There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentler on the spirit lies,
Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And thro' the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.
(Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1809-1892)
Ah, the joys of English poetry! The highest form
of language! And what could be greater than putting poetry to music,
or music to poetry?
Choral music is the most advanced medium for realising
the unification of poetry and music, of language and sound, of mediated
meaning and unmediated aesthetic experience. While one can deeply
enjoy the acoustic dynamics of a choral piece sung in a foreign
language one does not understand, or a choral piece constructed
only of vocal sounds without words, in most great choral works listening
closely to the words on both their phonetic level and their meaning
level is essential to fully appreciating the composition and its
performance.
For at the centre of our souls a small, almost inaudible
voice is continually crying out for meaning, crying out for deliverance,
for absolution, for assurance, for love, for genuine communication,
for acceptance, for self-confirmation, for self-transcendence. The
poet, deeply aware of this cry within the soul, crafts his words
so that they cut through to the innermost core of the individual's
subjectivity, while at the same time creating a public experience
that can be shared by large numbers of people.
 But
the words of the poet or seer are originally vocalized words, and
the paradigmatic form of their conveyance to others is the recitation,
where through the medium of the voice the poem or sacred text is
concretised in a way that synthesizes sense experience and the experience
of sense, or meaning. Language is lifted to a higher realm than
that of ordinary verbal discourse, a realm that by combining inherited
aesthetic structures and the vocalization of thought is capable
of both expressing and responding to that cry in the core of the
human soul.
Yet the instrument used for vocalizing the poem
or sacred text, being the means by which the soul both discovers
itself and communicates itself to others, now becomes as important
as the poem itself, for it is this instrument that brings the poem
and its message to life and carries them into the public realm.
And if the recited poem has such power to transcend ordinary communication
and bring spiritual healing power to the human soul - if it is,
that is, a sacred activity that elevates civilisation to a higher
level - then are we not compelled to try to refine and mobilise
all of the infinite capacities of this vocal instrument to vary
the acoustic and emotional quality of the linguistic syllables that
it vocalizes?
Here is where choral music is born - in the marriage
of message and voice, voice and rhythm, rhythm and harmony - a marriage
that is achieved most completely in the religious service, where
the only Being that can truly answer the cry of the soul is worshipped
through the mobilization of all the highest faculties of the human
mind and body that He himself created.
As everyone expected, the Stuttgart Chamber Choir's
concert was superb. After all, they have almost 34 years of history
and over 40 recordings to their name. But what precisely was superb
about it? A strong and always beautifully balanced sound, very lucid
and bright, with rich layers of resonance behind, above and around
the music of which the performers are always keenly aware. An incredibly
skillful blending of choral singing with accompanied solo passages,
where the solo parts are sung with great warmth and brilliance as
well as consummate control. Extremely clear diction and enunciation
so that one can always hear precisely the words that are being sung.
An excellent balance on the part of each individual choir member
between listening and vocalising. A bass section perhaps better
than any I have ever heard in a live performance, providing an extremely
strong, deep and resonant "base" or foundation for the
unfolding of the choral tapestry above. Long sustained bass notes
of rich timbre at the very bottom of the bass range added unforgettable
passages - particularly endings - to many of the pieces performed.
After the six movements of Rachmaninoff's (1873-1943)
All-Night Vigil, sung in Russian, the choir radically rearranged
itself from a conventional formation in the centre of the stage
to a spread-out formation around the peripheries of the stage. This
totally changed the nature of their sound, which became much wider
and literally filled the entire concert hall, taking maximum advantage
of the very good acoustic capabilities of the VCH. The work they
sang in this formation was Immortal Bach, by Knut Nystedt, an absolutely
fascinating piece of music that transported the listener into another,
somewhat mysterious and eerie, world. This unusual effect was created
by the fact that the voices frequently blended together in such
a way as to produce a sound like a musical instrument - perhaps
an organ or a synthesizer. Those of the audience who do not understand
German were deprived of a chance to enter into the meaning dimension
by the absence of an English translation, but the sound dimensions
of this work alone were enough to keep any audience enthralled.
 In
the next item, by contrast, the words were at the centre of attention.
This was a series of three English poems set to music by Sir Edward
Elgar (1857-1934), considered by many to be England's greatest composer.
The audience was thus invited to enjoy a choral "recitation"
of some great poems by masters of English word-crafting while having
their auditory faculties bathed in the SCC's beautiful vocalisations.
The first poem - either a meditation on the tranquilising effect
of music through the metaphor of Nature or a meditation on the tranquilising
effect of Nature through the metaphor of music - was quoted at the
beginning of this review. The following two probe deeper into the
cry of the soul that I mentioned above, the first on the subject
of love, and the second on the subject of Death. I quote them only
in part, believing that these passages can stand alone as the best
possible "commentary" on this part of the concert:
Deep in my soul, that tender secret dwells
Lonely and lost to light forevermore,
Save when to thine my heart responsive swells,
Then trembles into silence as before.
(George Byron, 1788-1824)
The old bring up the cortège
In front the young folk ride,
And on Death's saddle in a row
The babes sit side by side.
The young folk lift their voices,
The old folk plead with Death:
"O let us take the village road,
Or by the brook draw breath."
(Rosa Newmarch, 1857-1940)
The next item on the programme consisted of two
of Mahler's (1860-1911) orchestral compositions arranged for chorus
by adding the words of two German poems by Friedrich Rückert
(1788-1866). For many among the audience, this was the highlight
of the concert, because Mahler's music is so beautiful, so distinctive,
and so structurally sophisticated. The main solo parts before this
piece had been sung masterfully by the tenor Maximilian Schmitt,
but with Mahler we were treated to an exquisite soprano solo by
Claudia Reinhard, accompanied as always by the choir. The first
song was passionate, bright and crisp, with many colours on different
levels leading up to another of those totally disarming endings
by the deep bass. In the second song, an intricate interweaving
of the voices of the choir transported the audience to a realm very
different from my idea of "conventional" choral music.
Unfortunately, no English translation was given for the second song.
The concert concluded with two folksongs arranged
by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), with a rather delightful composition
by the prolific Bavarian composer Max Reger (1873-1916) sandwiched
in between. A member of the local early music group Musica Obscura
explained that the intriguing character of the Reger arose from
the fact that the same basic theme is repeated over and over in
increasingly interesting ways. Reger is fond of variations; It is
the nature of German folk music (indeed the folk music tradition
in many continents) to have a simple melody that is repeated with
different words. Instead of mere repetition, Reger takes the opportunity
to introduce variations and to some (me chiefly) it creates a delightful
(even playful but not so much humours) take on an otherwise boring
da capo. The final Brahms piece featured the same sort of elegant,
graceful and gentle choral style that we had heard in many of the
previous numbers, and I felt it was not a good choice for the concluding
song. It would have been much more appropriate to end the concert
with something more distinctive and more vigorous that would really
grab the audience's attention, leave a powerful impression, and
motivate an explosion of applause. Fortunately, the encore that
conductor Frieder Bernius offered (without much pleading from the
audience) was a more interesting work than the Brahms, ideally suited
for displaying all of the distinctive strengths and talents of the
choir. It was a very unusual and subtly playful sacred work called
Sanctus Benedictus, written in the 1920s by a Swiss composer of
French ancestry, Frank Martin (1890-1974), who later won attention
for the twelve-tone system he worked out for his 1942 work Vin herbé
(The Doctored Wine).
A large number of singers, musicians and chorus
conductors attended this concert, including many from the Chinese-speaking
community - that important part of Singapore society that is so
poorly represented at most SSO concerts. Since they were obviously
there not just to be entertained, but also to learn, it would appear
that the SCC's single Singapore performance will continue reverberating
within the Singapore choral music scene for quite some time to come.
Barry
Steben was left wondering how his burgeoning interest
in German music managed to lead to a rediscovery of the beauty of
English poetry. Goethe would be pleased.
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