Gregorian Chant Lives . . . .

The Recovering Choir Director tells us about the rebirth of chant and a new article detailing how it should be used in Mass. This is a fascinating development in Catholicism and deserves our attention.

His commentary:

. . . . the proposals contained therein, it deserves to be given a wide reading. Most interesting are the proposals and solutions that he gives concerning a revival of Gregorian chant at even the smallest chapel, excerpted below.

At the moment, his proposed solutions concerning use of the vernacular within a strictly liturgical context would seem to be better suited for the 1970 Missal. However, others seem quite sensible to incorporate into both forms. His apologia for reviving the sung Office is not to be overlooked either.

Opera chorus profiled on NPR

National Public Radio's Morning Edition interviews members of the Portland Opera Chorus. Good news: no pledge breaks online. Bad news: the audio version starts with messages from their "sponsors". Or you can just read the transcript.

To sit or not to sit

A gem which came through Choralist this morning:

To sit, or not to sit: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the concert to suffer
The slingbacks and pumps of outrageous contortion,
Or to take arch supports against the feet's troubles,
And by support hose, end them?

By Jen Whiting. I particularly like "The bunion and the callus: ay, there's the rub".

Read the whole thing.

ACDA Julius Herford Prize Nominations

ACDA Julius Herford Prize
Call for Nominations

The subcommittee for the Julius Herford Prize, given annually by the American Choral Directors Association, is now accepting nominations for the outstanding doctoral terminal research project in choral music for 2007. Projects are eligible if they comprise the principal research component of the degree requirements, whether the institution defines the project as a “dissertation,” a “document,” a “thesis,” or “treatise,” etc. Eligibility is limited to doctoral recipients whose degrees were conferred during the period January 1 through December 31, 2007. The winner will receive a $1000 cash award and a plaque.

Nominations must be submitted by the dean, director, or chair of the music unit. An institution may submit only one document. In the event that there are two nominations of equal merit from one school, the administrative head of the unit must submit a letter justifying the additional nomination.

A letter of nomination signed by the administrative head of the music unit and one unbound copy of the dissertation must be submitted no later than June 30, 2008 to:

Dr. John Silantien, Chair
Julius Herford Prize Subcommittee
Music Department
University of Texas at San Antonio
One UTSA Circle
San Antonio, TX 78249
Phone: 210/458-5328
fax: 210/458-4381
E-mail: <john.silantien@utsa.edu>

Information about the Herford Prize and past winners

ACDA for the 21st Century

Today ACDA officially welcomes Dr. Tim Sharp as the new Executive Director. Dr. Sharp outlined four visions for ACDA in the Twenty-First Century in the April 2008 issue of Choral Journal.

• I envision a twenty-first century ACDA that establishes the opportunity for every child in the United States to sing in a choir.
• I envision a twenty-first century ACDA that becomes fully engaged in world choral initiatives.
• I envision a twenty-first century ACDA that utilizes the full extent of technological communication and other technologies for the benefit of our membership.
• I envision a twenty-first century ACDA that sets the research and publication agenda for the best thinking, past and present, in choral music.

Read Dr. Sharp's complete vision statement here.
Listen to a PodCast with Dr. Sharp here.
Contribute your thoughts and vision of ACDA here.

Robot to conduct the Detroit Symphony Orchestra on May 13

The jokes almost write themselves.



Update: For the other end of the equation, there's also a game for the Wii called Virtual Maestro which allows the user to conduct. Hook these two together and we can eliminate humans from the creation of music entirely.

IMSLP update

The IMSLP, the orchestral equivalent of CPDL, will be re-opening on July 1. They've assembled a team of volunteers to look at every score to check for composer date, lyricist dates, and company logos, and expect to have a site ready with worldwide public-domain scores by July.

IMSLP closed down under pressure from European publisher Universal Edition; since European copyright have a longer duration than Canadian ones (where IMSLP is located), works in the public domain in Canada can still be under copyright in Europe. It's unclear how such a lawsuit would have been filed, and what court would have jurisdiction, but nonetheless the IMSLP closed up shop. More background information here.

I've written repeatedly about the ridiculousness of having such long copyright terms (up to 80 years after the composer's death in some countries). There is absolutely no benefit to society at large (or to composers in general) in having such long terms — only a few big corporations benefit.

Charles Ives is sitting up in his grave and applauding

Army Band and Marine Band play "Hail to the Chief" together, but unfortunately in different keys. Requires RealPlayer.

h/t Podium Speak channeling Junk Drawer.

What it takes to sing in a choir

One person called this "perhaps the best description of choral music participation that I have ever read."

Take a look at this post and see how one person described what it takes to sing in a choir. A portion of it excerpted here:

Choral scores (for those of you not in choirs) are complex, multi-factored codes from which singers are supposed to produce music. ..not just a sequence of notes, because every mark on the score instructs singers on other things . . .

---

Then there's the mundane side of things...singers must have the commitment, the discipline, to show up at rehearsals, work during rehearsals, do what it takes between rehearsals to arrive at the next one ready to go. Just showing up counts a lot--the time wasted by those who have skipped, who have to stop and ask questions because they weren't there, who come in late and have to ask what page we're on, who are chatting and not listening so they miss which bit comes next, who forgot their score or their pencil and need to borrow...that time is lost, missing from rehearsals. Choirs benefit from the dependable, the prompt, the prepared, the alert, those willing to concentrate on the work at hand. Individual singers must be committed to sing when they don't feel great, when their feet hurt, when their noses tickle, when their throats might be a little raw, when they've just been fired, when their significant other just got a job 400 miles away.

It's a great post . . .

A cappella competition signs TV deal

The Harmony Sweepstakes, a national competition of a-cappella groups of various kinds, has finalized a deal with Sony Pictures Television to create a reality show based on the competition.

Supposedly everyone involved has promised that the actual competition won't be affected, and it will just be a behind-the-scenes documentary kind of thing, but knowing the track record of "reality" shows, and especially the Clash of the Choirs show from last fall, it could be worrisome. I attend the Harmony Sweeps every year, and it's a terrific show, and I'd hate to see it wrecked by some short-sighted TV producer who couldn't care less about music.

RIchard Sparks blogs Uppsala, Sund, and OD

Here's Richard Spark's three part series on Uppsala, Robert Sund, and Orphea Dranger.:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Richard shares this brief history of the Orphea Dranger in the first post:

Orphei Drangar is one of the world's best men's choruses--you can find their website here--with a history that dates back to 1853. They came out of a tradition of student choirs at the famous Uppsala University (founded in 1477), although OD (as it's called) has long had members who are no longer students. Uppsala itself is a beautiful university town with a rich history and impressive Cathedral and castle. Because of the Cathedral (earlier versions than the present one) it has been the center of spiritual life in Sweden since the 1200s.

Note: For some reason, our server software doesn't allow us to use the proper diacritical marks once the page is rendered on the ChoralNet home page. Apologies to those who might miss the two dots over the "a" in "Dranger."

From Dave Walker at Church Times blog.

Click image to make it larger.

Music for Papal Mass Receiving Negative Reviews

I'm not able to ascertain the feelings of everyone in the world on the subject of the music performed for the recent papal mass here in the USA, but it looks pretty negative in the blogs that I follow.

Here's the primary sentiment, from the New Liturgical Movement:

it was to the grave embarrassment of all American Catholics that the music employed at the papal Mass at the Nationals stadium in Washington, D.C., not only represented a repudiation of everything that this pope has written on music appropriate to Mass. We can go further to say that there is no robust tradition of liturgical scholarship that is capable of defending what happened, and that is because it is indefensible.

It wasn't just the musicians who had a problem with what was performed. A Catholic Mother wrote this:

At one point as the music changed I looked at the radio puzzled. I actually thought I must have lost the signal on the station. Surely this music is coming from another station. They would never have music like this at a papal Mass. But they DID!!! Even pieces that would have been acceptable were jazzed up in way that seemed totally inappropriate. I was flabbergasted. I will give the benefit of the doubt to the planners. Surely they thought it sounded good, but I must admit it occurred to me that there might have been an element of rebelliousness in their selections. I hope not. I was almost embarrassed.

Other blogger reviews here.

The Power of the Internet: Eric Whitacre updates "i thank you God"

Ever noticed the difference in the Polyphony recording of "i thank you God" and the BYU version? The composer himself explains on his blog, but here's a little of it here:

Then, literally the night before I sent back the final proofs for publication, I freaked. i thank You God was the third in a set of three pieces (the Three Songs of Faith), and it suddenly occurred to me that I could tie the whole set together by quoting the beginning of the first piece, i will wade out, at the end of i thank You God. So I quickly rewrote the "now the ears of my ears" section, echoing the first leaps in i will wade out, and sent it off to the publisher. I can remember feeling actual pride - a very 'scholarly' pride - for so brilliantly and effortlessly manipulating motivic material.

Then he heard it about a year later and was conflicted . . . he didn't like it and feared he made a tragic mistake:

And when I heard it, I was horrified. It was ridiculously difficult, and I could see the otherwise excellent choir sweating just to make it sound natural. Much worse, though, was this: it completely masked the meaning of the words. The text became lost in the 'clever' writing, and the most important sentence in the poem just vanished in a fog of academic writing and . . . pride.

So, he gave Polyphony a copy of the original version for their recording . . . and then used the relatively new found power of the internet to provide that solution to the rest of us:

So here now, available for everyone, is the insert that restores the original. If you are conducting or singing i thank You God for most this amazing day and are trying to decide which version to do (the published or the 'urtext'), please know that I strongly encourage you to consider the insert.

And then, he makes a rather startling statement:

For me, the published version is a version I'd rather never hear again.

That is rather profound, I'd say. Mr. Whitacre just showed us a way composers and publishers can correct, manipulate, and simplify portions of their work once they've gone to publication.

Even more interesting is from the comment section of Whitacre's blog post from Jimmy:

I'm sorry you don't like the version that was published originally. I think it's a beautiful musical effect that, though difficult, can grab and hold an audience's attention so that it is more attentive to the wonderful building chords of "open". The chant-like section, as performed by Polyphony, sounds mundane.

Fascinating, eh?

Read the whole story here.
i thank you God insert.pdf

Choir 'Round the Internet

Here's what I've seen choir related around the internet lately:

A beautiful story about a visit to church where the unexpected happened . . . By the end of the song, I didn't know whether my chest was going to burst with exultation or whether my eyes would explode first with tears of joy. It was the first time I've ever been enveloped in that moving of a church moment; perhaps born out of my current "sheep situation" but I didn’t think so. I was wholly moved to collapse.

A great review of a Chanticleer concert . . . . In each of these works, the men sang soprano-alto-tenor-bass, traditional four part "mixed" choral music. On the second half were more traditional works from the male choral repertoire--for instance, the exquisite Four Prayers of St. Francis of Assisi by Poulenc or the sharply rhythmic "Dulaman," spitting out the Gaelic tongue-twister that was even more engaging than their recording . . .

Eleven singers memorialize a friend killed in a school bus crash with "Sing me to Heaven" . . . The smallest group that performed at the Minnesota Choral Arts Finale could have been the most inspiring group of singers. The 11 singers from Pelican Rapids High School looked tiny in comparison to the grand stage of Orchestra Hall, but their voices may have been the loudest.

Dealing with a lost dream of singing in a professional chorus . . . I overheard after church choir rehearsal today my choir director encouraging someone to audition for the PPC. And it suddenly became clear that I have been deluding myself. I'm just not at that level and I'm not going to be. And, you know what?, this is a really, really painful discovery. I think what makes it all worse is that singing professionally was sort of my last dream that I hadn't let go of yet.

And Chicken Betty.

One of the Reasons Choirs Travel

I spotted this in my searching yesterday:

"We would sing a chord, and it would echo throughout that vast space," said Debbie Ogle, director of choirs at the college. "I looked at the singers and mouthed, 'Listen to that chord!' You could literally hear the entire chord fall back to the ground. The sound was almost palpable. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever experienced."

Great acoustics aren't the only reason we travel to Europe of course, but it is surely one of the great benefits.

For more about the this particular college choir tour, look here.

From hip-hop to Mormon Tabernacle Choir

A great story:

In the late '90s, Alex Boye was a European heartthrob. His band "Awesome" shared the stage with big names like Smashing Pumpkins, Backstreet Boys, Missy Elliot and George Michael. Fans waited in long lines to get a glimpse of him.

But now you'll find Alex singing a different tune. He's a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

More here.

Choral Economics

Philip Morris sings with the Albany Pro Singers and blogs. He said some great words following their recent performance of the Brahms Requiem that are worth sharing:

Now, many other artistic endeavors are acts of love and charity as actors perform without pay in community theaters, artists hang exhibits without the hope of sales, and poets slave at words that do not yield royalties. The choral effort, though, has its own unique story.

Choirs need conductors. Conductors want to be paid. Choirs need accompanists for rehearsals and, often, orchestras or accompanists for concerts. These folks expect to be paid. Ticket sales never cut it and pay all the bills, so, typically, choir members are not only asked to rehearse and perform for free, but are expected to pay annual fees and dues to pay ongoing support costs as well as sell tickets and advertising in addition to participate in traditional fundraising efforts.

Its an amazing enterprise where the singer is, finally, the core of whether choral singing exists. The singer must not only be reasonably good at the musical craft, but at the business of music and event making. Community theaters typically have directors and stage folks with revolving actors and musicians. Choirs have singers. Those singers sit on the board of directors, personally support their conductors and orchestras and make sure their concerts succeed.

Its an amazing enterprise. Hard to believe, in many ways, that it exists at all in a society so often contemptuous of things that are not "economically feasible."

Read the whole post here.

Pulitzer

Congratulations to David Lang, composer of The Little Match Girl Passion, winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize for music. The last time a choral work won this prize is 1987, as far as I can tell, although a work for voice and orchestra won in 1996.

The work is modeled on Bach's St. Matthew Passion with interpolated arias and choruses within the story, based on Hans Christian Andersen's story — let's hear it for the public domain! — and sets the match girl as a kind of Christian allegory; the composer says, "There is no Bach in my piece and there is no Jesus—rather the suffering of the Little Match Girl has been substituted for Jesus's, elevating (I hope) her sorrow to a higher plane."

The work, for SATB chorus singing and playing percussion instruments, was premiered in October by Paul Hillier's Theatre of Voices. Although I haven't been able to find a description of this composition's style, Lang seems to write generally post-minimalist music, like John Adams, a melange of rock and classical.

So that's it! Jessop named Head at Utah State

Now it makes a little more sense:

UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY NAMES CRAIG D. JESSOP AS MUSIC DEPARTMENT HEAD

Craig D. Jessop, former music director for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, has been named head of Utah State University's department of music. The appointment was announced by College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Associate Dean Edward Glatfelter.

"We are pleased with this marvelous addition to the very strong music program at Utah State University," Glatfelter said. "Professor Jessop brings with him a wonderful quality, not only from the choral aspect, but in furthering the continued growth and development of the entire department. An outstanding artist and director will be leading an excellent music department."

More here.

Wedding tales

Podium Speak has a bizarre wedding coming up:

The Bride and Groom have only known each other for maybe a week. I'm not certain that they have a priest yet. I have to do is play the infamous "Wagner" wedding march from Lohengrin, and I need to be there from probably 8 am until 8 pm. After the wedding is over, the bride and groom will not legally be married. Oh, and I forgot to mention. The groom is ... a serial killer!

Read the whole thing.

Standard media catches up to Puerling death

The byline for this article claims it's from the Los Angeles Times, but I can't find it on the LA Times website [see below].

Gene Puerling, leader of the innovative vocal quartet the Hi-Lo's and a noted vocal arranger whose sophisticated harmonies influenced the sound of other groups, including the Beach Boys, died March 25. He was 78.

Puerling, a longtime resident of San Anselmo, Calif., died of complications from diabetes at a San Francisco Bay Area hospital, said Don Shelton, who was a member of the Hi-Lo's.

Update: Here it is on latimes.com.

A Cappella News Points Us to Gene Puerling Interview

A great way to remember Gene Puerling. (The link downloads or plays a 1986 interview of Gene Puerling by Jim Eason. Time 16:05.)

From NPR: An Opera Singer's Guide to Protecting the Voice

This might be beneficial to choral directors:

NPR's Description:

An Opera Singer's Advice for Saving Your Voice
by Rob Sachs

Weekend Edition, March 29, 2008 · When your stock in trade is your voice, the slightest tickle in the back of your throat is scary. An opera singer gives advice about how to preserve and protect your voice.

No Surprise: Mac Wilberg new Mormon T. Choir Director

I'm a big fan of Mac Wilberg's music and wasn't surprised at this news:

Dr. Mack Wilberg was officially named today as the new music director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir by Mac Christensen, president of the choir.

Dr. Edgar Thompson, former director of the University of Utah School of Music, was named as the interim assistant to Wilberg until a formal search is undertaken and completed for a new associate music director for the choir.