I knew it and V confirmed: a terrific lesson. V’s diary is crowded, we had only a couple of minutes left, but she turned to the keyboard and said: "Let's do it all again. Whatever."V didn't actually say Whatever, more like Boo. Boo. But I got her drift and sang my heart out, hitting all the points we'd discussed - Boo! Boo! Boo!
Purcell's Evening Hymn is in two parts. The first a glorious narrative which I know fairly well. The second is Hallelujah fourteen times. The first Hallelujah occupies one bar, the second is stretched over five bars. The penultimate Hallelujah takes seven bars.
This is what a seven-bar Hallelujah looks like vocally:
Hahh - ahh-ha-ahh - ahh-ha-ahh - ahh-ha-ahh - ahh-ha-ah - ahh-ha-ahh - ahh-ha-ahh - ahh-ha-ahh - ahh-ha-ah - ahh-ha-ahh - ahh-ha-ahh - le - lu-u-u - jah.
You count the groups of notes, conserve your puff (For the first time I did it in one) and it sounds bloody marvellous. Despite the counting you must launch yourself as if it were Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. I'm a mile from perfection but once it was a light-year.
If I could accurately describe what musical improvement - and there's a dull phrase - feels like. Luckily I recognise it. The hit the druggie expects. Someone who matters says yes. When earth, sea, sky, all parts of your body, your hopes and abilities combine to form sounds that are – within rules you have learned and re-learned – right! Or better than before. When you’re in tune with time and time, at your behest, is graciously standing still.
Nobody profits except me and, on this occasion, V. Some might say it’s gross indulgence but it does at least demand discipline. And doing my best for that genius, Henry Purcell.
And now we profit as well, as you have so soulfully conveyed your delight.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree with Mike.
ReplyDeleteIt always profits to aspire to something higher. Singing is good for us; it revives us and is one of the places where we experience joy. You sing, you please yourself and V. Then you go on in your day as a person who has lived a slightly larger life and who has experienced joy and achievement. You bump into all sorts of people and, as a person who has become a little larger and a little more generous of spirit, you are a better encounter for them, and they in turn will bump into many others, so a little bit of your sparkle goes out in the world. So you are better to be around for your friends and family and lots of other people. You send a bit of e-joy and pleasure into the world via your blog. You even do something good for the dead!
So I heartily disagree that such things are of no use, and think they are of good use to the world. How much sweeter and finer the world would be if everyone took singing lessons!
MikeM: You must know, you've made music. One of the attractions - although it doesn't seem like it at the time - is music's ephemeral. The good stuff is sounded and then it's gone; all you can recall is the effect it had on you, not the stuff itself. As if you're in a supersonic plane and you have a few seconds' view of a place you'd like to visit - Hey, it could be upstate New York - then you're back in the burbs.
ReplyDeleteWanna see it again? There is a way but it's by bike with a ridiculously high gear and the journey's uphill. It will be a struggle but it's attainable. Back to getting the true value from those dotted crotchets, from sustaining the word "rest" for a full two bars mf with swell, counting the phrases in the hallelujahs. Cursing the difficulties while simultaneously reminding yourself that the guy you're singing understands the sublime.
You must be sick of me getting soulful.
Marly: In short you're saying I may become unselfish, sensitive, warm-hearted, etc. It's a lovely thought and perhaps the knock-on effect happens, but I'm not to know. Even absolute bastards have their moments of happiness and then it's gone and they're left nursing their inadequacies.
There's a case to be made that a well-formed musical phrase has a fleeting, purifying effect on the singer; that the sound he has created is somehow better than him; that his likely wish to prolong and/or re-create that effect is good for everyone. But alas my mind recalls a soprano with the voice of an angel who turns out to be an unlikeable autocrat and who may or may not be tainted with opportunism during a murky period in history. How can this affect her voice? It doesn't because the unswallowable obstacle rests with me not her.
Does music redeem? Yes it does, but only in fiction. Here's the climax of Blest Redeemer; the music is Janacek's Glagolitic Mass:
Then to be subverted by the music itself. Transfixed by the wonder of Doris’s Ot Ducha sweta iz Marje děvy Judith – fatally, selfishly - dwelt an eye-blink too long on this stream of rare language. To be de-railed; concentration lost and with it the flow. Whispering words and their meanings Judith stumbled and fell out of the music’s present tense. Rehearsing she would have recovered, picked up the melody and seized on the pulse. But this was performance and performance had its own rules, its own finality. Outside there was only non-music, mere loneliness and disconnection. Distantly the choir degraded into mere sounds.
The Mass, if it still existed, was hopelessly corrupted into images: Alison faded, dark prison showers, Caitlin’s dying cheek, Henry Senior’s authority. Images that overpowered the ever fainter sounds. Images that sought her out, gripped her throat, tightened and tightened again. Allowing her only the child’s defence of submission and tears. An adult soprano silenced yet surrounded by those who sang soundlessly. Judith bent and cried.
Cried and cried, the tears gushing out accompanied by a faint crackling from the auditorium, rising over Doris and the other soloists, over the string band and up into the choir tiers. Hissing, flickering applause to mark what had just happened. A woman she did not know took Judith’s arms, imagining her to be a victim of the Mass’s magic. And why not?
In fact brief redemption, purification, unalloyed happiness, whatever, does happen. And can - with great effort - be repeated. It may even have a cumulative effect but the final result is not necessarily a better person but a better singer. But then music has strange unexplained effects. Close proximity with great works may ennoble the inner person. Perhaps. And then there's writing about it
I love these posts about music and seven-bar Hallelujah's and soulfulness.
ReplyDeleteI've just come back from a hard day at work and feel better after singing along with one of my favourite cd's ...
♪ ♫ ♪ ♪
Ah, I do know that high, and it is glorious. Bravo for you, Robbie, and thank you for sharing these moments with us. I'm sure old Purcell would be chuffed.
ReplyDeleteRW (zS): Singing along to CDs could be where it starts. Aged eighty you may decide to take lessons. Learning - perhaps unexpectedly - the subtle ascendancy sopranos have over baritones.
ReplyDeleteBeth: One further point is that V didn't choose Evening Hymn casually or accidentally. She learned it years ago and sings the Hallelujahs forcefully from memory - envy beshrew thyself! She is as emotionally involved with the piece as I am (although at a much higher level), tries to say this then that is the key passage but laughs at the impossibility of such judgments. We are, nevertheless, both transfixed by:
"Where? Where shall my soul repose? Dear, dear God, eve-en in thy arms."
Oh the heartbreak in those final five descending notes. Just part of a scale, no more. Ha!
And, somehow, ever close at hand, is the constant almost shocking reminder that Purcell was born almost exactly a hundred years before Mozart. Not to diminish either, just to revel in timeless music.
Oh, there are loads of people who loved an art and weren't very nice people. Perhaps they could have been even worse. Badness appears to be limitless, judging by the last century.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, the drive to abolish beauty and in art was quite strong in that century.
"When you’re in tune with time and time, at your behest, is graciously standing still." A beautiful way to describe that moment.
ReplyDeleteMarly: One thinks of Wagner and shudders; one thinks of the Wotan - Brünnhilde duet in Die Walküre and the knees turn to water.
ReplyDeleteColette: Where did it come from? I dunno. How did it get there? Instinct I suppose. Plus some attentive work back in the fifties.
Thanks for the recognition.