Upcoming ROCS concert
ironicshell put me up to this, but I was probably going to have a bit of a ranting outlet at some point. I might go on banging for a while, so it's best if I put everything behind an or two...
At this stage, I can't help betraying my own nervousness at the state of ROCS rehearsals, principally because I can perceive very little in the way of week-to-week improvement, and also for various reasons some of the music is unavailable (yes, I know I must shoulder some of the blame for not having finished writing my own piece). Maybe my perception has been due to where I'm sitting in the rehearsals - directly behind the two altos in the past fortnight (whom I can barely hear) and with the other tenors to my right, I can hear little promising noise from the sopranos and basses - when they usually should have the numerical advantage. Perhaps Sarah is getting a different acoustical perspective from out in front. I not sure how stable attendance is from week to week either, and whether there should be a noticeably larger number of choristers than the regulars who do attend each week. The basses seem to be the most variable in their vagaries.
Through no fault of her own, Leanne's having been absent sick for the past two rehearsals has had the side-effect of making Wheel of the Year un-rehearseable - as few people had remembered to hold onto their scores at the rehearsal three weeks ago, so that only two or three copies could be located either of the following weeks. This hasn't mattered too much as there are plenty of other pieces to look at, but has probably caused some frustration. I think we'll organise to raid Pascoe Vale for copies before this Thursday!
Sandra Uitdenbogerd's I must destroy the spacewhale seems to be the hands-down winner in the popularity stakes so far, thanks to its fun sending-up of musical clichés and the quasi-space-operatic verse by Adam Ford (who tacitly owes a debt to the late, great Douglas Adams). Hopefully we'll get to see more like this soon. The last couple of weeks have seen the rehearsal of Ade Ish's Moving Ashburton, which caused some confusion with vocally un-friendly notation usually appearing in the wrong octave. However, it runs along its track pretty much like the Alamein train does from Ashburton, but I'm not sure its going fast enough to reach Riversdale or Camberwell.
To my surprise I've revised my opinion of one of Theresa Wallner's pieces, Peace Be. I had thought this to be a somewhat nebulous or vapid work - and with the notation being very thinly stretched over seven mostly blank pages, it easily gives rise to this impression. However, when I had a little spare time last Friday I wrote it out longhand in short score - principally to consider Sarah's contention in rehearsal that it couldn't be physically played without leaving out notes. (There are two stretches of a tenth where it would be better to play the bass note an octave higher than to leave it out, or to diplomatically use the sustain pedal to cover the sound. Or you just need to grow larger hands :-)
Anyway, when written in short score, Peace be occupies only a single page of four highly compressed systems (omitting the largely doubling S2, A2 and Bar2 parts). This however visually clarifies the piece's structure as a set of four phrases of similar material, and convinced me that the piece is in the wrong time-signature - it is actually in a very slow 2/2 rather than the plodding 4/4 we've been rehearsing. The unusual entries on the second and fourth crotchet beats then become syncopations off the minim beat, which make a lot more sense. The connections in the part-writing are also a lot more obvious.
The piece was probably originally in C rather than B, (with the high soprano phrase coming slightly after the middle perhaps starting an octave higher), as the appearance of the F double sharp would be an obvious grammatical nicety from transposing down a minor second from a G sharp. However, I would like to see the piece transposed down quite a bit further, say down to A flat or G, (a) to allow the soprano part to function properly in the higher octave, when needed; (b) to allow the unused tenor to reinforce the low alto phrase starting at about bar 11; (c) to reduce the strain of the high baritone part on the average bass.
We also have sung a nice little ditty by James Ong that has arrived from Germany by fax.
Happily, I got a lot of the remainder of Kubla Khan nailed down over the weekend - finished up to "Could I revive within me", which is where the choir re-enters after a short solo for soprano accompanied by harp (literally "A damsel with a dulcimer"). Unfortunately, all of this was done up at Heathcote on paper, so I've had no time since getting back to transcribe into the computer; I'll probably have to pull an all-nighter to get everything done that I want to do. At least there'll be a diversion in the early hours of the morning:
Any early-birds up at about 5am tomorrow morning should wander outside and look for the lunar eclipse - the moon will go into shadow shortly before setting in the west. (On the other hand snowgrouse gets to see this before midnight, I think.)
At this stage, I can't help betraying my own nervousness at the state of ROCS rehearsals, principally because I can perceive very little in the way of week-to-week improvement, and also for various reasons some of the music is unavailable (yes, I know I must shoulder some of the blame for not having finished writing my own piece). Maybe my perception has been due to where I'm sitting in the rehearsals - directly behind the two altos in the past fortnight (whom I can barely hear) and with the other tenors to my right, I can hear little promising noise from the sopranos and basses - when they usually should have the numerical advantage. Perhaps Sarah is getting a different acoustical perspective from out in front. I not sure how stable attendance is from week to week either, and whether there should be a noticeably larger number of choristers than the regulars who do attend each week. The basses seem to be the most variable in their vagaries.
Through no fault of her own, Leanne's having been absent sick for the past two rehearsals has had the side-effect of making Wheel of the Year un-rehearseable - as few people had remembered to hold onto their scores at the rehearsal three weeks ago, so that only two or three copies could be located either of the following weeks. This hasn't mattered too much as there are plenty of other pieces to look at, but has probably caused some frustration. I think we'll organise to raid Pascoe Vale for copies before this Thursday!
Sandra Uitdenbogerd's I must destroy the spacewhale seems to be the hands-down winner in the popularity stakes so far, thanks to its fun sending-up of musical clichés and the quasi-space-operatic verse by Adam Ford (who tacitly owes a debt to the late, great Douglas Adams). Hopefully we'll get to see more like this soon. The last couple of weeks have seen the rehearsal of Ade Ish's Moving Ashburton, which caused some confusion with vocally un-friendly notation usually appearing in the wrong octave. However, it runs along its track pretty much like the Alamein train does from Ashburton, but I'm not sure its going fast enough to reach Riversdale or Camberwell.
To my surprise I've revised my opinion of one of Theresa Wallner's pieces, Peace Be. I had thought this to be a somewhat nebulous or vapid work - and with the notation being very thinly stretched over seven mostly blank pages, it easily gives rise to this impression. However, when I had a little spare time last Friday I wrote it out longhand in short score - principally to consider Sarah's contention in rehearsal that it couldn't be physically played without leaving out notes. (There are two stretches of a tenth where it would be better to play the bass note an octave higher than to leave it out, or to diplomatically use the sustain pedal to cover the sound. Or you just need to grow larger hands :-)
Anyway, when written in short score, Peace be occupies only a single page of four highly compressed systems (omitting the largely doubling S2, A2 and Bar2 parts). This however visually clarifies the piece's structure as a set of four phrases of similar material, and convinced me that the piece is in the wrong time-signature - it is actually in a very slow 2/2 rather than the plodding 4/4 we've been rehearsing. The unusual entries on the second and fourth crotchet beats then become syncopations off the minim beat, which make a lot more sense. The connections in the part-writing are also a lot more obvious.
The piece was probably originally in C rather than B, (with the high soprano phrase coming slightly after the middle perhaps starting an octave higher), as the appearance of the F double sharp would be an obvious grammatical nicety from transposing down a minor second from a G sharp. However, I would like to see the piece transposed down quite a bit further, say down to A flat or G, (a) to allow the soprano part to function properly in the higher octave, when needed; (b) to allow the unused tenor to reinforce the low alto phrase starting at about bar 11; (c) to reduce the strain of the high baritone part on the average bass.
We also have sung a nice little ditty by James Ong that has arrived from Germany by fax.
Happily, I got a lot of the remainder of Kubla Khan nailed down over the weekend - finished up to "Could I revive within me", which is where the choir re-enters after a short solo for soprano accompanied by harp (literally "A damsel with a dulcimer"). Unfortunately, all of this was done up at Heathcote on paper, so I've had no time since getting back to transcribe into the computer; I'll probably have to pull an all-nighter to get everything done that I want to do. At least there'll be a diversion in the early hours of the morning:
Any early-birds up at about 5am tomorrow morning should wander outside and look for the lunar eclipse - the moon will go into shadow shortly before setting in the west. (On the other hand snowgrouse gets to see this before midnight, I think.)