Sweet Singing in the Choir--A Choral Miscellany

Today is Liberation Day in NL, when the flags are fully hoisted after yesterday evening's Remembrance of the Dead. If the second movement of Henryk Górecki's heart-breaking Third Symphony is appropriate for May 4th, his Lobgesang (song of praise) is the perfect expression of restrained jubilation befitting today.

"Lobgesang was composed [in 2000] to mark the 600th anniversary of the birth of Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of moveable type, the debut performance of which was presented [eight years later, as here] by the Master Chorale. The work is accompanied by glockenspiel, played by the redoubtable Theresa Dimond, which [from 6:14 onwards spells] out 'Gutenberg' in musical terms in three iterations over the German word 'ewig' (forever), sung in an almost inaudible pianississimo by the choir. One scarcely breathes in such magical moments." [Source]

This is for Silken , who must have begun to think I'd abandoned my "choral miscellany" topic.



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henryk_Górecki

Last night, we attended a concert by a pretty good amateur choir. Indeed, I'd say the audience was a lot more amateur than the singers. There was one piece, A Boy And A Girl by Eric Whitacre, that the conductor explained had a lot of silences in it that increased in length towards the end. So the silences were important, not least the silence at the end. He needn't have bothered -- some idiots started clapping long before the conductor had turned to face them. He very graciously just made a gesture of helplessness to the choir and left it at that. But I digress...

Another work they performed was this gem by the English composer William Walton (1902–1983). Set Me As A Seal Upon Thine Heart is "Dedicated to the Honourable Ivor Guest and the Lady Mabel Fox-Stangways on the occasion of their marriage, Nov. 22nd 1938." The text is from The Song of Solomon, Chapter 8, verses 6 and 7:

"Set me as a seal upon thine heart,
as a seal upon thine arm:
for love is strong as death.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can the floods drown it:
for love is strong as death."



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Walton

This might not be your idea of "sweet singing" but one hearing of the arguably definitive first track (by an unnamed "group of longshoremen from Genoa") on this compilation album of trallalero singing blew me away, much as it did American musicologist Alan Lomax, who recorded it with Diego Carpitella in 1954 (see informative link below). He later described it as the most significant work in his long and storied career.



www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/tral_gen.htm

I have always been fascinated by architect J.M. Luthmann's concrete "cathedral" at the centre of Radio Kootwijk transmitter park (NL, see separate image). On May Day 2019 I heard an extraordinary choral work dedicated to the radio-telephonic transmission established between Radio Kootwijk and the Dutch East Indies in 1928. Called Mass Transmission, it was written by the polarizing American composer Mason Bates. It was the swooping electronics imitating the fine-tuning of radio signals that first caught my ear. After that I was riveted. (The full text is reproduced here.)



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Kootwijk

Yesterday evening, we heard an amateur choir (which included our soprano friend, whom I help with her parts) valiantly attempt a "fiendishly difficult work to sing", namely Arnold Schoenberg's Friede auf Erden, and doing pretty well, if my ears are to be trusted.

"Schoenberg wrote Friede auf Erden in 1907, at a moment in his life when his highly stylized late-Romanticism was agitating toward transformation into a more rigidly structured, atonal Expressionism. The piece did not receive its premiere until 1911 and though he had indicated in the earliest sketches that the music was meant to be performed a capella, Schoenberg was obliged to create an orchestral accompaniment for the concert to support the incredibly challenging vocal writing. The text for Peace on Earth was taken from an 1886 poem by the Swiss writer Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. The first verse is a depiction of the Nativity while the second tells of bloodshed and imploring angels. The third and fourth verses gradually deliver the peace of the title but the comfort supplied by this beautiful conclusion in the music has an air of caution to it. Schoenberg eventually became disillusioned on the concept of universal harmony among men and his choral evocation, one of the last pieces of his early ‘tonal' period, would later elicit a somber remembrance from the composer. He wrote in 1923 that Friede auf Erden was merely an ‘illusion,' one created when he still believed such a unity was possible. With one World War just ended and another little more than a decade away, it is no surprise that he lost the faith of that more innocent time. He was surely not alone." [From the YouTube blurb]

It is performed here by the Rundfunkchor Berlin conducted by Kent Nagano:



classicalexburns.com/2020/09/02/arnold-schoenberg-friede-auf-erden-peace-on-earth/

I'm so tied up these days with the "Two-Way Musical Excursion" that I'm neglecting other threads, such as this one (sorry, Silken).

Today I heard this beautiful piece on the radio and couldn't just pass it by. "Close Your Eyes" is part one of Llum (Light, 2013–16) by the Barcelona-born composer Ramón Humet.

"The texts which accompany each of the seven stages of the work were written by Vicenç Santamaria i Ollé, visual artist and monk at the monastery of Montserrat (Catalonia) [and a friend of the composer. They] evoke different states of the soul which Humet explores musically through recollection and introspection."

It is performed here by the Latvian Radio Choir conducted by Sigvards Kļava (for the entire album, click here):



www.auditori.cat/en/event-2/concert-sampler-series-humet-llum/

John!!Thank you! Sorry I didn´t see this before!
I'm well and still singing (in fact, we have one of Ola Gjeilo's compositions in our current repertoire). I'll be posting something soon.
I hope you're doing great!

Galina Grigorjeva was born in Ukraine in 1962, studying there and at the St Petersburg Conservatoire before moving to Estonia. This morning we heard her In Paradisum (2012) for male-voice choir on Dutch classical radio:



www.planethugill.com/2023/02/galina-grigorjeva-music-for-male-voice.html

This extraordinary vocal work dating from the late 14th century (!) was described on Dutch classical radio as an extreme example of the then current complex strand of composition or ars subtilior. Indeed, it would still be remarkable had it been written 700 years later.

Its composer was the mysterious Solage and the piece in question was Fumeux fume par fumée, a "rondeau" for three voices. This passage from the composer's wiki gives a good account of his music in general and this work in particular.



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solage

Richard Harvey's A Prayer, which I heard on Dutch classical radio this morning, has an Anna Lapwood connection: Harvey conducted the OST of Interstellar, one of whose pieces found its way onto Anna's organ album Luna, while two others feature in her "Midnight Sessions" project. This is for Silken, who probably thinks I've abandoned this corner of the non-BB section (I admit it's been a while)…

Heli Jürgenson conducts the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir:



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Harvey_(composer)

Nonsense, S. We all have our lives "on the ground" and that often means making choices. I now restrict my forum activity to this one and Beach Boys Today (with the occasional look-in at my old "hobby" forum).

Anyway, it's good to see you around! I hope life is treating you well.