One Giant Leap

Here's the poster for our October 2 concert, "Mrs. Winter's One Giant Leap for Humankind."

The dedicatee had no idea of the true import of the occasion when John Dowland wrote his delightful lute piece in her honor, and named it “Mrs. Winter’s Jump.” At this special concert, after Mrs. Winter takes the initiative, one small step after another will follow: from the sweet melancholy of John Dowland’s lute songs, sung by John Rommereim, baritone, with Christopher Gainey, lute, to Shostakovich preludes arranged for guitar and piano, to Rachmaninov’s famous vocalise arranged for choir and ethereal ebowed electric guitar, to a spiritual arrangement featuring jazz saxophone virtuoso Damani Phillips, and arriving at Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil (selections), sung by the Grinnell Singers.

I'm not a real angel; I just play one in a choir

Here are some pictures from last week's Grinnell Singers picnic.

"Pieces of music are wormholes that we can enter to escape our normal experience of time." (Robert Spano)

It did seem that after we took in that thought we were able to perform the glacial tempo on the "mironositsi zheni" [myhrr-bearing women] section of Movement nine more convincingly. Sometimes I think we do need be intentional about getting ourselves into an alternative (non-drug-induced) mental state. We can't always proceed successfully using just our normal day-to-day waking state.

Rachmaninov's vocalize -- performed by ebowed electric guitar (solo) and choir: thank you for being open to it. It will be fun to try out different versions of this piece: we have an accomplished whistler in the choir who might attempt it; sopranos take a look at it; other instruments are also possible. I need to prepare a complete transposed score, which will help me keep track of things. Chris Gainey will be coming back next Tuesday to play with us at the beginning of rehearsal at 4:30. Damani will also be coming again soon to play jazz saxophone with us.

Here is the cover to the choral conducting treatise by Pavel Chesnokov that Musica Russica will be publishing later this fall

Grinnell Singers Rehearsal September 15

I was very pleased that we were able to make such progress on the "Great Doxology " (Rachmaninov movement 12). That movement is in itself a major undertaking; it was so satisfying to hear the group starting to absorb some of its richness. There are many beautiful moments in that piece, but one favorite for me is measure 73. In the passage leading up to that moment, we are singing, "Let Thy mercy, O Lord, be upon us, as we have set our hope on Thee." While we had been predominantly in E Flat, on the word "Tia" (Thee), we arrive at that sublime G Major chord. That tertian relationship (from E Flat major, moving up a third to G Major) has such a mind-bending effect. (Granted, C minor is interposed in m. 70, but G Major and E Flat major are close enough together in time for the tertian effect to be present). Coming before God -- or that which is holy, or larger, more majestic than we are -- translate it in a way that might work for you if the religious phraseology is off-putting for you -- coming into this presence, we are transformed, thrown into a new key. Tallis's Spem in alium, you'll remember, has a similar moment at the climax of the work where the material in C major abruptly ends, and suddenly all forty voices enter with an A Major chord -- again, the tertian relationship, this time moving downward. The passage that follows in the Tallis intones "look upon our humility" (respice humilitatem nostram). In the Rachmaninov, the altos offer a supplication that is similarly humble, and filled with the desire to find the right path in life ("teach me your statutes"). I know that most in the choir are not religious; I hope nonetheless that we can still probe this work with some intensity, and that the emotional and spiritual journey that takes place within it can be absorbed by each individual.

Nice job also on Anders Paulsson's "Deep River." It will be fun to put this together with the jazz saxophone with Damani on Thursday.

Grinnell Singers rehearsal Sept. 13

Here is the quotation that I alluded to at the beginning of the rehearsal:

Again, one may go wrong in many different ways (because as the Pythagoreans expressed it, evil is of the class of the infinite, good of the finite), but right only in one, and so the former is easy, the latter difficult. Aristotle, Ethics, Book II page 15/28 (project Gutenburg, [read on iphone])

It seemed as if we were confronted rather more with that pesky class of infinite evil than the elusive, finite good during today's rehearsal. I thought our run-through of movement 9 was reasonably successful (what an exquisite piece.) On the other hand, I know that for several of the passages in Rach. movement 12, the words were getting in our way; we had some difficulty with flatting; we had a lot of people missing etc. etc. I just want to make an observation that I suppose is obvious: we are attempting something that is difficult. There's no getting around the fact that the All-Night Vigil is a major undertaking; it just takes a lot of effort to absorb it -- especially the text which is so foreign to most of you. If we all stay on task, we can do this; within a few weeks all of this hard work will start to bear fruit and we will begin to make music for longer stretches of time.

Even though we had a tough rehearsal today, I still feel so privileged to have this opportunity to work with you, and I am thoroughly enjoying this musical adventure with you. You are very welcome to take your scores with you and work on them between rehearsals. If you have some idle moments, one easy, somewhat mechanical task that you can do is to pencil the translation into your score. If you all complete this tedious task, you surely will have a more complete, satisfying experience. Practicing the text is something that is also relatively easy to do on your own; you don't even need a piano or a practice room. I'm hoping you will begin doing this work so often that people will begin to take notice of the strange, bewitched students mumbling in a backwards-sounding language as they walk across campus.