Old Friends

I've reflected before about how a choir member knows he's getting on when concerts include works already sung (sometimes more than once). This time it's the entire programme:

• Fauré: Requiem
  (third or fourth time, with my present and other choirs)
• Bernstein: Chichester Psalms
  (so long ago that I was fit enough to cycle the dozen-or-so mile round trip for the concert-day rehearsal)
• Vaughan Willims: Five Mystical Songs
  (last sung in 2011; our Past Concerts link also lists the 2020 concert which had to be cancelled

Fauré: Requiem

I posted here about an edition of Tales from the Stave, fortunately still available, and well worth a listen. As I wrote it more than 3½ years ago, I've cut/pasted most of it here; if you read it then (in which case thanks for the loyalty) you can skip the indented chunk that follows:

<pre_script>

One of the people commenting on the manuscript also featured as a boy soprano in the King's College Choir recording – Bob (credited at the time as "Robert") Chilcott. (In particular it alerted me to a mistranslation of mine, now fixed. To make matters worse, it was in a section that corrected a common mistranslation [of In Paradisum as *in paradise – which it doesn't mean]).

...In can mean many things  in Latin, but when followed by a noun in the accusative it doesn't mean 'in'. If the words were In Paradiso they would mean 'In Paradise'; but they are In Paradisum ... going on ...deducant Angeli : 'May angels will lead you into Paradise...' One of many other meanings of in, this time followed by the dative, is exemplified in the next phrase: in tuo adventu: that's closer to 'in' in meaning, with a sense something like 'on the occasion of'', though I'd favour a simpler translation: 'When you arrive...'.

More here

My mistake (future simple rather than subjunctive) was perhaps explained (though not of course justified – mea maxima culpa) by Fauré's own attitude to the Requiem as a lullaby of death. I let his view of death as a peaceful return to a state of eternal rest influence me. As Michael Lewanski‘s blog says

Unlike nearly all other works in the genre, it [HD: Fauré's Requiem ] contains none of the drama, anxiety, or fraught emotions one tends to associate with human thinking about death.  Nearly all references to the last judgement from the Catholic liturgy (and trust me, there are plenty) are excised. 

This nonchalance  in the sense of "not getting  hot under the collar" misled me into  assuming on the part of  Fauré a certain (not to say sanctimonious) belief that angels would lead the departed into paradise.

The manuscript, and thus the stuff of the discussion, was an unbound version without some movements added later (Offertorium, Libera me, etc.); it was, in the words of the Bibliothèque Nationale's Head of Music Manuscripts a manuscript de travail working copy rather than a draft of something to be  published.

Bob Chilcott makes frequent additions to the discussion based on his experience as a chorister;   from the sublime (David Willcocks‘s observation that the high strings after the triumphant Hosanna  represent  the angels flying off into the distance) to the ridiculous (after the recording of Pie Jesu, when the sound engineer asked if Chilcott wanted to listen back to his efforts, the response was "Sorry Sir, he's gone off with Marriner [Neville‘s  son Andrew] to buy sweets" [not the exact words – check Bob Chilcott's memory in the 17th minute of the programme]).

At one point (maybe more than one) Bob Chilcott calls attention to Fauré's word painting, which put me in mind of my own favourite example, discussed in an old post of mine:

My choice of 'listen out' [HD: the post was discussing phrasal verbs in  a context that had nothing to do with music] as an example is not entirely accidental. I'm singing this season Fauré's Requiem, which includes the prayer Exaudi orationem meam. This phrase is preceded by a soprano tune marked both piano and dolce: a very gentle and not-very-down-to-earth (in fact angelic)  'It is fitting that a hymn should be offered to you in Sion, O God'. Here the human penitent breaks in,  fortissimo: Exaudi – as if they were saying 'Enough of this airy-fairy stuff  – "it is fitting that..." – my Aunt Fanny! This really matters to a human soul. Among all the millions of prayers addressed to you throughout Christendom – not to mention that bl**dy  'hymnus' – listen out for mine.' The rather limp translation 'Hear my prayer' doesn't do justice to the word.

And in the same post I returned to the theme of 'listen out':

<autobiographical_note>
At the funeral of a grande dame yesterday... I witnessed an underlining of the importance of this Ex-  [HD: in exaudi]. We were in the middle of one of those interminable call-and-response prayers, with the congregation saying ‘Lord, hear our prayer‘ again and again. And The Angelus butted in. (For the uninitiated:  The Angelus is a very noisy Call-to-prayer^† – much noisier than the Islamic version: ding ding ding <pause> ding ding ding <pause> ding ding ding <pause..._{has it stopped?}>  <oh dear me NO, suckers> DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING... [ad nauseam]).  And the congregation was bleating (that‘s one for the etymologists: grex = ‘flock‘) ‘Lord, hear our prayer‘. Here was the perfect opportunity for something more robust: ‘Listen out for my prayer‘.
^† Not all believers would recognize this as a call to prayer exactly, but the name 'Angelus' is the first word of the prescribed prayer.                            

<inline_pps>
So it's a call to – and an accompaniment to – a particular prayer, to be prayed wherever the hearer happens to be, rather than [as in the Islamic case] a call to the faithful to come and pray at the mosque.
<inline_pps>

</autobiographical_note>

</pre_script>

Bernstein: Chichester Psalms

In July 2021 an edition of Radio 3's Building a Library dealt with the Chichester Psalms; the programme itself is no longer available, but there is this podcast – also well worth a listen (but be warned: the reviewer is a bit sniffy about the organ/harp reduction, which for obvious reasons is much the more common in local churches rather than professional concert halls: as he says, though, any version that brings this music to a wider audience can only be a good thing).

As Bernstein wrote at the time:

For hours on end I brooded and mused

On materia musica used and abused

Pieces for nattering, clucking sopranos

With squadrons of vibraphones, fleets of pianos,

Played with the forearms, the fists and the palms;

And then I came up with The Chichester Psalms.

These psalms are a simple and modest affair,

Tonal and tuneful and somewhat square:

Certain to sicken a stout John Cager

With its tonics and triads in E♭ major.

But  while tonal and tuneful I certainly wouldn't call it square. In fact, when the Dean of Chichester suggested "Why do the nations..." as a possible text, writing that the setting could have "a hint of West Side Story", he can't have suspected that Bernstein would set that psalm – though not in full – using some unused material left previously unfinished from that very show: the Jets and the Sharks "furiously raging together".

<inline_ps>

And the word they break in with is lama – which, all unbeknownst, is one of the few words in Hebrew that most English people with a church education, will have met (though in a different context: Eli Eli Lama Sabachthani): why?

</inline_ps>

And at the end, in a conclusion strongly reminiscent of the last peaceful bars that accompany the informal funeral cortège at the end of West Side Story, Bernstein has all the voices coming together in unison on the word yahad (which means "together" – a typically brilliant piece of word-painting)

L'Envoi

I have nothing to say about the Vaughan Williams, certainly not enough to justify a Subhead (as for the Fauré and the Bernstein).  And mindful of Schönberg's advice to young conductors (discussed in this blog by our MD – "never be witty" – I shall resist the temptation to mention last week's rehearsal, when George Herbert's "I got me flowers" brought to mind Eliza Doolittle. (Except I didn't.)

But make a date for 19 March:

b

Update 2022.01.25.17:20 – Added <inline_ps>

Update 2022.03.21.12:55 – Added link to review, to give you a taste of what you missed.