Rudsamblog

Kay led us through a straightforward and effective warm-up. Then Ollie produced something new (well, only 96 years old) for us to sing:

The spring time of the year (Vaughan Williams)
This is just three pages, without too many hazards and surprises, so a single session of note-bashing was enough to make it singable. We then proceeded to phrasing and dynamics.

• in the springtime of the year - tenors' high F# on the last quaver of year - risks not being sharp enough.
• I overheard a sailor boy - relax from mf as the phrase descends, except for the basses, who should give a strong low A for boy, Like-.
• Likewise a lady fair - observe the written markings, i.e., fairly p apart from a swell and dim in the bass line.
• They sang a song - sudden mf. For sop and bass, this comes on the last beat of a bar, while alto and tenor are still singing, quietly, -dy fair. When alto and tenor go mf for They, on the second beat of the next bar, sop and bass should ease off a bit.
• Proclaimed the lovely spring - sing this as an unbroken phrase. If you need breath, get it between gay and Proclaimed.
• Coda (wordless bit after spring) - timing and keeping the beat seems to be the problem here. Work out which other parts you can use to get cues for your entries.

Jede sedlák
Kay gave the pronunciation. I have no notes about this, because I wasn't there. Since the basses have no actual words to sing, we went off with Anne to work on the final bars of Cloudburst instead. When we came back, though, everybody else was word perfect and sang the whole thing like Iva Bittová. They then allowed us to join in, but could not restrain themselves from singing over our solo. So,

• remember there are two bars silence, if you're not a bass, before you launch into each verse.

Cloudburst
We worked on the end of the piece, from bar 65. It's impossible to take notes while clicking fingers and slapping thighs, so all I can do is to describe how I am trying to remember what to do here.

• bar 58: AnnaLauren's solo al punto de partida.
• bar 59: a 5/4 bar; one beat rest, then we whisper la lluvia...
• bar 60: 4/4, and it's all 4/4 from here on; we fade out our ah while the cymbal and windchimes start up.
• bars 61-64: cymbal and windchimes keep going and the handbells start up.
• bars 65-67: we all start mmm on an A; those who have to hum up a scale begin on the second beat of bar 66, and stick whenever they reach their destination note.
• bar 68: we should all have reached our destination note at least one beat before this; this is the bar where we start to raise our arms and change from mmm through O to ah. Fists closed, arms rising in front.
• bar 69: all singing ah, arms arriving at the vertical, then open hands, palms facing inwards; watch for Ollie's beat because there's a fermata on this bar.
• bar 70: sing mah- simultaneously with a single clap; begin finger-clicking; change mah- into -O- and them -mm; watch Ollie's beat, because there's another fermata.

From here on, I can't deal with the clicking, clapping and slapping. You'll have to fill in your own!

• bars 71-74: random chanting of ojos de agua de sueño, followed by relampagos (tenors), voz alta (altos), hay que cantar (sop2). There are fermatas in bars 72, 73 and 74, so watch Ollie!
• bar 75: this is where the sop1s sing their voz alta and the basses (who are still randomly chanting ojos de agua de sueño) have to arrive on agua synchronously with the sop2's cantar. Another fermata before we move on to ...
  
• bar 76: maximum clapping, clicking, slapping; tenors and basses silent while altos and sopranos sing (ff) mah.
• bars 77, 78: tenors and basses join in with a ff mah; then everybody does another mah.., f this time.
• bar 79: ...ah-O-mm, fading down, and everybody moves onto clicking fingers instead of slapping or clapping.
• bars 80-84: this is the "storm fading away" coda. Not too many notes, and you'll have to do your own counting. There are fermatas in almost every bar, so watch Ollie, particularly for the up-beats.

Notices:

• Remember the AGM next Wednesday (6th May)
• Cloudburst concert: what else are we going to sing? Ollie will send us the programme soon. It's likely to include the Five Hebrew Love Songs.
• York concert: please send any outstanding travel receipts to Anne straight away. And Ollie will give us a programme for this concert too - soon.

I was making coffee, so I didn't hear the notices. If there's anything that needs to be added, Anne will no doubt e-mail it to us.

Czech song:
We learnt the 2nd part of the Czech song (la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la), but this was primarily a Cloudburst rehearsal (see below)

Cloudbu(r)st:
We tried to get back on track with Cloudburst.
The first of two focus sections of the rehearsal concerned pages 7 and 8, starting with the 'rai, rai, ces ces .....' chords (bar 43).
These should really be p to begin with. Keep in mind though that although dynamics are p, each entry should have a clear little emphasis in the attack. As Whitacre puts it:

"Bars 43-46 should be soft bell tones, gradually expanding and growing in intensity"

I imagine these like the sound of bells, briefly loud when first hit and softly ringing thereafter, as if hit with a felt-capped mallet to soften the timbre of the sound and take away any harshness, but with some residual crispness (aided by what should be a crisp rolling 'r' for 'rai ... ', 'tro ...' and 'ra ...' - c.f. AnnaLauren's pronunciation.) Ok, ok, so I'm over the top in how I describe things (see frequency geekiness below).

--- aside ---
A nice thing to notice is the words that this music carries. The relevant lines are:
"We must sing till the song puts forth
roots [raíces]
trunk [tronco]
branches [ramas]
birds [pajaros]
stars [astros]
[...]"

It struck me as really nice how the imagery here going from the foundation of the tree reaching up towards the sky is reflected in the buildup of each chord individually (namely from the bottom up: the basses always start and e.g. in bar 45 the lower voices supply the branches after which the Altos I and the Sops deposit the birds), as well as in the fact that each successive chord reaches further harmonically speaking ('up' in the case of the first interval amongst the basses) and correspondingly higher up along and eventually above the tree.
--- aside ---

Everybody watch the tuning on these chords. Maybe listen to the recording, and pause it just before your note to check you've got it right, or if you have a piano / keyboard play the preceding notes on there. Idea is to get it nice and spot, be certain based on the note before you so we can get clear and well timed attacks.

The duration of the fermatas at the end of each bar (bars 43-45) have been left somewhat undefined while we focus on the tuning to begin with, hence some uncertainty in timings for starting each next bar remain for now. We'll sort this out later.

Dynamics: a nice crescendo starting from p in bar 43 and coming to mf in bar 47.

Prepare the page turn going from page 7 to page 8. Make sure you know without having to turn the page exactly what note is your next (write it in!).

You'll see the very last thing on page 7 is a breath mark. What follows on page 8 is phrased as follows:
Bar 53 and 3/4 of bar 54 ("sangre, la marea") is one phrase, followed by
Final 1/4 of bar 54, bar 55 and 3/4 of bar 56 ("la tierra y el cuerpo") is another phrase.

Bar 53: lower parts f, nice and strong, upper parts be aware of this (beware?)

Bar 57: in case there was any doubt, it's "volver", not "volvar".

Pronunciation (generally): some friendly recommendations from our chica northern-Mejicana :-)

* ROLL ('FLIP'?) YOUR 'R's !
This includes, but is not limited to:
"raí" which should never sound like the english "wry"
"tronco"
"ramas"
"astros"
"desenterrar"
"perdida"
"reco*rdar"
"tierra"
"relampagos"

All it requires is a momentary vibration of the tip of the tongue, without even much breath behind it (more like a flash of cat purring than like a machine gun).

* v should sound like a mix of 40% English v, 60% English b
"volver" ~> "bolber", "lluvia" ~> "yubia"

* d is soft, like a Gaelic d

* ñ (as in "soñar") sounds like, how to put it, ny in the Russian nyet

* Vowel sounds: the a generally sounds much brighter and 'open' than the posh English 'ah' sound

That's the best I can describe, best just to listen to AnnaLauren.

The second focus section of the Cloudburst rehearsal was the Cloudburst itself + its run up, i.e. bars 65 - 79, on pages 10 - 13.

By the end we were going through all of this by heart, though still somewhat hesitantly.

Bars 65 - 79 should be BY HEART. Aim to know what you need to do during these bars by heart asap.

Bar 65: enter really softly pp - let's put a smile on Ollie's face.

Remember: we start raising our arms as soon as everyone's finished singing their ascending scale - just listen and keep track of when the Soprano I's finish their ascending scale, it's simply the end of a bar.

MEMORIZE: start raising arms (fists clenched) on the first beat of bar 68.

Obviously the thunderclap on the first beat of bar 70 must be synchronised or else it'll be Cloudbust (what we need is a Cloudboom). I am unsure of whether fermata or not at the end of bar 69, will ask Ollie next rehearsal.

Also, firm attack with emphasis on 'mah', the first beat of bar 70. This means being sure of your tuning, so you can concentrate on the attack.

Bars 70 - 79 Finger snapping, thigh slapping and clapping:
This starts hesitantly right after the thunderclap, and increases over the next few bars, building up to a fury by the end of bar 75 that is sustained through bar 77, with everyone reverting to snapping that quickly loses intensity in bar 78 and disappears entirely by the end of bar 79.

--- Question for Ollie ---
as just described we've been reverting to snapping in bar 78 and letting it die out completely by the end of bar 79, while Whitacre's instructions are to only revert to snapping at the beginning of bar 79 (marked by ( 5 ) ), and then to "gradually fade until the end [of the piece, surely?]." Especially since he also says: "In the last bar [of the piece] the choir should hold [their hummed note] and then die out, leaving only the rain (soft snaps only) and the thunder as the rain cloud disappears into the distance".
--- Question for Ollie ---

In any case, what we want is dynamics in the snapping / slapping / clapping - crescendo through bars 70 - 75, and decrescendo later. We're taking a crescendo not to mean that the individual snaps / slaps / claps get much louder but, as I was trying to understand in geekily precise terms during the rehearsal, that the average frequency (and thereby temporal density - ha, suffer!) of sound events increases. Or as Kay so succinctly put it: just snap / slap / clap /faster!

In other words, the first hesitant snaps right after 'mah' first beat of bar 70 can actually be reasonably loud (John got the impression from the performance he attended that soft snaps won't be heard at all, though this depends on acoustics), but they should be intermittent - the first few drops of rain are not smaller than those that come later, there're just less of them.

--- me trying to get the last word ---
You see, technically I still prefer the term higher frequency because 'faster' is ambiguous - it could be taken to mean that individual snaps / slaps / claps should be done faster (i.e. move your fingers / hands at greater speed, leading to greater impact velocity and hence louder sound) rather than any change to the timings of the actions.
--- me trying to get the last word ---


Bar 81: TENORS II, ALTOS II, SOPRANOS II: you don't have a fermata, the numbers I do. So don't wait for them, just sing on. There is a fermata before the breath at the end of the bar, but that's for everyone and is in Ollie's hands so look at him.
Same in bars 82 (BASSES too this time only), 83, 84.

Some final words scribbled down at various points during the rehearsal:

• Don't look at copies
• Be uncomfortable (now, so you'll be comfortable later)
• Just remember what matters for you (entries, snaps, crackles and pops)

NOTICES
From before, I have written down Extra Rehearsal scheduled for May 30th, 13:00-15:00 by some kind of consensus.

Reservations for concert (June 6th): the Reid hall is plenty big so there shouldn't be any problem for people to get tickets at the door. However, to protect against the eventuality of unexpected mass popularity, we can tell people that if they want to be sure to get a seat, they can reserve by emailing Anne (I assume at contact@rudsambee.org.uk rather than her personal address anne@ravelrig01.demon.co.uk; - correct me if I'm wrong please Anne).

Something about travel reimbursements. Just bring a receipt / ticket with price to show Anne on Wednesday so she can reimburse you if she hasn't already.

Did some pliés with Clare. Helen didn't do them. She was laughing at someone else's attempts. If she'd have uncrossed her legs and joined in, the new furbishings would have been spoiled with wee. Anyway, did some of our own pee pee pee ing and other cons(t)onants.

TROIS CHANSONS
Enunciate
Alto staccato
Support trills. Even if you just get the first two notes of trill sung with clarity would be good
DIEU - put tongue on alveolar and behind your teeth to get a good D
DON'T BREATHE between Dieu and Qui
SONGE - is an important word. It means dream.

HIDE AND SEEKED
Lots of looking up!
Basses - ba boom louder - think it's an A you boom on
AMAZING - well done!

KANARBIK - remember - no folders
Basses - don't be tentative with words. Put 'k's in more strong (sounded 10xs better when you did)
Bars 12-15 - will speed up
Bar 9,10 - Triplets will be beaten
Bar 13 - rhythm and first time someone sings ainult nen de pel poleb.
Remember the warm up. Get good consonants on those words

ON HILLI - no folders
Hummers - need to think mp/mf

GENERAL NOTE - we'll be holding folders under our arms rather than putting them on floor. You can stick a sticky thing on your folder so you can glance down to see what note you're starting on, how Ollie's beating us, the first word, and any other information you need so you don't have to open the folder between songs and are confident as to where you're moving.

CRUCIFIXUS
1st page - listen to last note of previous bar and don't let the notes sag. EVERYONE'S 3rd note should be sharp and supported. WRITE THIS ON YOUR COPY
2nd page- Enunciate - it'll help with the rhythm. Roll rrrrrrrr's, it's a good way to get the tone out. Pout like ducks on words such as 'est'.
On long 'u' vowels, change the 'u' to 'aw' as in raw on the moving crotchet. Make sure moving crotchet is supported and in tune.
3rd page - Sops descending 2 beat thing - don't be afraid. SING OUT
TUS and ET should be connected. STAGGER breathing. Don't break at end Bar 37
Be confident
Look up LOTS and throw energy of piece to the audience.

GREEN FURRY FOREST
Tenors - Don't be shy of minor 3rds
Entries - as in cloudburst with bell sounds
Read ahead for words
Look up lots. People don't need to look at copies if singing chords.
Ollie will direct when we take breathes and change notes etc. and you can sort of hear from the melody when to change notes or how long to hold onto chords.
It's not just a case of looking up. Try and convey what the piece is about to the audience, and fool them into thinking we know what we're singing about! Watch how AnnaLauren, Kay 1 and Kay 2 do it!!

BOGOFF - no folders
AWESOME! especially men's bit in middle
Bring out the - ARNO PENTI (????) [Arno suggests: "ARNO PENTI" = Arvo Pärty :-)] chord. I think it's a posh name for notes squished together. Can't see why it's named after our bass though - oh yes I can, think of Arno and the clashing of his fencing swords!
Phrase the middle bit with a slight decrescendo and crescendo in the middle of the middle bit.

That's all, apart from asking Claire 2 to let us know what to bring on Saturday - want me to do a food list? Connor tried to sleep in the tent last night but decided pretty quickly that the rain and wind was a bit scary. Jenny