Low Notes 14
By David Ward
February 2020. This is the latest in an erratic series of newsletters about the choir that will include information about what we are singing plus irrelevant ramblings and observations from the back row of the basses.
In a distracted moment at a Tuesday night practice, I noticed that the chorus at figure 9 in Dido and Aeneas is preceded by a stage direction that says Aeneas enters “with his train”. Still not concentrating properly and with an eye wandering to another work in the book that contains the Jonas choruses, I wondered whether Aeneas’s train might be the Bolly Flyer.
Then I pulled myself together and started to concentrate. But the bizarre score we are using (Oxford University Press, price 3s 6d) tends to prompt distractions. You may have noticed that tiny print at the foot of the first page commands that it is strictly forbidden to copy this work “in any form – on blackboard or paper”. Another eccentricity is the minute type in which the music cues are printed.
And then there is the back page. It carries a plug for the Oxford Choral Songs, which carry “a guarantee of accuracy and practicability”. Does that mean you get your money back if the choir messes up a number or two? Some of the composers represented in the series are unfamiliar names, to say the least.
Thomas F Dunhill taught music at Eton and his brother founded the Dunhill cigarette company (whose fags seem to have gone the same way as Craven A); Bristolian Arthur Warrell gave the world We Wish You A Happy Christmas; and the splendidly named W. Gillies Whittaker, a Geordie vegetarian who died on Orkney, performed all Bach’s cantatas with choirs in Newcastle and Glasgow and, good for him, was a lover of the Northumbrian pipes.
Back to Dido. What I find tricky with the score is knowing who I am supposed to be in the choruses: friend of Dido, follower of Aeneas, sorcerer, sailor? I’m swotting up on the plot to understand the dramatic context. It’s a great piece and it’s hard not to shed a tear at Dido’s lament and during With drooping wings, especially when the sopranos fall down the scale in quavers seven bars from the end.
I’m enjoying Beatus Vir too. I was introduced to Monteverdi at university and, curiously, his music was possibly the biggest benefit I gained from an English degree. I’ve seen his grave in Venice and now I want to go to Mantua, where he was a musician at the court of the Gonzagas.
If you haven’t already got them, Steve Kleiser among the basses can supply CDs or download links that offer very useful highlighted voice parts.
Last autumn was busy. The November concert seems a long time ago but I remember feeling challenged, not least because of the stylistic range of a programme in which we ranged across four centuries, honoured the patron saint of music and celebrated women composers and three women who shared the same first name.
Donald’s Emily, Emily, Emily (as always, dedicated to the Bollington Festival Choir) was simultaneously highly imaginative and the most difficult piece he has ever written for us. My panic rose over the final weeks of rehearsals (I was a regular faller at Emily Davidson’s full gallop) but there seemed to be a collective will to get Emily done, to borrow a phrase current at the time.
By the afternoon rehearsal on the day, I sensed we were ready to respond to the piece and to go for it – and we did. We went home for tea buoyed up and perhaps slightly amazed. Nerves seemed to take over at the concert and the performance was a little bit less good, especially on the last two pages when we slowly collapsed; the staggered ending staggered rather more than Donald had intended. Shame. It would be good to give it another go, a feeling I picked up while talking to singers at our sociable Christmas dinner.
Three weeks later, we were in St Oswald’s for a flowers and fruit carol service. Members of the church and others who came enjoyed it and so, I think, did we – though there was a feeling that we wouldn’t want such a busy autumn schedule every year. A couple of days later, many of us were back in the Arts Centre for our Messiah for All, with less noise from the sopranos than usual but one of the best bands we’ve ever had.
After Dido, we’ll be preparing for the Brahms German Requiem in June. But you can have a very useful taste of the work (and it’s a big one) by coming to the choir’s Singing Day on March 14 from 9.30am-4.30pm. The day is open to all but choir members can enjoy it for a mere £7.50. Please come – and bring your friends.
David