DISGI PLH JE AND/ORART --
I •v e often thought that the most immediate and exciting e :::. 2ment i n cho-rnl singing is the same quality which is responsible for the e motion al i rr.. ~Jac t cf c.1. mi H tar y para de, any good athletic team, or an expert chorus line lik e th e _t-:0c ke t,tes: na mely, the fact that many persons are doing exactly th e same t hin g a.t exactly t he same time. As a matt er of fact, you can carry the principl e t o pr e tty terrifying extremes -- moral and ethical -- and come up with Fa scism. A~ any rate, dis c ipline (or precision) is a terrific instrument -- and no c hor a l ef fort is going to register without exploiting it. The point is wheth er it remains an instrument, subservient, to beauty the inher en t morality of music (for none of man's arts has more rightness wrongness), or whether it deteriorates into (a) style or (b) effect. Now I think it ought to be possible for out becoming slot machines. It certainly is cision techniques of ennunciation to become tive, rather than a seri e s of stock cliches form musical and lyrical con t our
and or
us to phrase and ennun ci at e wi th not too soon for the simple pr e -·tools, immediate, sup ple, and sensi and grotesque caricatures which de -
It's a pretty sad and degrading thing for singer and conductor alike when, in order to gain simple precision, the conductor is forced into unr e asoned dj_s cipline and artistic fascism. That which might be ali v e beco~es a mask. DYN AMIC CONTOUR -I have often wondered if there weren't really two rather distinct phra s in g te chniques: one for what we term "homophonic" music where the struc t ure is pr imaril y harmonic - or vertical, and the words fall in all voices at t he s ame t ime i n the manner of hymns, chorales, and most of the stylized popular arran ge ment s j an d another for "polyphonic" music where the structure is primarily me l odi c or horizontal, and the words fall in different voices at different times by v irt ue of what we t erm canonic imitation and cOlmterpoint. The t erm that indicates to me where the distinction lies i s "un it of dyn ami c contour." Now, that may sound a bit fancy-pants, but it a t leas t s ays it all at once. Another t erm might be "span of the soft-loud. " That is: with re s pect to dynamics (loud-softness), music has a sha pe - a contour. To f a l l back on a not ineffectual metaphor, the unit of phrasing in music is lik e a wav e : i t has amplitud e ("rise" and 11fall 11) and it has mot ion or dire ct i on ( it goes s omeplace. Now i n homophonic music the unit of "rise and falln, of n1oud-softn, is usually no mor e than the short span of a single ch ord or word or even sy llabl e of a wor d. And the shap e of the 11loud-soft 11, t he 11dyna rnic cont our' \ will te c lo s el y hin ged to the phonetic structure of the wor d, to t he proper pr oporti ons of voue l t o consonant and vowel to vowel. Thus in songs like n1e t Down Th.::: Bars 11 an d "Here I s Thy Foots t ool" almost each syllable must be gi ve n a c~,'.1,··,n 1_c c on ·~-our , mus t hav e its own lo udne ss and s oft nes s, its own sh a r e a nd s t ress. And whi le there is bound to be a l on ger phrase (so that neith er mel o(y or s en se su f f er) t he unit r emai ns t he word or syllable.
-2In t!'ie c,?..se of polyphonic music it seems to me that this sJ;-n.ami c cont oi..1.1' is of n.u.ci1 greater span; and while the habit of proper phonetic ennur.ciati o::i. can onl y e:-:hance legato phrasing, I'm almost ready to believe t r.at tu ::i fini¡: :~cy attention to syllable stress will destroy this larger grace. '1:1e lou d and ::of J:. of polyphonic music, like the Brahlns Motet, relates not so closely to word us to musical phrase; and if we extend the metaphor, is comparable to the ocean swell, which may be hundreds of feet between troughs or may possess many minor waves. What is required here is a maximumof tensil quality -- st eadiness, stre ngth , control -- and the ability to register slight and subtle gradua tions of lo ud~ess over a span of many notes and many syllables. choral
Here is another variable tone. Do you follow?
then - dynamic contour
- to set along side of
R. S.
The above letter was garnered from the file of old Collegiate Chorale letters, but it is still full of muscle, and hopefully will provide you with insight into the Hindemith. For one/third of a half of a second I wildly imagined that Mr. Shaw would be writing you this week, but he's just too tired. Maybe exhausted would des cribe it more accurately and it's just going to take a largo diminuendo bef ore the fortissimo crescendo l So with penc i ls poised and eyes glued to the conductor following r ehea rsals will sail along on untroubled waters.
let' s hope t hese
E. B .. ANNOUNCE MENTS:
Sunday, February 3, all men at 3 : 00 p .m.
WeI ll have elevat or se r vice •
Monday, February L., everybody come pr omptlyt! to begin.
8 :00 p .m. we 1 11 corrmence