Saturday, September 27, 2008

Handel and Brahms

I am singing in a performance of Brahms "German Requiem" this weekend. With several hours between rehearsal and performance, and steady pounding rain, I took refuge in a bookstore and found this:

"As a sacred, nonliturgical text for music, A German Requiem has but one peer, and that is the Jennens-Handel Messiah. Like Handel, Brahms knew his Bible well. ... "
from Michael Steinberg: Choral Masterworks: A Listener's Guide (OUP, 2005)

The text selection is so vital to these works- in some cases pairing snippets from far distant Biblical sections to present a unified concept in a musical movement.

Part Three opens with the soprano aria "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth." Having heard this a hundred times, I would have assumed that the entire text came from one place- in fact, though Jennens and Handel added Job to First Corinthians! Brahms paired a Beatitude with a Psalm in the first movement- other movements start with Pauline writings but close with a fugue from Revelation. These three- Brahms and Jennens and (perhaps) Handel- exhibit a bit of Biblical knowledge similar to Bach's gigantic, all-encompassing mastery of Biblical texts.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

A sign?

The new batch of kindergartners has arrived. (I teach the little kids, as well as the high schoolers.) I have had plenty of students named "Emmanuel" or "Jesus," but this one was new to me. I have a "Messiah!"

I hope he behaves well this year.

Oh, We Like Sheep

"We Like Sheep, too!"

Careful pronunciation required. This chorus, unknown to me when I first sang in those Christmas Messiahs years ago, might be my very favorite now. First of all, it is a RIOT- the vocal lines scattering hither and yon all over the page! We all, of course, learned about voice leading from Papa Bach- and that adjacent voices are not to extend more than an octave from another (the exception is the basses, just because we are so very terrific.) And, clearly, Handel was not subject to training under the strictures of his contemporary. I still imagine, though, that the octave-plus differential between voices (m. 22 and similar) was also intended to show our meandering from the path. Not only disjunct, but truly divergent,

The melismas of "we have turned" (m. 11 and similar) are probably the most difficult in all of Messiah. And look how the counterparts to those melismas are exactly opposite: as simple as he could write them.

Finally, the jarring change at measure 76. There had been so much merry cavorting and jolly fun, but when this measure arrives we starkly reminded of what we are talking about: "And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."

Sunday, September 7, 2008

video

Thanks to all who suggested a recording or score. My Dover score arrived last week.

I am chasing down more and more recorded performances, but I found something unusual two weeks ago: a DVD performance. Used and cheap, too! Slyvia McNair, Anne Sofie van Otter, Michael Chance, Jerry Hadley, Robert Lloyd, St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner. 1992 performance; Phillips DVD.

I have not had the chance to watch and listen yet. With that lineup, though, I imagine I will like it a great deal!

Taking stock

We officially started the project today- it was a start of the year party. Before the brats and beers, though, we gathered in a the living room of one of the tenors and sang most of the oratorio. (When I say 'we', I mean about half of the choir- with the strongest leaders in each section present.)

We started with the first chorus -"And the Glory of the Lord"- and plowed through. Everyone had sung most of the whole work before. Results were mixed. The easier ones were well done and even a little musical. The melismatic ones - "He Shall Purify" and "For Unto Us a Son is Born"- suffered some. And "All We Like Sheep" was quite the chaotic, disordered affair... even more than it was intended to be! I enjoy how this adult choir is fearless in plowing ahead, despite fatal flaws. When the breeze took the pianist's score away, the choir soon lost pitch, and eventually devolved into a rhythmic reading. My high schoolers, faced with the same problem, would immediately stop singing and crawl into their shell.

We tried out "Lift Up Your Heads" from the Second Part. We assigned three women to sing in alternation with the whole chorus; this gave a kind of concerto grosso effect AND saved us from dividing the sopranos. Worked very well, I think I will keep that.

We got to laugh and joke and tell Messiah stories (everybody has them!) in between movements. Overall, a light, enjoyable, but fruitful first step.