Art · Nouveau · Ho

Music heard and seen today:

- A strangely inspired concert by voice-and-clarinet duo Ah! You Sitting Comfortably, starring my good friend Pete W. The programme was all music by living composers, with whom the duo had worked-- and the preparation showed. Each piece was a bizarre, fantastic little story: my favourite, Flimminilap by Stephen McNeff, featured two people on a train drifting in and out of conversation and music on the way to a station whose existence is debatable. The last piece, Atem by Mauricio Kagel, is strangely moving: a solo clarinettist has increasing difficulty turning breath into sound; she plays feebly on several different reed instruments by turns before falling dead to the floor. It's music about the loss of music, and I liked that.

- 6comm at the Underworld in Camden. I arrived late-ish for the one decent opening act-- but heard all of the two who sucked hairy goat balls. (Very seriously, mind you.) One girl who showed some promise had to cut her set short because of a CD malfunction. 6comm himself started strongly, making his ritual gesture with his bell-festooned axe before settling down amid his usual morasse of stage-smoke and percussion instruments. What I like about 6comm is his soundworld, which is unique to him. Using percussion, samples and synths, he builds up this astounding sound-atmosphere which takes you right out of this world. Over this, he sings (his voice is surprisingly good; his lyrics, more often than not, total bollocks. Usually the words are kind of indistinguishable, which is a bonus.)
He played a few good songs before all his keyboards simultaneously died on him, so he was left with just percussion, looping and samples. It was interesting to see how he handled the situation, and it was great to see him improvise, but in the end he sadly admitted defeat and wandered offstage, shaking his axe.

- On the way home I stopped for some takeout meze at my neighbourhood Middle Eastern place (tasty, cheap and open late: what more could one ask?) The guys that know me were on shift, and as usual, they put on some dance music. Usually I just smile and show them a move or two-- but I'd been hearing extraordinary music all evening and not dancing, so I took off my coat and shoes and cut loose. A girl at one of the tables stood up and joined me: it turned out she knew me from dance class! So everyone at her table stood up and started dancing too, and we ended up having a brief dance party while I waited for my takeout. (They smiled and charged me £5.)

What have we learned about music today?

From the first concert: Music is what you think it is.
From the second concert: When you're in the zone, let nothing throw you out of it.
From the last dance: Without music, the human race would have no reason to shake its booty.

Good night and sweet music to you all.

Figaro went well! Kudos to my colleagues, and many thanks to all who came.

In every piece of music you rehearse, there comes a time by which the music is going round and round in your head nonstop: on the bus, down the aisles of the supermarket, and especially when you're trying to get to sleep.

But this time it was Figaro, and Figaro turns that phenomenon up to 11. Suddenly the earworm in your head has the volume and clarity of a million-dollar sound system that you can't turn off. There isn't a hope of getting rid of it, so you just live with a skull full of blasting Mozart.

There are two good points to this situation: one is that you get to know the opera really well, whether you want to or not. The other is subtler: this is the closest we'll ever get to knowing what it felt like to be Mozart. If his music occupies our every waking moment and won't leave us alone, how must he have felt? Did the music resound in his head with the same painful clarity, the same insistence, never letting him rest till he wrote it down? If so, he must never have needed to cast about for ideas; they'd have come thronging, clamouring to be let out.

If Mozart had lived a normal lifespan for his time and social class, most of what we have of his today would be known as "early Mozart".

My teacher once said that when you memorise music, you're actually composing it again in your head. I think he was right about this.

There's a bit in the Act II Finale (about 1.40 to 2.20 here) that made our Cherubino (offstage at the time) grin madly and wave her legs in the air. I think she was right about this too.

At the end of Figaro, after all the traps are sprung, misunderstandings cleared up, and jealous spouses disciplined, there is a very brief, almost frantically festive final chorus.

Questo giorno di tormenti,
Di capricci e di follia,
In contenti ed allegria,
Solo amor puo terminar.

Sposi! Amici! Al ballo! Al gioco!
Alle mine date fuoco!
Corriam tutti a festeggiar!

The next-to-last line means "Light the fireworks!" or, literally, "To the mines give fire!" This used to be an English phrase too:

In giving fire to any great peece of Ordnance, such as Cannon, Culverin, or such like, it is requisite that ye Gonner thereto appointed first see that ye peece be well primed, laying a little powdre about ye touch-hole as a traine, and then to be nimble in giving fire, which as soon as he espieth to flame, he ought with quicknesse to retire back three or four yardes out of danger of the reverse of ye wheels and carriage of ye peece; for oftentimes it happeneth that the wheels or axle-tree doth break and spoile ye Gonner that giveth fire, not having ability to move himself from the danger of ye same; yea, I did see a Gonner slaine with the reverse of the wheele of a culverin, which crushed his legge and thigh in peeces, who, if he had had a care, and nimbleness withal, might have escaped ye misfortune.

So "give fire" basically just meant "light something that explodes." The Italian word mina, "mine", similarly, just meant "thing that explodes." Italian fireworks were known as the loveliest in Europe, and much sought after; the Royal Fireworks of 1749, for which Handel composed the music, were made and given fire by Italians. (The concert pavilion burned down, but so it goes.)
( Click for Enlightenment )

On Halloween night, since I was neither in Oxford nor Whitby, I headed to the Royal Festival Hall to see Steve Reich. Yes, the man himself was in town for a performance with the London Sinfonietta; the show was long since sold out, of course, but they were screening it live in the RFH's ballroom for free. I got to hear "Sextet" and Music For 18 Musicians, both of which were ...

I'm struggling for an adjective here. I could use an anodyne one like "lovely", but this music is not lovely. Its nature requires you to commit to it on its own terms. It is made with the precision of the gods of geometry; with an exactitude that leaves no room for mercy. It is not music that makes you think. It is music that renders you, after a while, incapable of thought. It has the mathematical inexorability of Bach with added metallophones and maracas. It is, in short, Steve Reich.
( ...or that's one way of looking at it )

After rehearsal yesterday, I happened to pass by one of the most fantastic charity shops ever: Age Concern on St Clement's, Oxford, crammed to the gills with the random and the sublime. There I found

The Parlour Song Book: A Casquet of Vocal Gems
( Come! let us join the roundelay! )
The question now is: what should I do with this book? Find someone with an accordion and work up a few numbers to amuse steampunks? Send it anonymously to the Dead Victorians in the hope that they'll do an upbeat, ukulele-accompanied version of "Father's A Drunkard, Mother Is Dead"? Really, what do I do? I'm open to suggestion here.

The good news:
A couple of weeks ago I was offered Marcellina in a Figaro in Oxford on 10th and 11th November. It's in the very beautiful Wren-designed Sheldonian Theatre, in 18th century costume (full-throated huzzahs)! Rehearsals have been going well.

The not-so-good news:
Sadly, this means no Whitby. And the dress rehearsal is, cruelly, on Bonfire Night. I suppose this means I will have to set the rehearsal venue on fire. Sigh.

( Thoughts )

Many, many thanks to all who endured an evening on wooden benches in a cold church listening to silly Baroque ornamentation. You are truly hardcore, and the ghost of Handel smiles on you.
( ...so how did it go? )

In the title of these posts, I promised you sex.
( Click for sex... or gender, at least )
Less than a week now until the first performance! Email david.crown@virgin.net to book tickets.
Thursday 8th and Saturday 10th October, 7.30 pm
St Michael's at the Northgate, Cornmarket Street, Oxford
Tickets £10/students £5

Today I've been mostly practicing my recitative.

( my what? Read on, true believers )

I think I'm going to talk a little about what I've been working on lately, in the event that it interests anyone who might like to learn more about what I do, or who may be coming to see Giulio Cesare (which I hope you will.)
( Baroque opera for beginners )

Last night's Proms were quite amazing. First up was the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, whom I love, with Norrington being a tremendous tart at the helm and Joyce DiDonato singing.

For non-classical types: the OAE are Britain's premier period-instruments orchestra, which means that every piece they play they play is played on instruments from the same period it was composed. For an example, check out this Wikipedia page on the violin. Gut strings, rather than modern nylon, make a huge difference: there are few things lovelier than the sound of proper Baroque strings, like silk veils falling through space.

Period brass is a whole different kettle of fish. Valves (those finger keys you get on modern brass instruments) are a nineteenth-century thing; earlier than that, a brass player needed to produce all the notes using only airflow and lip tension (and, for horn players, one hand in the bell.) You're also limited to the specific key your instrument is in; you can only change key by attaching different lengths of tubing, called crooks, to your horn. This can be tiresome, but it has its moments: slide on an extra-long crook, and your Baroque horn becomes an instant tuba!

So basically, early brass is REALLY hard to play well. Watching the OAE perform Handel's Water Music last night, with the natural brass doing all those rapid fanfares in thirds, I was awestruck by how glorious and easy they made it sound. (When they got around to Mendelssohn's Scottish symphony, THAT was when the unholy farting noises began.)
( So how was the concert? iPlayer links below. )

Tuesday: Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience at the Proms. Good performances, but way too many mortifying memory associations. Promming in an overheated arena full of intensely spoddish people with poor impulse control did nothing to help. However, Felicity Palmer was, is and ever shall be awesome.

Wednesday: Handel Prom: the Sixteen with Harry Christopher conducting; Alastair Ross, organ; and Carolyn Sampson, soprano. Excellent! Sampson's arias from Semele were sung with beautiful teasing mischief. The mirror aria ("Myself I shall adore, if I persist in gazing") is a notorious soprano deathtrap: it's a long one, and if it's not sung brilliantly it can seem interminable. Ms Sampson rose to the challenge and made it sound easy. Well worth listening to on iPlayer.

Later: Philip Glass Prom: the Violin Concerto, followed by the newish Seventh Symphony's first performance in Britain. So amazing. iPlayer: listen to this one late at night. Glass himself gave a brief interview beforehand and took a bow afterwards; one voice booed. However, getting booed at the Proms is sort of an accolade for a composer; sign of the times, I guess. Still, it's puzzling: if the name Philip Glass is on the programme, surely by now you know what you're going to get? If you don't like it, why not stay home and amuse yourself by booing the radio?

Tonight: three short shows at the Tête à Tête Opera Festival at Riverside Studios. This is a festival for new, strange, off-the-wall stuff; it's great fun.

At 7pm, there was Mark Glentworth's Ula, an opera-in-progress about an American writer who encounters some mysterious people on the coast of Scotland; this was well sung, played and staged, but I found the music kind of forgettable.

At 8.30, my friend Pete was singing the part of the Shadow in Shadowplays, which turns out to be a lovely, haunting piece. Lighting and projection were used to great effect, and the company (4 singers, 2 dancers, 2 instrumentalists, no conductor) played together really well. The libretto is kind of lame, and that holds the first scenes back a bit; but later there were some lovely ensembles.

Then at 10, there was the strangest piece of all: Nicholas Brown's As Have I Now Memoyre, not so much an opera as a sound-and-art installation with singers. We wandered into a black-box room awash with ambient sound; then a singer began, softly, to sing; stagehands entered and hung various partitions and curtains in the room, on which a girl began incribing Elizabethan text as we listeners wandered and watched. I don't really know how to describe it beyond that, except to say that it was a lovely, mindblowing experience.

All three of those shows plus others are on again tonight, and still more all through the weekend, at the Riverside Studios near Hammersmith tube: if you're up for some entertaining musical strangeness, I highly recommend checking it out. Tickets are a mere £6 per show, or less if you see more than one; also, there's an excellent bar with a terrace overlooking the river. See you there.

I'm back from Scotland, where things went... well, an odd combination of YAY and eeuuuggghh. Fortunately most of the music-making, coaching and company were on the YAY side, and the agreeable flurry of Facebook friendings that usually follows such an event has been larger than usual. I also have some promising leads on coaching for Giulio Cesare, which will be helpful.

One of the major things I was singing in Scotland was the Presentation of the Rose from Strauss's opera der Rosenkavalier. This is an amazing piece of music, but more than that: it's a moment crystallised outside of time, the moment two young people, Octavian and Sophie, see each other for the first time and fall in love. To perform this scene, you don't just have to sing it well: you have to make time stand still.

I first sang the Presentation of the Rose last summer in DC with quesadelia. We sweated blood for a week or two, and then in performance the ghost of Richard Strauss smiled beatifically down upon us. I went to Scotland hoping to be paired with a good Sophie, and I got one: a London-based Australian named Sally with an exquisite high pianissimo. We worked well together, and produced a performance that, I think, we were both happy with.

Next up: learning most of The Barber of Seville for France, and continued work on Cesare for October in Oxford.

Meanwhile, I plan to go to the Proms on Wednesday, the 12th: Handel at 7pm followed by Philip Glass at 10.15. If you fancy coming along for either or both, let me know.

Some time ago I picked up a book of opera-inspired short stories edited by Jeanette Winterson. I don't usually buy things in hardcover, but the combination of Ms Winterson, short stories and opera was one I couldn't resist. That night, I happily settled down to read...

...and about halfway through, I stopped, thinking "Goddammit, if I have to plough through ONE more story of repressed upper-middle-class angst cleverly contrasted with the naked emotion of opera, I am going to soak this book in tomato sauce and eat it."

I suppose that if you're a British author and your agent asks you for a short story inspired by opera, that's what you do: you assume the kind of people who will buy this book are well-to-do operagoers brimming with upper-middle-class angst, and you write for them.

Myself, I have plenty of angst, though I wouldn't venture to speculate on its social stratum. I also have Weltschmerz, Stürm und Drang and many other German words. This book did nothing to help.

There is a book I want to read instead, but it doesn't exist.

The thing is: in the world of opera, you get swashbuckling, bodice-ripping, cross-dressing, dragon-slaying, gods and monsters engaged in combat for the ultimate destiny of the Universe. So why give that material to mainstream writers who have no idea what to do with it? (Here I exempt Ms Winterson, in whose prose fantastical things have been known to happen.)

But give that same brief to science fiction and fantasy authors and watch what happens. Hell, let the mystery writers and even the romance novelists play too. And the horror types-- let's let them out of the cellar for the party. Opera isn't realistic; opera is pure genre fiction. Wouldn't you like to read what Ursula LeGuin might do with The Magic Flute? Or what Terry Pratchett would do with Così fan Tutte? Diana Wynne Jones's Tales of Hoffmann! Robin McKinley's Alcina! Michael Moorcock's Ring cycle! Neal Stephenson's ... really whatever the hell he wants! (Maybe Don Carlos, with cameo by Enoch Root?)

I would have been so glad to spend the silly hardback cover price on this book, rather than the one I got. Admittedly, the singing-geek demographic is not the largest, but I can't be the only one... can I?

I've volunteered to sing in a new piece of choral music that's on this Friday at St Mary le Bow. I accepted as a help-out-a-friendly-composer thing, but since then it's morphed into a BBC broadcast to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Big Ben's first chime, attended by people like Ken Livingstone. The first rehearsal was tonight, and it was more fun than I'd anticipated.
( Amused )
The piece itself is a quite beautiful rhapsody on the Oranges and Lemons rhyme. Interwoven with that theme is a tenor solo singing "All ye that in the condemned hold do lie/ Prepare you, for tomorrow you shall die." The bell-rhymes are in triple time, the exhortation in 4; and the two themes collide, clash and finally unite with "The last man's dead." The composer makes beautiful use of melody and harmony, but imaginatively enough to avoid cliché.

Ok, so:

Singers: They're still looking for people. No cash, but lots of glory. Rehearsal Friday at 3; performance 6.45. I can forward you the email with the score attached.

All others: The performance is at 6.45 this Friday in St Mary le Bow, and I have one (1) ticket to give away. First commenter to ask for it gets it.

Meanwhile, I'm hazily pleased with my rehearsal-after-the-night-before skills. Cheers to fracture242 and Smaff for a truly phantasmagorick evening out.

Auditioned for something, and got it.
Auditioned for something, and got it.

That hasn't happened in a while. The last time I can think of was that Tower of London gig in '06. (My work in the interim has come from people just offering me things, or from phone calls that say "Aaaaaggghsomeone'sdroppedoutcanyoudoit.")

But last Thursday, I auditioned in Oxford for a production of Handel's Julius Caesar, and the next afternoon I got an email saying I'd got the title role.

So I'll be singing Caesar in early October. Handel's opera has a romantic plot involving Cleopatra, but the dastardly schemes of the villainous Ptolemy ensure that there's plenty of drama. The music can best be described as "Baroque awesomeness."

I'm going to have to cut my hair off.

This is going to RULE.

It's been a term of obscure operas in Oxford: earlier this summer I saw some friends sing in Schubert's Fierrabras, and tonight I went to the first performance in years of Donald Swann's Perelandra.

Yes, that's Donald Swann as in Flanders and Swann. Like Dudley Moore, he was a better composer than the comedy stuff gave him room for. He was also a big old fantasy nerd: he knew JRR Tolkien and set quite a few of his songs to music. (They're good, if a bit simplistic in places. Treebeard's song is my favourite. I rather prefer Stephen Oliver's settings, composed for the BBC radio dramatisation back in the Second Age.)
( How was it? )

I had an excellent time at Tatton Park last weekend. wyte_phantom's birthday was celebrated in style, and I have finally beheld in person the historically accurate pageantry of wheelie bin jousting.

Within the past few years I've happily acquired several good friends who are into reenactment. Last summer, out of curiosity to see what it was all about, I went to Berkeley Skirmish and really enjoyed it. Tatton proved that Berkeley hadn't been a fluke: it was seriously lovely.

One of the highlights for me was meeting a band called Squeake's Noyse. Anne-Marie (pipes, harp, vocals et alia) and Thor (drums, vocals) were very friendly and invited me to join them for a set on the Sunday, which was great fun. We discovered, among other things, a mutual love of Guillaume de Machaut. Anne-Marie's site has some lovely sound files: go and listen.

As always, deep and heartfelt thanks to the usual suspects (you know who you are, you reprobates!) for making a relative newcomer feel so welcome. And lastly, a very happy post-birthday to the only person who can enter and exit a wheelie bin elegantly: the fair and deadly wyte_phantom. Cheers!

It's May Eve, and I should have found somewhere pleasantly flowery to celebrate today, but I have a disgusting cold. Such is the way of the world.

But a few viruses can't stand in the way of the Mayday partayyy, so here is something seasonal to get you in the festive spirit from my own hometown of Washington DC. I give you... The Foggy Bottom Morris Men! [contains much leaping]

( your friends don't dance and if they don't dance, well they're no friends of mine )

Exposition: I'm in DC right now for my sister's wedding on the 18th. She is marrying someone good, and so far things seem to be going OK with only a minimum of draaaaama. (touch wood)

My sister has kindly asked me to sing. She's not normally the classical-music sort, so we found a Rodgers and Hart song we both liked. The music director of the church, however, vetoed it on the grounds that only sacred music should be used during the ceremony. He suggested Ave Maria instead.

"Screw Ave Maria sideways," thought Laura and I. We looked at a few other numbers and decided to email him back suggesting something from a Handel oratorio: "Where'er You Walk."

Of course, the oratorio it's from is Semele, which is not only TOTALLY PAGAN but also only called an oratorio because it was too full of impropriety to be permitted on the operatic stage in 1743. So I'm singing, at my sister's church wedding, an aria sung by the god Jupiter to his adulterous mortal lover. Result.