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NEWSLETTER: 3 August 2020

Here is a link to our latest video rehearsal:

(Demon’s Chorus Part II)

https://youtu.be/F9KtKgCy8eA.

Normal fortnightly video service should be resumed from now on.

Best wishes to all,

Mark

The Dream of Gerontius Rehearsal Links & Warm Up

Video 1 https://youtu.be/T8yhEVv-lRE

Video 2 https://youtu.be/nLhI6QUHUBY

Video 3 https://youtu.be/_mRy-GzIxC4

Video 4 https://youtu.be/7ePoG_8T0OA

These links are easily available in the Member Area of our web site https://mkchorale.org.uk alongside a down loadable copy of the full score.

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Summer Walks As I reminded you several weeks ago, now is an ideal time to re-introduce these walks. The weather is warming again and this is a chance for us to meet up, outside at a distance, of course. Would anyone like to organise a walk? It is usually held on choir rehearsal evenings which may still be free in your diaries? Of course, with many now working from home or retired, the walk could be scheduled on a Tuesday in the morning or afternoon. In case you missed my original newsletter, below are the salient points which I can promote and coordinate through this newsletter. You can reach me via mkcnotices@gmail.com Give it a go! Ian

Details are nearly the same as other years:

Time and date of meeting Where meeting (often a pub but does not have to be!) Brief description of the walk

(location, distance, approx. duration, terrain)

A destination. (may or may not be a pub, perhaps with a large garden.

Food and drink menus if this is possible !!)

Internet links and/or maps where possible (Google or whatever)

Your contact details.

(Asking walkers to confirm in advance if they can join us and any food orders that can be taken!)

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Summer Walk – Caldecotte Lake Tuesday 11 August from 6:00 pm (Sorry Tenori & Bassi WhatsApp!! Zoom Meeting) To take the initiative, Ian & Karen will lead the first walk of 2020 before our planned week away, hopefully, in Scotland. The weather so far is looking good, sunny at around 23c with a light North East cooling wind. For those who do not know this lakeside walk, see the link below:

https://www.theparkstrust.com/parks/caldecotte-lake We plan to meet in the free car park from 6:00 pm which can be accessed from the north side of the H10 Bletcham Way (Please see the map attached to the link above.)

This car park is beside the Caldecotte Pub & Grill and you will see a further map on their web site:

https://www.greeneking-pubs.co.uk/pubs/buckinghamshire/caldecotte/

This is an easy walk on the level and on a footpath all the way around both the southern and northern sides of the lake. For those feeling in need of greater exercise, there is “Keep Fit” equipment scattered along the southern walk!

The walk in total should take around an hour and a half at a leisurely pace and we plan to go around the lake anti-clockwise. i.e. that is the southern side first, which should take no more than 50 minutes to an hour. This enables those who do not wish to walk further to cut across the lake using the Bletcham Way, which divides it, and return to the car park.

The Caldecotte Pub & Grill is open for business. Dining can be outside if you prefer with waiter/ waitress service and, like every where at present, you must book your time, table and food using their App. to pay in advance.

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Warning: The toilets at the Caldecotte are for patrons only and there are no other facilities along the walk!!

So … the weather is looking fine, the walk is easy, the food is reasonably priced and the company will be brilliant.

Shrug off Covid for the evening, Ian & Karen look forward to seeing you all again.

As promised, here's the next instalment... Hope you're all keeping well. Alex

Alex Aitken's Potted History of Music

Part VII: The Early Classical Period (1750-1780)

How much can happen in thirty years? Quite a lot, as it happens, so make sure you are sitting comfortably. Good. Welcome to 1750 (nearly dinner time). Earlier music has by now been derogatorily labelled ‘Baroque’ by the French philosopher-composer Rousseau and some of his rowdy critic friends, who think that earlier music was overly-complex, had ‘confused’ harmony, and tastelessly galloped through every compositional device so far created. Hence they name it in jest after the Portuguese word for a misshaped pearl; something that tried and failed to be beautiful. Ouch. Lighter and clearer textures are now the thing in music, with the three main ingredients being melody, bassline, and accompaniment (in that order of importance), with melodies that the aristocracy could easily hum along to and quote to each other at their silly dinner parties. The resulting melody-dominated homophony (melody and accompaniment) was seen as much more tasteful than the dense, intellectualised, and complex Baroque counterpoint. The old Baroque dance forms still proved quite useful for entertaining though, so largely stayed, although in modified or expanded forms (minuet, gigue, gavotte, etc.). But, instead of

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showing off the level of education a composer had (‘look at me I can write a fugue because I know stuff about music’), it was now all about making the music a hit with the very rich crowd, who had the attention span of a pheasant (‘oh I do like roasted pheasant’) and were more concerned with when the next hunting party would return with more food. Said aristocratic crowd still wanted sensation (enough to make their wigs wiggle), but all within the bounds of refinement and class, and certainly not shocking enough to knock one’s quail eggs into the hollandaise during the third course. Composers were therefore furiously trying to find a way for music to be more dramatic and sensational, whilst still being refined and elegant enough to fit in with the overall vibe. Musicians could no longer freely improvise ornaments, as they had done in the Baroque will mordants and vocal runs; they were now slapped with a wet fish if they did so, and told to only perform the notated, reduced ornamentation. Tunes retained some of the earlier (Baroque) ornamentation, but only if it reflected how a singer might tastefully ornament a melody; so appoggiaturas, upper and lower turns stayed, but Baroque mordents (named after the Latin word for ‘biting’) were seen as more distasteful, and so largely disappeared, or at least were slowed down and written out in full notation so as to ‘nibble’ rather than bite the ear. The trill on the supertonic now becomes a thing (a melody that ended like ‘three blind mice’ would have a trill added to the ‘blind’ note); except that trills now needed to start on the note above the note they were actually written on and completed with a turn, because that sounded nicer. Gosh so many rules; all in the name of pleasing people with money and silly wigs. Shame they still largely talked over the music whilst quaffing their wine and admiring each other’s beauty marks… All this led to melodies that were now fresher, had greater elegance, a vitality and energy to them, and often fitted pleasingly into the vocal range (so one could hum that nice string quartet melody whilst taking a turn around the room). Melodies now fall more clearly into two equal phrases – a ‘question’ and ‘answer’ (or antecedent and consequent if we’re being pedantic). Harmony had to be simple for fear of displeasing those who had paid for their composer to write music – so was mostly based on either the tonic

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(I), dominant (V) or subdominant (IV) chords in a key – and melodies had to be in clear four or eight bar units, each punctuated by a perfect or imperfect cadence (named after the Latin cadere for ‘falling’, because the music’s momentum briefly falls at the end of a phrase). Social functions now required even more music for aristocratic soirées, leading to a rise of music that could be played by a few musicians inconspicuously shoved into the corner of a room (e.g. a string quartet); hence we get chambre or chamber music – literally ‘room’ music. The rapid rise of the nobility and the aristocracy now demanded more and more music, so more and more composers were paid to write music for them (now officially termed patronage). One was only someone if one had one’s own composer, don’t you think? Flutes, bassoons and clarinets begin to be added to the orchestra from around 1750, in addition to the two oboes and a horn that were already used. The basso continuo was sacked (‘bye thanks for coming’), and replaced with trumpets and drums to add extra drama to the existing ensemble of winds and strings, and provide greater oomph when playing divertimentos and serenades outside. Lisbon then has a massive earthquake (bad), just as Haydn begins writing the first of his 106 symphonies in 1759 whilst employed at the court of Morzin. The sane George III ascends to the English throne as style galant takes off; named after the classy, elegant, and fashionable French socialite. Inner musical parts are now not as important, and the orchestra expands to include more strings (to take the place of the harpsichord and organ continuo). The order, symmetry, balance, and logic of the classical world of Ancient Greece now informed the structure and appearance of buildings, gardens, and the Arts (hence lovely symmetrical box hedging patterns, temples, lakes, etc.); this also went hand in hand with the emergence of scientific rigour (apparatus, method, observations, conclusions, etc.) and enlightened thinking about general existence (*strokes beard*). Comic operas (opera buffa) take off, largely because they made posh people laugh, so they paid money to put them on and be titillated. These opera buffa (hence our term ‘buffoon’) steal stock characters from Ancient Greece (the hapless man, the coward, the

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show-off, etc.) and weave them into silly plots, usually involving some farce, stepping on rakes, and hide and seek shenanigans. And so begins what later becomes pantomime. For now, though, everything is just silly. Mozart is born in 1756 (well done to him) and begins writing keyboard works at the depressing age of four. JC Bach (one of JS Bach’s other sons) lands a job as organist in Milan, writes some rather interesting quartets, keyboard sonatas and symphonies, and then gets bored so instead works for Queen Charlotte in England (wife of the now mad George III). By the 1760s Gluck was getting fed up of opera buffa’s bad jokes and its stereotypical stock characters; he was also grumpy with opera seria (frowny face) and its boring and dry plots. So he writes his ‘reform’ operas Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste, cuts out the boring recitative and replaces it with accompanied recitative that drives the story forward, bans arias with repeated sections because yawn, banned virtuosity for the sake of it, and prioritised drama over the actors (gasp). He also uses key for mood and masters enhancing the story with orchestration. His changes influenced Mozart’s operas and they’re great. In Germany the empfindsam or ‘sensitive’ style takes off, focusing on honestly conveying natural feelings using simple melodies, very little ornamentation, rapid changes of register (high then low and vice versa), and SUDDEN dynamic contrasts. CPE Bach (JS’s son) masters this empfindsam style in his dramatic, emotional, and sometimes violently mad sinfonias (but they still sounded illogical – bad luck). The Italians, meanwhile, building on Gabrieli’s instructions for piano (‘soft’) and forte (‘strong’), now came up with more instructions for how to change the energy of music; crescendo ‘growing’, decrescendo ‘shrinking’, and diminuendo ‘becoming dimmer’ now appear as descriptions. More detail about how the melody (the most important part) should be played was therefore useful and welcome. We then get a sad triple death: Handel dies almost blind in 1759 (his eye surgeon also tried unsuccessfully to fix JS Bach as well); Rameau then dies in 1764, having ‘concealed art with art’ in his own words (whatever that means); and Telemann dies in 1767, leaving behind over 3000(!) highly influential and well-regarded works, including some fantastic orchestral suites, sonatas and concertos.

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In lighter news, Haydn begins working for the Esterházy household in 1761, whilst over in Mannheim, Stamitz’s professional and revered orchestra flourishes at the court of Mannheim. Stamitz and his composer friends (Beck, Richter, Cannabich and Fränzl) find a winning formula for their symphonies (named after the Greek sym and phonos for ‘together sounding’). Symphonies now almost always open with a dramatic orchestral tutti that forcibly establishes the key of the music with energetic rhythms (ba baa ba ba ba ba ba, etc.), followed by a quieter answering passage in the winds (laaa laaa la la la la la), accompanied by energetic repeated notes in ‘cellos and basses (dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum, etc.). Isn’t this exciting. Mozart by now is being wheeled around Europe and shoved in front of royalty by his father; after playing with the fancy curtains he astonishes kings and queens by improvising and playing ridiculous pieces, before running around pretending to be a horse. Much eye-roll. Team Mannheim (woop), sponsored by their music-loving patron Karl Theodor, go one further and come up with numerous orchestral tricks and gimmicks, including writing more notes for the woodwinds (not just long notes to sustain the sound), dramatic pauses for effect, and what would become known as the ‘Mannheim crescendo’, ‘Mannheim rocket’ (rapid rising arpeggios) and ‘Mannheim steamroller’ (crescendos over an ostinato) effects. Jommelli then introduces greater dynamic variety with sudden changes as well as crescendos, decrescendos and forte-piano effects, having got bored with the terraced dynamics approach. The Mannheim troupe also insert the minuet from the Baroque suite to create a third movement, thereby expanding the symphony to its current four-movement form. The melody-dominated homophony texture (melody and accompaniment) was now well and truly established, replacing the archaic, stuffy and more densely intellectualised Baroque counterpoint (yawn). Symphonies had now proved themselves as being very useful for opening and closing public concert programmes, framing other

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instrumental and vocal pieces, including concertos, lighter instrumental pieces (divertimentos and serenades), and chamber works (string quartets, trios, etc.). Opera overtures were sometimes cut and pasted into programmes as well to masquerade as symphonies; a trick that quickly revealed how opera overtures could also be hastily assembled from splicing out parts of instrumental symphonies and shoving them in front of the opening scene of an opera. Strangely, more composers are found at the pub once this begins to happen. Overtures and symphonies were therefore pretty much the same thing for a while, until opera seria (frowny face) demanded overtures be freshly composed to ‘open’ (French ‘ouvert’-ure) the show. Just in case that wasn’t enough chaos, symphonies could also be broken up with other works played in between their movements to add to the general melee. Everyone just made it up as they went along. What fun. Concerts were by now regular occasions for audiences to sit and listen (rather than talk over); the need for so much music meant composers had to churn music out quickly for the one rehearsal before each concert. The woodwind section now becomes even more important, after multiple players complain that they were just musical stuffing; the flutes, oboes and bassoons are now joined by the shiny new clarinet. It only had four keys at this point, so wasn’t much use, but that didn’t stop its inventors who were already concocting a bass clarinet to join it. Over in Italy, Bartolomeo Christofori has by now perfected the four-and-a-half-octave gravicembalo col piano e forte or ‘harpsichord with soft and strong’. The new-fangled instrument struck strings with soft hammers made of paper and leather, instead of aggressively plucking them like a harpsichord did. Bartolomeo’s masterpiece is marketed as the pianoforte, fortepiano, or piano, depending on how lazy his marketing team is feeling that day. Ironically it was made of cypress or spruce, and could barely play strongly without falling to pieces, but that doesn’t matter because it was new and came with a two-day guarantee or your money back (shipping time 8 months). It even included a pedal contraption that made it only play one string at a time instead of two – una corda – hence we kept the name for the left-most pedal on modern pianos. By the late 1760s the cheaper and more reliable square piano was

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being bought as the new fashionable thing to have, but its inability to sustain chords was a problem. So composers looked to the (now dead) Mr Domenico Alberti who, in most of his pieces, had broken up the chord into a bottom-top-middle-top pattern; now known as Alberti bass. Et voilà – a musical solution to a technical problem, because the overall effect of the chords being sustained could be created by splitting up the notes. The Italian Piccini (not Puccini) then writes his opera La buona figliuola (‘The good girl’) – the first opera buffa to be based on a modern novel, which goes on to play every major opera house in Europe. Gluck’s outrageous tragédie lyrique Iphigénie en Aulide premières in 1767, almost causing another war between his supporters and those of Piccini. CPE Bach has by now mastered writing music that the public loved, and probably makes his dad a little jealous from on high. Meanwhile there is a rapid rise of musical soirées, mostly consisting of vocal or operatic music accompanied by a group of instrumentalists, who would then play overtures, sinfonias, or other instrumental pieces for added variety, or to provide a break for the knackered singers to neck a glass of wine or seven. The Baroque ternary form (ABA) gets expanded, with longer outer sections, and a more dramatic and explosive B section. The circle of fifths had by now been accepted as a way to relate scales and their different properties together, since people could no longer argue with the idea that starting scales a perfect fifth higher each time took away flats and added sharps, and vice versa. Helpfully the order of the appearance of the sharps and flats themselves was also dictated by perfect fifths, so that made the pedants happy. Annoyingly music was still only tolerable in keys of up to three sharps or flats; cue theorists being shut into a cupboard and told to emerge only once they’ve fixed it. Poor theorists. The single mood or affekt of Baroque movements was now too boring for the aristocratic attention spans, so increased chromaticism and dramatic shifts in mood within a piece became popular in the 1770s (named the sturm und drang or ‘storm and stress/drive’ style). With more options now available for how to play notes (depending on the drama in the music), articulation marks begin to appear denoting how a note should speak in relation to its surroundings. The Italians had already come to the rescue in the late Baroque – notes could be

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staccato (‘detached’), legato (‘joined’) or portato (‘carried’ to the next note); but now everyone argued about whether a staccato should be written as a wedge or a dot or a dash. In the end, all three were used without consistency. As James Cook dodges a didgeridoo whilst exploring Australia and New Zealand, Quantz (Frederick’s flute man) dies in 1773, and the Baroque concerto grosso (‘big concert’) is gradually replaced with the concerto (flashy soloist plus orchestra). Court composers use their best violinist or flautist as the soloist, and show off their technique by writing fast scales and silly figurations, much to the joy of the crowd. Back with serious music, Sammartini has by now finished writing his 70 symphonies, having come up with the idea of using two contrasting themes in the opening section of a piece instead of one (this later becomes the ‘second subject group’ or second theme in sonata form). Sammartini and the Mannheim School establish three- and four-movement symphonies of the fast-slow-(dance)-fast variety, with the first movement written in an approximate binary (AB) form, using this new idea of two contrasting themes in two different keys. These two themes were then brought back in the returning section in the same tonic key. The third movement now consisted of an expanded (Baroque) minuet dance – but shhh no one listening noticed we still had some Baroque music in there. Composers also realised now that pitting musical keys against each other during the course of a single movement was quite dramatic, and helped take the listener on more of a journey. So begins the idea of passing through keys to a distant point before wondering back again to the home key. Haydn begins writing music for the music-loving Prince Nikolaus’s weekly musicales, pilfering folk tunes, peasant dances, yodelling, bird calls, drinking songs – anything that could be smashed together into music – and giving his symphonies evocative titles like ‘sunrise’, ‘the storm of the sea’, ‘the philosopher’, etc. to capture the Prince’s imagination. In return, the Prince gives Haydn a cushty lifestyle, but he and his outstanding court musicians demand bigger, better, and shinier music each week; so Haydn churns out hit after hit for the court orchestra (and the Prince himself) to play through, not realising that single-handedly he is turning the symphony into a passionate, dramatic and musical spectacle in its

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own right. How exciting. Haydn also comes up with the idea of using a small ‘seed’ motif and growing it into a full ‘plant’ across a movement – something that would later inspire Beethoven (DA DA DA DAAAAAA). By now the sonata exists, named after the Italian suonare (‘to sound’); the term is applied to any keyboard piece (or keyboard plus a solo instrument) of multiple movements (usually fast-slow-fast). Anna Amalia composes her symphony for two flutes, two oboes, two violins and a double bass. Mozart is by now employed in the Salzburg court, writing keyboard concertos, symphonies and serenades, until he resigns and heads for Mannheim (to admire their orchestra) and then Paris. Boccherini meanwhile has been tweaking Haydn’s improvements to the string quartet, making the ‘cello more prominent and giving it solos, instead of relegating it to accompanying violins and a viola. He also adds a second ‘cello, producing a string quintet (not replicated by many others). Haydn then writes his ‘Farewell’ symphony in F# minor (dark key for the time); a subtle attempt to remind the partying Prince that his court musicians were longing to return to their families rather than play for him all the time. Salieri writes his opera Armida in 1771, influenced by Gluck’s reform operas; Gluck is focused instead on repairing the damage caused by his last opera, so blends French and Italian characteristics and writes his glorious Iphigénie en Tauride in 1779. Piccini meanwhile continues to churn out his opera buffa with immense success, unscathed after his ‘war’ with Gluck, and Cook lands in Hawaii (aloha). Next up: the three musketeers arrive, Mozart begins misbehaving, and the world gets ready for Beethoven...