January meme: Jan 12

[cahn]

skygiants asked me to talk about some music I enjoyed.

That... could be answered in many different ways. I considered talking about West Side Story, which I just saw two weeks ago with my sister and absolutely adored, or the Opera in English recordings which I keep mentioning but have never actually written up properly, or Frank Wildhorn (which skygiants has already written up better than I could ever do), or Loreena McKennitt (which I don't really have much to say about except that I love all her stuff). But I will talk about the three pieces of choral music I sang in my college choir that I love the most.

Os Justi, Bruckner, an incredibly gorgeous motet which is one of my absolute favorite pieces in the entire world. The part at "meditabitur" (and later at "lex Dei") where the sopranos soar up to an A and the altos have the moving line up against the sopranos moving down... is the most gorgeous thing I have ever been privileged to sing. (And the last page: the gentleness of "in corde, corde," and then the hushed triple pianissimo of "et non supplantabuntur gressus ejus" with the basses supplying the grounding of the low F's -- wow.)

(The translation is "The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom, and his tongue speaks what is just. The law of his God is in his heart, and his feet do not falter." I... have no idea how Bruckner made this out of that.)

"Bruckner- Os Justi Meditabitur- Monteverdi Choir" (Watch on YouTube)

(Please don't listen to this quietly on crappy computer speakers like I just tried to do. Crappy headphones, okay.)

The Coolin, or more precisely Reincarnations, Op. 16: III. The Coolin, Samuel Barber. This is the most sensual piece of music I have ever performed, period. It reminds me of being tenderly and sensually in love, in all the good ways.

The following recording I like except for the way they flat a third of the way through (of course, given how much we flatted this in my college choir, I have no grounds to talk):

"Barber: The Coolin, from Reincarnations, for a cappella chorus, Op.16 No.3 - HKYPC" (Watch on YouTube)

(For those of you with Spotify, I like the Dale Warland Singers version.)

And then there's Ein Deutches Requiem, Brahms, which is Brahms setting a bunch of Biblical texts to music while firmly declining to make it Christian-theology-specific (Wikipedia informs me that in performance they inserted some stuff from Handel's Messiah to make it palatable to the clergy, which I think is hilarious). We combined with the other college choirs for this one, and brought in ringers, and it was awesome. We all also have a ton of fond memories of our conductor's odd sayings on this one -- for example, there was the part where "the tenors help the basses, the altos help the tenors, the sopranos help the altos, and God help the sopranos."

Or -- the second movement is one of the most fun choral parts, and it probably says something about me that I can still say in German (albeit with a terrible accent), "For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass." After that, the women come in (and then the men), saying -- and I swear that independent of textual context, the musical line is practically lilting -- "Das Gras ist verdorret, und die Blume abgefallen! (The grass withers, and the flower falls away.) We used to laugh at how cheerful and upbeat the line sounded.

And then, later in the movement: "Aber des Herrn Wort bleibet in Ewigkeit!!!!!!!" (But the word of the Lord shall endure forever) leading into the totally awesome "Die Erlöseten des Herrn" (The ransomed of the Lord shall return). Okay, the exclamation points were not in the music, but we sang it like they were. Our conductor called it "the biggest BUT in the history of music!"

For the second movement, start at about 10:40 in the following recording. I tend to be partial to Gardiner's conducting of choral music, though I don't like the soloists so much in this one:

"BRAHMS EIN DEUTSCHES REQUIEM GARDINER 2007" (Watch on YouTube)

This was not one of our favorite movements at the time, because no choral parts, but it is now one of my favorites to listen to, because it is gorgeous. This recording is with Arleen Auger, one of my favorite soprano voices ever.

"Arleen Auger "Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit" Ein Deutsches Requiem" (Watch on YouTube)

Comments

[skygiants]

These pieces all are lovely! Reading about people's experiences with choral music always makes me wish I had not abandoned choir at the age of twelve or so.

[thistleingrey]

One can pick it up as an adult, to some extent; I sang Brahms's Requiem with a relatively low-pressure adult chorus, and we did a decent job--enough not to embarrass me and my picky, orchestrally trained standards. :P And I hadn't done choir at all till attempting a no-audition community chorus a couple of years prior. (Note that I continue to be mildly intimidated by how cahn writes about her singing and church directing! But it's also why I think it's useful to identify potential rungs past K-12 and college.)

[cahn]

Um. I apologize for being intimidating! I suspect it has to do with music being the one thing where I'm actually self-confident; for everything else I have a pretty terrible inferiority complex, so I kind of enjoy the lack of that with music, which probably manifests in showing off a bit.

I suspect though that the two of us are not so different in vocal ability (even though I've taken an embarrassing number of lessons, I started much too late; the lessons don't seem to have huge effect unless I've been given extremely directed warmups) -- my main advantage as a singer is that my sightreading (and general musical knowledge) is extremely good for a singer because of my instrumental background, which would also be the case for you, no? I think the main difference is that I wasn't exposed to anyone critiquing my voice in grade (if I recall correctly?) school, so I was allowed to build up that confidence...

[thistleingrey]

Oh, no, please don't apologize--it's great that you carry that confidence. And I think you're underrating the knowledge you've built up from long experience with music. Certainly I still don't know much about vocally oriented pieces, whether to sing or to listen to.

You're right about critique, insofar as I knew quite precisely all through private violin lessons and county orchestral participation how good I was/n't and how much potential I did/n't have relative to those nearby. At one point I was assistant concertmaster but knew I'd never be concertmaster, within that group of recurring fellow-travelers and friends.

[cahn]

That's true -- and relative to this post, my college conductor was probably the best conductor I have ever had (and really arrogant; this has been a feature of all my good conductors except one, actually), and I learned a lot from him.

I was thinking mostly of a post you made where you mentioned a friend who criticized your voice. When you described your voice in that post, I remember thinking that mine, especially before I started lessons, was pretty similar (relatively thin and not supported, if I remember your post correctly, and even if I didn't, that's what my voice is like). But no one told me so until I was in grad school and had already gotten confident about it :)

[thistleingrey]

*nods* You're remembering the post correctly--relatively light and (at least then) not supported.

[cahn]

Ah, I'm very glad you liked the pieces!

And as thistleingrey says, you can absolutely join choirs and pick up singing now if you would like to :) (Though I would be the first to understand being too busy!)

[zopyrus]

Barber is one of my favorite composers, but I'm not really familiar with his choral work. This is beautiful, thank you for posting about it!

[cahn]

Ah, I'm so glad you enjoyed! I also love Barber :) :)