my throat and continue. And by some miracle before the first Amen, I was back in. I was OK. I'm living proof that no matter how bad you have to cough, you can control yourself.
We pushed on through Sanctus and found ourselves staring down O Salutaris. This section has been a constant problem for the sopranos. The first high G, the Maestro has pointed out, sounds like we're trying to do a pull up for all the effort and screeching that comes from us. G is not that high for a soprano but it's a very naked G sitting out there for all to see. Perhaps we're gripped by a bit of panic.
Berlioz intended for the opening of O Salutaris to be sung by only 3 sopranos however LY had the entire soprano section "go for it." It really was a "go for it" kind of effort as those who didn't feel they could make it were encouraged to "fake it" - complete with singing gestures sans sound. The passage is meant for just a few voices so volunteering to take yourself out of the talent pool actually improves the effect.
I can usually hit the G easily if I'm warmed up but having just swallowed a desert back in Resurrexit I figured I'd take the faking option on the first note.
I think Sanctus actually went OK but I was in no condition to judge. By this point my memory is a bit blurry as I'd been standing for the better part of an hour. I suppose it was "OK" but not "really great" which is how I'd felt after our first performance of Mahler last month.
We were closing in on the finale.
The penultimate piece is Agnus Dei - a tenor solo. It was very hard to hear the tenor and I could sense some tension around me because at one part people weren't sure if they'd heard their cue or not. We hadn't and eventually it came though we were rather non-committal with the background effects we then provided to the piece as if we were still not convinced of our timing.
At last we arrived at Domine Salvum. Salvation did look to be at hand too. Everything was going along swimingly. Domine is one of the easiest passages to sing and we were taking it full on.
So what happened? We had been warned earlier that it is possible to get out of sync in just one or two bars if you're not completely alert. If we didn't believe it before we certainly proved it to ourselves tonight.
It's probably hard to believe that the acoustics in the Esplanade can be anything but perfect. But the truth is that in the middle of a choir it can be hard to hear the orchestra. Sound is not the only cue available however. You don't need to hear to stay in sync. You can watch, you can feel. Beg, borrow or steal - whatever it takes. The ensemble needs to stick together.
That's not what happened. Over four bars in the finale, we came apart from the orchestra. I don't think the altos or the men could really hear it. From where I was sitting it was clear. Could they see it? Could they feel it?
Perhaps it shows the experience of the others that they were able to hold the last two notes such that it felt we all ended together. But it was what engineers call "a force fit." It was way off.
The applause followed. Far more than I expected. Singapore audiences aren't very frugal with applause in any case. Plus we had a slightly biased audience as half of them were friends and family of the chorus. They seemed genuinely appreciative mind you.
We didn't do the three-four bows we had for Mahler. It was the usual two and then exit stage left.
I asked some of my fellow singers how they felt. They were all taking it better than me. Everyone said it was "not so bad."
Perhaps it was "not so bad" but is that really what we're after? If we're after "not so bad" I don't know why we bother at all. The whole stage was set for greatness and we hadn't put on our best shirt.
Later I was greeted by friends who thought the show was fantastic. The sound of a big choir carried the moment.
I am glad the audience enjoyed what they did. But as I've said before, while my job is to please the audience, the barometer of my performance as a member of the choir is not the audience, it is the conductor. It's what he thinks that matters to me.
The choir can be pleased with themselves, the audience can go home feeling jolly and I can even deal with some of the looks from the orchestra. But the standard we have to aspire to is that set by the conductor. In this case, I can't think of a higher standard to aim for. I have a hard time believing there is anyone on this island who would want more from us or who deserves more from us.
This was an incredibly ambitious project. There was a LOT of material to cover in a very short period of time. We did not master it. We needed more time which we did not have. We did not meet the challenge. I don't blame anyone. I'm just disappointed we missed the mark.
A friend of mine who heard some but not all of the errors said she was very happy with the performance. Not because we pulled it off so well - we didn't. But because we were doing it at all. The idea that someone was pushing the local scene to greater heights was inspiring just in itself. She figured the entire SSO budget should be thrown at the Resident Conductor now before he found something better to do.
The Messe eluded us and there is no second chance. Perhaps tomorrow we shall run faster, reach farther. But not on these pastures.
I find that very hard to swallow - and I'm only a visitor. What do you do when you set your standards so high that perfection must constantly elude your grasp - week after week - year after year? How does one live with that?
"Berlioz was said to have written this after 'a year and a half of formal music training,'" Lim Yau once told us during rehearsal. "We aren't told what 'formal music training' means but if it means learning to read notes then it is clear God is very unfair in his distribution of talent."
It's possible there was not enough left over from composition for the performance.
God has got a mention a few times during rehearsal. My friend asked me if I thought the maestro was religious.
"I doubt it"
"Why not?"
"Who needs religion when you've got God staring up at you in black and white every day?"
Toscanini reportedly once told a trumpet player, "God tells me how the music should sound but you stand in the way."
That we did.
We shall have to do a bit of time in purgatory for today's performance.
How often do we get the opportunity to transcend mediocrity? Perhaps we each get that opportunity daily. We just don't notice it.
Purgatory must be overloaded.
Kyrie Eleison.
Post Script: It seems I'm harsher than professional critics. According to Andant our performance showed "flawless balance and perfect ensemble."
Labels: music
I discovered at choir practice Monday night that several women in the chorus are drooling over Lan Shui. My popularity ranking increased enormously when I announced my secret connection to him: we have the same massage guy.
Sunny The Massage Guy
Sunny is a freelance reflexologist. I've held the prime Sunday afternoon slot with him for 7 years. Sunny seems to "do" a variety of famous people including GK Goh's wife and other family members. They referred Lan Shui to him. Initially this was just as and when LS was visiting Singapore. Since he became the Music Director of the SSO, the massage sessions are more regular. Sunny sees Lan Shui right after
me because, as it turns out, Lan Shui is my neighbour.
Sunny does reflexology, full body massage, is a former Kung Fu master, can tell you how to kill someone with your umbrella. He also knows an obscure form of Qi Gong which he'll teach you for free if you're an old client and not likely to use your powers for evil.
Because of Sunny, I'm regularly informed of whether Lan Shui is in or out of town. Mostly it's the latter and usually he's in some frozen Scandinavian country. The change of climate is not always easy and when he last came back from conducting in Denmark he came down with the flu for 3 days.
Oh the poor dear. What he needs is some of my chicken soup...
Ladies, before you rush over with your herbal remedies, let me continue.
I can't tell you what kind of car he drives, because it's a rental and always changes. I do know what his rent is though. It's a lot less than mine and I'm thinking of complaining to my landlord.
I've also learned that his wife is from Iceland... and he met her in the States.
If any of this is wrong, blame Sunny.
The word "wife" has not gone down so well with the Lan Shui groupies in the chorus nor has my inability to furnish a description of her. I think they were hoping the word "fat" would creep up. Sorry, but I've never laid eyes on the woman and Sunny has not volunteered the info so I'm not asking.
LS's marital status has forced a reassesment. The chorus ladies have now decided that a life which involves frequent trips to Nordic climates can't be great no matter how charming, cute and talented your husband is.
Mr. Nice Guy
I can personally attest to the fact that he is genuinely a nice guy.
While being massaged one afternoon, I was moaning to a friend about how I was unable to get a ticket to the Esplanade opening concert. The Esplanade is across the street from my office and having watch it come up over the previous two years, I practically felt like I owned the place. But the first performance of the SSO for the Opening Gala was by invitation only.
Sunny, despite having only a 30 word vocabulary in English (mostly consisting of words like "pain" "sore" "hurt") picked up what I said. An hour later my phone rang.
"Hi, this is Lan Shui."
I was dumbstruck and mumbled something witty like "Oh Wow uh, uh.."
"Do you speak Chinese?"
Why did I stop those damn "Mandarin in 3 Months" tapes???.
"No I'm SO sorry I don't!"
He continued in English which was actually quite good except for a strong accent. He told me that someone from his party, from Denmark, couldn't make it and if I would like, I could take the ticket.
He didn't know me AT ALL and was inviting me to join his wife and friends for the concert.
In the end, I couldn't go because the Esplanade staff said that for security reasons, they could not change the name on the invitation. By that point it didn't matter so much to me - I'd already got the best invitation in Singapore, even if I couldn't take it.
I only met him face to face about 6 months later. I went to one of the chamber music concerts at the Victoria Concert Hall. When the concert started, I moved out of my seat to one unoccupied which was a bit better. No sooner had I done this than someone took the seat I'd just vacated. It was Lan Shui.
If the rightful owner of my new seat showed, what would I do? Boot the Maestro out of my seat?!
At the intermission I introduced myself. He was aware that I was in the Singapore Symphony Chorus thanks to Sunny, the double agent. We chatted a bit until he politely excused himself because our conversation was holding up the show... He was supposed to be conducting after the intermission.
Since then, I've only dealt with him as a member of the chorus. He was very patient with us.. perhaps even lax. I wonder if he takes us seriously? We're a bunch of amateurs and he had only 3 rehearsals to influence our performance. Either he was very pleased with us to start with or he decided we're a write off and he preferred to concentrate on the orchestra - a group of professionals and the main driver of the performance. Edit: One theory later mentioned to me was that perhaps he thought better of suggesting improvements to Lim Yau's chorus!
We had three practices for Mahler's second and then we performed it on two consecutive nights. Watching him conduct was very exciting. He gets totally lost in the music. Sitting in the middle of the choir, I definitely had the best seat in the house to watch his performance. I can't say I noticed that his suit was too big for him - a fact all my friends in the audience were fixated on. I was lost in the music and captivated by his passion.
That's got to be worth a few visits to the freezing north.
Lan Shui - |
 Lan Shui joined the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) as Music Director in 1997. Born in China, Lan Shui made his professional conducting debut with the Central Philharmonic Orchestra in Beijing and was later appointed Conductor of the Beijing Symphony Orchestra. As guest conductor, Lan Shui has conducted orchestras in the United States, Europe and Canada. he has also conducted the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Taipei (Taiwan) Symphony and Melbourne Symphony, and has performed at festivals in the United States (Tanglewood Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, Round Top Music Festival, Eastern Music Festival, National Orchestra Institute). Shui is the recipient of several international awards, amongst them kudos from the Beijing Arts Festival, New York Tcherepnin Society, 37th Besancon Conductors Competition in France and Boston University Distinguished Alumni Award. He currently divides his time between his post as Music Director of the SSO and engagements with orchestras all over the world. FROM Singapore Conservatory of Music |
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Smarty Pants
"Hey, I saw an article in the SSO bulletin. It seems there was some private function where the original violin soloist was supposed to play a concerto but ended up with several false starts. In the end, Shui Lan exchanged places with him and the violinist conducted instead. Seems he hasn't been playing the violin for some 20 years but managed to pull through the whole concerto."
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Labels: music
