Low Notes 12
By David Ward
January 2019. 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.
The Christmas concert was a cracker, one that was remarkable for its collective enthusiasm and a conviction that we had done enough work to banish fear and turn in good performances. And we did.
The Charpentier Messe de Minuit was full of folky energy and, from my position in the distant recesses of the chancel, we seemed to be flying in Buxtehude’s cantata. And amazingly I didn’t mess up the bass demi-semiquaver runs that had given me repeated nightmares for several weeks. Basses are not built to do that sort of thing.
The assurance continued through the glued-together carols and Jiri (sorry, can’t find the right accent for him on this keyboard) Pavlica’s joyous Sanctus, which turned out to be my Christmas ear-worm. Congratulations to the soloists and the richly talented bunch of instrumentalists from the choir; I thought at one point that Steve Thorpe was going to play his flute and sing simultaneously.
I can’t say too much about the readings because I was involved in selecting them but they seemed to work and Marcia’s angry Scouse cat won its own applause.
And now it’s Joseph Horovitz’s Noah, whose tricky bits, especially the scattered accidentals, are tripping me up. (You could say I’m all at sea.) But on a good day I can at least do a pretty decent raven and shout “Never more!”. I remembered, and it’s one of the few things I can remember these days, that long, long ago I was present at the first performance of Horovitz’s jazz harpsichord concerto in St Pancras parish church in London. It has been performed a fair bit since then and a new recording was released last year. Not a masterpiece, but fun.
A video plugging the new disc includes bits of the concerto and an interview with the composer, who is now a sprightly 92. You can catch it here:
Horovitz’s jazz harpsichord concerto
Michael Flanders’s words for Noah are very clever, especially his litany of the animals entering the ark:
Japhet, Shem and Ham fetched a ewe-sheep and a ram
Duck and drake and bull and cock and hen;
Female spotted cheetahs, armadillos and anteaters
And mosquiters and two lions from their den.
This is, as you may have noticed, way in advance of the words I have cobbled together for the version of Berlioz’s Le Chant des Chemin de Fer that we’ll perform at the Bolly Festival in May. The original was composed in three nights for the opening in 1846 of the station at Lille in northern France. Berlioz, who died in 1869, the year the Bolly railway arrived, rode in the inaugural train and conducted the première.
The excitable but less than perfect text was by the critic and writer Jules Janin, who, judging by a picture on his Wikipedia page, was both whiskery and considerably overweight. Here’s a sample verse:
Seeing this spectacle
The elderly will go smiling to their graves
Because this miracle makes the future
Bigger and more beautiful for their children.
The only virtue of my text is that it makes no mention of dying pensioners.
Back to the Noah night on February 24. The whole concert has a watery theme and will also include solo items by choir members and Ocean by the early American composer Supply Belcher (1751-1836). Quite why Mrs and Mrs Belcher named their son Supply (they would probably have called him Supp-ly rather than Supp-ly) is not recorded.
He was born in Stoughton, Massachusetts in time to be an adult when the American revolution began. He was taught by the eccentric Boston composer William Billings and later became known as “the Handel of Maine”, the state in which he settled with his wife Margaret and where they brought up ten children.
When not composing or fathering offspring, he served as a justice of the peace and magistrate, led the church choir and taught in the local school. Ocean, was published in 1794 in The Harmony of Maine, the only collection of his work.
Now for some practicalities. The pre-concert Noah and co rehearsal will be at 4pm on February 24 and the singing day featuring works for the Festival will be the following Saturday, March 2. It would be great if as many as possible of you could come.
As for the Festival, we have a busy three days at the opening weekend. We are doing a short turn at the Best of Bolly concert on May 10, taking part in the Festival parade on May 11 and giving our Opera Night concert in the big tent on May 12.
It would be good to have a big choir for the opera concert, so it’s not too late twist the arms of any singers, particularly tenors and sopranos, you may meet.
David