Hermit Diary 28: Some calm at the end of a wretched week

Deer under a palm tree, a watercolor and ink drawing of a tiled panel in Lisbon.

Such a difficult week this has been, full of sorrow, outrage, solidarity, anxiety for the future, and also some glimmers of hope that this might be a turning point.

I will not add any words, as I think this is a time for me, and for most white people, to listen to black voices, and to learn what we need to do (and not do) to be the best allies we can. What I can offer is a little bit of calmness through music, which is maybe the best and most continuous gift I've been able to give others throughout my life. Music has always given back to me, too, in multiples, helping me through the worst and best times.

Not being able to sing together has been one of the most difficult parts of isolation for me, and probably for all choral singers everywhere. Because there's so much danger about viral spreading through singing (though there have recently been some articles saying it may not be quite as bad as we initially thought), it's still going to be ages before congregational and choir singing returns to churches, and before my professional musician friends are back in concert halls. I'm seeing first-hand the financial and emotional toll this is taking on many of them. For congregations who are used to a lot of beautiful music, as most Anglicans are, the loss is keen too.

But where there's a will, there's a way. Our choir has produced its first two virtual choir pieces, and we've got two more in the works. These were presented during live-streamed Zoom services of Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal, and then placed on social media, YouTube, and the church's website, along with a growing library of organ music, music education resources, psalms and hymns, and recorded services. We're finding that the new situation is spawning some new creative responses, and also the surprising gift of being able to share what we do with a much wider, far-flung audience.

Recording your own part as a solo, based on a click track or recorded accompaniment, is totally different from the organic experience of sitting or standing next to your colleagues and making music together -- so much of what happens in live performance has to do with careful preparation combined with listening closely to each other to correct the pitch and watching the conductor for tiny shifts in tempo, dynamics, and feeling. This creates a collective emotional and physical reaction to the actual moment. It is intensely "real-time." In contrast, the way I do the recording is to stand in front of a tripod that holds my phone, which will record the video and audio of me singing, while playing the accompaniment on my computer and listening to it in headphones. Meanwhile I'm holding the score in my hands and yet trying to look at the camera as I would the director. You can see that most of us got better at presenting ourselves visually the second time around.

It's a very weird and self-conscious-making experience! But I've found that this process is showing me aspects of my voice and technique I didn't know, encouraging me to listen harder, practice, and try to improve in subtle and not-so subtle ways. For instance, I can really hear my American accent on certain vowels -- not really desirable! Once we've done several recordings and chosen the best, we each send off our video files, and our music director does the painstaking work of assembling and editing the tracks. The results have been startlingly good, considering how flawed some of us have felt our individual recordings have been. Even though our voices and images have been technically-reassembled, we sound remarkably like our own particular choir. Hearing and seeing these pieces of music, sung by people I care about deeply and haven't seen for months, has really moved me, and members of the congregation say the same. I hope maybe these motets will give you some peaceful moments at the end of this week.

The first, Palestrina's Sicut cervus, is a setting in Latin of the first verses of Psalm 42, "Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks/so longeth my soul after thee, oh God."

 

The second piece is a setting of a well-loved hymn, O for a Closer Walk with God, by Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924). The original hymn was written by William Cowper in 1769 during the serious illness of an aunt he loved.

 

Comments

[am]

Thank you for sharing this beautiful music.

[Roderick Robinson]

To smile or not? Perhaps not, but what about changing facial expression? The matter is less obvious when one is singing in the choir; isolated on one's own, one is more exposed. I'd never considered this before and eventually realised that the beauty of a legato line can often bring about a simultaneous hint of appreciation. That is allowed isn't it?

The Palestrina drew me back to last Monday's Skyped lesson, devoted entirely to detail in Pause from Schöne Müllerin. V was dissatisfied with my "ee" sounds and Skype allowed her to squeeze her own mouth into the requisite shape: teeth exposed and slightly apart, mouth width shortened perhaps a couple of centimetres. Your "ee" sound gets quite a work-out in the Sicus and, needless to say, your embouchure was exemplary. I should add hastily I never expected anything other.

[Natalie]

Thank you Beth, it's certainly a new experience to see and hear a choir in this manner. Sitting in a church or concert hall, part of an audience, is so different that the two occasions can't even be compared. Focusing on individual singers in the Zoom animated 'collage' is very interesting in itself but, for me, somewhat distracts from the music. If I close my eyes it helps but then it's like listening to a record. In any case, it's beautifully done and I much appreciate your posting this.

I wonder if this method of presenting a choral performance to listeners sitting at home will become more prevalent after the coronavirus restrictions are all gone.

[Dave Bonta]

Those were beautiful. As a viewing experience, in some ways more moving than a video of you all together in one place would've been.

[Huw]

Yes, thank you Beth. I listened to parts of each with my eyes closed as the videos seemed somehow too personal, but this also gave them their charge, as Dave said.
I liked the appearance of the cat halfway through the Stanford piece!