MR minus four days and counting
Jun. 9th, 2005 11:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
westernindLast night, the conductor's piano rehearsal for the Mozart/Levin Requiem on Sunday. Sir Charles Mackerras was happy with us. Either he's 'your biggest fan' or you can't do anything right, and thankfully we fell into the former category again. After the Big Cull of 2004 to bring the standards up again, Sir Charles has been one of the Philharmonia Chorus's best allies to get them back in with the Philharmonia Orchestra, for instance giving us the Edinburgh Festival Der Freischutz.
This Requiem concert really matters to the Philharmonia Orchestra, enough so they were originally going to employ a professional paid chorus to do it. We got it back last year on the basis of Der Freischutz, bolstered by the excellent performance of Gerontius earlier this year.
One of the reasons we know Sir Charles was happy is that he asked Robert Dean, quite genuinely, how he'd managed to get us to not sound flat during the last part of the Confutatis. That's the quiet oddly modulating sequence where the basses lead in each phrase, followed by the other three voice parts - "oro supplex et acclinis..." He said, usually everyone sounds flat. This is exacerbated because as the organ is nowadays tuned to an equal tempered scale, the bass pedal actually sounds sharper than the bass voices in the keys that the music goes through. To avoid this he tells the organ not to play.
Whilst on the subject, he told us that Handel - pre-equal temperament - deliberately picked more dissonant keys for any arias dealing with 'nastiness'; a distinction now lost because of the near-universality of equal temperament. Interestingly I found when surfing the web looking for more information that Handel's A tuning fork was at 422Hz instead of the modern A=440Hz, which was only standardised in 1939! That's nearly a semi-tone down. I wonder if that's why I find the top G in Dido's Lament is so hard? It's not a high note per se, it just lands whap bang right on the upper passagio. I'll try transposing it down and see if it's easier. But not today.
And another good thing. Despite all the hard work concentrating on glottals, German Latin pronunciation (e.g 'qva' not 'qua'), end consonants and more glottals, the sheer beauty of the music still carries me away.
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I got picked for the Italy tour! First week in August, at the Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte in Montepulciano, plus concerts in Forli and Bologna. Mozart Requiem, Fauré Requiem, and a new piece by an Iranian composer. The flights are booked so it's definitely happening, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
forbinproject is coming as a guest. The downside is that it clashes with Odyssey, which I'm sad about missing; but singing has become such a part of my identity that I can't imagine not choosing to go to Italy.
Also picked for the Poland tour in September. Verdi Requiem. We are so turning into the Requiem Chorus.
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In the meantime, I have a tickly cough. Without doing the whole hand-stapled-to-forehead goth thing, this is somewhat worrying and I'm working from home so I don't have to use my voice at all. And sucking Halls Soothers constantly. Singing teacher says, every time I want to cough, to drink water and try to swallow instead. Will consider all and any other suggestions, particularly from other singers.
This Requiem concert really matters to the Philharmonia Orchestra, enough so they were originally going to employ a professional paid chorus to do it. We got it back last year on the basis of Der Freischutz, bolstered by the excellent performance of Gerontius earlier this year.
One of the reasons we know Sir Charles was happy is that he asked Robert Dean, quite genuinely, how he'd managed to get us to not sound flat during the last part of the Confutatis. That's the quiet oddly modulating sequence where the basses lead in each phrase, followed by the other three voice parts - "oro supplex et acclinis..." He said, usually everyone sounds flat. This is exacerbated because as the organ is nowadays tuned to an equal tempered scale, the bass pedal actually sounds sharper than the bass voices in the keys that the music goes through. To avoid this he tells the organ not to play.
Whilst on the subject, he told us that Handel - pre-equal temperament - deliberately picked more dissonant keys for any arias dealing with 'nastiness'; a distinction now lost because of the near-universality of equal temperament. Interestingly I found when surfing the web looking for more information that Handel's A tuning fork was at 422Hz instead of the modern A=440Hz, which was only standardised in 1939! That's nearly a semi-tone down. I wonder if that's why I find the top G in Dido's Lament is so hard? It's not a high note per se, it just lands whap bang right on the upper passagio. I'll try transposing it down and see if it's easier. But not today.
And another good thing. Despite all the hard work concentrating on glottals, German Latin pronunciation (e.g 'qva' not 'qua'), end consonants and more glottals, the sheer beauty of the music still carries me away.
----------------
I got picked for the Italy tour! First week in August, at the Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte in Montepulciano, plus concerts in Forli and Bologna. Mozart Requiem, Fauré Requiem, and a new piece by an Iranian composer. The flights are booked so it's definitely happening, and
forbinproject is coming as a guest. The downside is that it clashes with Odyssey, which I'm sad about missing; but singing has become such a part of my identity that I can't imagine not choosing to go to Italy.Also picked for the Poland tour in September. Verdi Requiem. We are so turning into the Requiem Chorus.
----------------
In the meantime, I have a tickly cough. Without doing the whole hand-stapled-to-forehead goth thing, this is somewhat worrying and I'm working from home so I don't have to use my voice at all. And sucking Halls Soothers constantly. Singing teacher says, every time I want to cough, to drink water and try to swallow instead. Will consider all and any other suggestions, particularly from other singers.
