Bit of a dust up

Whether there is a mellowing of taste or it is the early onset of dementia I refuse to debate.

As a child, Dusty Springfield was a part of the background – I was too young to be too concerned with the music but it was on the radio, I heard it … and, as with all such experiences, I didn’t even notice the etching into the blank metal sheet of taste. A couple of songs I might be able to identify … with names like Cilla Black and Petula Clarke mazing themselves together under beehive hair, tight black and white dresses, and bare feet.

‘Saturday Night at the Palladium’, ‘Doctor Who’, Mars bars all swim in the background – along with a slowly disintegrating family and the first pangs of alienation from the working class housing estate I was growing on.

So, maybe it was an impulse buy, or maybe it was tightening cords pulling the drowning man down, but when a local book shop displayed the ridiculously cheap Colour Collection and I came across the Dusty Springfield disc, I bought it.

It is singing from a time when singers needed to be able to project – the lung power is there, and the vocal control. The voice is not sweet – it has a gritty quality and an edge which says ‘listen to this’ although in one of the quieter (it is only a comparative term) numbers, Mockingbird, there is a deep resonance which suggests more to it than the thump them out tracks and rough recordings display.

It is a voice you can listen to – and it is a voice you can understand the words with. Iconic pop words – all love and angst, all 60s girl pleading with boy with tears in her eyes although with the emotional distance the professional performer needs in order to hit the notes.

Arrangements are very much of their time – strings swooping and female backing vocals.

The majority of the disc will not appeal to anyone not inside the time-capsule of direct contact, but there are a number of classics.

‘Son Of A Preacher Man’ is pretty steaming and ‘The Windmills Of Your Mind’ shows the softer strength within the voice – but it is Burt Bacharach/Hal David’s Wishin’ And Hopin’ that makes you sit up and listen.

But the early ‘I Only Want To Be With You’ and ‘Little by Little’ resonate with 45-ness: Crackle, distortion and energy in equal proportions; and the trumpet introduction to ‘You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me’ must have had many a jilted teenage girl reaching for the handkerchief and noble sacrifice men will willingly exploit.

It’s a disc I’ll play occasionally when I want to remember – and that. I think is what the Colour Collection series and its like is all about – tapping memories to squeeze out the final drops of profit from the back-catalogue.

Of their time and place

I do not know anywhere near enough to be able to tell you why a particular composer sounds the way he or she does – but I know, when I hear it, a piece of ballet music is by Чайковский (Tchikovski) – or that a symphony is by Vaughan Williams. Mature Beethoven is Beethoven (although early sounds more like Haydn to me).

Some composers have managed to arrange the notes and instruments in such a way that it reflects an individuality.

I was acutely aware of this, this month, after downloading several pieces which just struck me as ‘typical’.

Copland’s ‘Third Symphony’ – in a great recording conducted by the composer himself with the LSO, for example. I was attracted to the download because of ‘Billy the Kid’, the ballet, which is one of my favourites, and then thought, I don’t know the Symphony. I listened and realised – that is so Copland.

Part of the effect I am sure comes from the composer’s own conducting – he knows exactly the effect he wants and is good enough to get it. There might, in the future, be better conductors who can get better performances out of an orchestra, but there will not be a more definitive performance. Pure Copland in essence.

It also contains a famous tune whose integration into the work is remarkable and could leave no one in doubt as to the composer.

The second download that cemented the ‘typicality’ thought for me was of Malcolm Arnold’s 9^th Symphony – again, a new piece for me. It is brassy – as brassy as a Northern barmaid! But there is also the typical contrast of brass with flute and then in comes the clarinet … and I am off thinking not only Arnold but late 50’s early 60’s black-and–white, English, kitchen-sink films. There are smoking chimneys and rugby matches, bikes running over the cobbles and men in Gabardines with the collars turned up fighting against a downpour …

It is given a great performance by the forces of National Symphony of Orchestra of Ireland under the baton of Andrew Penny. It appears on the Naxos label which is doing so much for serious music.

Not only was this so Arnold, it was also so of its time and of a place. Maybe because Arnold’s music was first exposed to me as incidental to films, or maybe because it manages to capture something of the feelings of the culture.

And another realisation followed – so too is Copland: The quintessential American. And it is 20^th Century American. A piece like ‘Billy the Kid’ may be about the wild west, but it is the Hollywood fantasy wild west.

The final piece I listened to in this spirit was by a near contemporary of Arnold, William Walton, his First Symphony. I had downloaded it last month but only just got around to listening.

Now I had a triangulation – again, elements of the typical – I might not at first listen have been able to say ‘Walton’ – but if you’d said, Henry V – I’d have gone, “Of course … “

The personal is there and so too is the territorial. This is English. A different English from the Arnold – but English none the less. There are some Holst-like bits, and an element of Vaughan Williams pastoral, but overall it is very distinctive Walton. We get the brass again but here it thuds along building storm clouds accompanied by a downpour of strings swirling underneath.

And is there is a moment of Copland?

Of course – we are in the 20^th century in an industrialised economy and Walton is incapable of escaping that. Mind you, it is a performance under Andre Previn, who, despite giving some of the most English of twists to all he conducted in England, couldn’t escape his own cultural background. Mind you, it is with a third Orchestra from this side of the Atlantic - this time the Royal Philharmonic.

How much of this is in the music I couldn’t say. It is certainly in my head when I listen.

Technorati Tags: William Walton, Aaron Copland, Malcolm Arnold, Andre Previn

Singing Shakespeare

Alfred Deller was a hero - make no mistake.

The handsome young man you see in this picture had the voice of an angel - not the wishy-washy children's, sickly-sweet voice of a Christmas carol angel, but the voice of a mature, powerful, penetrating angel.

This man stuck arrows in you.

He sang counter-tenor - that's the high sounding male voice.

In fact, you could almost claim he reinvented the counter tenor voice. Until Dellor came along and broke out of church (where the average counter tenor was trembling in fear of detection - oh, a man with a voice like that - he isn't right - is everything all there?), many people never even knew normal men could make that sound, or that songs could be sung that way- or that the power and glory of many early songs lay hidden with the counter tenor.

He was a brave man - he went public. And anyone who loves 'early' music, or the Baroque, Purcell or Britten - should go down on their knees and thank whichever deity they believe in (I'm with Dionysus myself - libation poured). His son also sings counter tenor - there must have been something in the genes (pun intended).

One of the recordings Deller went on to make with the Deller Consort was 'Shakespeare Songs'.

This is a collection of music - much of which can be directly linked to a named Shakespeare play, by Shakespeare's contemporaries or Mr Anonymous himself.

In addition to Dellor and friends (and possibly family) - there is Desmond Dupre on the lute - a man almost in need of the same reverence as Dellor himself.

The collection starts with a rollicking performance of one of the most well known Shakespeare songs - It was a lover and his lass, with music by Thomas Morley. Morley was a writer of madrigals and the arrangement he made of Shakespeare's words from As you like it, carries with it an assurance about English text, a love of light bouncy sounds and a humour.

Deller takes this at quite a speed - and straight away one of the best things about this disc becomes apparent - a clarity in pronunciation that makes a booklet with printed texts almost irrelevant. You understand every word.

He moves on to the much slower contemplative 'Take, oh take those lips away' from Measure for Measure: A dark play and a dark setting from John Wilson who worked for Shakespeare's Theatre company - though just after he left.

Deller's voice really shines here - he has a dark resonance even though he is singing high - he gives a woeful, touching rendition which only the hardest of hearts would fail to feel.

Next Thomas Morley again with 'Oh mistress mine' from Twelfth Night - lighter than the second, but darker than the first - and this is where you become aware of the thoughtfullness behind the arrangement on the disc.

The first three fit together like in a recital - showing off the music and the singer to best advantage. There is an interlude of Thomas Welkes Strike it up, Tabor which is a madrigal delivered by the Deller Consort - and although it has no known connection to Shakespeare, does help to give a flavour of the music making of the time, and the popular pieces people would be singing. This is the first time you need to dive into the booklet - only to find out that the words don't actually help much - this is a dance with morris and worn shoe leather and the consort give it a full leg tapping performance. Maybe it is something like this that the Duke is offered at the end of the mechanical's performance in A Midsummer Nights Dream.

Then we are back to Shakespeare - and one of the great songs which needs the sort of artistry unbelievable in the boy who originally sang it as Desdamona in Othello, The Willow Song. Mr Anonymous wrote the music.

Deller here reveals the third element in his musical makeup - an intelligent reading of the text. Unlike too many good singers, he actually sounds as though the words mean something - that the words come first - they carry emotion and meaning which the music picks up on and intensifies. It is also a song which plays on that deep, powerful resonance and cuts deep.

The disc goes on for a total of 19 tracks - and each is worthy of comment. I'll only pick out a couple though that tickled my fancy.

We be soldiers three is a bit of bawdry! ''Putting ink in your pen'' - and money in your pocket. It's given a very rousing, gritty performance by the Consort - that manages to suggest a rough bunch of music students (possibly brass players) let loose.

Bonny sweet Robin is a lute solo - and jolly good too.

And Deller's rendering of 'When that I was' - the closing song in Twelfth Night, is so complex and controlled that I still can't get to the bottom of it - it's the sort of performance you just know is as good as it is ever going to get.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare, Alfred Deller, Deller Consort, Shakespeare Songs

One thing I miss

about not living in England is the Proms!

For those poor souls who are unaware of the World's biggest serious music festival, The Proms have dominated English summers for several generations.
Forget the 'Last Night' (I do) look at what else is on.



Technorati Tags: BBC, Proms, Music

From Tallis to Vaughan Williams - and back.

Part of the delights of being a partial tech–NO(phobe) is when I put things onto my cheap Chinese copy mp3 player, I really have no control over the play order.

In bed, doing my wake-up-in-a-minute thing, earphones in, out popped Tallis – wonderful in those moments of semi-consciousness. I have him on the portable as part of my preparation for the Complete Works … Spem in alium – in Latin in case you ain’t got the point of the title.

It was immediately followed by Vaughan Williams – a new piece to me, the start of his Pilgrim’s Progress – and then back to Tallis, in English this time.

Everything fitted …

And, more importantly for this post, linked as being essentially English.

I got one of those distasteful-when-awake National urges to ‘bulldog’.

Whether it is the quality which linked them (whether it was the semi-consciousness) or something essentially English I do not know. I suspect a bit of both (or all three).

There was some research done that linked the ‘national’ in music to the intervals of the voice when spoken, so maybe that had something to do with it; maybe Williams was conscious of Tallis as English and had set his route based on the earlier composer; maybe I was thinking English (yesterday I was searching Timisoara for St Georges).

But the Latin worked too … It sounded so English Cathedral.

Technorati Tags: Tallis, Music, Vaughan Williams

Recycled Review

Medieval Minimalism:

It is almost impossible for us at this end of the second millennium to grasp the tremendous outpouring of creative talent that resulted in the buildings, art, poetry, and music of the beginning of the same millennium - but The Hilliard Ensemble do try to make it a little easier for us.

Perotin, called `Perotinus the Great' by one visiting Englishman of the time, is a perfect starting point for a journey back into that lost world - and into the acoustic pleasures of this fine music.

Based in plainchant - the singing of the Latin text in a flowing, one note at a time melody - Perotin's music frequently takes a small section of the text and adds extra notes - sometimes from two voices, sometimes from four.

In its simplest form, one note is like the `drone' of the bagpipe - held for a long time - and the other bounces along on top of it. (I'm reminded when I listen to this type of tune of a deep, slow, cool river flowing majestically along, whilst a red, armour-plated dragonfly zooms and bounces above it, hunting.)

There is a wonderful sense of fun in this - it is easy to imagine a group of choristers playing with the sound and trying to co-ordinate their `bounces' - a bit like putting together a sequence of passes on the football field.

Another aspect of Perotin, as shown in his Beata viscera (track 8), is a deep felt reverence for all things religious, especially the Virgin Mary. Irritatingly, the booklet doesn't provide any translations so it is easy to miss the absolute beauty of the text - but not the music. In a
free flowing wave of sound, the words of the poem are hoisted to heaven - like watching a sky lark.

What the Hilliard Ensemble bring to all this is a strength, a certainty of sound and a purity of line that originates as much in their work on contemporary music as it does on older traditions. And this is what makes this CD stand out - it is as much about today as it is about 900 years ago.

As the booklet points out, Perotin has influenced the likes of Steve Reich.

If you like minimalism, you'll love this - Perotin, takes a simple idea and fills a vast space - in his case, Notre-Dame Cathedral.

Musical Splendour

Notre-Dame was at the heart of the Western 12th century cultural explosion - and this CD attempts to capture something of that dynamic, Gothic-cathedral-building splendour.

Starting with a simple, solo-voiced (monophonic), quite beautiful hymn to the Blessed Flesh of
the Virgin Mary the programme moves through increasingly complicated, two then four part arrangements of music that would have been performed in Paris as the first, `truly monumental' cathedral was raised above its foundations.

And just as the building has its foundations - so too with the music: Weaving in and out of the performances is the dignified simplicity of plainchant - the basis from which first Leonin then Perotin departed.

The parallel between the increasing power and complication of the building and the developing richness of the music is deliberate - as Antony Pitts (founder of TONUS PEREGRINUS) makes clear in his excellent booklet notes.

More than anything else, however, this CD deserves to be listened to because of the wonderfully clear performance.

Not everyone will appreciate the use of women's voices for the high parts - but for me they give a strength which more than compensates for any niggles over authenticity.

This is not the only way to approach this wonderful music - but the alternatives will have to be very, very good to supplant this recording as my first choice as an introduction to the world of Gothic Polyphony.

Luscious

From the first soul stroking notes of 'O vis aternitatis' there is no doubting the intensity of feeling to be found in both the music and performance.

Recorded over a decade ago, this Sequentia c.d. remains not only the best introduction to the music of Hidegard von Bingen available, but also amongst the finest recordings of mediaeval church music ever made.

All the voices are female and maintain an individual clarity which is distinguishable even when singing in chorus - and in a marvellously atmospheric church acoustic. The voices are sometimes supported by instruments giving a vaguely resonant effect as if the crystal spheres themselves were ringing.

If this sounds as though there is a touch of the `Mystic-Meg' about all this - there is: Hildegard was attempting to capture in sound the ecstatic experience of, in the final words of the recording, `the embraces of the divine mysteries'.

Sequentia have not attempted to reproduce an historically accurate performance: As Ken Clark pointed out in the BBC Series, Civilisation, we `moderns' can never think or feel or believe as the medieval mind did. Instead, we get an intelligent and very accessible programme of pieces which allow us a glimpse into the mind of a woman attempting to reach beyond the stars to `the power of eternity'.



Technorati Tags: Medieval Music, Perotin, Hilliard Ensemble, Hidegard von Bingen

Bene ati venit!

Which is 'welcome' to you.

This is an 'offshoot' blog - in the mode of my Books Reflected, and taking material from Ecce Homo (which should have been a creative writing blog but got a bit hi-jacked - it means "Behold the Man" for those with a wickedly-suspicious mind).

Quite simply music is taking an ever more significant role in my life - especially since I've discovered downloading.

Incidentally, I do it legally - I actually pay for what I download: Virtue shining through.


Technorati Tags: Music, akfarrar