by

Meine Seele Erhebet Den Herrn, from Telemann’s Magnificat (Ensemble Planeta)

I was going to do something light and funny for Friday, but it’s been a very long week and I’m tired and headachey and in the mood for something soothing.

Hence, we have this rather unusual interpretation by the Ensemble Planeta of an aria from Telemann’s German Magnificat.  They’ve slowed it right down, given the tenor solo to a soprano, and transformed the bouncy string accompaniment into a trippy, drifting vocal one – it’s the Magnificat, Telemann, but not as we know it, not as we know it, not as we know it…  And just to make it more gorgeous, someone has added a collection of medieval illuminations to the music.  It’s possibly the prettiest thing you will see on YouTube this year.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbjixX93pcw&w=560&h=315] Continue reading →

by

Monday Music: Ei, wie schmeckt der Coffee süsse (Oh, how sweet coffee tastes) (J.S. Bach)

Bach is not a composer known for his lively sense of humour (unless you like obscure mathematical jokes involving making codes out of people’s names and setting them to music, in which case you’ll probably find him an absolute scream).  Indeed, the first allegedly humourous piece of his that I heard was an obscure cantata using Greek myth to express the fact that he was a much better musician than one of his rivals, who pretty much had donkey’s ears.  This sort of thing is extremely amusing, when your name is Johann Sebastian…

But he was, apparently, capable of more generally intelligible light moments, and he wrote, as it happens, an entire cantata about coffee.  What could be more appropriate for a Monday morning?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keTwmdQakMc&w=420&h=315]

Continue reading →

by

Friday Fun: The King’s Singers perform the Overture to Rossini’s Barber of Seville

I kind of have a crush on all of the King’s Singers, to be honest. I was fortunate enough to go to be in the audience for both a concert and a Master Class of theirs earlier this year, and in addition to having beautiful, incredibly well-trained voices, they are just generally funny and delightful people.  They do a lot of serious and less serious madrigals, and folk songs, and their version of The Band Played Waltzing Matilda was shatteringly good (that song is quite good at getting me teary in any case, but this was something else again).

And then they do things like this.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrXJnMvg9uI&w=420&h=315] Continue reading →

by

Come Away Death (Roger Quilter)

I’ve only discovered Quilter recently, mostly because there was a book of his art song available at the Allans sale a few weeks ago and I was seduced by the prospect of singing Shakespeare’s poetry.  My friendly salesperson, who is a fellow lover of Purcell and 19th century French opera, eyed my choice with disfavour.  “Well… it’s very… pretty,” he finally said, clearly attempting diplomacy. And so it is…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGZjewK_jJY&w=560&h=315] Continue reading →

by

The Swingle Singers perform Dido’s Lament (H. Purcell)

I was going to start this blog off tomorrow with a very beautiful recording of ‘Music for a while’, that being my tagline and all, but as I was wandering around YouTube looking for my own stuff, I stumbled across this deeply strange, beat-boxy version of Dido’s Lament.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FSPJ5f9CWI&w=420&h=315] Continue reading →

by

Cate Sings

This is how it goes:

I see an email on a mailing list seeking chorus members for a performance of Tosca in a few days time.  Naturally, I’m agog to sing in some bona fide opera (I’ve been singing church music for the last decade, and have only discovered opera recently), so I write back immediately, and spend the next two evenings in rehearsal, merrily switching voice parts according to need.

It’s amazingly good fun.

And at the end of it, one of the soloists asks for my business card, which is when I realise I don’t have one.

Continue reading →

by

Advent Calendar Day 25 – MERRY CHRISTMAS

Huzzah! I survived a midnight mass as the lone soprano in descant hell – and I still have my vocal chords!!

I’ve been trying to figure out all day what I can possibly use for tonight’s carol. You see, I did all my favourite Midnight Mass ones last year, and it seems like cheating to repeat them. And then, I haven’t done The Holly And The Ivy this year, which is really a favourite of mine, but doesn’t seem to have the joyfulness required of a Christmas Day carol. And I want to do ‘Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day’ again, but I think we all know why I shouldn’t.

Now we’re all going to have to go back and listen to those ones, aren’t we?

Right then. Like last year, I’ll celebrate Christmas with a trio (a Trinity?) of Christmas Carols that fit my mood. The first is a Mediaeval Baebes version of a medieval carol – Ecce Mundi Gaudium. I love the vibrance and energy of this, and the sense of joy, and just the general bounciness of it.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr0DScNyEuk&w=560&h=315]

The second carol I’m sharing with you is Past Three O’Clock, which I sincerely hope it will *not* be by the time I click ‘post’ on this entry. It never gets sung at midnight mass (too early in the evening, perhaps?), but it speaks to me of the whole getting up in the middle of the night to go to church, or possibly the manger, on Christmas Eve. Also, infidel choristers find the whole bit about cheese from the dairy / bring they for Mary vastly amusing.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9momjvte10&w=560&h=315]

Finally, a carol I’d forgotten until recently but remember vividly from my shopping centre carolling days as an undergraduate – The Shepherd’s Farewell, by Berlioz, affectionately known as ‘Carols on Acid’ because it’s kind of trippy and changes key twice a bar. Actually, I was told recently that Berlioz was rather fond of his opium, so perhaps the trippiness wasn’t just in our undergraduate minds.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpgWhHv2dJw&w=560&h=315]

I was going to stop there, but after singing all those descants tonight I can’t possibly end without a descanty one, now can I? I wanted to include the diabolical descant from Christians, Awake!, but apparently we are the only people insane enough to make sopranos sing top B flats at one in the morning. So here’s a recording of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, which is a fitting carol to end with, being the first carol I sing every year. This is the first carol in my work choir’s carol book, and we use it as our warm up, though we go a lot faster than this and we do not do the mad descant, because it actually requires a bass section, which we don’t usually have. You have to love a descant that involves the altos, too. Or at least, I have to love it.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDcSyaW-tTI&w=560&h=315]

Time to sign off from this year’s Advent Calendar, I think.  Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

by

Advent Calendar Day 24 – Magnificat (Telemann)

We aren’t doing Chris’s lovely Magnificat tonight, so I thought I’d go looking for one, and when I ran across Telemann, who I know only as that guy who wrote baroque recorder concertos, I thought I’d give him a try.

Well.

I’ve never heard anything quite like this piece of music, to be honest.  I can’t decide what I think of it.  It’s like a human clockwork music box.  With illustrations from the Très Riches Heures Du Duc De Berry.  And I’m not even sure if I like it, but it’s strangely compelling and not as insipid as I thought it was and I have to keep listening to it.  I’m also not entirely sure what language it is in – I suspect (from external evidence) that it might be in German – this is, apparently, his German Magnificat – but I can’t pick out a single word of German, and the group singing it is the Japanese Ensemble Planeta, so I’m beginning to wonder if it is in fact in Japanese instead.  Surely not? I also strongly suspect they have arranged it themselves, as Telemann is usually rather more orchestral in a somewhat Handelian style – I think they have grabbed all the instrumental parts and given them to the other voices.

Edited December 2017: Having listened to this quite a few more times by now, I still can’t make out most of the lyrics, but there is definitely a ‘laudate signore’ at the start, which suggests Latin, but not very traditional Latin?  But I think attempting to discern the words is probably not the point of this exercise – best to just let the music wash over one…

I think I like the effect.  I know I like the images.  And it’s certainly something a bit different.  Also, I keep having to listen to it again, so maybe I do really like it after all… Enjoy!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbjixX93pcw&w=560&h=315]