Author: Laura Conrad

Mushrooms

mushrooms
Mushrooms on May 17, 2012

We had a very hot and dry April in this part of the world, so we were all wondering whether there would be flowers in May at all.

Fortunately, we’ve had a cool, wet May, so there are not only flowers (a lot of the May ones bloomed in April, but we’re getting some of the June roses now) but these mushrooms sprung up on the sidewalk across the street from me.

The history of West Gallery music

This
post is so wrongheaded that I initially had no idea how to
start, so I thought about it until I did. I’m going to start with
the misstatements of fact, and then procede to the wrongheaded
opinions.

  • Mr. White states that The Oxford Movement “booted this old
    nonsense out of [Church of England] liturgical practice”, which
    is true and “cleared the way for the ‘high’ choral evensong that
    remains Anglicanism’s greatest gift to the world.” It was not
    the Oxford movement that invented choral evensong, but the great
    16th
    century polyphonists (Byrd, Morley, Gibbons…) who are also the
    people who wrote the first psalm settings from which the West
    Gallery tradition arose. And the Melstock Band in “Under the
    Greenwood Tree” was not succeeded by organs and surpliced
    choirboys but by a harmonium, with a music-box like mechanism
    allowing anybody who can turn the crank to play an “approved”
    version of an “approved” hymn.
  • He quotes a Hardy poem in which the Vicar refuses to bury
    the old choirmaster as he had requested because the viols
    wouldn’t be able to play in bad weather. Mr. White claims to
    see the vicar’s point and claims that Hardy did not. Of course,
    the vicar is a character written by Hardy, so he would not have
    been able to make a point had Hardy not been able to see
    it. He may well have disagreed after he saw it, but I’m sure he
    had more experience listening to viols played in the rain than
    Mr. White does.
  • Mr. White isn’t responsible for this, but a commenter with
    the clearly pseudonymous name of Esmeralda Weatherwax, who may never have
    heard West Gallery music, equates it with the “worship band”
    with guitar, keyboard, and drums and banal choruses. The
    guitar, keyboard and drums may well be in the West Gallery
    tradition of using the musical talent available in the
    congregation, but West Gallery music for generations used only
    the Old and New versions of the metrical psalms, which are
    anything but banal. I know Francis Roads, one of the founders
    of the London West Gallery Quire whose performance prompted this post, and
    he is explicitly trying to use West Gallery music in
    contemporary liturgical settings to drive the “happy, clappy
    stuff” out.
  • When welcoming the demise of West Gallery music, Mr. White
    says, “I can’t be in a minority there because viols and their
    like are indeed long gone from Anglican worship.” This is a
    total non-sequitur — nobody ever claimed that the 19th century
    Church of England was a democracy, so the disappearance of
    choirs accompanied by bands of instruments may well have been
    imposed by a numerical minority.

And now to the matters of opinion:

  • Mr. White’s brief review of the performance he heard was,
    “They turned up with a batch of 18th-century-style wind and
    brass (serpent included), and a lot of lusty voices; and I can’t
    deny that it was fun, sort of. But spiritual, no.” I can’t
    dispute this view of this particular performance, since
    Mr. White was there and I wasn’t. But I challenge anyone to
    listen to “Egypt” or “Poole” and not have a spiritual experience
    overlaying the dread of death, and the joy embodied in Gibralter
    surely transcends “fun”.
  • I see no point in arguing with Mr. White about whether the
    West Gallery tradition is better or worse than the high choral
    evensong tradition. If a church has a congregation that wants
    to praise God with music, the church may well be better off using the
    musical talents actually available to it than trying to ape a
    church with a larger budget, a better organ, and a different
    population of singers. Mr. White and Ms Weatherwax want to
    dismiss the musical and liturgical value of what the rural
    churches came up with and I don’t.
  • Mr. White says, “Let’s face it, the 18th and early 19th
    centuries were not the church’s finest moment in this country,
    and the West Gallery tradition sums up everything that was
    wrong.” I agree that the Church of England, even prodded by the
    best of the Dissenting tradition, performed badly in a lot of
    the crises of that time. But I doubt that more little boys in
    surplices who could sing unaccompanied would have helped.

Report from the March 25 concert

Laura, John, and Anne
Laura Conrad, John Maloney, Anne Kazlauskas performing "Shakespeare's Neighbors" on March 25, 2012.

Short version: it was a great space to sing in, not as large an audience as we’d have liked, but they seemed to enjoy what we did.

There aren’t as many photographs as from the previous week, since the photographer was performing, but see the video below, and here are some sound clips:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V48NfxkUEfw&feature=g-upl&context=G2b91881AUAAAAAAAFAA

Report on the March 18 concert

How did it go

The short answer is that everybody had a good time.
Unfortunately, the camera got packed up before the party got
going, so you can’t see the audience and performers staying around
to continue to enjoy themselves, or the glass harmonica party
music provided by our hostess, Vera Meyer.

A longer answer is that the performers agreed that we had done
a lot of good things musically, but had missed a few things that
we wanted to do. And we agreed that we’ve gotten really good at
recovering from mistakes, and we wished we could get a bit better
at not making the mistakes in the first place.

The bottom line is that I was catching myself smiling about it
for most of the next two days.

What it sounded like

Cease,
mine eyes

Love
learns by laughing

So if this looks like fun…

Come on Sunday, March 25, 2012, to the repeat performance at Gallery 263, 263 Pearl
St., Cambridge, MA. It might be even better than last Sunday.

News of the week of February 21, 2012

Meeting report

We played:

Schedule

Here’s the schedule for the next couple of months:

  • Tuesday, February 28, No meeting
  • Tuesday, March 6, regular meeting. (Anne has agreed to open
    up.)
  • Tuesday March 13 regular meeting
  • Sunday, March 18, Concert: Shakespeare’s
    Neighbors     3 pm at 521 Fellsway East, Malden
  • Tuesday March 20 regular meeting
  • Sunday, March 25 Concert: Shakespeare’s
    Neighbors     7pm at 263 Pearl St., Cambridge
  • Tuesdays March 27, April 3, 10 and 17, Regular meetings
  • Tuesdays March 24 and May 1, meetings restricted to and compulsory
    for performers at the Walk
    for Hunger
  • Sunday, May 6 10am to 3pm, Walk for Hunger

Walk for Hunger

Remember that you should let me know as soon as possible
whether you want to play at the Walk for Hunger. A lot of what
we’re thinking about playing is five part music, and we shouldn’t
work on that unless we’re going to have at least five
performers.

Another Concert Announcement

Or more specifically, an announcement of another performance of
the same concert. Vera Meyer is graciously allowing us to perform
Shakespeare’s Neighbors
in her living room, at 3pm on Sunday, March 18. It’s free and
open to the public, and there will be a pot luck supper following
the concert. Please come, and bring all your friends.

Concert Announcement: March 25

The Cantabile Renaissance Band will be performing
“Shakespeare’s neighbors: an evening with Thomas Morley, William
Shakespeare, and others” on Sunday, March 25 at 7pm at the 263
Gallery, 263 Pearl St., Cambridge, MA.

This performance will include the complete Morley Canzonets
to three voyces, interspersed with readings from
Romeo and Juliet, Phillip Sidney, and The
Aminta by Tasso.

For more details, see the concert
webpage.

There’s a flyer you can print and paper your neighborhood with and
give to all your friends.

We are trying to set up other performances of this program,
which I will announce on this list as we finalize the
arrangements. If you have an idea for somewhere West or South of
the central metropolitan Boston area where we could do it, let me know.

News of the week of February 14, 2012

Meeting Report

We played:

Schedule

We will be meeting as usual on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place with
the following exceptions:

  • Tuesday February 28 will not be a dropin rehearsal, as the
    Morley group will pre-empt that time.
  • On March 6, I will be working at the polls for the presidential primary, so someone
    will have to open up if we want to meet that night.
  • The meetings in March and April will concentrate on the Walk for Hunger program.
    The meetings of April 24 and May 1 will be limited to (and
    compulsory for) the
    performers at the Walk for Hunger.
  • On Sunday, May 6, we’ll be playing between 10am and 3pm.
    You shouldn’t sign up unless you can be there at least between
    noon and 3pm.

Next week, February 21, will probably be our last meeting for a
while where we will not be concentrating on the Walk for Hunger
program, and where we will have a new piece to sightread. So if
you have ideas about what you’d like to do, either for the new
piece or for old pieces that aren’t suitable for the Walk program,
let me know.

Walk for Hunger

We will be performing again this year, as we have every year
since 1999, at the Walk for Hunger, in a beautiful spot on the
Charles River, at the Cambridge-Watertown line. Unless you’re a
major rock star, it’s probably your only opportunity to perform
for tens of thousands of people.

Let me know if you want to play. If you do, let me know what
you would like to play.

I’m leaning towards an all-English program, with some
Morley, Weelkes, Holborne, Dowland and Byrd. Let me know your
likes and dislikes in that range. Also, if that would leave out
your favorite upbeat walking music, let me know about that.