Thursday, January 27, 2011

Thursday Thoughts

On Tuesday I referred to a book I was reading called "The Swedish Choral Miracle" by the conductor of Pro Coro Canada, Richard Sparks. The book was the result of Sparks' research into the Swedish choral sound as influenced by the world renouned conductor from that country, Eric Ericson.  Early on in the book, Sparks illustrates the six key ingredients which have evolved to make up the spectacular sound of the great choirs in Sweden:    
  • intonationism - the emphasis placed by Swedish conductors on pure intonation
  • pianissim - the emphasis on soft (listening) dynamics
  • non-vibratism - relatively straight tone to improve intonation
  • aliquotism - each singer's attempt for unison with others, ie the relinquishing of one's individual musical personality in favour of the choir's.
  • consentism - the unaminity of ensemble diction
  • precisionism - the emphasis on rhythmic precision
I touched on most of these on Tuesday evening. (Think of "O Crux" - the opening unisons of the S2's, the pp singing, the "ks" consonants of "crux"  and so on. The principle was further illustrated to everyone when I asked the basses to listen to each other in the opening solo line of the Rautavaara "Psalm of Invocation" and make the sound unanimous. There was an instant improvement and everyone heard it.  The challenge for an ensemble like Camerata, not having the luxury of rehearsing numerous times a week, is for us to have the principles of good choral singing as a mental check list throughout each rehearsal. And it begins with listening more than singing.

I thought we made great strides in rehearsal on Tuesday. "O Crux" is really coming along - the music is coming off the page with great conviction. We have a good start on both Rautavaara pieces and the first of the Raminsh set. What will help things go a long way is your spending time with the text. These texts are not like German, Latin, French, etc. They are languages that up to this point, we haven't sung a lot, so it is important to get them in your ears. Please use the online resources which have been provided for you.

In other choir news, the esteemed jury for the Young Composer's Competition met yesterday and made a decision on the winning composition. The jury consisted of Peter Togni, Jeff Hennessy, Christina Murray and myself. There was a lot of discussion over the compositions and I am delighted to tell you that we have a winning composition which I believe will be a fitting addition to the May concert. As the composer has yet to be contacted, I'm not at liberty to tell you his name nor the name of the winning composition but that will be public soon.

Speaking of the May concert, here is a video of a wonderful piece (which we will sing in the May concert) by BC composer Rupert Lang, called "Agneu de Dieu " beautifully sung by musica intima.  Think of this as your own little musical sampler on a day the province has come to a grinding halt with yet another weather system! Hope you like it!



For next week please spend time with the following pieces:

First Snow - Holten
Psalm of Invocation - Rautavaara
Evening Hymn - Rautavaara
Of Home and the Great Wide World - Raminsh
The Black Raven - Raminsh
O Sacrum Convivium - Miskinis
On surri sun rantas - (remember it is the Torma setting)

Have a great week.  See you on Tuesday.

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