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Choral music Sunday
posted Monday, 26 February 2007
Yesterday, I voluntarily attended a church service at a local church of the denomination in which I grew up. Well, sort of.
In truth, although it was technically a church service, it was really more of a joint concert between the choir I'm in and the church's choir. Our group sang four pieces, theirs sang two, and then together we sang three. All in all, it was a very nice program. Probably the best pieces were those that each choir did individually, if only because they were more polished. Still, it was a good experience: the church is a really nice setting (it feels, with its dome and large seating capacity a bit like it was brought in from Europe, especially when compared to the modest edifices where God was said to reside in the midwest), and we got to do music that we wouldn't be able to perform on our own (the combined pieces were a double-choir Renaissance motet (Dixit Dominus) by Victoria, a three-movement double-choir work (Fest- und Gedenksprueche) by Brahms, and an eight-part behemoth by C. Hubert H. Parry (Blest Pair of Sirens--my least favorite of the three).
When it comes to the music, it's largely my own biases that shape my reactions. For myself, I have a light, flexible voice rather than a large, bombastic one; my musical tastes match up accordingly. Thus, I could sing pieces like the Victoria all day; the Brahms is a little big for my voice but still very worthwhile; the Parry is just too big, too schmaltzy, for me to really get into it. For my part, the Renaissance and the 20th Century have really been the best eras for choral music. These are the eras of music for small unaccompanied ensembles. So much music of the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic calls for instruments--up to and including full, often rather large, orchestra--that it's a bit off-putting for me. An unaccompanied choir, to me, just has a great amal gamation of characteristics. You have the combination of language's meaning and music's evocativeness; you have the complexity of multiple lines of music, but the words are uncluttered by instrumental music (though of course the individual lines sometimes get in one another's way in terms of understanding). At its best, at least, there is a directness to choral expression fused with an evocative power. All that said, a piano, for instance, can be a very effective partner in the endeavor of creating meaning, but it seems to me that as the soundscape becomes more cluttered with instruments, while something is gained something is also lost. Typically, the subte gradations of dynamics and articulation are lost in the din, and for an art-form that depends on expression, this often seems like a poor trade just to get a broader palatte of tone colors. Of course, there are times when it works. Take Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for instance: it works, though, because the chorus is there to express joy, pure joy, and for that the loud, diverse, exuberant sounds of the orchestra are altogether appropriate.
Ultimately, though, this is probably just thinly-veiled justification of my own tastes, not a really rational argument. I do not have a large, operatic voice of the sort that nineteenth-century music often seems to prefer. My voice is more suited for an unaccompanied choir. Give me the vocal purity of Renaissance music or the wonderful challenges of twentieth-century choral music any day.
In truth, although it was technically a church service, it was really more of a joint concert between the choir I'm in and the church's choir. Our group sang four pieces, theirs sang two, and then together we sang three. All in all, it was a very nice program. Probably the best pieces were those that each choir did individually, if only because they were more polished. Still, it was a good experience: the church is a really nice setting (it feels, with its dome and large seating capacity a bit like it was brought in from Europe, especially when compared to the modest edifices where God was said to reside in the midwest), and we got to do music that we wouldn't be able to perform on our own (the combined pieces were a double-choir Renaissance motet (Dixit Dominus) by Victoria, a three-movement double-choir work (Fest- und Gedenksprueche) by Brahms, and an eight-part behemoth by C. Hubert H. Parry (Blest Pair of Sirens--my least favorite of the three).
When it comes to the music, it's largely my own biases that shape my reactions. For myself, I have a light, flexible voice rather than a large, bombastic one; my musical tastes match up accordingly. Thus, I could sing pieces like the Victoria all day; the Brahms is a little big for my voice but still very worthwhile; the Parry is just too big, too schmaltzy, for me to really get into it. For my part, the Renaissance and the 20th Century have really been the best eras for choral music. These are the eras of music for small unaccompanied ensembles. So much music of the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic calls for instruments--up to and including full, often rather large, orchestra--that it's a bit off-putting for me. An unaccompanied choir, to me, just has a great amal gamation of characteristics. You have the combination of language's meaning and music's evocativeness; you have the complexity of multiple lines of music, but the words are uncluttered by instrumental music (though of course the individual lines sometimes get in one another's way in terms of understanding). At its best, at least, there is a directness to choral expression fused with an evocative power. All that said, a piano, for instance, can be a very effective partner in the endeavor of creating meaning, but it seems to me that as the soundscape becomes more cluttered with instruments, while something is gained something is also lost. Typically, the subte gradations of dynamics and articulation are lost in the din, and for an art-form that depends on expression, this often seems like a poor trade just to get a broader palatte of tone colors. Of course, there are times when it works. Take Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for instance: it works, though, because the chorus is there to express joy, pure joy, and for that the loud, diverse, exuberant sounds of the orchestra are altogether appropriate.
Ultimately, though, this is probably just thinly-veiled justification of my own tastes, not a really rational argument. I do not have a large, operatic voice of the sort that nineteenth-century music often seems to prefer. My voice is more suited for an unaccompanied choir. Give me the vocal purity of Renaissance music or the wonderful challenges of twentieth-century choral music any day.
Your comments, as always, are most welcome. (3)