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APOLOGY The post below is about me, but Henry (Purcell) deserves a mention too. Henry belongs to a band of composers who died young (Schubert, Mozart, Chopin), wrote prolifically, and went on to worldwide fame. There's a Henry Purcell Society in Boston, Mass, for instance. Born in Devil's Acre, London ("a notorious slum") in 1659 he started composing aged nine, wrote in many genres including a handful of operas and provided music for 42 plays. No later England-born composers approached his fame until Vaughan Williams, Holst, Walton and Britten, all working in the twentieth century. His tri-centennial anniversary was marked by the Royal Mail with a commemorative stamp in the Eminent Britons series. Buried in Westminster Abbey under this elegant tribute: Here lyes Henry Purcell Esq., who left this life and is gone to that Blessed Place where only His harmony can be exceeded. |
322 weeks ago I had my first singing lesson.That's seven and two-thirds years. There’ve been gaps but not many. Missing a lesson is like losing one’s trousers in Trafalgar Square. Feeling incomplete
Early on I yearned to sing duets with a soprano. V obliged with We’ll Gather Lilacs, (Operetta, ugh! But not too taxing.) Alas, my voice lacked certainty; V’s trained voice, even reduced to whisper, pulled me off my baritone line. Lilacs was shelved.
I made better progress with Bei Männern from Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. For technical reasons this wasn’t a true test.
Finally a real duet: Purcell’s My Dearest, My Fairest. The first twenty bars are hard but – still a beginner and practising alone at home (Admittedly difficult with a duet!) - I bodged them, rushing on to passages I fondly imagined were easier. Yet after two or three more weeks with V, the work was “sidled” away. No other word. Music I loved and I was heart-slufted (West Yorkshire idiom for “cast down in sorrow”).
But I didn’t protest. Students don’t argue with the source of light. Often V’s reasons are hidden, and they always work out. We’ve resumed with MDMF. Under the microscope, crotchet by crotchet. Hard repetitive work. The difference being I’m a big boy now. MDMF was once a mere song for two, now I dimly perceive it as the subtlest of masterpieces. I make endless mistakes but as V wryly says: “Purcell’s always going to be difficult.”
Mistakes are, after all, prior evidence of learning. The structure is now clear, something to aim at. More important I have an inkling of Purcell’s “tone of voice”. You’d hate to hear me singing MDMF with V but my pain is necessary. On y va.
THIS is what it should sound like
You are brave man indeed to begin voice training at an age when your apparatus has by any reasonable standards passed its prime. Bravo, I say. The link you provide to the performance where Dame Janet Baker radiates, as she always does, is a great way to start my day. Purcell is not as well known as the other luminaries you mention, (at least to me) with Mozart’s Eine Klein Nachtmusik having become the stuff of droning musical tackiness in shopping malls and the like. Wolfgang would have loved the royalties. If I may close this circle by bringing it back to British composers, one of my favourite pieces of all time remains Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending” - (do you say Ralf or Raife?). Finally your post brings me to yet another question. What to do with my three hundred or so CDs that never see the light of day any more? So many technically perfect performances, so many world renowned orchestras and their legendary conductors. All can be seen on You Tube now? Ah, technology……
ReplyDeleteDMG: I too was a doubter but I rang up V anyway. Her response: "Age is unimportant, desire is what matters." I submitted myself to an interview, said I had 600 CDs, went regularly to CBSO (ie, high level) concerts, had played the trumpet and mouth organ, by ear and without conviction. Was an untutored church chorister for a few months, as a treble. V played me some scales and some triads, singing from the keyboard; these I duplicated but couldn't tell whether I'd done so in tune. Thirty minutes gone and I was in suspended animation.
ReplyDeleteThis was to change.
V handed me a score knowing I didn't read music. Yet, unerringly, she'd picked music I was familiar with. O Isis und Osiris, one of Sarastro's two (baritone) arias in The Magic Flute. "Follow me," she said, accompanying and singing an octave up, filling the room with overwhelming power and melody. At first I merely mumbled the German words. But third go round the remembered music had percolated my frontal lobes. I turned up the wick a bit, found some confidence from somewhere and started - sort of - singing.
Next go, I knew what I wanted to do. Sang half a dozen bars then ground to a halt in a state of exaltation. I was singing f......g Mozart! For God's sake! I turned away, walked unsteadily into the centre of the room, then burst into tears. Bleated a snotty bubbling apology.
V said calmly, "It's all right. That's what's supposed to happen."
Finding my own singing voice was hard. Two years at least. It didn't matter, no baby music. Straight into Schubert, more Mozart, Schumann, Wolff, a bit of Brahms. Even - you're going to snort at this - Roger Quilter's setting of The Lord's Prayer. OOOh. Those three Es ("kingdom", "power", "glory") at two Fs if not three.
Can't climb, ski or distance-swim any more. But I can offer:
Oh Mistress mine, where are you roaming?.
Oh stay and hear your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low...
Words by WS, setting by Quilter. Even sung inadequately it's better than any birthday card.
Those CDs. Use software to convert them into WMA files, load them on to a 32-gig chip, play 'em through your phone into ear buds. Only you will. hear the music, the birds will remain undisturbed.
Impressive! As for the Lord’s Prayer, so much glorious music was written by those professing divine inspiration. Think only of Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, or any of the great Requiems.
ReplyDeleteDMG: In fact the Quilter Lord's Prayer setting was well realised, especially the ending. I enjoyed singing it then and now. V happens to be a Quilter fan and she admitted to being mischievous, given that she knew about my atheism. Thought I might baulk. But for me the quality of the music outweighs the importance of the words, although it's a close-run thing with O Mistress Mine. Oddly, my conversion to classical music occurred when, in my early teens, I was transfixed by a Bach cantata I heard, almost by accident, on my mother's radio.
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