The Fredösphere

Aworks notices that, just because a piece was written in the year 1700, it isn't automatically non-crap.

You may have noticed I tend to complain about choirs that mumble, choirs that sing with their noses in their music, choirs that sometimes fail to notice that there's a whole big crowd of people sitting there listening to them when they perform.  The word on Choraltalk is that Robert Shaw spent a lot of time complaining about the same thing.  (Read this and this and this, or go to the list of posts and read all with the subject "Shaw on enunciation.")  If Shaw's approach seems extreme, remember that very large choirs need to work their consonants more than small ones, especially when singing with an orchestra.

I'm trippin' out to the news that the local flagship choir, the Choral Union, will join with the University of Michigan orchestra and choirs to perform Vaughn Williams' Sea Symphony this fall.  Do you know it?  It's a thrilling -- if a bit uneven -- and sprawling work, with an opening passage that socks you in the gut.  The text is by some guy named Walt Whitman.

Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead is spending more of his time with high-brow musicians:

"I had that schoolboy thing of being either passionately into things or against them." Bach he found epic and grand; Mozart, by contrast, was merely "impressive, not moving". Greenwood strikingly compares this to the way he "loved the Pixies but never got into AC/DC".

I know the feeling.  In another article, he surprises me again:

"I get these enthusiasms which can drive the band crazy," he explains, "but I just say: listen, French horns are amazing, we've got to find a way of using them. Or I'll say, it would be great if this song sounded like Penderecki, or Alice Coltrane. And it's childish because none of us can play jazz like Alice Coltrane, and none of us can write the kind of music that Penderecki does.

And:

The new piece, Piano for Children, is scored for strings and John Constable, the Sinfonietta's star pianist. "He has played the part through with me," Greenwood says, "and made some great suggestions. There's something about classical musicians - they tend to be totally without ego, and so enthusiastic, but also just so talented."

"Without ego."  Huh?  I did not see that coming.