Category Archives: composition

composers, composition, New Dublin Voices and other choral singing, reviews and reports, what I'm up to

Superbos!

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'Called' - Bruce Herman (click for article about the artist)

Last night was the performance of Bach’s Magnificat and it was such fun. We met at the concert hall at 4.15 and went through the programme with the organist and the orchestra. We stood on the stage (five rows, I think it was, of about twenty-four singers each). In front of us were the orchestra — it’s quite a small band: double bass, cello, bassoon, chamber organ continuo, oboe/cor anglais, two flutes, triple strings (as far as I can recall) and timpani. Also not forgetting the trumpets that play such a great part in the outer movements. The choir is in five parts and there are five soloists, too, each of whom gets a solo aria.

The instruments are all given a moment to shine, too. I love the ‘Esurientes implevit bonis’ (the text of which translates as “he has filled the hungry with good things and has sent the rich away empty”) — it features a flute duet obbligato (music-speak for the fact that they play all the way through, as importantly as the vocalist) that at times trips along in thirds or sixths, and at times has the two lines tumbling over each other. Bach plays a little joke with the words at the end: the flutes stop short of the final note, leaving it to the bass instruments. Sending us away empty.

Bach dissects the text of the Magnificat (the song that the writer of Luke’s gospel ascribes to the awestruck teenage mother of God), making twelve separate movements. I was at a talk during the week by theologian Terry Eagleton and he mentioned that the lines I quoted above sound like a political chant — the sort of thing that crowds would’ve shouted in protest against a corrupt and oppressive ruling class, say.

Another musical joke (a traditional one — Durrante does the same thing in his setting of the Magnificat, which we also sang in the concert) is the use of the same music at the end of the piece as the start. The last line of the doxology (Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.) lends itself nicely to the musical task of recapitulation (music-speak for having the first tune come back at the end). And what an ending it is! All trumpets (one of them a wee piccolo trumpet, playing gloriously high, piercing through the bustling music with a high, descending chromatic line. It’s as if, for a moment, we catch sight of something amazing before getting on with the business of jubilation.

Brilliant, composers, composition, forthcoming events, New Dublin Voices and other choral singing, Technical, what I'm up to

Notes tremendous thundered out

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Today is St Cecilia’s Day, the patron saint of music. It’s also the day Benjamin Britten was born. One of his compositions, the ‘Ode To Saint Cecilia’ (from whence comes the title of this blog post), is a setting for unaccompanied choir of a poem that his friend WH Auden dedicated to him. We sang it in New Dublin Voices a couple of years ago and it is included on our CD, ‘Something Beginning With B’.

(The album is available to buy from the website, newdublinvoices.com, or on iTunes…)

Tonight I’m going to attend the rehearsal of the Goethe-Institut Choir. Hopefully they’ll let me sing with them in their forthcoming concert on 5 December in The National Concert Hall. They’ll be singing Bach’s setting of the Magnificat, which I fell in love with as a student in university. In the first term we (the fifty or so students in the first and second years of the BMus course) did the piece in a scratch performance just for ourselves. Our tutors told us about the various little compositional signals that Bach uses in his setting of the words of Mary’s song, and I’ll blog more about it another time. Right now I have to go and get ready. Have to make a good impression if I’m to convince them I’m up to the task!

Oh yes, and I found this charming video by the Anderson & Roe piano duo (whom I’ve written about before on this blog). Vivaldi was a near contemporary of Bach and would have probably *loved* to play a grand piano, had it been invented. Anderson & Roe achieve a delicate sound, more akin to the Baroque keyboard instrument sound, by dampening the strings of Ms Roe’s piano. Mr Anderson’s uneffected (but wonderfully affected) playing allows the piano to sing the melody as only a grand piano can. A beautiful effect from a continually interesting musical partnership.

composition, songs

Come to His presence

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I wrote the first verse of this gospel song about five years ago and added the other two verses just a few months ago. Jen and I played at my friend Peter’s wedding in All Souls, Langham Place, London a few years ago and I played this song as they signed the register. I’m pleased with this version of the chords and it’s a good key for me, too (G major). Probably a bit high for general use—it goes up to an ‘E’—but it would work well on piano in F or Eb.

Come to His presence
Come lay your cares at His feet
Come find your healing
Come and be made complete
For He is faithful and He will care for you
Draw near to God
Draw near to God

Come with your hunger
Come with that thirst in your soul
Come to His open arms
Come with those fears untold
For He is faithful and He will care for you
Draw near to God
Draw near to God

Come with your grieving
Come with the pain that you feel
Come with your broken heart
Don’t be too proud to kneel
For He is faithful and He will care for you
Draw near to God
Draw near to God

A PDF of the lyrics and chords is available on request. Please pass this on to anyone you know who you think might like it, or who’s involved in church music. If you use it, let me know 🙂

composers, lovely performances, lyrics and lines I especially admire, togetherness

Scorn Not His Simplicity

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My Dad was a big fan of Phil Coulter. He was at Queen’s at the same time as Phil and liked to tell us about the time Phil locked him and a bunch of other students in a room on the campus to rehearse them! As a boy, I went to hear Phil Coulter and his orchestra a number of times—in Craigavon Leisure Centre, in the Grand Opera House at least once—and his albums were staples of family car journeys. I enjoyed his arrangements of Irish folk songs and I still remember going to Matchett’s Music in Belfast one Saturday morning to get a copy of his piano book (which I still have, complete with pencilled-in letters on ‘The Town I Loved So Well’ under the ledger line bass notes that Anna and I hadn’t learned yet). Actually, it’s through Phil Coulter that I got to know most of the tunes in the first place. Definitely a big inspiration to me. I still have a couple of signed photos somewhere with him posing at the piano in a billowy white shirt 🙂

His songs were what particularly made an impression on me. He started his songwriting career at a run, penning a Eurovision winner and a one-point-off-the-top runner-up at a time when doing so meant that, (a) it was a good song, and (b) they were destined to be massive hits. Check out his website for more of his story—it’s very readable, clearly written by him, and filled with loads of stories about the amazing career he’s enjoyed.

I was prompted to write this today by one song in particular, though, ‘Scorn Not His Simplicity’. Written from Phil’s personal experience, this song was first introduced to the world by the wonderful Luke Kelly. Here’s a lovely, intimate recording from a Tallaght pub in 1974:

Today parents, teachers, pupils, Special Needs Assistants and others are taking to the street outside the Dáil here in Dublin to protest the cutting of funding for SNAs. Listen to this song and let your heart go out to them.

composition, The Ode Less Travelled

Toast

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Here’s another poem done as an exercise from Stephen Fry’s ‘The Ode Less Travelled’. It’s from the chapter on Anglo-Saxon Attitudes and the apprentice poet is tasked with writing some lines on food using the alliterative principle. Each line of this type of poetry follows the pattern BANG BANG BANG — CRASH! Here’s my attempt (this should definitely be read aloud):

The serrated slicer spreads the butter.
Today it’s toast with trickly honey;
Golden and good and gloopy and sweet.
Nimbly I manipulate the knife to stop drips:
The quickness required! The requisite speed!
Twisting and turning this stainless steel cutter;
Move hastily—hesitation holds no reward.
The ground is the goal where gravity’s concerned—
It wants you to waver, it welcomes your wobbling—
But you must usurp it, exuberantly wielding
The slicing device in your vice-like grip.
This condiment, carefully curated by bees—
Those mini magicians transmuting the flowers,
Zipping and buzzing with zeal round the garden.
Alarmingly, of late they say that apiary is greatly threatened.
Bees are besieged and it’s we who are to blame;
They need a certain space, a certain freedom.
There’s a paucity of pollen in the places that we’ve built up;
Those vexing environments, their views distinctly gloomy.
“Think twice,” they’d say, “your tarmacadam tendencies are ruining
Our ability to ‘bee’ in this bud-forsaken world!”
But enough about that stuff, bees are tough and I am hungry
So it’s “Honey, you’re home!”, then it’s HHOM in my mouth.

The Ode Less Travelled

Cows

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I picked up Stephen Fry’s excellent book, ‘The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking The Poet Within’, after stalling with it a few years ago. All through he advocates reading poetry aloud and gives space for lots of practice.

This is one exercise—to write some lines of dactylic pentameter on the subject of cows—that I did today:

Cows are quite massive—it’s hard not to feel slightly freaked out
Crossing a field in your Wellington boots as the sun sets.
They stand around and they ruminate, watching you pass by;
You hold your head high, pretending you all know who’s boss here.

Brilliant, composers, Intellectual

Ecstasy

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John Adams gave the commencement speech at Juilliard this week, where he was being presented with an honorary doctorate (along with the amazing Herbie Hancock—if you love music, get his album ‘The Imagine Project’). It’s a great speech about being an artist.

Twyla Tharp, Herbie Hancock, Derek Jacobi, John Adams

It calls to mind a post I did a few months ago that highlighted inspiration from Sam West and Austin Kleon.

Brilliant, composers, lovely performances, Technical

Cuban Landscape with Rain

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A beautiful performance of Leo Brouwer’s ‘Cuban Landscape with Rain’ by Dublin Guitar Quartet. I came across Leo Brouwer’s work while helping catalogue guitar music at The Victorian Music Library in Melbourne in November. One afternoon I popped out for lunch to a lovely charcoal chicken place and, as I ate, the heavens opened and spewed forth rain such as I’ve never seen before. Then, as swiftly as it had begun, it was over. Listen out for the portrayal of rain in this beautiful piece.

composers, lovely performances, New Dublin Voices and other choral singing, reviews and reports, what I'm up to

I *Was* Glad…

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Today I sang Hubert Parry’s anthem, ‘I Was Glad’, with St Ann’s choir for a service to mark the commencement of the newly-elected Irish parliament (Dáil Éireann). Parry was born in 1848, an explosive year in Europe, not least in Ireland. He died in 1918, just a few months before the first Irish parliament convened.

This paragraph, from the Wikipedia article on Parry, is a bleak reminder of the cost of freedom:

In the words of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: “During the war he watched a life’s work of progress and education being wiped away as the male population—particularly the new fertile generation of composing talent—of the Royal College dwindled.”

‘I Was Glad’ is justifiably one of Parry’s best known works, and was written for the coronation of Edward VII, revised for that of George V, and performed again at Elizabeth II’s crowning ceremony. (An upside to the abdication debacle—for Parry, at least—must have been the opportunity to hear his work performed at two coronations!). It’s a great piece and brilliantly written. Listen to the lovely word setting of the central section (“O pray for the peace of Jerusalem…”) and the wonderfully expansive climax on the word ‘plenteousness’ at the end.

(PS this isn’t us—it’s St Paul’s in London on the Queen’s golden jubilee)

Today is Ash Wednesday, so it didn’t go unnoticed among the choir that ‘I Was Glad’ is rather a joyous piece for the first day of Lent. Quick as a flash, one of our number, a Finnish girl called Tuula, said, “Well, it is past tense: ‘I Was Glad’…”.