The Postmodern Camerata Restful Requiem
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
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| Artistic Director Dr. Greg Caisely, Alexandra Hill, Camyar Pazandeh & Rei Ikeda |
I asked the young man what kind of horn he was carrying in his case that was strapped to his back . “An alto trombone."
This was Friday October 23 in the afternoon and I was near
Nitobi Garden on my way to the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 at the Chan Centre.
I told the young man, “You must be going to rehearse Mozart’s
Requiem."
He did look at me with some reserved amazement as I was
right. But if you investigate the circumstances you will find that my correct
guessing has a lot to do with that Spanish saying that the devil knows more,
not because he is the devil, but because he is an old man.
At my age of 73 with most of the communications between my
neurons and synapses not diverging into dead ends it can simply be explained
that if you have gone to a few performances of Mozart’s Requiem you will know
that somewhere on stage left of an orchestra or stage right (for Sunday’s
performance of the Requiem by The Post Modern Camerata at Dunbar Heights United
Church you would see three trombone players with one bass, on baritone and one
alto trombone. Since I knew about the Camerata’s schedule and indeed attended
the Sunday concert it should make sense.
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| Leanna Wong's Double Bass |
Where it does not make sense is why during the very nicely
loud (I like to sit up front and be blown away) Requiem (good to have a tympani
on board) I could hear one of the three sopranos with a crystal clear sound that was above all
other sounds of a middle sized orchestra with 13 singers.
The soprano in question is Alexandra Hill. Her voice does
not pierce. It is a beautiful and pleasant voice. To me it has all to do with
some very good diction and whatever can be explained by her ability to project
sound.
Some years ago my younger daughter gave me Requiem played by
the Chorus and Orchestra of Ancient Music directed by Christopher Hogwood. One
of the singers is soprano Emma Kirkby. The first few minutes of the Requiem powerfully
pull you in. When it is all over you are at rest in silence. This is
appropriate as requiem comes from the Latin root to rest.
After Sunday’s performance, the silence that came after
provided me with that restful moment to consider how lucky I am to have the
opportunity to witness Mozart’s Requiem in the intimate surroundings of a
church in preparation for that Christmas season when I do my best to avoid any
of those choirs singing in English that work by a composer whose surname begins with an H.
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| Brian Mix's cello |
There was something else that this amateur of music noticed.
This was the voice of Kamyar Pazandeh listed in my program as a bass. My
experience with bass singers of the past is that it is easy to sound like burping
in melody. This was not the case with Pazandeh. The voice was clear and I could
hear him by simply looking at him while blurring with my vision the other
singers.
The afternoon's performance began with J.S. Bach's Cantata BWV in which I was able to enjoy that very good local tenor Clinton Stoffberg. Then I heard a marvelous compostion by Vancouver's (tall) Jocelyn Morlock who wrote a Lacrimosa (the very same words of the Latin Mass and in Mozart's Requiem Lacrimosa) in memory of her father. Morlock's "new" music while always different, it always eases you (gently) in to enjoying something that is not in the general repertoire. She is currently the Composer in Residence at the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. The best part of her Lacrimosa was that it featured only two singers, Alexandra Hill, soprano, and a startlingly good Melissa Howell, Mezzo Soprano.
The afternoon's performance began with J.S. Bach's Cantata BWV in which I was able to enjoy that very good local tenor Clinton Stoffberg. Then I heard a marvelous compostion by Vancouver's (tall) Jocelyn Morlock who wrote a Lacrimosa (the very same words of the Latin Mass and in Mozart's Requiem Lacrimosa) in memory of her father. Morlock's "new" music while always different, it always eases you (gently) in to enjoying something that is not in the general repertoire. She is currently the Composer in Residence at the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. The best part of her Lacrimosa was that it featured only two singers, Alexandra Hill, soprano, and a startlingly good Melissa Howell, Mezzo Soprano.
After the performance I got to meet Pazandeh and Rei Ikeda the alto trombone player.
I have to pleasantly report that Pazandeh is studying to
be an actor at Studio 58 and that it seems he has only had a couple of voice
lessons. He obviously is one fast
learner (handsome, too) but he will not have to learn how to project his voice
from anybody much less that fave soprano of mine, Alexandra Hill.
Vocal Projection - by Alexandra Hill
The question: why is it that I could be heard to “cut” through the orchestra?
I am a soprano.
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| Alexandra Hill |
The question: why is it that I could be heard to “cut” through the orchestra?
The short answer: A familiarity of melody and the perception
that higher is louder.
The longer answer: well it has to do with voice type,
fundamental frequency, harmonics, and the human ear. It also has to do with a
mix of how the music is orchestrated, what the acoustics of the performance
space are like, how many people are in the audience, and where they are seated
relative to the performers.
Pitch is like colour. It is perceived. Higher pitches are
often perceived to be louder than lower pitches (recall that frequency (pitch),
which is measured in Hertz, is not the same thing as amplitude (loudness),
which is measured in decibels). Melodies are often the highest line of the
woven fabric that is a song, a cantata, or a symphony. When you hear a chord,
your ear often picks out the top note. Perhaps this immediate focus to the top
note has to do with the way we are taught to listen to the melody rather than the
harmonies. It is a cultural thing.
If you have ever sung in a choir, and you’ve been asked by
the choir director to sing the bass, tenor or alto line, you’ll recall that
it’s often the sopranos that get the “easy” part - the part that everyone
recognizes - the part that could have taken you less than 30 seconds to learn
if only the choir conductor hadn’t saddled you with the tricky harmony part.
We, as listeners, bend our ear for a musical phrase, and the soprano being the highest
voice type, is the voice to deliver that line.
I am a soprano.
Alex asked me to write an essay on vocal projection after
attending the Postmodern Camerata concert on Sunday. A thorough essay would
have been one that included definitions, equations, theories, models, and
perhaps even images of spectrograms and vocal folds; one that would have really
provided insight into the physics of sound – air molecules in motion. For this
type of answer, I point the reader in the direction of Keith
Johnson’s book Acoustic and AuditoryPhonetics.
I will conclude by simply saying this: Bach, Mozart and
Jocelyn Morlock are masters. The music they have written is crafted in such a
way as to permit the human voice to soar. The harmonics of the soprano voice
are much higher than those of the orchestra, and are therefore easily picked-up
by the human ear. Alex was also sitting in one of the front rows at Dunbar
Heights United on Sunday, just feet away from the soprano section, which may
provide further explanation as to why he could hear me very clearly
