Tag: Music

THEN THERE’S PERFORMING IN PUBLIC

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Can I really be coming up on my fifth year in the choir that’s evolved into the Revels Singers? Hard to believe, especially when I hear the astonishing, velvety sound around me in rehearsal — one that’s getting even crisper as we develop.

The only experience I’d had before joining was Mennonite a cappella hymns sung in experienced circles and then later some Quaker ad hoc four-part chorales. Working with the Boston Revels organization has been a much more intimidating and rewarding challenge, especially for an untrained singer who had only some background in violin.

One thing that has surprised me is how hard it is to hear myself. Leaving a new message on the telephone answering machine (remember those?) always came as a shock. Whose voice was that, anyway? It was lower and thicker than what I hear in my head. Add to that the reality that we don’t hear ourselves snore – how can that be? I’ve learned to recognize the vibration in my throat but never hear an actual sound. What a mystery!

As a singer, what I sense more is a vibration than hearing an actual voice. At least that’s the best I can describe. I hear the voices around me instead and adjust to them as needed. And, yes, I hear the times when we’re full and rich in all our glory.

I do recall an event a few months ago when we were in the sanctuary rather than the adjacent room of the church where we practice. We formed a big circle around the pews and were singing in mixed formation but, as it turned out, I was the only bass in my quarter of the room and so, when we had a line to ourselves, I heard my voice arching out to the center – like a fishing line being cast into water, as I recall. It was thinner and lighter than I expected. Hmm.

Another big surprise has come in the experience of performing, in contrast to rehearsals.

We practice in a room of fine acoustics and have a good time together as we move closer and closer to some higher standard. We gain a familiarity in that space and probably react to it. And rehearsing is always filled with interruptions as we reexamine a passage to tweak something, explore other possibilities, correct our pitch, or simply make it better or more convincing.

Each performance, though, is a unique experience. It feels quite different from what we normally do.

Since I’m not confident enough to give up my printed score – my memorization has always been faulty when it comes to words and music. I’m always rewriting them as I go, so on stage I need to have room to open my book. That, as I’ve learned, is not always a given. Nor is sufficient light. And even when both are adequate, there are times when I look down on the page with a sense that I’ve never, ever seen this piece of music before. How many times have we rehearsed it? Well, I am getting better at memorization, just in case.

You never really know quite what to expect, but each time you’ll discover something new. This really does put everything to the test. Outdoors, especially, can be difficult when it comes to hearing the others. You have to trust the director and, if you’re in a decent position, what you see of the others.

No matter what, though, the performance turns into an altered state of consciousness. I’m focused on our conductor, my colleagues, the music and lyrics, and to a degree on our audience and setting – and for a give span of time, we’re in a corded shell, as poet John Dryden once described it. (Somehow, I’d rather have that as chorded shell, but there I go revising.) We begin, we are, we finish. Leaving the stage, we grin at each other. That was … fun, yes, along with something quite different and inexplicable.

All that practice seems gone in such a short time. Well, it is like preparing a feast, especially if you consider raising your own ingredients. I love it when we have an audience that leaves feeling well fed, even euphoric.

GIVING VOICE TO A UNIQUELY AMERICAN MUSIC

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

The demands of settling the New World left little time for the first waves of immigrants to attend to the fine arts. Unlike Europe, with its ongoing traditions, America had no courtly patrons or vested institutions. No Lorenzo de Medici or cathedrals, for instance. In fact, many of the Protestants looked askance at the vanity running through many of the arts or questioned the truthfulness of entertaining fictions. The Puritans banned theater, after all, as well as social dancing, at least until yielding where I live on New England contradance. The Quakers and Baptists went further, forbidding music from their worship services altogether.

Something had to bend and, over time, did. Slowly native voices took shape in literature, painting, and music, mostly. To us today, these “primitives” can be refreshing encounters.

In music, much of this impulse surfaced along vocal lines. (Little wonder, considering the rarity of instruments and teachers.) And out of this came a desire for choral music, a community activity of a social nature.

In the absence of trained musicians, though, some music masters, mostly self-taught, opened workshops known as “singing schools” and eventually created a unique notation style we know as “shape-note” scores. These pages have the staves, time signatures, sharps and flats like the scores generally used today, but rather than having the notes themselves be round, some are square or triangles – and each of those markings designates a fa, so, la, ti, do – an ancient foundation for singing.

When singers pick up a hymn from a shape-note book, they run through the music the first time by using the words fa, so, la, ti, do rather than the lyrics, which are introduced once the singers have their musical lines and harmonies in place. And away they go.

Boston tanner William Billings (1746-1800) is regarded as the first American choral composer, and increasingly as an original, even startling, voice. His four-part “fuguing tunes” of one voice after another embracing and embellishing a phrase create bright polyphonic tapestries on Biblical and patriotic texts. Henry Cowell, a major 20th century American composer, has argued that had we heeded Billings rather than later reformers, we would have had a unique serious American musical tradition much earlier than we did. Other observers have said that hearing Billings is like encountering the wonders of music for the first time. I’d agree. While Billings, himself a singing-school master and publisher, did not employ shape notes, much of his music has survived in that style.

In Virginia, the Mennonite Joseph Funk (1778-1862) created a seven-note system still in use among Mennonites and Brethren. Many of those hymns were published in both English and German. (I have several editions of these volumes.) The crossroads where he lived and is buried is now known as Singers Glen. It’s a lovely site.

Best known today is the Sacred Harp, taking its name from a 1844 tunebook once New England choral singing took root in the American South. It’s a loud, lively, even raucous style of four-part a cappella activity – with many of the hymns composed by Billings, in fact.

Historical purists can argue whether shape-note music should be performed in the Sacred Harp style or in the more lyrical piety of the Mennonites and Brethren, which I favor. What I do know is the joy we feel as a choir when we take up pieces from this stream, as well as how difficult and challenging they can be. For the record, we use standard notation, rather than the shape-note scores. No need to further confuse us.

For related poetry collections, visit Thistle/Flinch editions.