Close Encounter with Schubert Week

Every morning I put myself through Pilates and recently the Pilates routine has become easier.

That is because I watch these singing master classes. It is amazing, the stuff you can find on YouTube. You do not have to be a singer or a pianist to appreciate them, either. It is a wonderful way to learn your way around a Schubert song. Or whatever it is they are discussing.

The video above, all it is is Schubert. It is like being in heaven!

There is this thing called Schubert Week. It takes place in Heidelberg, as far as I can figure out. There is a hall oddly named the Pierre Boulez Hall and that is where this takes place. Thomas Hampson presides over it and he talks, at least in the above video, mostly in German.

I cannot always understand German in movies or when actual Germans are talking it. But I notice that when Thomas Hampson is talking German I can usually understand him. It must be because he is American and talks just a little more slowly and clearly. 

There are a lot of things I love about this video. I will get into a lot more detail about this in some future point, but for now I just want to say one thing I appreciate about this Thomas Hampson Schubert Week master class.

It is recent!

This video streamed live on Jan. 28, 2022. I am guessing the Schubert Week is tied to Schubert's birthday which is Jan. 31. So many things were canceled because of Covid however Hampson seems to have observed Schubert Week come hell or high water. 

Not virtual. In person!

I love that!

I am so sick of virtual this and virtual that. Not only that but these other master classes I am watching, they are usually eight or 10 years ago. That can preoccupy me. I start wondering what happened to these students who are singing in the master class. I think of them being older now. I think of the singer leading the master class. What is that singer doing now?

In contrast the Schubert Week is in the here and now. That Korean singer -- I think he is Korean -- singing the first of the "Gesange des Harfners," he was singing that only a month ago. That is a song I love, by the way. It takes me back to when I was a teenager. However this is funny, I was thinking today, I know it by heart but I never took it into my head to learn anything about it. The song's poem is from Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister"; I knew that, but I never knew what that story was, or anything about it. 

I find all this fascinating. I kept leaving the mat so I could rewind the video a few minutes and pick up something I missed. I would be drawn into a discussion about the difference between "allein" and "Einsamkeit."

"It is remarkable how many people are watching," Hampson says at some point, introducing the class.

I am late to the party, but I am one!

A Mozart Manuscript For Sale

 

Online shopping is the greatest! I get on Abe Books looking for a score for Gustav Mahler's songs from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn." I have a few I want to try now that I, ahem, have this voice I never knew I had.

I end up wandering around the site for a few minutes and what do I see but a Mozart manuscript!

I mean a real one!

I cannot make out all the German right now but it appears to be to one of his canons. That is it up above. When I get a minute I am going to figure out exactly what this thing is because this is something we should know.

The price? US$ 391,686.64.

I love the 64 cents. Plus $21.73 shipping! Got to love that. It is coming from Germany.

Where's my checkbook?

You start thinking: I could sell my house, scrounge around, buy this thing. Imagine that. It would be just you and this Mozart manuscript. Your one possession.

You could take it out and look at it. Feel it. Your hands could touch this paper that Mozart touched. You would own this little piece of Mozart's life. 

You would not have to tell anyone you had it and so you would not have to guard it. No thief who broke into your house would recognize it as being of value. Oh wait, you would have sold your house, so that solves that problem anyway. There would be no house for anyone to break into.

$391,686.64. Plus $21.73 shipping.

It would almost be worth it!

Me and My New Voice

I have a new hobby, classical singing. I try to get in some practice every day in addition to the piano.

Before we get any further: That is not me in the video! I just lifted this video off YouTube. I will get to that in a minute. First I have to start with what happened. What happened was, I have been singing in choir at church for some time, and two or three weeks ago, I asked Howard for some coaching. Howard is evolving into quite the fine tenor thanks to lessons he took with the great Andy Anselmo.

To be honest I did not expect anything to come of this coaching. I had always sort of assumed in my life that I was a pianist and not a singer, that I could not sing. My sisters sang. I would beg my sister Katie to learn Schubert songs so I could accompany her. She was not as motivated as I was but she did learn a few songs. We did "Der Musensohn" -- that is fun to play on the piano! -- as well as "Lachen und Weinen"; "Wohin?", a bunch of others. A few times I tried to sing them along with myself. But I always had this problem, I had this small range. Even in the alto book, the song would go up to an E above the C above middle C, and I would be stuck. Even the D below would give me problems. I just couldn't sing these higher notes. 

Speaking of which I think that is the case with most women. I am thinking that few people have much of a range. Howard sings on the app Smule, and I am unimpressed with most of the people he sings with. The women, especially, they sing songs that are good and low, with a range of only about five notes. If I were smart I would just do that. 

But now it is too late. To my astonishment Howard's coaching took exactly five minutes to work this magic on me. All of a sudden I could hit all these notes comfortably that I had never hit in my life. That elusive E came into play, and E is for easy. The F above it is there too. And the G above that. It was something about the way I had held my mouth all these years. I had not been going at the note right. Suddenly singing these notes -- and the ones leading up to them -- is as easy as striking a note on the piano. You order them up and they are there.

What in the world, you know?

Anyway, it is like this new toy. I just have never sung these notes and now I just want to sing them! I went to choir practice and sailed up and down the warmup arpeggios. I sang this chant I could never sing before and I got tears in my eyes. I actually texted Howard from the choir loft before Mass and I told him that. I told him thank you. It has honestly changed my life.

So now I have this new voice and I have to work on it. I started singing a few songs. I do Schubert's "An Die Musik" and Schumann's "Widmung." Those are kind of my two. I know hundreds of songs by heart so I often try others as well.

Times have sure changed since I was singing these songs with my sister!

Number one, you can look on Youtube and find accompaniments. You have your choice of keys. It's not as easy as playing the accompaniment for yourself because you have to adjust to the pianist's tempo which can be strange, but you can stand and concentrate on your singing.

Another thing, you can find master classes! I looked for "Master Class Widmung" and immediately found two great ones, one featuring Sir Thomas Allen -- that is it at the top of this post -- and the other one the pianist Graham Johnson. I have listened to Graham Johnson's Schubert recordings millions of times. 

It was like heaven! This really good singer taking the stage, singing "Widmung," and right next to her you've got Thomas Allen, ready to give his insights. Howard came in to talk to me right as the singer was finishing the song, and I had to pause the video. It was torture, having to do that!

Anyway. I thought it would be fun to write about some of these online master classes. I certainly am coming at them from a unique angle. And this music I have been listening to all my life, I am learning it in a new way. So look for more of this in the future.

So much fun!

A Deep Dive into Firestone Christmas, Vol. 2

Let's discuss Christmas albums! I will start our discussion off with Vol 2 in the iconic Firestone series.

I listened to it by mistake while I was putting the lights on my Christmas tree!

The mistake was that it was in the wrong jacket. I thought I was listening to Vol. 4 ...

... but it ended up I was listening to Vol. 2.

When it ended I was thinking that's funny, I do not remember hearing Julie Andrews. But my Christmas tree lights were giving me grief so I forgot about it. Until just now. Now I have it all figured out.

So. All of us fans of Christmas music, we can all agree that the Firestone albums are without parallel. They featured these wonderful arrangements. They starred opera singers. Julie Andrews was a regular, and so was the great Jack Jones. They also had a certain sheen about them, these albums. They were bright and fun but at the same time they were reverent.

The Firestone album I remember most vividly from being a kid was the one featuring Julie Andrews and Jack Jones and these Richard Strauss-like arrangements by Andre Previn. This one that I listened to tonight, I do not remember. We must not have had it. 

But I had a great time with it!

One highlight was Brian Sullivan singing "Deck the Halls." Brian Sullivan has kind of fallen off the merry-go-round of history, but he was a great tenor in his day. An Irish Wagnerian tenor, you do not get better than that. The arrangement is creative and Sullivan just throws himself into it. Bravo to him. Tenors have to take it to the wall or it is no fun. 

He also sings a "We Three Kings" that is to be reckoned with. And "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen." "To save us all from Satan's power when we had gone astray!" And "O tidings of comfort and joy!" Even the chorus is no match for him. Bravo, maestro!

"Adeste Fideles" ends with an orchestral flourish that made me think of Respighi's "The Pines of Rome."

The "Hallelujah Chorus" sounds a little off -- I think it is top-heavy, too many women and not enough men. That is just my guess. But still, all good. The performance of "Jingle Bells" cracked me up. The arrangement is so saucy, and you hear a chorus of laughing you can only assume is the Columbus Boys Choir. It really is a lot of fun.

The great mezzo soprano Rise Stevens sings a haunting "O Come O Come Emmanuel." This song is beautiful for a mezzo. It needs that kind of mood. She sings "Away in a Manger" too, accompanied by a wordless choir. Bring on those wordless choirs! And she joins Brian Sullivan in "Angels We Have Heard on High." Is this heaven?

Beautiful Rise Stevens -- 

-- her real name was Rise Gus Steenberg -- sang with the Metropolitan Opera for about 20 years beginning in 1938. She was 99 when she died, in 2013. How did she get a middle name like Gus? We will have to explore this question at some later date.

The opera singers and the chorus join in an overblown "Partridge in a Pear Tree." I do not mean to sound critical when calling it overblown. That song is allowed to be overblown. It's fun at the end when the orchestra suggests the lords a-leaping, the ladies dancing, and the drummers drumming.

There is an atmospheric "Carol of the Bells" that I thought was excellent. It starts and ends with churchbells and the bells chime along with the chorus. It is not overdone, just very pretty. Church bells actually have a supernatural power. They keep away evil. Knowing that adds to the my feeling for this song and this particular recording of it.

I mentioned that I did not grow up with this album. I did not remember it. However listening to it I found myself homesick for something I never knew. That era, when Christmas albums would feature Metropolitan Opera stars. When you heard those beautiful old religious carols from around the world. Before you went into a store, as I went into Big Lots a couple of weeks ago, and heard all these tuneless pop Christmas tunes you do not recognize or like.

It is great that these albums are on YouTube and we can listen to them there. But still. I think it is time tire stores began doing this kind of thing again, you know? We should go into Firestone and Goodyear and ask them to begin again to issue Christmas albums.

We should demand it!

Hugo Wolf and the road to Bethlehem

Today at church we celebrated the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. We did the Gospel reading you hear in Advent, about the angel Gabriel being sent to Nazareth to meet with Mary. I loved this because it is like jumping the gun on Christmas, and you know me, I am always up for that!

Back home, I found myself drawn back to my old obsession, Hugo Wolf's song "Nun wandre, Maria." It is about Mary and Joseph on the way to Bethlehem. It is from Wolf's "Spanish Song Book."

As I love to repeat at great length, you can tell from the piano accompaniment how tired everyone is -- Mary, Joseph, and the donkey, all of them stumbling along toward Bethlehem.

There is this video I found that I do not believe I ever got to share. That is it at the top of this post.

I always wish that videos had translations, however if there were text it might have ruined this video. The artwork is just so lovely. A little primitive, a little grotesque, starting with that unusual angel. The face of the cow peering out of the darkness, that gets me. Whoever posted the video did not say what the artwork was. It appears to have been painted on wood. I would guess it was German or Dutch.

And the performance! I have never heard this song sung this slow. The tenor who is singing, too, he is startling. His name is Peter Anders.

I have never heard a singer sound like him!

He has such a beautiful voice and such control. I had never heard of him when I first heard this video -- which I did two years ago, because I see I left a comment. I still know nothing about him. In the description I was surprised to see he died a long time ago. The recording has been remastered very well, I am guessing, because it sounds so clear and not old.

One of these days I will have to go down the Internet rabbit hole and find out about Maestro Anders and discuss what I find out. But for now I just want to watch and listen to this. 

The painting, the music, the slow stumbling pace -- I was honestly tearing up.

So beautiful!!

Hail "Hail, Holy Queen"

Yesterday being the Feast of the Assumption, we got to end Mass with the great hymn "Hail, Holy Queen."

That was a thrill! This is one of the great Catholic melodies, up there with "Holy God, We Praise Thy Name" and "Adeste Fideles." I should come up with a list and one of these days I will.

Meanwhile let us shine the spotlight on "Hail Holy Queen."

The text is attributed to Hermannus Contractus, better known as Blessed Hermann von Reichenau. He is the gentleman in the picture up above. And if you think his name was something, his father was Count Wolverad II von Altshausen.

About the melody, it is always referred to as German, but as I was just writing on my other Web log, you would almost think it was Irish. This hymn is a challenge. It starts low and then suddenly the chorus is about an octave higher. You have to be all in if you are going to get through it.

"Hail Holy Queen" had its moment of fame in pop culture for its treatment in "Sister Act." Wow, that is suddenly a long time ago! 

 

I personally like how the hymn was sounding before they ragged it, LOL. But I get a little nostalgic when they give the gospel treatment to these Latin phrases. Unless you go to a Latin Mass, you would never get the jokes now.

It is hard to find good renditions online of traditional Catholic hymns. A lot of the time you see something promising and you click on it, but then you hear that electric piano, and you go, Oh, no. Well, I am going to see what I can find.

That is a group called the Cathedral Singers. I personally prefer the hymn more rousing but that is me. Sometimes you have a piece of music that is just a sacred cow to you, you know? Pardon the Hindu reference, in this context. What I mean is when you have one of these sacred cows, it is hard to find a recording that is just right.

That is Mary, Queen of the Universe Shrine Choir. I like the intro.

One thing I am seeing online is that it has apparently become a thing for school choir directors to have their choirs perform beautiful "Hail Holy Queen" in the "Sister Act" version. That is kind of a pain! Nothing against gospel music. I love gospel music. I have a lot of records and I was personal friends with Aretha Franklin, I will have you know. She was from Buffalo. The truth is thought that musical traditions are different. And people go out of their way to make this magnificent hymn sound stodgy and boring, in need of this intervention. 

They do not get it!

Singing this hymn at church is always a joy. I wish we had recorded our version from yesterday. This one gal in the choir, Philomena, she sang a descant at the end. It was so beautiful that I almost started to cry. But I could not because there were only a couple of us holding down the normal soprano line and the hymn was going full blast and it was all hands on deck.

Triumph, all ye cherubim!

Sing with us, ye Seraphim!

Heaven and earth resound the hymn!

Salve, salve, salve Regina!

What lyrics.

What a melody!

The greatest!!

"

The Tallis tune that sparked a fantasy

 

 Of course I love Ralph Vaughan Williams' "Fantasy on a Theme of Thomas Tallis"... who doesn't? But I never really thought about it. It is this ethereal music and whenever I have heard it I have concentrated on it, cleared away other distractions, paused to enjoy. But I never wondered where it came from, what melody inspired him.

I am sure this is not a state secret. CD notes I am sure explain it, and I probably have an LP or two in the house that tell you everything you need to know and then some, as we say here in Buffalo. 

But now I am kind of glad I did not find out that way. It is more fun to find it out backwards!

And I found out one day singing in the choir. We were working up some of the tunes Tallis wrote for Archbishop Parker's Psalter. Archbishop Parker was the Archbishop of Canterbury. And I am not being disrespectful writing "tune." I am being accurate. We were on the third tune and that was how it was identified, "Third Tune."

All of a sudden I heard this theme, this gently rocking melody you hear in the "Fantasy on a Theme of Thomas Tallis." Now I am going to sound jaded but I have to admit: my thought as I sang on was: I have heard this before. Someone ripped off Thomas Tallis.

Ha, ha! I could not explore the thought much because the lyrics took all my attention. It is not easy to sing the greatest hits of 1587. The words do not come naturally -- "Why fum'th in sight, the Gentiles' plight" begins this number, and it goes from there. It took until the next verse for it to come into focus .... a British composer, a British piece... Oh my goodness, "Fantasy on a Theme of Thomas Tallis"!

This was the theme!

Or the tune, to put it more accurately. It is the third in the set in the above video because that is what it is. And you will notice they are here performed by the Tallis Scholars. One day that will be me. I will be a Tallis scholar.

Until then I will rejoice in this bit of knowledge.

In this fantasy. In this .... tune.