Low Notes

By David Ward

March 2016 This is meant to be the first in an occasional series of newsletters about the choir that will include information about what we are singing. They might even include occasional profiles of choir members that will help to introduce people to each other. But it is also likely to feature irrelevant ramblings from me, observations from the back row of the basses.

I’m hopeless at German; never studied it, can’t understand it, can’t say it. So first attempts at getting my teeth round the text of Bach’s Wachet Auf for our spring concert were a bit fraught.

But then I had a thought: I bet somewhere on the net some helpful person (or bit of software) will guide me on my way and have me speaking like a native. Though more likely a native of Birmingham than Berlin.

I found this: http://text-to-speech.imtranslator.net/ You simply type in or copy and paste the text, use the drop-down menu to indicate German, press “say it” and a nice man will read it to you. A bit fast, admittedly, but you can’t have everything and you can stop and start his recitation. The site is not pretty but it works and I think I now have got the hang of some tricky vowels.

All I have to do now is get the hang of the notes. Things are not too bad till I hit the Alleluias at bar 144 where I fall like a cart horse at Beecher’s Brook. I can’t help it  – I just panic at the sight of semi-quavers and feel intimidated by those thick black double lines. But I now have a secret weapon: my 12-year-old granddaughter (she who muttered, as I said I was going to brush my hair, “What’s left of it.”).

She insisted on marking breathing points in run of semi-quavers and refused to accept my pathetic claim that I just breathe where I can before I pass out. Then she played the notes for me s-l-o-w-l-y; I recorded them and play them to myself. I’m now groping towards accuracy but lord knows what will happen when I try it at speed.

All I know is that Bach is worth the effort. Singing the St John Passion with the choir a few years ago was one of my greatest joys and I can still feel the sense of elation and exhaustion that I felt at the end of the huge final chorus.

In 2000, John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists marked the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death by going on what they called a pilgrimage, performing all 198 surviving cantatas in churches in Europe and the US. On July 28, the day Bach died, they performed in the abbey on Iona. I was with them (not to sing, I hasten to add, but to write about the project) as they rehearsed cantatas dwelling on death including Actus Tragicus, in which the soprano soloist almost pleads to die. It was an amazing trip. The sun shone on Iona; we all ate together and went on an evening boat trip round the island.

I joined the pilgrimage again in November 2000, this time in the Thomaskirche, Bach’s own church in Leipzig. Eliot Gardiner was a bit cheesed off that the church authorities would not let him place his sopranino recorder soloist in the pulpit for Cantata 96 but I didn’t mind. I was just glad to be there. At the end of the concert, the choir moved into the chancel to sing an unaccompanied chorale round Bach’s grave while stern portraits of Lutheran pastors looked down.

Enough of reminiscences and on to Messiah. Donald’s performing notes pointed us to a YouTube clip of the chorus But Thanks Be To God. It’s performed by the Bach Collegium San Diego and preceded by a recitative and duet featuring one of the most stunning male altos I’ve ever heard.

He’s Reggie Mobley, a big bloke, the sort that might well be seen charging at full tilt down an American football pitch. But he sings with terrific verve and style. You can here more of him on his website: www.reginaldmobley.com

And he’s coming to Europe next month to sing with Eliot Gardiner and his team in performances of the St Matthew Passion. The only one in Britain seems to be at the Barbican on March 26, which I won’t be able to make.

I mentioned at a recent practice that the Alzheimer’s Society is looking for volunteers for its Singing for the Brain sessions on Tuesday afternoons at the Methodist church near Sainsbury’s in Macclesfield. If you need to know, ask me. It’s a great warm up for Tuesday evenings.

That’s it. Back to bar 144 of Wachet Auf.