Musical Jottings
by Michael Ackerman (a rather grumpy old man)
A Sequence of Renaissance Music for the Season of Advent (not)
The Renaissance Singers The Temple Church 2nd December 2006
Advent is the first season of the Christian year, which has largely got buried beneath the unpleasant excesses of the commercialised Anglo-Saxon ‘Christmas’, that curious non-religious period of over-indulgence that seems to last for months but ends at the very time when Christians begin to celebrate Christmas. Advent is an austere period, waiting for the birth of Our Lord, when traditionally Christians meditate on the Four Last Things. As far as the music for this season is concerned, you may well feel that on the whole, Renaissance does ‘austere’ better than jollification, and I went to this concert given by this excellent choir, full of expectation of solemn contrapuntal grandeur. The expectation was unfulfilled. After a nod in the direction of Advent, by the time we got to the interval the music was in fact music for Christmas. The promise was unfulfilled, and there we were, listening to music to celebrate Jesus’ birth. ‘Does it matter?’ I hear you ask. Well, it matters to me, because I do not go to Christmas events before Christmas. I feel that the words ‘Advent’ and ‘Christmas’ mean two different things: they are contrasted but related seasons of the Christian year, having each distinct texts and distinct music. I am disappointed that a society of educated musicians should deceive me in this way. I do not celebrate the birth of a baby until it has arrived.
Orfeo
New London Consort 14 th March 2007 QEH
This was a treat. There was a lovely line-up of instruments, or rather, two lines-up (?) either side of the stage, representing heaven on the left, and the underworld on the right. The playing was exquisite, the sound of the instruments ravishing. The singing was not of such a high order, but then when it comes to Baroque opera, it never is. I suppose that unless you start learning to sing Baroque decoration in childhood, you can never quite master it. (I would be happy to stand corrected on that.) There is also the problem of decoration against volume. Just how loud was ‘loud’ when it came to singing in public? I would have said, to judge from the noise made by the instruments, that ‘loud’ could have been not at all loud by modern standards. Moving on to matters sartorial, I am only too aware that the ideal nowadays is to look like a tramp, so I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that the singers were dressed in grey pyjamas, possibly a job lot from Oxfam: not a cheering sight. But then, as is the way at most musical events I attend, the audience emerged from the auditorium at the end of this musical feast looking as though they had been feasting rather on rotting lemons, so perhaps at the end of the day the costumes were not inappropriate. Anyway, in spite of my bitter remarks, it was, as I said, a treat to hear this music live, and Philip Pickett is to be congratulated on his determination to bring lovely music to the South Bank whether the great British public wants it or not.
The Tudor Organs
A friend of mine at Oxford got in touch on 25 th January to let me know there was a study day at New College and All Souls that very Saturday on the Tudor organs, conducted by Magnus Williamson, but that it was probably too late for me to do anything about attending. Well, I wasn’t doing anything else, so early that Saturday morning I cycled to Paddington to get an earlier train than apparently needed, in order to foil British Rail, and, as I expected, there were delays to the journey.
I got there in time for a nice cup of coffee and off I went to New Coll, chapel where the Wetheringsett organ (now in Durham) was then. There couldn’t have been more than twenty of us, which is pathetic when you think of the number of organ scholars and students of music there are at Oxford, but it was cosy - except that there was no heating. Fortunately, I was wearing long everythings. Other hardier souls were skimpily clad but seemed not to be suffering. The event was fascinating for me, and several ideas I had arrived at intuitively were confirmed, regarding pitch, tempo and indeed the ringing bold sound of the organ.
After lunch, on to All Soul’s, the first time I’ve ever been through the front door thereof, to the chapel where the Wingfield organ was. I took a turn at pumping (needless to say, both organs are person-blown), which in itself was quite an education.
It would appear from the little evidence that exists that church organs were probably at five-foot pitch right up to the Commonwealth. Later that day, Lawrence Dreyfus, who is among other things an expert on the viols, pointed out that in secular music, organs played with viols, and viols were at eight-foot pitch. The Knole organ appears to be eight-foot pitch as well. So perhaps there was church pitch and chamber pitch. This must have involved lots of problems of transposition, which presumably the organists relished, enlivening an otherwise dull existence.
One last BR story. On the Sunday I intended to get back to London in plenty of time for me to get to the church where I play an eighteenth-century chamber organ during the communion at the Sunday evening mass. The train was an hour late, and I arrived at the organ just as the administration of communion was about to begin!
The following Tuesday, the organs were transported to the QEH. The pre-concert talk was fascinating and not to be missed, with Patrick Russill, Dominic Gwynn, Eamon Duffy and Andrew McCrea. Then Patrick Russill played the organs, and members of the Sixteen, dressed as superannuated teddy boys, which they may well be, sang. (For comments on the audience, please refer to my remarks on ‘Orfeo’: the same applies.) It was mega! Dr Katherine Pardee, organ scholar at Wadham Coll, who has worked tirelessly to make the most of the organs’ sojourn at Oxford, worked the bellows of the Wetheringsett organ, and Dominic Gwynne pumped the Wingfield. I felt there was some justice that he should have pumped that organ, as the bellows are near floor level, and only someone of very small stature would be able to handle them comfortably. Who was it who designed them thus, one asks oneself? I do hope he didn’t suffer unduly the following day.
If you buy the CD ‘More sweet to hear: organs and voices in Tudor England’, with Magnus Williamson playing, you will find superb notes accompanying, which sum up the whole experience. More information about the organs can be read on the Early Organ Project website (www.earlyorgans.org.uk).
My Ladye Nevells Booke – Terence Charlston
I do like the British Library: I find it comfortable to use, plus the availability of good food when I can afford it, and the lovely circular roof garden. I should also mention the lavish provision of loos! On 26th March I discovered another good feature, the Conference Centre. The auditorium is a reasonable size, the seats very comfortable indeed, so you can nod off if you so wish; the only problem is that the quantity of soft furnishing does absorb a lot of sound. Terence Charlston played a David Evans copy of a one-manual Couchet. On the BL website it gave us to understand that he was playing the whole of the book: no one was more daunted than he at the prospect! The Library acquired the splendid manuscript a couple of years ago, I believe. I was hoping for a scholarly dissertation on the book, but that wasn’t the purpose of the recital. In fact, Mr Charlston did give an introduction to the book and to the pieces he played for the benefit of those members of the audience for whom Elizabethan virginals music is a novelty. However, the main purpose of the evening was to listen to the music, which we did, with great delight. He played with charm and authority. Perhaps we shall be able to return thither to hear more pieces from the book played by him.
MRI Scans and Modern Music
I’ve attended performances of contemporary dance since I was at university. A few weeks ago I attended the Scottish Dance Theatre. They have some brilliant dancers: my fave is Toby Fitzgibbon. Unfortunately, like many dance groups nowadays, they seem to have given up using music as commonly defined. Instead they have sound tracks of the most ghastly noises - played, of course, very very loud. In fact, I have largely given up going to modern dance because of this: even ear plugs are ineffective in keeping out the noise. Well, ghastly noises played deafeningly loud were again the order of the day, and I really don’t think I can face going again.
The week after, I had an MRI scan at the brand new University College Hospital. This was my first: I was worried about the possibility of claustrophobia when being slid into this immense machine, I was worried about the noise it was going to make, and I was worried about having to lie still for forty-five minutes. Well, it wasn’t claustrophobic: it’s open at your feet end as well, and I went in as far as my eyebrows. It was fine. Lying there also wasn’t a problem. I tried thinking agreeable thoughts, but I kept drifting off into a sort of limbo. This may have had something to do with the drugs they were pumping into my arm. Anyway, it was fine. Lastly, the noise! Well, quite frankly, it was not as bad as the music at the Scottish Dance Theatre. It wasn’t, as I had feared it was going to be, continuous. There were bursts of one sort of noise, then a gap, then another noise would start, a bit like the washing machine going through its cycle. It would have been appropriate to Doctor Who, or something like that. I did e-mail the Scottish Dance Theatre to share this information with them, but they haven’t replied.
David Wright at St Martin-in-the-Fields
I’ve only been inside St Martin’s once before, a few years ago, to have a quick look at the magnificent new organ case in the west end. The church is undergoing a mammoth restoration at the moment, so you enter through scaffolding. It’s a vast auditorium, in restrained English baroque, desperately in need of the restoration it is now receiving. You are probably aware that our priceless heritage of ecclesiastical architecture, a significant contribution to the reason why people visit Britain, is maintained very largely at the expense of the small Christian congregations who use the buildings: a shabby state of affairs, to my way of thinking. So there we were, in this gloomy grey building-site, with a great organ case at one end, and an Andrew Wooderson harpsichord at the other. Because of its position and its marketing, St Martin’s attracts large audiences, and Tuesday 1st May was no exception. There were a few other members of the D. Wright rent-a-crowd here and there in the audience. Harpsichord playing in such a large building is problematical, and it was tiring hearing the intermittent but frequent public-service sirens from Trafalgar Square, plus the noise of the few thousands milling around outside. The much-publicised ‘candle light’ intensified the gloom rather than adding a romantic lustre, and I could only just see my miniature score, bought excitedly thirty years ago and hardly opened since. Having said all that, David played brilliantly, con fuoco, with verve and éclat. The first half of the programme comprised Handel, Bach, Scarlatti (I didn’t get a programme, so I’m not absolutely sure what was played), and then the second half was the Goldberg Variations. He played them without repeats, so it was a bit like seeing a film with the speed increased. However, I think it was a good idea, in that members of the audience for whom the recital was something of a novelty would not have had time to get bored.
David’s CD was released that evening, a performance of the variations with repeats (!). He uses a Colin Booth instrument after Mietke, temperament based on one of several formulated by Werkmeister, pitch 392. To order your copy, e-mail David .