Light in the shadows

Light and darkness. Shadows and highlights. Ornate buildings take on a whole new character at night when the daytime sun no longer illuminates the building. The planners of tonight's concert—one of the fifteen performances in the Summer Music Festival 2005 at the Washington National Cathedral—opted not to illuminate brightly the performance space, but to allow the elaborately carved walls and ceilings of the cathedral to form a dramatic, changing, chiaroscuro backdrop for the sixteen a capella singers of "Phoenix."

Light and darkness continued in the music, as well, as the group sang alternating movements of darker contrapuntal music from a 16th century Christopher Tye Mass with contemporary 20th century motets about lux, or "light." In addition, during the first half of the concert, the setting sun continued to shine through the stained glass of the clerestory windows, not only allowing the liturigcal portrayals in the windows to glow and later darken, but also casting beams of colored light through the upper part of the sanctuary. Those beams reminded me of the symbolism of light in gothic style churches that dates all the way back to the construction of the Abbey Church of St. Denis, the very first gothic building in the Middle Ages, and its creators' studies of the philosophy of Pseudo-Dionysius, who taught that symbols such as light and beauty move us towards God.

It was in this mystical space that we heard tonight's concert. What was particularly interesting was the performance location within the vast cathedral. The previous two series concerts I'd attended put the performers in the crossing and the audience in the nave. Tonight, though, the organizers set up hundreds of chairs in the Great Quire, and the singers stood in the sanctuary to perform. Between the permanent stalls for choir and chapter and the supplemental chairs set up in the aisles between the stalls, I estimate that there was seating for 450-500 people (it should tell you how big this place is if you remember this is just the choir or chancel area of the cathedral!). It's a very interesting space, being fairly long and narrow and approximately four stories high. In the area of the stalls, the lower half of the walls are of highly carved walnut and walnut paneling, with artistically arranged organ pipes on each side, and above that white limestone with a heavily ribbed ceiling and stained glass windows on the clerestory level. The sanctuary, of course, is largely of sculpted white marble with limestone and stained glass in the top half. The special intimate acoustics of this area of the cathedral were soon to lend themselves to the delicacy of this all-a capella concert.

Phoenix is a group of young-ish church musicians drawn from across the northeast coast, and it has been performing across the country since 1996, specializing in English choral music. They have an interesting mix of singers, with nine men (one is a counter-tenor) and seven women, plus a conductor. They entered the sanctuary to stand behind black music stands in a large semi-circle, parts mixed, with all the gentlemen in black tuxedos and the women in a variety of styles of conservative long black dresses, and the conductor in a cream dinner jacket. I noticed an interesting thing about the group: they were all brunettes!

The first half of the concert was devoted to Tye's Mass Euge Bone, opening with the 16th century John Taverner's "Kyrie LeRoy" and then between each of the Mass movements, they sang contemporary "lux" motets, namely "O nata lux" by Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943), "Lux Aurumque" by Eric Whitacre (b. 1970), and "Lux AEterna" by Edwin Fissinger (1920-1990). This interplay made for quite an interesting balance of moods. The choir was at its best with the contemporary motets. The pianissimos and diminuendos of "O nata lux" were particularly beautiful. I didn't know the lux motets, so I can't say much about the works or the composers other than the fact that they shared a contemporary British feel in their chordal structures and harmonies, and some of the passages felt very familiar, reminding me of some of the British anthems I've sung by other composers. The Tye Mass presented some interesting challenges for the group. Now, I don't want to give a negative impression of the group, because their mastery of the music and their level of artistry far exceeds what we generally hear from church and collegiate choirs. Music from the 16th century can be very challenging for modern choirs to sing, since that era of music expected a trained singer's voice eventually to "solidify," and to lose any wobble, tremolo, or vibrato; modern operatically-trained singers tend to strive for such vibrato. This group also used female singers, but we should remember than in the 16th century, the high parts were sung either by boys choirs or by castrati, since a papal decree forbade women from singing in public. Music written for castrati will be hard for modern women to sing because not only were soaring high notes put in, but castrati were particularly prized for the richness of their lower registers, and few modern female sopranos will have that kind of range. In the Taverner, the singers were particularly careful to enunciate their consonants, giving us especially explosive K's for repetitions of "kyrie," and that made me hopeful for the rest of the concert. Unfortunately, though, the diction lost crispness in many of the more elaborate sections of the Tye Mass, and that was often quite noticeable in the lower voices during some of the melismas. I also had the feeling that several of the women were working hard to hold their voices back, since some entrances felt shaky and almost cracked. They were doing that, though, to blend in, stop the vibrato, and keep their voices from sticking out, and I must say that overall, the blend of the choir was very pleasing.

For the first half of the concert, we sat on the fifth row back from the altar rail. During the second half, we moved and sat twenty rows further back on the next to the last row of the chairs in the choir, just in front of the rood screen. While the closer seat gave us a better feel of the voices as they entered during the contrapuntal sections and the individual personalities of some of the singers, the seat further back not only gave us a better overall blend, but gave us more of a sense of the cathedral's reverberant "echo". It would have been nice to have had a chance to go out into the nave to hear the sound from out there, as well, but perhaps we can do that for another concert.

The second half of the concert was devoted to three of the great British composers of the 20th century. They opened with Charles Villiers Stanford's "Magnificat, anima mea," his long Latin version (not one of his Mag and Nunc settings for Evensongs) that I've never thought was very exciting. Next was a "Chorale after an Old French Carol" by Benjamin Britten which was pretty, but the diction was so blurred I could not swear that they were actually singing the English words in English. Finally, they did Herbert Howell's Requiem, a little known work hidden by the composer until shortly before his death thought to be a response to the death of his son and a preliminary study for Howell's big festival piece, Hymnus Paradisi. The two major portions of the Requiem are settings of Psalms 23 (rather forgettable) and 121 (very nice), with two variations on "requiem aeternam" in between, and all flanked by a "Salvador mundi" up front and "I heard a voice from heaven" at the conclusion The baritone (who looked a lot like the British actor Rupert Graves) and tenor soloists had opportunities to shine in Psalm 121. The first "requiem aeternam" variation had a lot of nice pedal tones from the basses, and the second variation had some of the very few soaring, "big" moments in the evening's performance.

Tallis quincentenary

Just got back from a concert at the National Cathedral celebrating the quincentenary of the birth of the English composer Thomas Tallis. Most of you would probably recognize a hymn tune of his which is often sung as a round, usually with the words "All praise to thee my God this night, for all the blessing of the light: keep me, o keep me, King of kings, beneath thine own almighty wings." Long time church choristers may also remember singing an English motet called "If ye love me, keep my commandments."

Anyway, tonight's concert was devoted exclusively to Tallis's a capella choral compositions, sung by five different area choral ensembles. This concert is a part of the month-long Summer Music Festival at the cathedral, wherein several free concerts are given each week from a broad range of performers and genres. I got there tonight about fifteen minutes early, and had to sit at the back of the front half of the nave. Eventually, the north and south transepts were also filled, and I'd say about a third of the back half of the nave was full. The audience was quite diverse and seemed to have people from all age groups. The past several days, there has been a Tallis workshop going on at the cathedral with musicians from all over, led by Philip Cave, an original singer with the Tallis Scholars choral ensemble and the director and founder of the English choral group Magnificat.

The program opened with "Loquebantur varlis linguis" (the apostles did speak with many tongues), sung by the Choir of Men and Girls of the Washington National Cathedral. The choir was surprisingly small, with about five men and six high school aged girls. I guess most of the girls are off on summer vacation, since the choir for services is much larger. The next ensemble was the Choir of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Rock Creek, that sang "Te lucis ante terminum" (before the ending of the day), "Salvator mundi" (Savior of the world), and "In ieiunion et fletu" (fasting and weeping). This was another small group, and there was one guy in the group who was absolutely adorable, even from way back where I was sitting!

The only English-language anthems were sung by the Woodley Ensemble, which did "If ye love me," "Hear the voice and prayer," and "O Lord, give thy Holy Spirit." This was a little bit bigger group. One of the men had this very unfortunate tendency to bob and sway wildly as he sang, though, and all that movement made his hair comb-over fall out of place and become very obvious. The "large" group of the day was the Palestrina Choir, which sang "In manus tuas" (Into your hands), "Candidi facti sunt" (Made radiantly white), and "O nata lux de lumine" (O light of light). They were certainly the most polished group of the evening. I noticed there were several people who sang in multiple ensembles, especially with this one. The last group to sing was the Schola Cantorum from St. Matthew's (Catholic) Cathedral. Another small group, they did "O sacrum convivium" (O sacred banquet) and "O salutaris hostia" (O saving victim), a couple of pieces they recently recorded for their CD. They use microphones at St. Matt's, so they weren't quite used to the live acoustic here.

A couple of notes seem common to all of the ensembles. The acoustics of the cathedral are amazing. Even the small groups of eight singers could be clearly heard without any amplification. That acoustic was rather unforgiving in some of the less-well-rehearsed passages, where the diction got a little muddy. I was also reminded, unfortunately, with each ensemble, why the early, medieval, and Renaissance church used choirs of men and boys instead of choirs with adult women. It is extremely hard for women to sing with a "straight tone" and avoid using their vibrato to help keep the pitch on target, even with these auditioned, professional singers. At some point, each group had some major pitch problems when the women went flat. Now, I certainly don't want to infer that boys never go flat, but they naturally sing in straight tone, so I find that most trained boys choirs do a much better job with pitch and intonation on this type of music.

For the finale, all of the groups came on stage to sing Tallis's masterpiece, the motet "Spem in alium", conducted by workshop leader Philip Cave. Now, most choral music is arranged for four parts (for example, soprano, alto, tenor, and bass), and some complex music today may be written for eight parts or for a "double choir". This motet, though, is written for forty parts, distributed amongst octuple choirs! Because of it's difficulty, it isn't often performed. This is the first time I have ever heard a live performance of the piece. About twenty years ago, I sang the motet with the Canterbury Choral Society, but you get a completely different perspective of the work when you are in the ensemble and are trying to concentrate on one part and watch the conductor. Our performance was also complicated a bit by the director's decision to spread the choir out all over the Civic Center Music Hall (before the big remodeling process in Oklahoma City's post-bombing renewal), rather than keep the group together on stage. Today was, then, a really exciting opportunity for me to hear this piece (and the main reason I went to the otherwise rather dry concert). They acquitted themselves well. There were, as expected, a couple of places where the parts get dense when some of the voices got lost, but they eventually picked it back up again. The subito fortes were of wonderous effect in the cathedral acoustic. It made a fine ending for the hour-long concert.

I was rather amused during the concert by an elderly man sitting in front of me a bit. He came in before the concert began to find his seat, then he pulled out this big book called Einstein in Berlin, and he proceded to read it during the entire concert! He looked rather annoyed during those moments of applause, which, I guess, distracted him from his reading. After the final ovation, he closed his book up and left with the rest of the audience. I have no idea why he came to the concert, if he was just going to read!

New cast

Went to Mass this morning at St. Stephen's. They have new priests. The new pastor is another monsignor, but surprisingly young. Back in Oklahoma, when the bishop did the mid-summer clergy shuffle, he usually just changed one priest at a time, but here in D.C., the entire team of three priests is switched out. The celebrant was the new assisting priest. He sings flat, but was basically melodic. He's a little heavy, too, and didn't genuflect during the prayer of consecration. To compensate for that, he held the host and the chalice up for about an hour each during the elevation. I think it's interesting that the pastors of this parish always seem to be monsignors—the new guy is at least the third in a row. St. Stephen's doesn't appear to me to be that big of a parish, or particularly important, so I don't know how they manage to get so much red trim. I still haven't figured out what I think of the parish. Because of the modern '60s architecture, I always feel like I'm going to Mass in a bowling alley.

Liturgical music for fife and drum

I belong to a parish back in Oklahoma City (well, Nichols Hills, actually, but OKC is just across the street!) that has for decades had a special Independence Day service (transferred to a convenient Sunday, of course) with patriotic hymns and the entire Oklahoma City bagpipe and drum band. Episcopalians love a party, and the Fourth of July is as good an excuse as any. It turns out my church selection for this morning was having a transferred Feast of Independence Day celebration today, as well. I wonder if anyone will actually have church tomorrow morning on the actual day?

It was a busy morning at St. John's Lafayette Square. They were welcoming a new assistant rector (yet another priestess—the majority of the clergy at this parish is, distressingly, female) who was celebrating her first Mass here today. The choir is off for July and August, so they have "summer choir" of volunteers for services that rehearses in the nave for most of the hour prior to the service. They had a substitute organist this morning. And, for the "holiday," they had a fifist and a snare drummer.

The hymns were pretty predictable: "God of Our Fathers" for the processional, "O God Our Help in Ages Past" for the sequence, "America" at the presentation, and "America the Beautiful" for the recessional. The one weird thing was after the communion anthem, there was a some dreadful Taize hymn called "Bless the Lord, My Soul" which was intended as a congregational hymn. The congregation, of course, didn't sing it. Most Episcopalians and Catholics in the pews hate Taize music, no matter how much choir directors try to force the trash on them.

The anthems this morning were the spiritual "I Want Jesus to Walk with Me" for communion, which was really just the choir singing a hymn with some simple harmonies by itself, and then for the offertory, they did that tired Wilhousky arrangement of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" that everyone has done for years. This is the first time I've heard it with fife and drum, though, so that at least made it a little more interesting. For the final chorus, the choir director made the whole congregation stand up and sing along, which, of course, the congregation loved, and they actually applauded after the offertory! (For you non-Anglicans, non-Catholics reading this, one does not applaud during Mass!) It was fun, though. I decided to be wild and sang the Amens with the choir at the end, even if people did stare. LOL

I found their choice of service music to be rather unusual. The Gloria was a William Mathias setting from the Episcopal hymnal, the psalm was an unaccompanied plainsong chant that was cantored Catholic-style, and the only thing sung during the eucharistic prayer was the Sanctus, for which they chose a setting from Lift Every Voice and Sing that had some big high Fs in the Benedictus (and I noticed that the congregation wasn't the only group of singers that couldn't hit the Fs!).

Should have worn my seersucker suit to church this morning. I saw at least a half dozen of them today, plus a couple of pincord suits and some seersucker blazers. This parish seems a lot more Southern than others in town. That also was apparent in the "coffee hour" out on the plaza in front of the church after the service, from the Southern iced tea they were serving. There were two huge urns of tea, and both of them were sweetened....one was with lemon and the other without lemon. Actually, I've always thought of Southern tea less as tea with sugar and more as tea-flavored syrup. If one is gonna do the sugar, one might as well do the lemon, too.

I may think about going back and joining their summer choir. I always enjoy their rector's preaching. The downside is all the priestesses in the clergy. Fortunately, the rector and the geriatric male assisting priest all stand back behind the altar during the consecration (not quite a formal con-celebration), so I can at least take communion. The church is only two subway stops away, so it's not too hard to get to. We shall see.