Sangerknaben

Vienna Boys Choir Goes Pop

2010-08-21T07:31:00.000-07:00

One of the most controversial, well okay, the most controversial CD I have in my collection is a 2002 release, The Vienna Boys Choir Goes Pop. I first learned of it when I saw three of the songs on another CD, Les Plus Belles Chorales D’Enfants, which is a great compilation album of lots of great choirs.

The three songs there were My Heart Will Go On, All You Need Is Love, and Eternal Flame. I liked all three and thought they were much better than the originals. I would rather listen to WSK than Celine Dion any day.

Other songs on the CD are perhaps less… wisely chosen. I’ve made no secret of my admiration for the Vienna Boys Choir, but I wasn’t anxious to hear them cover Talking Heads with Burning Down the House or Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters. Actually, I kind of liked the soloist’s voice on the Metallica song. Their covers of Enya and The Police were pretty good, too.

If there is any disappointment in this CD it can’t be blamed on the boys, but is solely the responsibility of the director who chose the songs. I’m not saying that I didn’t like it, but a lot of people criticized it. Try to imagine WSK covering Prince, Madonna, Back Street Boys or Earth, Wind and Fire.

To make sure that it wasn’t just my opinion I went to Amazon.com to read some of the reviews there. They seemed to be one extreme or the other, one star or five stars. Here’s some comments:

“How Sad”, “Not their style”, “What horrid crap!”, “Perhaps the greatest gag gift ever”, “The worst CD ever”, “Are you people deaf?”

Those were one star comments, but several people praised it instead. They said, “Better with each listening”, “Wow!”, “I think it’s great”, “… It grows on you”.

There are a couple of comments from the boys themselves on the inside of the CD.
Matthias said, “I liked the project. It was fun to sing songs which you usually hear on the radio or on MTV.”
Josef said, “We weren’t sure initially how some of the songs that we normally just like to listen to would sound sung by us - but the result is pretty cool.”

The Vienna Boys Choir is very versatile and I think it’s fun to see them branching out and experimenting.

I Saw Libera

2010-08-11T13:05:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Atlanta where I saw Libera perform at the Peachtree Presbyterian Church, a large complex in the swankiest part of town. It was really nice.

The thing I usually don’t like about general admission seating is that I never know what to expect about the size of the auditorium, what sort of crowd will attend, and what time to arrive in order to get a good seat without standing around for hours before hand.

This time everything worked out well. The place was pretty full and by counting the number of pews I estimated that there were around 500 fans in the audience. At ten dollars each that doesn’t add up to a lot of revenue so they made a low key pitch for donations.

I had hoped that Atlanta, a city of 2 million people, would turn out in bigger numbers for such a special occasion, but the people who did come were enthusiastic, even if they had never heard Libera before.

My friend and I headed to the balcony and grabbed the front row center spots. We had lots of elbow room, which is always good, and a great view of the stage. Despite the paucity of the ticket sales, Libera didn’t stint on their programs. They gave us full-color, eight page booklets with good pictures of all the boys who came. It was an excellent thing for them to autograph.

I was curious about which boys would be there and especially which veterans. Alex, Ben, Jakob, Jonathan, Josh, Liam, Sam and Tiarnan were all there plus 14 younger boys. Kavana and Freddie Ingles were excellent speakers and made us all laugh. Ben is always wonderful at clowning around.

When I saw Libera in Pittsburgh a couple of years ago the atmosphere was electric. The theater was packed with excited fans and so many people wanted autographs afterwards that the boys had to sign in shifts which meant that I only got half of the autographs that I wanted. This time I was determined make up for that so when we had coaxed an encore from the boys and everyone was standing up applauding I made a dash for the fellowship hall where, it had been announced, a queue would form after the show. I managed to buy a couple of things from the merchandise table and still was first in line for signatures.

While we waited for the kids to change and unwind we chatted with the church’s music director who told us that Libera wouldn’t be going home until Saturday so some fun activities had been planned for them. Someone was hosting a pool party and there was a chance of going to Six Flags Over Georgia. Fiona was ill, although you couldn’t tell it from her playing, and was flying back today.

I passed down the line with my program and all of the boys were super friendly and sweet. In Pittsburgh I got nervous and tongue-tied and forgot all of the things I wanted to say, but this time I was a lot more relaxed. I found out that they don’t actually get tired of people telling them how wonderful they are, that they are excited to be touring and meeting people, and that Josh’s little brother, Matt, will probably be on the next tour.

I also found out something that few other people know. This is a scoop. Remember, you saw it here first… Mini-Ben’s birthday is January 6th.
In other lists that I’ve seen of Libera birthdays, Ben’s was just listed as January, with the day unknown, so I asked him.
Okay, so I’m not really the first to find out, but I’m ahead of the BCSD site.

England, My England

2010-07-25T18:37:00.000-07:00

When I was ordering A Year at King's I noticed another CD from King’s College that I, somehow, didn't own so I sent for it, too. This one is a 2009 release called England, My England and it's a 2 CD set that is sort of like a greatest hits album. It sounds a lot different from the other one. Unlike the a capella singing in A Year at King's most of the pieces here are backed up with some great organ music or by the New Philharmonia Orchestra or by the Band of the Royal Military School of Music, Kneller Hall. Although, there are still some that are voices only.

Each CD has 20 recordings (9 are listed as new) for a total of more than 2 ½ hours of beauty. It starts and ends with coronation music: Zadoc the Priest (Handel) and I Was Glad (Parry). Did you know that those two pieces have been sung at every coronation since their premiers?

This is from the liner notes: “In between are motets ancient and modern - from the miniature If Ye Love Me and the architectural splendour of the 40-part Spem in Alium to William Harris’s dramatic double-choir Spenser setting Faire is the Heaven; well-known psalms sung to Anglican chant; and favourite hymns, notably All People That on Earth Do Dwell, arranged ceremonially for another coronation, that of Elizabeth II.”

There are familiar and popular pieces like Ave Verum Corpus (Byrd), When I Survey the Wondrous Cross (Rutter), Magnificat in G (Stanford) and the Hallelujah Chorus (Handel).

I was particularly taken with Requiem-Requiem Aeternum (Rutter). It’s really a wonderful piece. I think I’ve listened to it over a dozen times.

I often wonder if it's just me or does everyone experience this, where the first version that I hear, and like, of a particular song becomes my favorite, and, no matter how many other versions I hear, that first one will remain my favorite and the one I judge the others by. Abide With Me, I Vow to Thee My Country and Jerusalem are really good on this CD but I think I prefer Libera’s version of them. Of course, I may be a little prejudiced.

Anyway, great CD, great choir. I wish they would come to my neck of the woods. Maybe if I write to Dolly Parton she could invite them to Dollywood. It’s just up the road a piece. Hey, it could happen. I can just imagine Sir David Willcocks enjoying a funnel cake.

The Choir of King's College

2010-07-17T09:28:00.000-07:00

I’m sure that by now everyone knows that Libera is touring again and this time they’re coming to my part of the US. Do I have my ticket? What a silly question.

One morning, a couple of days after the tour schedule was posted, I awoke from a funny dream where I was telling people, “the British are coming, the British are coming…”.

Libera is not the only good news I’ve had lately. Today the postman delivered my new CD from the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge. This is a special CD titled A Year At King’s and it contains 16 choral works that span an entire year in the Church calendar and follow Christ‘s life from Advent to Ascension.

This is also another one of those CD’s that you should listen to with the lights dimmed and all distractions put aside. Kick back in the La-Z-boy recliner with a glass of wine and your headphones so you can really pay attention to the singing. The layering of the voices is complex and rich, and the trebles are especially sweet sounding. Once again the choir is singing without music, but they don‘t need it.

Most of the 16 pieces on this CD are new to me, and that’s usually a good thing. I like new things. Tavener’s version of Away In A Manger is really different from the version I’m used to.
Other unfamiliar works are Eccard’s When To The Temple, Wood’s Tis The Day Of Resurrection, Stanford’s Coelos Ascendit Hodie, and some others. They’re all good.

We all have a lot of versions of Allegri’s Miserere in our collections, but this one is one of the best. I’m always amazed and thrilled at how the boys hold those long, pretty notes for such a long time.

I first noticed the Choir of King’s College when I watched the Merchant-Ivory movie Maurice. There is one particular scene at King’s College that gives us a quick look inside the chapel while the boys are singing Miserere. The scene lasts less than a minute, but I usually rewind and listen to it a few times.

Here they follow up Miserere with Barber’s Agnus Dei, which is a perfect pairing. Both are very haunting, ethereal compositions that are sort of hypnotic and very relaxing.

Anyway, this is a great CD. The only thing I don’t like is that it’s one of those EMI OpenDisc CD’s. Those things annoy me when I want to listen on the computer.

I wish I could get back to a regular posting schedule. I’m trying, only I don’t have a lot of new things to write about right now. Oh, I do have a few CD’s that turned out to be not very exciting, so it’s a little hard to get enthusiastic about them. I do have some on order and I hope they will be more interesting.

When I was looking at A Year At King’s I came across another CD by them that I didn’t have in my collection so I’m writing about it next time.

2010-06-27T16:55:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of things to like about the Vienna Boys Choir. They adhere to a very high standard of quality in their music and they have been the leading ambassadors of boy choir music around the world for a long, long time. WSK is actually four choirs that are all versatile and able to sing Classical music, Folk music, Chinese songs, American standards, Rock and Pop, anything. Well, I don’t think I’ve heard them do Rap or Country but that’s probably another thing to like about them.

On top of that, they have the friendliest web site of any choir I have found. You can ask questions to their Guestbook and they will answer you, usually the very next day. I’ve written to them several times and they are always kind and informative. That can’t be said about other choirs that I’ve emailed with questions. Often I don’t receive a reply at all. I won’t mention any names (coughlibera).

It’s fun to visit their site to look at the pictures which are plentiful and updated often.

Wiener Sangerknaben has re-opened their shop after taking it off-line for updates. They are once again selling their Teddy bears in the little WSK sailor suits so I ordered one and it arrived today. It’s so cute standing on my CD shelf. I just have to keep my niece from seeing it or she will swipe it. She can be really grabby for a five-year-old.

I also received a CD that I have wanted for quite some time, I Am From Austria. This is sort of an odd CD because I don’t know how they chose these particular songs. They don’t seem to have anything in common, except that they are all very nice.

The first few are movie songs like Singing in the Rain, Over the Rainbow and Chim Chim Cheree.

Then there are some Broadway numbers like If I Were a Rich Man, from Fiddler on the Roof, Prepare Ye The Way of the Lord, from Godspell, and a stirring version of A Wonderful Day, from The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd (I love that title).

There are Folk songs, Loreley, and Danny Boy, and Classical songs like Heidneroslein, by Heinrich Werener, and the Brahms lullaby Sandmannchen.

For more modern, pop songs there is Morning Has Broken, Wir Wollen Gemeinsam Singen (Let’s Sing Together) and the title song, which I like a lot, I Am From Austria.

I also have to mention that when they sing in English their accents are adorable.

The Phoenix Boys Choir

2010-06-15T17:23:00.000-07:00

Something that always makes me laugh is an episode of the Simpsons where Homer runs into and knocks over a statue of a deer. The dialog goes:
Homer: Doh!
Lisa: A deer.
Marge: A female deer.

I was reminded of that scene recently when I got my CD from the Phoenix Boys Choir titled Drops of Golden Sun, which is, of course, the second line from that Sound of Music song Do Re Mi ... "Ray, a drop of golden sun".

These boys are pretty charming and sometimes they sound like the Vienna Boys Choir, which is probably because their director, Georg Stangelberger, worked with WSK for twelve years as Deputy Artistic Director.

The CD has a variety of songs from Hungarian folk music to Mozart’s Magic Flute. There are four Copland pieces that are nice, including one I hadn’t heard, Zion’s Walls, which they refer to as a Revivalist song.

I really like the song Cantate 2000. It’s very pretty and the harmonies are nice and smooth and it’s about twenty minutes long.

There is also The Lonely Goatherd and Do Re Mi by Rodgers and Hammerstein, and three songs by Peter Marschik. My favorite of all, on this CD is Rutter’s The Lord Bless You and Keep You, a song that isn’t sung often enough.

Two songs are by the Men of the Phoenix Boys Choir, Down in the Valley and Let All Men Sing. The first is surprising good and the second I didn’t really care for. Oh well.

A little something about the Phoenix Boys Choir: Founded in 1947, the Phoenix Boys Choir has programs featuring training in voice, music theory, and performance for boys age 7 to 14. Beginning with the Training Choir, boys can progress to Cadet, Town and Tour choirs, and upon graduation, participate in the Master’s Choir. Currently, there are approximately 250 young boys and men participating, making it one of the largest and most active boychoirs in the United States.
In 2003 they began a Neighborhood Training Choir Program. This expansion made the Phoenix Boys Choir available to all boys, regardless of where they live or their families’ financial situation.

One of their most prestigious awards was received in the summer of 2007 during the European concert tour in July. The choir participated in the Summa Cum Laude International Youth Music Festival at the renowned Musikverein in Vienna in which the Phoenix Boys Choir won first place.
Last year, the choirs appeared in more than 100 performances in Arizona and across in the Midwest United States in front of approximately 50,000 people, impacted 5,400 youth and collaborated with 164 schools.

And this post comes from Me (a name I call myself).

2010-06-08T16:01:00.000-07:00

Here is a mystery choir that I can’t seem to find out enough about. It’s the Sangerknaben Vom Wienerwald or the Boys Choir of the Vienna Woods, which sometimes is confused with the Vienna Boys Choir.

First, what I don’t know about this choir is this: Are they still around? Why don’t they have a better web site? Have they gone co-ed? Do they still record and how can we get new CD’s? Their web site seems to be down and I haven't found any CD's newer than 1999.

I keep hoping that we will hire someone from Germany at our office so I can get them to translate for me. Their German web site may have lots of information about them, I don't know, but the parts that are in English are not very helpful.

I found a CD from them on Amazon titled Romantic Vienna and it is another one of those digitally remastered recordings from Essential Media Group that is made from an old vinyl LP record. They never give the date of the original recording nor do they give us any liner notes. I went back to the web and searched again and found three other versions of this same recording with different covers and titles but with the same song listings.

The sound quality is not, of course, like modern recordings. It’s flat but at least they took out any static and background hiss. The quality of the singing, on the other hand, is very good and after awhile I stopped noticing the lack of depth. These boys sound very young and very well trained. If you like Strauss Waltzes, and who doesn’t, I think you’ll find yourself smiling at this CD. There are 19 songs starting with the 1001 Night Waltz and ending with the Zappert Polka. I love Vienna, City of My Dreams.
On all of the songs they are backed up by a great orchestra.

Now, what I do know about Sangerknaben Vom Wienerwald is this: They start training at age 6 or 7 at the choir school at the Mission House of Saint Gabriel, founded in 1921.

The boys sing church music at the high holidays in St. Gabriel and also provide 50 concert performances during the school year. The highlight of the year is the 3-5-week concert tour in the summer months.

Jesus College

2010-06-02T16:11:00.000-07:00

Last weekend my neighbor, who lives across the creek, parked his truck in line with the front of my house and turned up his radio really loud. He opened the door so the racket was aimed directly at me. I don’t know if he was trying to make a point or if he was just an idiot. As long as I kept my doors and windows closed I could barely hear it but when I went outside the din was just annoying. I needed to do some shopping so as I left I put in a CD of Libera’s Sanctus and cranked that volume up to 35. Then I rolled down the window as I slowly proceeded up my driveway. I never heard another peep out of him all weekend.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There must be something in the water in Cambridge, England that makes people want to sing, and sing well. I have looked at different directories of choirs for that area and none of them are comprehensive, but they list a lot of groups. Of course, boy choirs are what we really want to know about and as far as I can tell there are three major ones. We all know about King’s College and St. John’s College, but I was surprised to find out recently about another choir that is truly wonderful.
The Chapel Choir of Jesus College has a CD titled Sweet Spirit Comfort Me and I’ve been wearing it out. This has everything I like in a boy’s choir, good, clear trebles with notes that soar high, pretty tunes and a cohesive sound. These boys are really good.
The singing is accompanied by soft organ music that adds to the voices without trying to dominate them.

I really love all of the songs on this CD and I’m listing them here. I especially adore tracks 1 and 7. They’re achingly beautiful. Tracks 8 and 14 are organ solos.

1. A Song of Peace: Charles Villiers Stanford
2. Ubi Caritas: Simon Lole
Messe Basse 4 Movements: Gabriel Fauré
3. Kyrie
4. Sanctus
5. Benedictus
6. Agnus Dei
7. The Father's Love: Simon Lole
8. Andante in G: Charles Macpherson
9. Balulalow: Peter Warlock
10. What Songs Are These?: Richard Lloyd
11. Who can express the noble acts of the Lord?: Samuel Sebastian Wesley
12. I waited for the Lord: Felix Mendelssohn
13. Ex ore innocentium: John Ireland
14. Chorale Prelude on 'Eventide': Charles Hubert Hastings Parry
15. Magnificat in C: Christopher Robinson
16. Nunc Dimittis in C: Christopher Robinson
17. Ave Verum: Sir Edward Elgar
18. Litany to the Holy Spirit: Peter Hurford
19. Praise and Glory: Rory Boyle

The all-male choir is one of only three College choirs of its kind in Cambridge, and is highly regarded. Unlike the others (at King's and St John's) it recruits trebles from local schools rather than maintaining a choir school. They sing two of the four choral evensongs per week as well as Eucharists.
The Chapel Choir is made up of boy choristers and adult male singers while the College Choir has female undergraduates so if you are a purist (like me) who doesn’t like to mix sopranos and trebles be careful when ordering music.

On their web page they list the Choristers’ Code which I like a lot.
The Choristers' Code
When boys are admitted to the choir, it is understood that they will abide by the following rules:-
1. Support, help and praise all other choristers.
2. Respect and listen to the adults who are in charge, and do what’s asked, when it’s asked. This includes no talking or disruption during a rehearsal or service.
3. Report any bullying to an adult, always.
4. Respect and listen to the advice and instructions of the Head and Deputy Choristers.
5. Be kind and helpful to younger boys.
6. Co-operate when older boys are trying to teach and help younger ones.
7. Share food and drink, ensuring there’s enough to go round.
8. Make sure that no one is feeling left out.
9. Look after cassocks and surplices; always hang them up on your own hanger, tidily.
10. Be responsible for (and clear away) own mess.

2010-05-16T18:15:00.000-07:00

Don’t you love it when you hear a song that somehow moves you and you look to see who the artist is and that leads you to a great CD?

I heard one called, appropriately enough, A New Song, and I liked it so much I had to hear it more so I tracked it down (it wasn’t hard to do) and found out that it’s on the 2008 CD My Beloved Spake by the Winchester College Chapel Choir, or Winchester College Quiristers.

Selection number 8, A New Song, was composed by James MacMillan in 1997 and it’s a unique piece with these wonderful vocal flourishes that I won‘t even try to describe. It starts with the trebles and builds in intensity until it ends with a powerful bit of organ work.

Other pieces (I’m not supposed to call them songs) that I recognize and like are A Grateful Heart by Mary Plumstead, the German version of Brahms’ How Lovely Are Thy Dwellings, William Byrd’s Ave Verum Corpus and They That Go Down to the Sea in Ships by Herbert Sumsion (…and stagger like a drunken, stagger like a drunken, stagger like a drunken man...).
The title piece, My Beloved Spake, by Hadley takes its verses from The Song of Solomon and it’s very pretty.
There are 15 cuts on this CD and they are kind enough to give us the lyrics and a short paragraph about each piece.

One thing I really like about this album is that, unlike too many other choral CD’s such as the ones from Downside Abby, the trebles are given the spotlight with the other voices playing a supporting role.
Just like the violins are the heart of the orchestra, so I believe that the treble voices are the heart of the choir. The altos and basses are there to bring fullness and drama to the overall sound but it’s the trebles that give us goose bumps.

There is a fun video on their web site that features the choristers going about their daily prep school lives and practicing their singing.
Here’s a link:
http://wincol.remarkabledesign.co.uk/chapel-choir-video

Also, I lifted this from BCSD:
“Founded in 1382 by William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester and twice Chancellor of England, Winchester College is one of the oldest and best-known schools in Great Britain. Wykeham's original foundation included 70 scholars, and although the school has now grown tenfold in size, the same number of scholars continues to live in medieval chambers next to the College Hall and Chapel. Wykeham also made provision for 16 singing-boys called Quiristers, whose duty was to sing at Chapel services.”

2010-05-09T16:26:00.000-07:00

Do you remember an old movie called The Bishop’s Wife? Not the more modern version with Denzel Washington but the black and white version with Cary Grant and Loretta Young. It’s been years since I’ve seen it but I still remember the boys choir and how they showed up for practice and sounded great. They were just regular guys, street tough and sassy, but when they sang they seemed transformed.

Anyway, that was the Mitchell Boys Choir. They were a famous group that began in 1934 and were in lots of films, sometimes appearing as a choir and other times just on the soundtrack. Another famous film was Angels with Dirty Faces and they can be heard in White Christmas, Going My Way, Yankee Doodle Dandy and a lot more.
Someone turned me on to one of their songs so I ordered the CD The Mitchell Boys Choir Sings. This is an oldie that has been remastered from the original but it sounds pretty good, just a little fuzzy. It’s too bad that this reproduction doesn’t say anything about the date of the original recording because I would really like to know. By the haircuts I would guess it to be from the early ‘60s.

The songs are pretty corny, the sort of thing that Aunt Bea would have liked back in Mayberry. It opens with an Italian song Come Back to Sorrento and goes on to The Happy Wanderer (Val-deri,Val-dera), Oh, What a Beautiful Morning and That’s an Irish Lullaby.
Appropriately for Mother’s Day there is That Wonderful Mother of Mine.
The song I like best is When You Wish Upon a Star, from Disney’s Pinocchio. They sing it with that old fashion warbling falsetto that you hear in other Disney music like the songs from Snow White. I smile whenever I hear it.

“Bob Mitchell was a musical prodigy who got his start as a 12-year-old in 1924 playing the organ at the Strand Theater in Pasadena for silent movies… Mitchell and the choir were featured in a special short documentary film, Forty Boys and a Song (1941), which described the choir and showed the students rehearsing at their school desks as Mitchell provided instruction. The film was nominated for an Academy Award (for Best Short Subject, One-reel).”

His boy’s choir also recorded with Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra and he received several illustrious honors including a Silver Medal from Princess Grace (Kelly) of Monaco, a Medal from the Pope and the Boy Scouts of America.
The group was also known by other names such as the St. Brendan's Boy's Choir, St. Brendan's Church Choir and the Mitchell Choirboys.

Robert Mitchell died on July 4, 2009.

Downside Abbey

2010-05-01T16:15:00.000-07:00

I don’t know if anyone is still interested in this blog since I seemed to have abandoned it. I hope you are. I usually try to not talk about me except as it relates to my experience with this music but I do want to quickly say that I have lost 5 pounds and my garden is growing nicely. I think I have averted the looming need to buy larger trousers so I don’t feel guilty about sitting down again to write a bit.

It’s been a couple of years since I stumbled into this ancient and mysterious world of boy choir music and began an exploration that has been both satisfying and fun. When I started blogging about it I was pretty ignorant. I still am, but maybe a little less so than before. Some very nice people helped me learn a lot with their comments and explanations of things with which I had no experience. Of course, I’ve only scratched the surface and that is why I laugh when I look back at some earlier posts and see how opinionated and downright cheeky I sounded at times. I have decided to revisit some of the albums that I was critical of to see if they look better now.

I had a pretty tepid response to the 1997 CD Gregorian Moods by the Monks and Choirboys of Downside Abbey so I listened again and… I love it. In fact, I like it so much that I ordered their previous 1996 CD The Abbey. What I failed to notice before is the smooth and cohesive singing from this choir. It puts me in mind of a pipe organ, each voice like a pipe, each unique but made of the same metal, all one unit.

I really like the cathedral echo in every piece that makes me feel as if I have traveled back in time, taking refuge inside the walls of cool stone to let the magic voices lift my spirit. There really is something magical about it all.

Most of the pieces are plainchant, such as Ave Maris Stella, Viderunt Omnes and Sub Tuum Praesidium. They are alternated with pieces by Byrd, Charles Wood, Gabrieli and others. Most are sung by men’s voices but the best ones include the boys. I stand by my original statement that there should be fewer monks and more choirboys, but the men do sound magnificent.

It seems odd that there are only these two recordings from the Monks and Choirboys of Downside Abbey. I’ve been to their web shop and there are no others except for a couple of CD’s of organ music and another choir of some sort. They do have the section called Ask A Monk so maybe I’ll ask them to do something new.

2010-04-01T02:22:00.000-07:00

High up in the Swiss Alps, tucked into a remote valley, is the monastery of Saint Bernard. The roads up the mountain are only open for a short time each summer and access to the monastery requires dogged determination, but in spite of their isolation the monastery manages to maintain a well known choir.

The Choir of Saint Bernard’s has met with howling success all around the world.

Their latest CD is a compilation of popular tunes like How Much Is That Doggie In The Window, Puppy Love, and Who Let The Dogs Out.

Their previous mega-hit album was a collection of Pooch-ini arias.

The choir has toured extensively and received lots of favorable reviews. However, there was the one unfortunate incident that occurred on their last tour to New York when their musical director, showing very poor judgment, took them to see a musical play, Cats.

Okay, obviously that was my tribute to April 1st. I’m afraid I haven’t been very good about posting lately and that is due largely to my doctor’s orders that I spend less time on the internet. Since my operation I’ve put on weight and now that winter is past and the weather is getting wonderfully inviting I’ve decided to limit my internet time to one half hour per day. I’m going to be out in the yard and garden as much as possible and getting off my… chair.
I’ll still be posting now and then, whenever I find something I really like so check back.

Also, I had planned to visit Washington DC on April 18th to see the Choir of New College, Oxford and the Choir of St. Thomas, New York who will be doing a concert at the National Cathedral. Something has come up and I won’t be able to make it so I have a ticket that I will give to anyone who would like it, no charge. It’s a shame to let it go to waste so if you think you could use it, let me know. It’s general admission and is sure to be a great show.

Peace

2010-03-16T15:41:00.000-07:00

For the past several days I’ve been listening to Libera’s new CD Peace and I’ve been trying to figure out just what I think about it. I hate to say it, but it’s not my favorite Libera album. It’s nice, of course, very nice and pretty. It has those special Libera harmonies that we all love. The music and the singing are both just great.

I guess it’s just that none of the songs really stand out from the others. Even though I’ve played it a dozen times I still can only name a couple of them. All of the songs have a similar, slow tempo, which I suppose is intended to make us feel peaceful, like the title says.
I expected a few dramatic choruses like in Far Away or You Were There. It would have been nice to hear something powerful like Sanctus or a fun song like Orinoco Flow.

My favorite song is Exsultate which is an Irish sounding tune by Ben Philipp. He handles the bouncing rhythms like a pro.
Daniel Fontannaz sings a good version of Panis Angelicus.
I’m sure everyone has heard Sanctissima by now so you know how pretty it is. The others are similar.

As I said, all of the songs are pretty and it’s fun to hear the new boys getting a turn in the spotlight. There are new soloists but Josh, Tom and Ben are still going strong, too.
One interesting thing about the CD is seeing who is no longer listed as being part of Libera. The Cole brothers are gone and so is Zac Lockett, Joe Snelling and Michael V.
There are 26 choristers shown on the back side of the folding liner notes and their names are listed inside but I have no idea which boy is which. I think we need another DVD so they can introduce themselves again.

This is another Opendisc CD from EMI and it is supposed to give us access to other Libera information but my six-year-old computer won’t connect to it. My office computer tries to but the company filters prevent it. Maybe something there identifies the new boys. I suppose I’ll never know.

I'm sure everyong has their copy by now but in case someone doesn't, buy the CD and support Libera. You’ll like it.

The Toronto Boys Choir

2010-03-09T16:17:00.000-08:00

Springtime is coming fast and I’m ready. I volunteered again with the Big Brothers, Big Sisters organization and everything has been approved so now I’m just waiting for them to find a little friend for me.

I’ve already got a lot of outings planned, like the aquarium, picnics in the mountains, the amusement park and stuff like that. It’s going to be so much more fun with a boy along to laugh with me.

The way things are today he will probably be into rap music but I have a plan to steer him in a more classical direction. I have a new CD called Mr. Bach Comes to Call. It’s part of a series of CD’s for kids that includes “Vivaldi’s Ring of Mystery”, “Beethoven Lives Upstairs” and “Mozart’s Magical Voyage”. There are several other CD‘s, as well.

The Bach one starts out with the NASA technician counting down the first Voyager launch, the first of two where they sent a craft into space carrying information about the Earth and it’s people. Besides the many pictures there was music, including several pieces by Bach.

On this CD a young girl is bored by practicing the piano so Bach magically appears and gives her some encouragement and demonstrations. He brings along some choir boys from the Toronto Boys Choir.
Bach talks about his life, his music and his family in a very interesting way and introduces her to some of his most popular music.
The boys are charming and it’s fun to hear them talk but they only sing one song and that’s the last one, “We Hasten, Cantata #78”. They do it so well it makes me want to hear more.

I can’t find out much about this choir and I have to assume that they have disbanded, which is too bad.

BCSD lists two albums, the Toronto Boys Choir, Volume 2 (1976) and the Toronto Boys Choir, Volume 3 (1979). They were founded in 1976 so it seems odd that there would be a Volume 1 and Volume 2 in the same year but it must so. Both of these albums are Jewish music and I would have to guess that Volume 1 was, also.

Interestingly, there is another album shown, “The Toronto Boys Choir-The Hanson Singers”, which is a traditional Christmas album.

I did find a website whose writer reports hearing from a former member of this choir and who says that some of the boys suffered abuse at the hands of Ned Hanson, who is now deceased.

All that BCSD has to say about them is this. “The Toronto Boys Choir, founded in 1976, allows boys to participate in a variety musical experiences, ranging from the most demanding classical repertoir and specially commissioned new works to cameo roles in SCTV and MGM movie production in Toronto.”

Dresdner Kreuzchor

2010-03-06T18:58:00.000-08:00

I knew I would have something better to write about. I do hate having negative things to say about choirs and CD’s so this post is more upbeat.

This 2005 CD is by that famous German choir, Der Dresdner Kreuzchor, and it’s called “Volkslieder” (folksongs), which is great for people who enjoy folk music, like me. There are 25 songs and many of them are quite short. One is only 61 seconds.

I want to quote a little something from the liner notes, “People kit themselves out with surround sound in their living rooms, CD and radio in their cars, MP3 players as they walk about, to be fed with synthetic sounds and perfect orchestral balance. Where can we find space for the original popular song, invented a long time ago, somewhere else and in some seemingly distant context, simply passed on from one singer to the next? More to the point: who can still sing such a song?”

The answer to that last question is Der Dresdner Kreuzchor. The writers go on to talk about the lyrics but the lyrics don’t mean much to those of us who don’t speak German. All of these songs are in German and are sung without instrumental accompaniment and it doesn’t matter at all. They are still really nice. I even recognized a couple of them, “Feinsliebchen” and “Der Mond ist Afugegangen”.

There are deeper, more mature voices on this CD but they are kept in the background, which is as it should be. The focus is on the treble voices. Altogether it’s a very rich sound and a lot of fun to listen to and another good thing about it is that, because it’s in German, I can’t sing along and ruin it.

The Dresdner Kreuzchor is from Dresden, Germany and goes back more than seven hundred years which makes it one of the oldest boys' choirs in Europe. It was founded as a school for Latin at the present Kreuzkirche (Church of the Holy Cross).
The choir has 150 members between the ages of 9 and 19. They perform mostly as a mixed boys' and men's choir, the number of singers depending on the works being performed. For guest performances, about 80 singers go on tour. Most of the boys live in a boarding school.

Back at last

2010-03-04T18:50:00.000-08:00

I hope you haven’t given up on me. Finally the big project at work is over and out the door. We had to work for three weeks without a day off and anywhere from ten to fourteen hours each day. I was exhausted.

Now I have the time to get back to the things I enjoy, like blogging, but there is another little problem. I don’t have any good music to write about. I’ve been listening to the CD’s that I received at Christmas and frankly many of them are sort of boring. I found these CD’s on Amazon and I had to search a lot to find music by groups that I don’t already have in my collection, because I like to sample new music. Unfortunately there isn’t always a good selection and I’ve wound up with some that I just don’t enjoy very much.

Two albums in particular have let me down. The first is one that I suspected I wouldn’t like but I decided to give it a try anyway. It’s the St. Thomas Choir of Men and Boys album “Most Sacred Banquet”, and the selections here are just too high-toned for my taste. I’m probably being cynical when I say this, but sometimes I think that choir directors choose music only to show that they have sophisticated tastes. Unfortunately, I’m not sophisticated enough so Poulenc’s “Exultate Deo” and Messiaen’s “O Sacrum Convivium” make me yawn. I find it hard to pay attention to Tournemire’s “Cinq Improvisations for Organ” without becoming distracted by my surroundings.

The second CD is “Favorites From the Past” by the Philadelphia Boys Choir and Chorale. This is a live recording that would have benefited from some studio polishing. It sounds like the soloists are standing too far from the microphone and some songs like “God Bless America” and “My Country Tis of Thee” seem sort of unmelodic. “Ezekiel Saw the Wheel” is an old spiritual but here it’s lacking soul. “Philadelphia Pride” on the other hand is very nicely done so maybe show tunes are a better choice for this director.

I have to emphasize that there is nothing at all wrong with the singing on either of these albums. The boys are very talented and professional and they sound like violins. I fault the directors and arrangers.

However, don’t take my word for it. These may be the most wonderful albums in the world and the problem may be that I’m just tired. I prefer pretty music and I don’t hear it here.

The good news is that I’ve got new stuff coming in the next day or two so I will be posting something fun and interesting very shortly.

A Good Year

2010-02-13T15:43:00.000-08:00

We are nearing the end of a major project at work and I 've been stuck with a lot of overtime every day and no days off. I'm only mentioning it to explain the lack of posts lately. I usually try to upload something every 3 or 4 days and I'm behind. Anyway, this is a special one.

February 14th is my one year anniversary of blogging. It’s appropriate because it’s Valentine’s day and I love boy choirs (in a perfectly wholesome and appropriate way, of course).

When I began this blog I didn’t really know much about this music but I’ve learned some things this year, both by researching and with the help of kind readers.

Also, I have collected a lot of CD’s this year and I’ve noticed that there are some albums that I listen to more than others so I thought I would offer my top ten list of CD’s. This is not a value judgment, I’m not saying that one choir or one album is better than the rest. This is only a list of the ones that I find that I play the most often. In no particular order:

1. Angel Voices - Libera (2006)
    A classic recording that won them tons of new fans all over the world

2. Hymn - The American Boychoir (1995)
    Some of the prettiest singing I have ever heard.

3. Heavenly Voices - The Boys of King’s College Choir, Cambridge (2004)
    A very powerful and dynamic album

4. Ave Maria - The Vienna Boys Choir (1998)
    This shows why this choir is the most famous choir in the world

5. Dennis and Polskie Slowiki (2001)
    This boy had one of the greatest voices of our time

6. Requiem - Boys Air Choir (1997)
    Very haunting

7. Agnus Dei, Music of Inner Harmony - The Choir of New College, Oxford (1996)
    It’s what you would expect angels to sound like

8. Will Your Anchor Hold? - Ely Cathedral Choir (1999)
    A fun and touching collection of music

9. Favorite Hymns - The Choir of the Abbey School, Tewkesbury (2001)
    Very moving and sweet

10. Les Choristes en Concert - Les Petits Chanteurs de St Marc (2005)
      It’s got girls in it but Jean Baptiste Maunier makes up for it

11. The Sublime Treble Voice of James Rainbird - James Rainbird (1987)
      I’m still in love with his voice

Okay, so I couldn’t stop at ten. I could have mentioned the Yeshiva Boys Choir and a few more. It's all good.

Writer's Block

2010-02-09T18:23:00.000-08:00

I have been working on a post for a popular choir and it has turned out to be too much work. I finally realized it's because I really don't care much for this CD. Since I can't say something nice I won't say anything about it at this time. Maybe it's a lovely CD and it's my mood that's making it seem unlikable. Maybe I'll like it better at another time so I'll save it. The name will be secret for now in case I hurt someone's feelings.

I've been putting in a lot of overtime at the office for the past week and that has really gotten in the way of my writing, but I have a special post that is almost ready.
Meanwhile, I just wanted to mention this. The Pacific Boychoir took home a Grammy award this year for their participation in the recording of "Mahler: Symphony No.8; Adagio From Symphony No. 10". Two other choirs shared the award, The San Francisco Girls Chorus and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus.

Their competition included the Chattanooga Boys Choir who sang on the recording "Ravel: L’Enfant Et Les Sortileges".

So it was a pretty big year for boy choirs. That’s really encouraging and I would like to give a big cheer for both of them.
I'll be back in a day or two.
Thanks.

The Palestrina Choir

2010-02-01T17:13:00.000-08:00

I would like to be like Ebenezer Scrooge after his transformation. Dickens said of Scrooge, “he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge”. I would like to keep it well too, and keep it all year long.

And that’s my excuse this time for plugging another Christmas CD.

Tonight I’m listening to Christmas with The Palestrina Choir. They are, for some reason, the only Irish choir whose album I have. The Palestrina Choir is from Dublin and from the pictures I have to say they are about the cutest choir I’ve ever seen with their big smiles and blue cassocks.

This CD has twenty-five carols and even though many of them are standard Christmas fare they are done with unique arrangements that make them refreshingly different. I Saw Ships is really nice and original.

It’s always fun for me to hear songs sung in Irish and there are some here. Traditional Irish songs like Suantrai na Maighdine (The Virgin Mary’s Lullaby) and Oiche Nollag (Christmas Night) and a few others. I’m glad they included the translations of the titles and lyrics in the CD booklet. It’s fun to read along.

They have a charming soloist named Christopher Graham, who was 13 and had been with the choir for 7 years when the CD was recorded in 2008.
For music they have David Grealy on the organ and Andreja Malir playing the harp. It’s all very beautiful.

I haven’t found anything about the name of the choir but I assume that they take it from the composer Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina whose sacred works had such an influence on Catholic church music.

The choir is from Saint Mary’s Pro-Cathedral and that term confused me. I finally found out that it just means “acting” cathedral. It seems that Dublin has two cathedrals but neither is Catholic, both are Church of Ireland.
I’m still not clear on all of it but it doesn’t matter to me. The music is what I care about and this music is great. I’m going to try and get their other CD The Bells Of the Angelus.

One little bit of humor that I noticed on the album cover is that there is a robin sitting atop the word Christmas and he’s all puffed up to sing. He doesn’t see the snowball that the artist has drawn flying straight at him. Those boys.

The Boys of St Thomas

2010-01-28T18:51:00.000-08:00

Somehow I wound up with several new Christmas CD’s during the holidays and I suppose I could put them aside until next December rolls around or I could just go ahead and talk about them now.

Oh, why wait?

This one is from a very famous choir, Thomanerchor Leipzig, and it’s titled Weihnachtssingen der Thomaner, which just means Christmas With the Boy Choristers of St Thomas.
The good thing is that with only a couple of exceptions these songs are not particularly Christmasy to me. The titles and lyrics are in German so the only ones I recognize are Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht and In Dulci Jubilo (oh, I suppose that one is in Latin). The other songs have titles like Macht Hoch Die Tur by Max Reger, Ubers Gebirg Maria Geht by Johann Eccard, and Aus Hartem Weh Op.7a by Willy Sendt.

I don’t “sprechen sie Deutsch” but I get the feeling that none of those are translations of Jingle Bell Rock so I can’t really say much about the songs except that they are really pretty.
The first piece and the last, Gelaut Der Thomaskirche Zu Leipzig, consist of the warm tones of the bells of St. Thomas church. Very nice.

The boys and young men sing without accompaniment, and they sound great. Interestingly, there are three numbers that are organ only without voices, and they are also very pretty.

There are 23 songs but at a total time of 49 minutes the CD is over too quickly.

Thomanerchor Leipzig has been around for almost 800 years. They were closely associated with Johann Sebastian Bach but had been in existance for a long time when Bach came along as music director. In the year 1212 Otto IV confirmed the foundation of an Augustiner monastery dedicated to St.Thomas. The monastery included a school to prepare youngsters for a clerical career, to which boys from outside the monastery were also admitted. From the beginning, singing for the liturgy was part of the education.
In the last century alone, the school has survived two World Wars, and the Communist regime, which permitted many of its ancient traditions to continue, unbroken.

The children get up at six in the morning, have several hours of choir practice every day, as well as individual singing and instrumental lessons and, of course, ordinary school lessons. For concerts they always dress in the tradition dark-blue sailor-style uniforms.
I love this bit from BCSD, “Scruffiness is strictly prohibited. The smaller boys are inspected to make sure that their fingernails are not dirty and nothing is bulging out of their pockets.”

Choral Evensong

2010-01-24T16:21:00.000-08:00

I wonder how many people, like me, enjoy Anglican cathedral music but have never been to a service? I’m not really a church-going type of Christian. When I was a child I had to go to a church where an old man pounded his fist, stomped his feet and screamed that we were all going to burn in Hell forever. I used to hide under my mother’s arm and cry. My later experiences did little to let me see church as a ‘feel good’ experience so I drifted away from organized religion and developed my own ideas and moral code.

Now, Sunday mornings usually find me praying to Saint Mattress, but if there was a cathedral with a boys choir near here I would certainly attend Evensong services. I suppose it‘s okay to go just to hear the singing.
It would be good to know what the services are about, though, so in case I ever get there I decided to learn something about Evensong services.

For a great many of us Evensong has not been a part of our experience so I would like to say a little about it in case others may be curious too. My research source is the internet, not direct experience, so Anglicans may laugh if I goof anything up.

Evening prayer is celebrated in the late afternoon or evening and is commonly known as Evensong, especially when it is sung. The Catholics have something similar called Vespers.
The service usually, but not always, consists of these elements:
An introduction, including a confession and the Lord’s Prayer.
Preces - a series of verses and responses
One or more Psalms
Two readings from the Bible followed by the Magnificat (Latin for Magnify, Stanford’s Magnificate in G is my favorite) and Nunc Dimittis (also called the Song of Simeon from Luke 2:29–32, named after its first words in Latin. It starts out, “Lord, now you let your servant depart in peace according to your word.”)
Then the Apostles Creed, a chant which starts “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth”
Then several prayers and responses, an anthem and some spoken prayers.
One thing you will hear often in Evensong is the Gloria Patri, that verse that says, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost:
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.” I hear that on a lot of the Anglican hymns that I have.

I picked up a CD titled Choral Evensong From Tewkesbury Abbey that I like. When it was announced that the Abbey School would close, they decided that a CD should be recorded of the Evensong service which the choir had sung four times a week for the last thirty two years. I recommend ear phones for this one in order to have a more intimate experience.

The service opens with Howells’ Master Tallis’s Testament, a truly great organ piece, and then Sancte Deus by Tallis.
Psalm 91 by Alcock and Psalm 131 by Peterson are followed by Gabriel Jackson’s Magnificat and his Nunc Dimittis which are both stunning.
The hymn is The Day Thou Gavest by St. Clement, Descant: John Scott.

It goes without saying that the singing is magnificent all the way through this CD. There is a list of choristers in the liner notes and near the bottom of the trebles is Andrew Swait.

Music as Meditation

2010-01-21T15:07:00.000-08:00

I once took classes in Transcendental Meditation at a TM center in Atlanta and I was surprised at just how well it works. After only a few tries I was able to get into a very still, peaceful place inside my mind. With practice I found I could stay there for longer periods.
I practiced it daily for a while but then somehow life sort of got in the way and I had less and less time to devote to it. I grew rusty, but I still remember my mantra.

For the past year or so I’ve been working on my own form of TM that involves boy choir music. Here’s how it works.

Find some time to be alone, just you and your stereo or your iPod. Take off your shoes and lie on the sofa or bed, or sink into your favorite chair with your feet up.
Turn on your favorite boy choir. Maybe you’re in the mood for some classical music from the Vienna Boys or some spiritual pop from Libera. Some hymns from the American Boychoir would be nice or, my favorite, that ambient, ethereal music on the album ‘Agnus Dei, Music of Inner Harmony’ from the Choir of New College, Oxford. It works with all sorts of boy choir music (although, I doubt it would be very effective with country or rap).

Now, close your eyes and relax. Free your spirit; clear your mind of all thoughts. Just hear the music, follow the music, but don’t think about the music, just go with it. Go like a boat on the ocean, like a kite on the wind, let it bear you aloft, feel the movement, the sensations.

The song is a stream that wants to carry you along through swift water and still pools. The voices are the sunlight that sparkles and dazzles your eyes, they are the deep, dark shadows that lure you with their mystery, they are the rhythmic ripples that form patterns around you. Float along freely, and don’t be afraid when you feel the music touching your very soul with its soft, cool fingers.

If you find that stray thoughts are trying to intrude just ignore them and switch your focus back to the music. Eventually it will become easier to do. Don’t go to sleep now. Just hear the music and drift along, letting your mind sink deeper like a rock in a pond seeking the bottom.

This is the way to enlightenment, my children. Now… send me all your money.

2010-01-17T16:18:00.000-08:00

I’ve mentioned before that I like the Yeshiva Boys’ Choir so I thought I would check out a couple of other Jewish choirs and see how they stack up. I don’t mean to critique these choirs, I’m not enough of an authority to give a meaningful review, but I did want to just briefly describe their music.

Now what I know about Jewish music is what I learned from the movies and television, two sources that usually have little to do with reality. The Miami Boys Choir has a 1993 CD, The 3rd Annual Miami Experience, that may or may not be representative of their other music. They have tons of recordings but I really didn’t care for this one at all.

The blurb in the liner notes says, “Remember ‘Modeh Ani’ and ‘Shsulim’? Remember ‘Horeini’?” Well, of course I don’t remember those songs but if they sound like the rest of the stuff on this album I don’t think I missed much.
Listening to these songs was like being at a Jewish wedding (the ones I’ve seen on TV) where people dance in a circle to old eastern European music, the kind that has an accordion in the band. It’s a music that’s enjoyed by a great many people but it just wasn’t what I was looking for.
Usually I can focus on the boys’ voices, which I will admit are fine, and overlook everything else, but this was too much for me to handle.

Then I moved on to the mystery choir, The Shaleves Boys’ Choir and their 2002 recording Precious Tears. I call them a mystery choir because I haven’t been able to find out anything about them. The liner notes list the songs and the choir members but there is nothing about the choir itself. Where are they from? Why are there no pictures? How long have they been around? What does Shaleves mean? I searched the internet and came up blank on this one. The only interesting thing I see is that they have a list of people whom they say ‘special thanks to’ and Yossi Newman (presumably from the Yeshiva Boy’s Choir) is mentioned.

The music is nice, more modern and pop than the Miami album and, for me, much more listenable. The songs are in Hebrew except for the title song, Precious Tears, which is in English and seems to refer to Israel, “A nation on her own in this world she stands alone, danger and fear from all sides…”.
The boys sing wonderfully well and probably put on a good show.

Still, for my money, I prefer the Yeshiva kids. Their songs are just prettier, their singing happier

Here’s a bit about the Miami Boys’ Choir: “Formed in 1977 in Miami Beach, Florida, by Yerachmiel Begun, the Miami Boys Choir was part of a larger surge in popularity of Jewish choral music. Made up of Orthodox boys from the Miami area, the choir began recording and performing almost immediately.
After releasing the first few albums, Begun moved MBC to Manhattan although he retained the "Miami" in the name of the group. After its move to New York, the Miami Boys Choir has released a new album nearly every year with boys primarily coming from the New York area.”

EEK!

2010-01-13T17:59:00.000-08:00

The Boy Choir and Soloist Directory is closing down on the 19th of this month. That’s a bigger disaster for me than losing the Boys’ Choir of Harlem.

Who am I going to plagiarize, I mean borrow, information from now?

-----------------------------------------

One CD that I wanted to get for quite a while is Andrew Swait’s Song’s of Innocence, but I held back because I read an unflattering review of it. I shouldn’t have worried though, because I knew that Swait has an outstanding voice and talent. He couldn’t do anything bad, nor has he.

I’ll admit, this CD is a little different than the music I’m accustomed to hearing from boys. It’s more sophisticated in its style and song selections, but I like it.

This is another of those albums that deserve to be listened to quietly, without distractions, so the vocals can be savored and studied. Andrew’s voice has changed a bit since his previous year’s Choirboys CD, The Carols Album. The treble quality is still in full force and now it’s richer, more refined. Obviously he’s been studying hard and learning, it’s paying off nicely.

Swait’s voice is not the only one on here. James Bowman, the famous counter-tenor, sings duet with him on several numbers and his voice is a lot like Andrew’s, only more mature. They weave a pretty tapestry together.

I thought that the title, Songs of Innocence, may have been taken from William Blake’s book by the same name and because both have a “Cradle Song”, but then I saw that the words were different so I guess I was wrong.

The liner notes don’t mention Blake at all. They are pretty thorough in mentioning everyone else, though. There is a ton of useful and interesting information in the booklet about Britten, Barber, Ives and other great composers. There are 25 songs and only a few were familiar to me.

One really interesting thing is that they feature some songs by Britten that have not been recorded before, such as The Owl, Witches’ Song and The Rainbow, written when the composer was only a little older than Andrew Swait.

I won’t go into the songs much (the list can be found on the internet) except to say that I really like The Slow Train by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann. The melody is pretty and a couple of verses are spoken instead of sung, like a conductor announcing the stations. It’s fun.

Also I should add that the music on this CD is by pianist Andrew Plant and is quite excellent.

Andrew Swait began his musical training at a very early age and at 6 he went to the Abbey School, Tewkesbury. “At 7 he became one of the youngest to receive a surplice at the final initiation by Michael Tavener (then Vicar of Tewkesbury Abbey) of probationers into the choir.”

He also plays piano and cello. What a kid.

A Good Idea

2010-01-10T14:39:00.000-08:00

I would like to think that the success of Libera shows that the public’s interest in boy choir music is growing. All of the concerts I have been to have been standing room only and that includes some pretty big spaces so it seems that there must be a lot of fans out there. I hope it all means that we will have boy choirs to mesmerize us for years to come.

If you scroll down on this page you’ll notice that since I installed the stat counter last year we have had over 10,000 visits and that’s not bad for a small, amateur blog. I take it as another encouraging sign of hope for the future.

Did you know that BCSD, the Boy Choir and Soloist Directory, lists 817 boy choirs from around the world? And that’s not all of them. I wish I could hear each and every one of those choirs and have Cds in my collection from them all, but it’s hopeless. I suppose one could begin alphabetically and attempt to gather them up. It would take a long time and a lot of money. There are 44 choirs that begin with “A” and I only have three of them, The Abbey School at Tewkesbury, the American Boychoir and the Atlanta Boy Choir.

Following that path I might never get to Zwettler Sangerknaben and Zwols Jongenskoor.
So far, I’ve taken a shotgun approach to my collecting, usually not aiming at a particular target and just picking up whatever comes near. Unless it’s a choir like Libera or the American Boychoir and then I search for specific albums.

Although Amazon has been my main source for music, they usually make me wade through the same pages every time I want to see what’s available and that can take a lot of time.
I’ve considered buying from each choir’s shop but so many of them don’t have English translations of their web pages and my foreign language skills are poor so that cuts out a lot of choirs. Also a lot of them don’t seem to have shops at all.

What we really need is a central clearing house that specializes in boy choir and boy soloist music. We need a catalogue, especially of the new releases from choirs everywhere. So I’m asking for volunteers, people who know about business and the internet and who are multi-lingual and who enjoy this sort of music. A person like that shouldn’t be too hard to find so step up and let’s get something going. Who's with me?

Pie Jesu

2010-01-06T16:44:00.000-08:00

A friend recently pointed out that there are different versions of Pie Jesu by different composers, a fact I should have known, but I just didn‘t really think about it. I knew that I had other Pie Jesu versions that sounded different but for some reason I assumed that the music directors were just playing with the arrangements. Sometimes I don’t pay attention. When I took a closer look at my collection I immediately saw the differences.

Some of the ones I have are Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Pie Jesu by Solvguttne and The Choirboys; John Rutter’s version by Anthony Way and Dara Carroll, Faure’s arrangement by St. John’s College, the Vienna Boys’ Choir, Polski Slowiki and others. St. John’s College has one by Lili Boulanger.

The single best CD for this motet is Requiem by the Boys Air Choir who give us versions by John Rutter, Gabriel Fauré, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Maurice Duruflé so it’s easy to compare them. I’ve said before that this is one of the very best Cd’s I have.

There are more Pie Jesu compositions out there, too but after re-listening to all that I have of them I have to say that while I love them all I really find Rutter’s version the most moving, especially when Connor Burrowes sings it. I think it’s the way the choir responds after each verse and that long high note in the second verse that thrills me.

I’ll quote a little something from Wikipedia here, “Pie Jesu is a motet derived from the final couplet of the Dies Irae and often included in musical settings of the Requiem Mass. …The best known is the Pie Jesu from Fauré's Requiem; Camille Saint-Saëns said of it, ‘just as Mozart’s is the only Ave Verum Corpus, this is the only Pie Jesu‘.”

The funny thing about that is that Saint-Saëns died in 1921 so he would never have heard the great works by Rutter, Webber and Duruflé. If he had, he would have said the same thing I did, that John Rutter’s Pie Jesu, sung by Connor Burrowes, is totally awesome.

2010-01-02T16:35:00.000-08:00

There is a town 52 Km south of Munich Germany called Bad Tölz . Oddly there doesn’t seem to be a Good Tölz anywhere on the map, but there is something really good that comes from Bad Tölz and that is Der Tölzer Knabenchor.

This CD (that Santa brought) Halleluja - Festliche Musik, appears to be a re-release of a 1972 album and it has a marvelous soloist by the name of Hans Buchhierl. The songs on here are popular classical standards from Handel, Bach, Haydn Mozart, etc and they are wonderful renditions.

In the movie Shrek there is a scene where princess Fiona is singing in the forest with a bluebird who tries to match her increasingly high notes until it finally explodes. I often think of that scene when I hear Hallelujah by Handel. You know the part where the boys sing “King of Kings… and Lord of Lords,” then they sing it again even higher and a third time going higher still and holding it. Amazing. This CD opens with that song and the boys really do reach the heights.

You should hear Hans Buchhierl on the second song, Ombra Mai Fu, also by Handel. It is such a moving melody and his voice is like crystal, clear and lovely even when he reaches down for some lower notes. Hans has some delightfully surprising nuance and skill in his singing.

Besides Ave Maria (Bach), Panis Angelicus and Ave Verum Corpus, I was familiar with most of the songs here even though I didn’t recognize their German names.

Tölzer Knabenchor is one of the great choirs of the world with an almost unbelievable number of recordings.
I’ll be listening to this CD a lot.

Once again I lifted a bit of information about the choir from BCSD: “In 1956... Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden founded the Tölzer Knabenchor in Bad Tölz. The wide musical range of the choir encloses vocal music of the Middle Ages up to modernity. Since 1970, there is a section in Munich with its own studio in Munich-Solln. At the moment, nearly 80% of the choir members come from Munich, although Bad Tölz remains an important center. The universal training of the choir members is based on the discipline accepted voluntarily by each boy. Creativity, spontaneity and the joy of singing are as important as a highly developed technique."

2009-12-29T19:10:00.000-08:00

Thank goodness Christmas is finally over. I’m so tired of being good and not pouting. Now that the presents have been opened I can relax again.

One thing I got was the 1997 Choir of New College, Oxford CD titled Early One Morning, Music From Past Times, For Our Time. This is an excellent collection of folk songs, mostly from the UK, that have been enriched by these powerful choral voices. Most of the songs are well-known, even by me, such as Linden Lea, Loch Lomond, Greensleeves and The Minstrel Boy.

One really good song is Londonderry Air. (Someone once told me that he used to think the title of the song was London Derriere, a song about a Parisian hooker in London. I told him he was thinking of the story A Tail of Two Cities.)

The choir performs this song without words, just ‘ooh-ing and aah-ing’. I wish I knew what that type of singing is called, there must be a word for it. It isn’t humming yet there are no words, either.

Anyway, I realized something when listening to this song, that words can get in the way. If you are listening to the interplay of beautiful voices then it can be really nice to not be distracted by the lyrics so you can concentrate more on just the sounds. It’s similar, for me, with foreign language songs. Since I don’t understand the words I don’t pay as much attention to them. They become just sounds.

The director, Edward Higginbottom, has included a couple of American spirituals, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and Steal Away and also Shenandoah, all which are really pretty.

Some of the other songs are Early One Morning, Waly, Waly, The Skye Boat Song and more.

It’s funny that the credits list Christopher Hughes as the organ scholar because that seems to indicate that the organ is present somewhere on the album, but I can’t hear it. The choir is singing without music, as far as I can tell. They really don’t need any accompaniment.
This is another great CD from the Choir of New College, but I doubt they could ever make a bad one.

God Bless Us, Every One!

2009-12-23T14:53:00.000-08:00

In case you had not noticed yet, Libera has a short Christmas greeting video on their home page. We get to see some of the new faces in the group, but brace yourself for the shock when Josh and Liam speak their names. They sound like Barry White. Okay, maybe not quite that deep but they’re definitely not trebles any more.
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The boys’ and girls’ choirs from Manchester, England are being closed down, according to the article I’ve linked here. And as if that was not tragedy enough, the Boys’ Choir of Harlem is also saying good-bye. Lack of funding seems to be the problem for all of them. I hope this recession ends soon, before more is lost.

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1186884_fury_as_cash_blow_silences_young_choirs
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Santa came early this year and piled a bunch of gifts under my tree, but the darn things all say, “Do Not Open Until Christmas” so it may be a next week before I post again. I need to see what new CD’s are waiting to be unwrapped on Friday morning.

Meanwhile, I have something special. For Christmas I want to talk about a Jewish choir. I’ve mentioned before about how much I like the Yeshiva Boys’ Choir. I got curious about the faces behind all of those distinctive and interesting voices so I got their DVD titled YBC Live.

Something I always think of when I hear these guys is “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord…”. These boys smile as they belt out the words, loudly and with confidence. There are several soloists that take turns at the mike during each song and they are all really cute kids but the most charming one is also the smallest boy. He may be three feet tall but I’m not so sure about that. The director, Eli (pronounced Ellie) Gerstner introduced him as his little brother Yaakov and he has a great Munchkin voice that makes me grin whenever he reaches over his head to take the mike off the stand and belts out the lyrics like a little pro.

Naturally, the music on the DVD, unlike the Cd, has not been polished up by the studio producers, but there is always something fun about seeing a live DVD performance.
All of the boys are very accomplished, more so at singing than at dancing, although they do that well enough. Yossi Newman directs their singing and choreography which is sort of a cross between calisthenics and line dancing with a little bit of Macarena thrown in. They’re not always together on the moves, but it’s a lot of fun to watch them. A couple of the boys manage to do some fancy footwork at the front of the stage during one or two numbers.

They sing in Hebrew so I don’t have any idea what they are saying. It doesn’t matter, though.

There is one thing that I’m not happy about with this DVD and that is the mis-labeling on the cover which says “YBC Live“. It turns out that half the disc is given over to solos by Eli Gerstner and several songs by an adult trio. I don’t recall this being mentioned anywhere in the description when I ordered it. I don’t want to hear a guy's voice if he’s over 18. I’m kidding, of course. There are lots of great adult male voices out there, like…, well…, uh….that guy who, you know, heck, I’ll think of it later.

You can check out their video Kol Hamispalel on YouTube.

The Choirboys

2009-12-20T15:22:00.000-08:00

This is the last Christmas album I will talk about this year. There’s no use overdoing it.

There are The Choirboys and then there are The Choirboys. Two trios, one recorded their CD in 2005 and the other in 2007. Perhaps the main thing they have in common is their producer, Ian Tilley, who also did editing and mixing on both CD’s.

(Just a quick aside: I once ordered Fiona Pears DVD and Ian Tilley himself emailed me to remind me that it was not in Region 1 format and that it wouldn’t play on my DVD player, only on my computer and asked if I still wanted it. What a nice guy.)

Just as the first trio of Patrick, Ben and C.J. were chosen by auditions the same selection process found this second trio, William Dutton (son of Paul), Bill Doss and Andrew Swait.
These boys have just an outstanding set of voices that are beautiful together on their CD The Carols Album.

The songs here are the standard Christmas fare, everyone’s favorites, so there’s really no need to describe them, but it’s the harmonies and arrangements that make it a special recording. The orchestra is excellent and so is the backup choir. They even have some help from All Angels, a female quartet, on O, Holy Night.

Here is a little biographical information I lifted (stole) from the internet.
“Bill was a chorister at the Belmont Grosvenor School, near Harrogate … He has twice been awarded the Outstanding Performance Award at the National Junior Choir Championships.Bill is now a chorister at St. Olave's School in York.”

“Andrew Swait was just ten years old when he recorded 'Light of the World' in October 2005 as an Abbey School Chorister. In addition to the demands of full choristership in The Abbey School Choir … Andrew was also a member of Tewkesbury Abbey Parish Choir. Upon the closure of the Abbey School in September 2006 Andrew was given a choral scholarship to Cheltenham College where he continues his work as a chorister.”

“William Dutton is a student at St Aidan's Church of England High School and a Chorister of St Mark's Church, Harrogate. In October 2006 he won the title of BBC Radio 2 Young Chorister of the Year… and was delighted to be invited to sing with Jose Carreras in his 2006 Royal Albert Hall Christmas concert.
William is also a violinist and… has been a member of the National Children's Orchestra (NCO) since 2003, and in 2006 was awarded a NCO-Leverhulme Trust Scholarship in recognition of his exceptional talent.”

There will be, someday, another trio to be called The Choirboys. I can’t wait to hear them.

2009-12-17T15:42:00.000-08:00

The Boys Air Choir changed its membership frequently, selecting some of the best boys‘ voices in the UK. The one name that seems to appear on all of their CD‘s is Connor Burrowes, sometimes as a singer and most of the time as a conductor. His brothers appear with him on some of the albums and other boys names appear on more than one CD, but in their 2003 release Merry Christmas the names are all new ones, again with the exception of Connor.

Tom Crow, Marcus Roberts, Charlie Hughes, Hugh Saffrey, Sam Hancock, and Joseph Rawlins make their only appearance here but it’s a memorable one.

It’s interesting that Merry Christmas was followed up the next year with Merry Christmas + Five which had the same 13 songs from this album along with the five Christmas songs from their earlier CD Believe.

I find myself putting down whatever I’m doing when I hear this CD. It’s so pretty that I want to clear away the distractions and just listen closely.
They open with a wonderful version of Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime. The arrangement is unique and the soloist is really good.

Sleigh Ride is one of the best cuts. It’s perky and the harmonies are especially sweet and smooth.

The most unusual song on here is A Spaceman Came Traveling by Chris De Burgh. I’ve never heard this one and I like it. The tune is pretty. The premise of the lyrics is that his ship arrived 2,000 years ago and was the star that hung over the stable.

The Holly and the Ivy has an arrangement that’s really different. This time it’s a fast tempo with a bouncy piano instead of the usual slow song that everyone else does.

Some of the other cuts are O Holy Night, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and a fast A cappella version of Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day.

One of the sweetest songs is Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. They don’t tell which boy is the soloist but his voice is soft and his accent is charming.

This CD should be in every fan’s collection. I like it a lot.

2009-12-13T04:47:00.000-08:00

I’ve never been to Vienna but I’ve seen lots of pictures and if ever a place was designed to evoke a Christmas feel it is surely this one. The gorgeous old buildings decked out in lights and snow, the beautiful decorations and those choir boys, it all makes me want to be there.

Children and Christmas are a perfect pairing and never more so than when it’s the Vienna Boys’ Choir. Of the choir’s many Christmas CD’s I have three and all three are very different from each other.
The first one, from 2003, is titled The Christmas Album and has a photo of several smiling boys around a small candle-lit tree. There is a small, white Teddy bear dressed in a WSK uniform standing in front of the tree and I want one of those. If you should ever see one somewhere, tell me.

Anyway, the songs on the album are of the very popular variety. Songs like Jingle Bells, O Holy Night, Stille Nacht and the best version of Little Drummer Boy I’ve ever heard.
They also include a powerful version of Suo Gan with English lyrics and John Lennon’s Happy Christmas (War Is Over).
There’s no need to describe the singing. It’s the Vienna Boys’ Choir so of course it’s delightful.

The second CD has more of an English feel to it. This one is from 1995 and is titled Christmas Angels. It starts off with Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols and this time has all 11 songs (or 12 if you count 4a and 4b as separate). One of my very favorite songs from this group is That Yonge Child. The vocals on this song are cleverly staggered with each verse repeated in such a way that it makes an echo-y effect. It’s pretty cool.

For more English carols there are Coventry Carol, We’ve Been Awhile A-Wandering and Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming. Of course there is also Joy to the World, Deck the Halls, Adeste Fideles and a bunch more popular tunes.

My third Vienna Boys Choir CD is titled Christmas With The Vienna Boys’ Choir and was recorded in 1993. This could have been called A Mozart and Bach Christmas, or perhaps, Christmas for Smart People.
It starts off with Mozart’s Mass in C Major K. 317 “Coronation”, a six-part Mass with Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei.
The Bach portion is Cantata “Ich Hatte Viel Bekummernis", a two part composition with sections like Sinfonia, Corro and Recitativo.
It’s very nice but somehow it just doesn’t say Christmas to me. I prefer more popular carols to put me in the Christmas mood.

Still, I know I’ll be listening to the Vienna Boys’ Choir this Christmas morning.

2009-12-08T17:23:00.001-08:00

Something about the month of December seems to be good for creating choristers. I was looking at the birthdays on BCSD and there are a lot of well-known boys who were born during this month.
Aled Jones, Anthony Way, Jean-Baptiste Maunier, Declan, C. J. Porter-Thaw, Bill Goss, Donny Osmond, Aaron Carter, Joseph McManners, and from Libera, Kavana Crossley, Joe Snelling, Liam Connery and Daren Geraghty were all December kids.

When I discovered Libera I had to rush out and get every recording I could find. It was particularly nice to find Angel Voices 3 by the St. Philips Boy’s Choir, a collection of Christmas songs. This period of Libera's recording history gives us some of the very prettiest voices like Liam O'Kane, Darren and Stephen Geraghty, Alex and Chris Baron and Adam Harris. All of them have something special, a confidence and a level of skill that you might not expect from such youthful voices.

This was my first introduction to some of the great English Christmas songs like In the Bleak Mid-Winter, the Holly and the Ivy and Gaudete.
Several of the songs on this CD were new for me, such as Cliff Richard’s Saviour’s Day, a modern classic from 1990 with a wonderful melody.

Apparently, lots of people recorded versions of Walking in the Air, the song that Peter Auty sang for the animated television show, but this is a very good rendition by Liam O'Kane.

An interesting song is In Dulci Jubilo which is the tune to Good Christian Men Rejoice. These original lyrics are thought to have been written around 1328 by Heinrich Seuse.

They added a fun verse, about sun and palm trees in Beverly Hills, to White Christmas that most singers don’t include. Liam O’Kane solos on this one and it always makes me smile.

Classic carols like Away In a Manger, The First Noel and Silent Night are just wonderful. Especially nice is the way O Come All Ye Faithful is done without the usual adult voices that most choirs rely on to give the song more power. It’s maybe even more lovely with just the boy’s singing.

I’ve always loved Do You Hear What I Hear and little twelve year-old Adam Harris solos on this one and he’s really charming.

There are twenty songs on this CD and they are all excellent. I listen to this all year long.

2009-12-05T12:43:00.000-08:00

Maybe my favorite Christmas CD in my collection is the American Boychoir’s Carol album. It’s everything Christmas music should be. The singing is powerful and rich, the orchestral arrangements are brilliant and stirring.

The liner notes say it best, “The American Boychoir, performing with orchestra, chamber ensemble, organ and carillon in the cathedral-like acoustics of the Princeton University Chapel, brings a new sound to this joyous music. The delicate yet brilliant sounds… combine to create a new listening experience.”

They open with, from the Ukraine, Carol of the Bells which makes great use of the carillon and then they move into a regal sounding Joy to the World with a full orchestra that fills the hall to the rafters with joy.

There is a new song that I was not familiar with, This Christmastide (Jesseye’s Carol) and it’s really lovely and soft. The organ is perfect with the voices and together they build to a thrilling peak. It makes me tingle.

Christmas Day, by Gustav Holst, is a great medley of Good Christian Men Rejoice, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Come Ye Lofty, Come Ye Lowly and The First Nowell. There is some complex layering of voices here.

Silent Night! Holy Night!, O Holy Night, Away in a Manger… these are filled with those fabulous American Boychoir harmonies that James Litton designs so well. I know that Angelic is an adjective that is overused to the point of becoming trite, but heck, what other word is there to describe this sound?

I’ve never heard a more beautifully haunting version of What Child is This? It’s very moving. I’m not always accurate when it comes to identifying certain instruments in the orchestra but I believe what I’m hearing here is harp, oboe, flute and violin among others. It’s a great combination.

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing and O Come, All Ye Faithful are loud, powerful and uplifting songs and the choir sings them perfectly.

We Wish You a Merry Christmas is a short, pretty version that is less than two minutes long and the interesting thing about it is that the coda was composed by a 14-year-old member of the choir.

I give this album my strongest recommendation. If it doesn’t put you in the Christmas spirit, well, you might need to be visited by some ghosts to adjust your attitude.

Fa-la-la-la-la La-la-la-la

2009-12-02T14:07:00.000-08:00

Several years ago the children’s choir was performing their part of the church Christmas program and my nephew, who was six, had a small verse to sing.

He knew the words perfectly but when he stood in front of all those people he forgot all of it. I could see that he was struggling but finally he started singing the first thing that came to mind, a little ditty that my brother had taught him.

Jingle bells
Shotgun shells
Rabbits all the way
One jumped up,
Shot him in the butt,
The other one got away.

Everyone laughed and turned to look at my brother who tried to sink through the pew, and his wife, who slapped him on the back of his head.
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Over the past few years I have made my own holiday traditions. Around Christmas time I buy a bottle of Godiva chocolate liqueur and a bottle of Bailey’s. A couple of fingers of these mixed in equal parts makes the best chocolate milk ever. It’s great to sip one on a cold night sitting in front of the fire with a good book and some boys singing carols on the stereo.

I always save a few vacation days for that period between Christmas and the New Year. The house is decorated with lights and greenery and ornaments, the gifts have been exchanged and everyone has gone home, the candles smell of cinnamon and the Vienna boys are keeping me company. If I’m lucky there will be snow.

Maybe I shouldn’t tell this, but one thing I like to do each year is to make a compilation CD of my favorite Christmas music and give it to my friends. I find some pretty picture on the internet to use as a CD cover and slap a title on it, then I buy those round adhesive labels and print them to put on each disc. It all looks pretty professional.

I have a lot of Christmas albums by boy choirs so it’s fun and sometimes hard to pick my favorite version of each song, but it's a gift that everyone enjoys receiving.

This may not be exactly legal to do (so don‘t tell Libera), but I only make a dozen copies and they are for people who would not buy the albums anyway. I feel like I’m doing a good thing by promoting the artists and, besides, I think if I was really being bad I wouldn’t get so many cool new CD’s from Santa.

2009-11-28T15:24:00.000-08:00

Everyone knows that the Vienna Boys Choir Brucknerchor is touring the US but do you ever read the reports they give on the WSK home page?
If you want a good laugh you should take a look at their blog entries. They are a lot more fun than mine and the humor makes the boys even more endearing.

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The painting at the top of this page is titled May Morning on Magdalen Tower and was painted by William Holman Hunt, one of the greatest of the Victorian Pre-Raphaelite painters.
The figures are all portraits (the boy holding the lily is his son) but Hunt never intended to paint one actual performance, only ‘to represent the spirit of a beautiful, primitive and, in a large sense, eternal service’.

Wikipedia says that “May Morning is an annual event in Oxford, on May day. It starts early at 6 am with the Magdalen College Choir singing a hymn, the Hymnus Eucharisticus, from the top of Magdalen Tower, a tradition of over 500 years. Large crowds normally gather under the tower along theHigh Street and on Magdalen Bridge. This is then followed by general revelry and festivities including Morris dancing, impromptu music, etc., for a couple of hours.” If anyone has ever been to this tell me if it is as much fun as it sounds.

I always like it when someone suggests a CD to me and this time a friend told me about The Choir of Magdalen College and their new release Carols By Candlelight, Music for Advent and Christmas. This is not the usual collection of carols that everyone else does. The album is divided into sections, The Fall, Good Tidings, The Annunciation, The Birth of Jesus and Epiphany.

There are a few songs that are familiar like O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day and Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, but most of the songs are new to me and new music is always welcome.

There are songs like I Look From Afar by Palestrina, Britten‘s A Hymn To The Virgin, The Truth From Above by Ralph Vaughan Williams and quite a few more. An especially beautiful number is In Dulci Jubilo by Pearsall, with a soloist named Alexander Knighton.
This is my first CD from the Magdalen College Choir but I’m going to look for more.

2009-11-25T17:38:00.000-08:00

I am listening to another CD that I got from Lammas Records. This one is Britten-Missa Brevis and Other Works For Treble Voices featuring Kieran White and the Boy Choristers of Wells Cathedral.
If I close my eyes I can pretend I’m sitting in those dimly lit stone walls and hearing the rich, clear voices of the boys echoing through the church.

Little Kieran White has a fine quality to his singing and he’s one of those singers who can roll his R’s with ease. That’s something I hear in the English cathedral choirs but not so much in the American ones. Apparently it's something that usually has to be learned as a child and they don't teach that here. I like it,though.

The Wells choir is as beautiful a choir as you could want. They do a variety of songs, starting with Britten’s Missa Brevis which is a really interesting mass. I especially love the Benedictus and the Agnus Dei with their dark mood.

Young Ned Berry sings When I Survey The Wondrous Cross, one of my favorites songs. The choir sings Ireland’s Ex Ore Innocentium, Faure’s Pie Jesu, A Grateful Heart by Mary Plumstead and several other good songs.

Most of the songs on this album are solos by Kieran, accompanied by piano or the organ. Be Still For The Presence of The Lord by Archer is one that I particularly like and so is If With All Your Hearts by Mendelssohn.

This is a 2004 release recorded mostly in Wells Cathedral by Lance Andrews, who has retired from Lammas Records. I can’t think of a finer career than to visit cathedrals hearing and recording boys singing. It would be an enjoyable thing to do for a living as well as saving some wonderful music from disappearing forever.

It is interesting that since 1994 Wells Cathedral has a choir of eighteen girls as well as their boys choir. This CD is done by the boys.

A bit of history: The wells, which gave the city its name, are natural springs which can be found in the garden of the Bishop's Palace, including the holy well of St. Andrew.
In 909 the church of St. Andrew became the first Wells Cathedral. By 1180 the foundations of a new church in the Gothic style were being laid to the north of the old one.
In 1477 Bishop Robert Stillington embarked on a complete rebuilding of the chapel on a grand scale. The foundations of this cruciform building are what can be seen today in the Camery garden. This grand chapel did not last long and was blown up with gunpowder in 1552 because Edward VI had abolished Chantry chapels in the height of Reformation zeal.

2009-11-21T16:02:00.000-08:00

Alan Mould, former Headmaster at St. John’s College choir school in Cambridge has written The English Chorister, A History, a book that’s packed with interesting information dating back to Biblical times.
I’ve mentioned it before and I still like to explore it. I have a tough time remembering all the dates and names and details, though. It might be easier if it were written more like a story than a text book but it’s still fun to sift through it. Some parts are very sad. For example…

Choral music in England was not always appreciated as it is today. During the Protestant Reformation the choirs were shut down until sanity could once again be established. During the reign of Elizabeth I choirs were nurtured and at that time Richard Hooker wrote “Church music is in truth most admirable… They must have hearts very dry and tough” who do not draw spiritual delight from it.

In 1572 the Puritans submitted to Parliament that cathedrals were “the dennes of all loitering lubbers, wher Deane… Canons… the cheefe chaunter, singing men… squeaking queresters, organ players… live in great idleness and have their abiding.”
Reading that passage makes me think that much of the ignorance of the Reformists could be tied to their inability to spell.

Things continued to worsen and later, in 1642, Canterbury Cathedral was sacked, the books ruined and the organ damaged. Windsor Castle saw its choristers expelled. At Winchester Cathedral the music books were burnt and the organ wrecked. The same damages occurred at Chichester, Peterborough, Norwich and other cathedrals.

“At Hereford, York and Exeter… choristers were driven out with the jeering cry, ‘boyes, we have spoiled your trade, you must go and sing Hot Pudding Pies’.” I have no idea what that means but it sounds quite rude.

John Vicars wrote: “Whereas there was wont to be heard nothing but Roaring-boyes, tooting and squeaking Organ-pipes and the Cathedral-Catches of Morley…the bellowing Organs are demolish’d and pulled down and the (choristers) driven out…”
They considered it an improvement and in 1643 “the sound of boys’ voices singing in quire was utterly silenced throughout England”.

It’s hard to imagine. Fortunately, the sons of the men who were expelled from the choirs became the next generation of singers. I love a happy ending.

2009-11-18T14:22:00.000-08:00

Ask and ye shall receive. I just noticed something a couple of days ago. On the Libera home page they are giving us a free download of a new song, ‘O Sanctissima’, that will be on their next CD which is hoped to be released in March, 2010.
It’s a beautiful song and it’s unmistakably Libera.

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With the great number of choral songs that have been written over the centuries it is little wonder that there are so many I have not heard yet. I do keep on trying, though.
There are a lot of beautiful songs that have become standards, at least for boy choirs. For example, I have almost 20 versions of Pie Jesu, at least 10 of Miserere and 10 of Ave Verum Corpus.

But I have also found songs that I love which are somehow less popular and I wonder why these are not performed more often. Perhaps I'm just not finding the right CD's.

Everyone knows Franck's Panis Angelicus but have you heard his Alleluia! from the Choeur de Pacques? The Choir of King’s College sing it on their Heavenly Voices CD and it's really gorgeous. The funny thing is that I can't find much about it on the internet, not even the words.

I think it must take a special voice to sing Peuri Conceniti by Herbeck because of those extra high notes near the end. The Vienna Boys Choir tackle it easily on their Ave Maria CD and Jean Baptiste Maunier does a pretty version but those are the only two that I have found.

Winchester Cathedral, on a CD titled Allegri Miserere and Other Choral Favorites, has a very good soloist singing This Is The Record of John. I’ve only found it on one other CD, but what a unique song. I love the way the choir repeats each verse and changes it to make it sound more complex.

Zuercher Sangerknaben has a CD called Ave Maria which has a lot of different versions of that song by different composers but one that I had not heard before is the one by Paolo Tosti. It’s sung by a tenor and sounds like it could be from an opera.

The Choir of the Abbey School at Tewkesbury has a Favorite Hymns CD that features more than one outstanding song, but the one I love best is I, The Lord Of Sea And Sky. One particular boy chorister has a voice that shines forth even though the others are singing just as loudly. This is a great song that has great lyrics, like “I will break their hearts of stone, give them hearts of love alone.”

I’m not sure what my point is, maybe that we should always welcome music that we are unfamiliar with because there’s no telling when a gem will pop up. I know a lot of people who still listen to the same music they listened to in high school or college and they’re happy with that. Not me.

100

2009-11-15T11:46:00.000-08:00

I was complaining one day about the lack of web sites where people were discussing boy choir music. I had found a couple of discussion groups but not much was happening on them so a friend said, “Why don’t you start a blog?”

I wasn’t sure how to start and it took a while to find my voice but soon I got fairly comfortable with it and now this is my 100th post, a goal I had not thought about reaching.

Besides the enjoyment that I get from doing this there is the added bonus that people actually read it and talk to me about it, too. You have all been really kind and helpful and you’ve taught me a lot so I would like to say thanks.

Since this is a special post I wanted to dedicate it to my favorite boy choir, Libera. These kids must have the most loyal and ardent fan base of any choir in the world. Their fans span every age group and every continent (with the probable exception of Antarctica) and there are tons of fan sites on the internet. Even after a couple of years I still feel that excitement, that magic that they bring.

An excellent CD to own is Libera Eternal, the Best of Libera. It’s a double CD with 32 of their best songs. Most of them were recorded for previous albums, some are new versions of previous recordings while some others are remixes of older tunes.

The remix of Heaven, this time sung by Josh and Liam, is especially pretty. Steven Geraghty did the remix of Sempiterna with vocals by Tom and Joseph Sandros Wilde.

There are two totally new songs. One is You Were There, the theme from the Japanese movie “Nobody to Watch Over Me”, with a solo by Tom Cully.
I haven’t seen the film but I watched the trailer and it’s pretty cool to hear them on it.

The other new song is Taverner’s Mother of God, a soft, slow song that showcases their special harmonies.
I can't wait to for their next CD. I hope they do one sometime in the coming year.

2009-11-12T16:13:00.000-08:00

It isn’t always easy to find these CD’s especially since I don’t understand foreign languages enough to safely order them on the internet. More than once I have misread the description and received something I didn’t care for.

On top of that I worry about putting my credit card number out there in too many places because of the chance of some hacker getting it. It happened to me once several years ago when I foolishly used my debit card on-line and a few days later found that my checking account was short $3,000. The bank replaced it but I’m still a little gun shy.

That’s why I prefer to buy from a few central sources and one that I found recently is Lammas Records. Looking at their web site you might wonder if they are still in business because none of their stock is newer than 2006. They explained that Lance Andrews has retired and will be issuing no more CD‘s on the Lammas label and they will not be replacing any of their stock, but they continue to sell what remains. Plus a lot of their music is available as downloads from the internet.

I ordered a couple of CD’s and was happy with the transaction. They only charged $30.00 for the two and that included shipping.
One of the CD’s from them is a 2005 release from the Truro Cathedral Choir titled Peace On Earth, Sacred and Secular Music by Orlando Gibbons. I’m not that familiar with Gibbons’ work but I did recognize a couple of pieces, Song 46 and This Is The Record of John, both of which I really like.

The choir sings with just the organ quietly supporting them so their voices are not obscured, just the way I like them. Treble soloists Max Spreckley and Matthew Oddy do a beautiful duet on If Ye Be Risen and it’s fun to listen to the interplay of their voices. Young Patrick Windsor sounds great on Nay Let Me Weep.

It may not be a really special thing but I like it when the organ and a boy’s voice hit the same note and the sounds are so similar that they blend together seamlessly. It makes me smile.

The Truro Cathedral Choir consists of eighteen boy choristers and twelve gentlemen. They all sound wonderful. They tour every two years so maybe they will come to the states sometime soon.
An interesting note about Orlando Gibbons is that he was once a chorister at King’s College, Cambridge until 1598.

2009-11-08T14:24:00.000-08:00

For someone with a liberal arts education I sure do have a lot of holes in my learning. I’m always finding out about things that I probably should have known already. I thought about asking the university for a partial refund for the things they didn’t teach me, but I’m sure they would just tell me that I should have paid more attention in class.

I’m trying to learn more about famous composers like Sir Edward William Elgar who was most famous for his Pomp and Circumstance Marches. Everyone knows the tunes but not so many know the man behind them.

That’s why I picked up the CD titled Elgar, Sacred Choral Music from the Choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge. The CD was recorded in July, 2003 so many of the boys who sang on their 2002 DVD, Ave Verum were probably still in the choir. I feel as if I know them.

There are thirteen songs including a version of Ave Verum Corpus and one of Ave Maria. There is also Light of the World, Ave Maris Stella, O Harken Thou and more. An interesting one is Rossetti’s translation from Italian of the poem Go Song of Mine, by Cavalcanti.

It's always enjoyable to read about someone’s rise to success in the art world especially if they come from humble beginnings like Elgar. His father was a piano-tuner, organist and shopkeeper but it was from him along with his own studies that Elgar learned music.

He began as a freelance musician but when he was thirty he wrote the Imperial March and that was his first success. Over the next few years he continued to grow in prominence with his Enigma Variations and The Dream of Gerontius.

He wrote the coronation music for King Edward VII and was awarded honorary doctorates along with a knighthood and in 1931 he became a Baronet.

I won’t say this is my favorite CD but I always like hearing the Choir of St. Johns College. They have a rich, full sound with those sweet trebles that rise above the warmer, deeper voices of the men.

2009-11-04T15:27:00.000-08:00

Eleven-year-old Laurence Kilsby from Tewkesbury Abbey in Gloucestershire, and Jaquelyne Hill from St Andrew's, West Tarring in Sussex are the winners of this year’s Chorister of the Year competition from the BBC. Congratulations to both of them. Their performances were outstanding and the duet at the end was really moving.

-------------------------------------------

I've been making my Christmas fruitcakes. Each one takes about a pint of bourbon and they have to age for a few weeks before they are ripe. Maybe it was sampling the bourbon (to make sure it had not gone bad) that made me feel Christmas-y so I put on some carols.

One of my first and favorite Christmas CD's is The Choirboy's Christmas by that charismatic little chorister, Anthony Way. I like this album for a number of reasons, he's young here so his voice is pretty and he's backed up by the St. Paul's Cathedral choir and the English Chamber Orchestra, two fantastic groups.

Also, most of the songs here are traditional English carols so they were new to me. I wonder why these songs are not more well-known over here, or at least, why I had never heard them before I bought this CD a couple of years ago.

Everyone knows carols like Joy to the World, Silent Night and Away In a Manger, but I fell in love with songs like Sussex Carol, Dancing Day, In the Bleak Midwinter and The Holly and the Ivy.
I can never get enough of Balulalow but then who can? Too bad I can’t say the same thing for The Twelve Days of Christmas.

The Brits have grown up with these songs but for the Americans who haven’t discovered them it’s really nice to add some new songs to your Christmas carol repertoire.
This album has especially powerful versions of O Come All Ye Faithful and Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. The choir of St. Paul’s brings something special to all of the songs.

2009-11-01T04:37:00.000-08:00

I watched a new video from Libera’s tour of the Philippines and here is a link to it on YouTube. The song is called Banyan Ko and the video is shot from a single view at the back of the theater. It’s a pretty song and it would sound even prettier if the audience would be quiet so I could hear it.
Maybe it’s an ethnic thing but they break into applause and cheers eight times throughout the 3-1/2 minute number. If the entire concert was like that it would have been annoying.

The good thing is that Libera sounds great. The change in members didn’t affect their special harmonies. Too bad there were no close-ups, though. It seems like they were over there for a long time and during some bad weather so I'm really glad they made it home safely.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vCTcEN-tBA

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I’m not like the rest of my family. I never was. When I was a boy I believed that I had been switched at birth and I had faith that someday my real family would pull up in a limo and take me home to our mansion. I think I was 11 when I realized one day that I looked just like my mother and those hopes were dashed.

My family is not very sophisticated. They are happy with gifts in bags that say Sears on the outside. I always wished that mine said Nieman Marcus.

I always look forward to November because this is the time of year when I start my Christmas shopping. The family laughs at me because I buy presents for myself, but I have to, it’s the only way I can get any really good stuff.

I to go to Amazon and start stuffing things into my ‘wish list’. For most of November I load it up with books, DVD’s and lots of music. Then when I get my Christmas bonus at work, which is sometime around Thanksgiving, I start dumping my wishes into the shopping cart. I make sure that they all come in groups just large enough to qualify for free shipping so there will be lots of boxes and when they arrive I wrap them and stick them under the tree. By the time Christmas morning arrives I will have forgotten what I ordered so each box will have nice surprises in it and it’s always something I really wanted.

So, when it comes to CD’s I’m open for suggestions.

2009-10-29T02:22:00.000-07:00

I really wanted to write a post for Halloween that has to do with choir boys and spooky stuff, like un-holy ghosts. I went all over the net trying to find ghost stories about choirboys, but I didn’t find much. It looks like choirboys lead exemplary lives and don’t leave behind much unfinished business.

I encountered a lot of ‘dead ends’, like it turns out that the Dead Boys Choir is a hardcore metal group. Boring.
Here are a few things that I did find. This post is a little longer than I usually like. I hope you don’t mind.

In Edmonton, Alberta at Concordia College - On certain nights you can hear a choir sing in the boy’s dorm areas. Doors slam even though no one is around. A female teacher has also been seen wandering the halls.

At the St. James' Theatre in Wellington, New Zealand, built in 1912, there have been numerous reports of several ghosts in the theatre. … A boy's choir is said to haunt the theatre also. The choir played their last song at the St. James during the Second World War before beginning a tour. The ship they sailed on was never seen again and patrons and workers alike often hear their music in the seating area. The excellent Ghost Hunt group of New Zealand held a night investigation here which resulted in some incredible paranormal evidence... This has to be one of the most haunted theatres in the world.

This is from a church in England. “In December 1920 a choirmaster along with two choirboys had gone into the church to rehearse at 6 pm one evening a few days before Christmas. They had been singing for around twenty minutes when they noticed an old lady standing about 8 feet away from them. So real did she appear that one of the boys walked over and placed a chair for her to sit on, the woman nodded her thanks and sat down. She was dressed… in old-fashioned clothing. Her hair was grey…
Their strange visitor mystified the choirmaster. He had most certainly locked the door when they had entered. He had heard no footsteps on the stone floor and, furthermore, the heavy, creaking double doors that led from the main body of the church had been silent since he and the choristers had passed through them.
Then suddenly, just as the practice concluded, the mysterious visitor vanished without trace. They searched the church but could find no trace whatsoever of the woman. Furthermore, when they went to leave the building, the door was still locked.”

I’m sure I’m not supposed to just lift other people’s photos from the web so I’m just including the link to a site that shows a possible choirboy’s ghost appearing on a television. If you ask me though, it’s the little girl in the picture that’s scary. Check it out.
http://paranormal.about.com/library/bl_choirboy_ghost_lg.htm
　
Finally, A neighbor of mine, an older man, once told me about something scary that happened to him back in the 1930's. His family lived in a very rural area and they used to walk to church. One evening he and his brother and their mother were coming home from choir practice. They knew it would be dark, as usual, when they finished so they always brought a lantern.
They had to walk more than a mile to get home, but this time there had been a storm and the bridge was washed out on the road they usually used so they were taking the path through the woods. This path went past the old logging camp and was not used much since the camp had closed.
He and his brother sang some songs as they walked, but when they stopped singing the boys could hear footsteps behind them.
Their mother told them it was nothing, just the wind or something, but a few minutes later they heard it again. Their mother shined the lantern behind them and said again that there was nothing there.
Finally, they were nearing their house when the footsteps became louder, as if they were closer. They were scared so their mother held the lantern up and looked back again.
She told them she didn't see anything but they should hurry and get to the house because their father would be worrying about them. They walked really fast and were relieved to get inside and lock the door. The boys told their father what they had heard but their mother said it was their imaginations. Still, she seemed to be nervous and distracted.
Later that night, when the boys were in bed, he could hear his mother telling his father about it. In a frightened and trembling voice she told how she held the lantern up and didn't see anything until the last time. "That time I saw it, Henry. It was a man standing right there and, oh God Henry, he didn't have a head!"

And finally, I can’t prove it, but I’ve been told that Casper is the ghost of Richie Rich.

2009-10-27T02:22:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned last time, I have another Vienna Boys Choir DVD that I really like a lot. It is titled A Mozart Celebration. This DVD is bigger than the previous one in every way. It’s longer with a larger orchestra and more singers, and it’s also filmed inside a huge cathedral, the Domkirche St. Stephen in Vienna. The opening shot is of the outside of the cathedral and it’s massive and really impressive.
The inside is breathtaking with every surface textured and lavishly ornate. There are a lot of large paintings that are very beautiful, especially the one behind the altar, and there are lots of chandeliers and sculptures. Unfortunately the camera seems to spend more time panning around the interior than focusing on the boys.

2006 must have been a good year at the Palais Augarten because the boys were outstanding. They sang Ave Verum Corpus again and my favorite Mozart Mass, the “Coronation Mass” in C major (I can’t believe I actually have a favorite Mozart Mass). The two boy soloists were really sweet and fun to watch.

There is something I have yet to figure out and that is the purpose of the numbers after the names of the compositions. For example, here they have two versions of the same tune, Church Sonata in C Major, K. 278 and Church Sonata in C Major, K. 317. Could they not think of another name?

This time the men were from the Chorus Viennensis and the music was by the Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien.

I know I shouldn’t say this because it probably makes me look shallow, but there is one thing about this DVD that I don’t care for very much. They have a soprano, Sandrine Piau, who somehow annoys me. She looks quite elegant and has a good voice, but I just wish she would hold still. Instead, she constantly sways left and right while bobbing her head back and forth and making these odd facial contortions.

I think that all singers should emulate Josh Madine and always sing with a big smile on their face (unless they are singing something like I Pagliacci, of course). Anyway, my solution is to simply close my eyes when she’s on and that makes it much better.

2009-10-23T16:01:00.000-07:00

There is something special about the Vienna Boys Choir. They have a consistently beautiful sound and a long, interesting history.
I’ve been alerted to the rumors that they may start accepting girls into the choir ; I almost fainted at the thought. The WSK management are saying that it isn’t true and I hope they aren’t stonewalling us.

How hard could it possibly be to find boy singers? What boy wouldn’t love to go live in that palace in Vienna, tour the world with a bunch of friends, meet adoring crowds everywhere and learn a craft that will almost guarantee them a career? I certainly would.

I have two DVD’s from the Vienna Boys Choir that I like to watch. They are both dedicated to Mozart. The first, titled “Waisenhaus Mass” and Other Choral Works, has two performances that were recorded for television in 1988 and 1990. The first part, the Waisenhaus Mass, was performed at the Hofburg Chapel in Vienna.

This Mass was written when Mozart was 12 for the consecration of a new orphanage in Vienna and the Empress Theresia was in the audience.
A newspaper at the time said, “all of the music sung by the orphanage choir in the High Mass was written by Wolfgang Mozart, the twelve-year-old boy famous for his exceptional talent…; it was newly composed for the occasion, and directed by the composer himself to the applause and admiration of all present…”

It goes without saying that the Vienna boys are in excellent form, looking perfectly wholesome and angelic in their white uniforms.

The chapel itself is also very pretty with pale stone columns and walls, deep red lower walls and lots of statues perched high on the columns. There is a nice size orchestra to support the boys and a talented group of men from the Herrenchor Der Wiener Staatsoper to help out.

The Mass is labeled a Missa Solemnis in C minor and has the usual parts, Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, etc. It’s Mozart so of course it’s good.

I like the second part, Other Choral Works, better mainly because I recognized more of the music, like Sub Tuum Praesidium and Ave Verum Corpus.
It’s interesting that Mozart composed Ave Verum Corpus, perhaps his most popular sacred composition, in Baden bei Wien for the choir director there. There are two excellent young soloists in this production.
This was filmed in the parish church of St. Stephen in Baden bei Wien, where it was written. The church, again, is very handsome with lots of gold touches everywhere. The orchestra is all strings and the men’s chorus is from the Wiener Hofmusikkapelle.

Uwe Christian Harrer conducts both performances.

This post grew longer than I expected so I will write about the other DVD in a couple of days.

2009-10-19T16:59:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year BCSD, one of my favorite sites, featured a CD by Dennis Chmelensky which was simply titled Dennis. I finally got around to getting it and it’s pretty good.

Dennis has one of those special voices that reminds me a bit of Diozny Placzkowski. It’s very smooth, sort of operatic, and he can easily reach the high notes without straining.

On this CD, his first, he has some of the standards like Schubert’s Ave Maria, Pie Jesu, and Abendsegen (Evening Prayer) from Hansel and Gretel. How many times can I listen to Panis Angelicus? At least a million and this one is good.

Dennis takes on three songs from the movie Les Choristes: Cerf-Volant, Vois Sur Ton Chemnin and Caresse Sur L’Ocean.

He does You Raise Me Up in a very ‘American Idol’ style, you know where they repeat a verse three times, each time getting higher and more intense, the microphone held high and their eyes squinched tightly shut.

I’m not a fan of American Idol but he also does a sweet rendition of Moon River and The Last Unicorn. He even gives us some Handel and Mozart and Bach to show he’s not afraid of classical music.

The liner notes are in German and so is his home page but I managed to get a translation of some of it. He was with the Berlin State and Cathedral Choir when he sang Ave Maria on 'Germany’s Got Talent' and made it to the finals. He said he wanted to buy his mother a better hearing aid with the prize money. That was bound to get him some votes from the older female viewers.

At age five he began playing the violin and at seven, the piano. Dennis began singing at eight years old as a member of the Berlin State Opera Chorus where he has performed under the direction of some big name conductors, like Simon Rattle. I could say more about him if only my German was better.

He’s a cute kid and probably should have won that talent show. I hope his mom got that hearing aid.

2009-10-15T16:37:00.000-07:00

I have an album that’s… different. It’s title is In the Beginning, Choral Masterpieces of the 1940’s and it comes to us from the Gloucester Cathedral Choir.
This is a 2005 release that features works by four modern composers.

Benjamin Britten is first with Rejoice in the Lamb which takes its text from a poem by Christopher Smart (1722-1771). Smart spent much of his later life in a home for the insane and produced a long, rambling and strange work.
For example: “For I will consider my cat Jeoffry. For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.”
Britten extracted parts of the writings and set them to music in a modern style.

Ildebrando Pizzetti uses a poem by his friend Gabriel d’Annuzio for the first part of his Tre Composizioni Corali and the other two parts are taken from the book of Lamentations.

Gerald Finzi was a Jewish agnostic but used the poems of Thomas Aquinas to create Lo, the Full, Final Sacrifice.

Aaron Copland’s In the Beginning uses text from Genesis.

All of these are modernistic and so not like what I expected. Some of it takes getting used to but while the music is okay the voices are great. I love hearing the boys doing such complicated work. True music lovers, those who are better educated in music than I am will probably like this CD. I’m going to have to listen to it a few more times before I decide.

All of the selections are either accompanied by the organ or are voices alone.
Copland’s is the only one to use a mezzo-soprano. The Gloucester choir is impressive, both in skill and in sound. I would like to get something more traditional from them.

I stole couple of words about the choir from their web site.
The Gloucester Cathedral Choir is the successor to the boys and monks of the Benedictine Abbey of St Peter, who first sang daily worship in this magnificent building almost 1,000 years ago.
The choir sings six services each week as well as major Easter and Christmas services; it also participates each year in the Three Choirs Festival, Europe’s longest established music festival.
Gloucester Cathedral is also called the Cathedral Church of St Peter and the Holy and Undivided Trinity
The cathedral has been used from 2000 as a location for filming the first, second and sixth Harry Potter films, which has generated revenue and publicity, but caused some controversy amongst those who suggest that the theme of the films was unsuitable for a church.

2009-10-12T16:41:00.000-07:00

The Metropolitan Boys Choir is from, as you would expect, Metropolis, home of Superman and his friend Clark Kent. Occasionally they are called upon to assist law and order and help Superman put the bad guys in prison. They put them in Sing-sing which is why they need the talents of the choir.

Oh, well. Actually I just made that stuff up. The truth is a little less glamorous. They are actually from the Minneapolis/Saint Paul region.

I picked up their 1994 CD “How Great Thou Art”, 21 Traditional Hymns.
What’s not to like about these boys? They sing with simplicity and charm. These are the hymns that we sang in the Baptist church when I was a boy, Songs like Rock of Ages, Bringing in the Sheaves, the Old Rugged Cross and more.

I wonder if these are just American hymns or if they are sung in European churches as well. They really are very pretty.

Some of the songs on this album are accompanied by a piano and others by the organ so they sound very much the way they did in our church. Except these boys have rehearsed a lot and sound very professional.
Even though there are 21 songs the CD is over too quickly. It’s only about 45 minutes long.

I couldn’t find very much interesting information about them but I lifted some from their web site.

“The Metropolitan Boys Choir is an organization of young men from the Minneapolis/Saint Paul twelve county Metropolitan area. The boys range in age from five to eighteen. Founded in 1971 by Music Director, Bea Hasselmann, they merit the title "Minnesota's Young Ambassadors of Song" given to them by the late Vice President, Hubert H. Humphrey. The Choir regularly appears in concert halls, churches, convention centers and senior residences throughout the Minneapolis/Saint Paul metropolitan area. The Choir has performed regularly with the Minnesota Orchestra for twenty-nine years. “

I did find one statement and I hope he doesn’t mind my quoting him “… being in the MBC helped teach me stage-presence. Even now, almost every time I sing or play in front of a group some lesson from MBC comes flashing back to my mind.” That's really nice.

2009-10-09T14:13:00.000-07:00

I recently had to laugh at myself because I heard a song that excited me so much I played it a dozen times, then ordered the CD. It was Adon Olam by the Yeshiva Boys Choir, a new choir to me. The Yeshiva Boys Choir was formed at the Yeshiva of Cleveland, but has since moved to Brooklyn, New York

I thought I was ordering the CD with the song Adon Olam but I should have read more carefully because what I got was the song Adon Olamim. Drat those foreign languages, it wasn‘t the same song at all. I turned right around and ordered the correct one and it came today.

I'm happy with both albums. I like these boys because they’re different than anything else I’ve found so far. The music is mostly in Hebrew and done in a very pop style with a snappy beat and great orchestration. The voices of the various soloists are especially nice. They’re all clear and strong and the boys sing loudly with almost a sense of joy. There is no chance of these boys being overshadowed by the orchestra.

If it were not for the crowd of squealing teenage girls I would like to see them in concert sometime. I see from the vids they do some dancing as well as singing and one of their teachers dances back and forth across the front of the stage to lead them. It looks like a lot of fun.

Most of the songs are in Hebrew and the boys put a lot of those Middle-eastern vocal flourishes in them and some of the rhythms are the sort you hear in Jewish dances. For all I know they may be singing about something sad but I can't keep from smiling and tapping my foot whenever I listen to them.

According to Wikipedia the song Adon Olam is rather traditional and is sung in many different ways. They mention a version sung to Yankee Doodle Dandy. I listened to a couple of other groups singing it on YouTube and this group does it in a unique way. It's the best.

The lyrics are fun to follow along with,
Adon olam, asher malach, b'terem kol y'tzir nivra. L'et na'asah v'cheftzo kol, azai melech sh'mo nikra. V'acharey kichlot hakol, l'vado yimloch nora. V'hu haya, v'hu hoveh, v'hu yih'yeh b'tifara.

Also, I learned that a Yeshiva is a school for boys and men that teaches Jewish religion and law.

2009-10-05T17:06:00.000-07:00

Students in a psychology class at a Texas university were attending their first class on emotional extremes.
"In order to establish some parameters," the professor said to a student, "What is the opposite of joy?"
"Sadness," replied the student.
"And what is the opposite of depression?", the professor asked another student.
"Elation," she answered.
"And you, young man," he said to a young cowboy. "What about the opposite of woe?"
"Well, sir, I believe that'd be 'giddy-up'."
　
Speaking of Texas, I have a 1998 CD from the Texas Boys Choir titled Montage. The title refers to the wide variety of songs presented here. They tackle patriotic songs, gospel numbers, a French madrigal, a Venezuelan children’s song, a Bach cantata, some cowboy songs from the American west and even Agnus Dei and Ave Verum Corpus.

Apparently there are sub-groups in the choir. Some numbers are performed by the full choir but others are by The Young Men’s Ensemble and some by the Treble Choir.
The young men do a smooth, haunting Shenandoah and the trebles shine on All Things Bright and Beautiful.

Their Adon Olam, the popular Jewish song, is really pretty and I liked Ghost Riders, too.
It’s a pretty good album, all in all.

The guys in the picture here are taller than I’m used to seeing in a boy’s choir, but I hear that everything is bigger in Texas.

Some basic information: The Texas Boys Choir was founded in 1946 as the Denton Civic Boys Choir and in 1957 moved to Fort Worth and was renamed the Texas Boys Choir. They have made more than 35 albums including two Grammy winners. They got a gold medal in Mixed Boys’ Choirs at the 2004 Choir Olympics in Bremen, Germany.

They provide any boy, regardless of socio-economic or ethnic background a structured environment for developing their talent in an accredited academic institution. Along with music they learn self-discipline, self-confidence, decorum, patriotism, and leadership. I got that from their web site.

Composer Igor Stravinsky called the Texas Boys Choir "the best boys choir in the world", but then he had never heard of Libera.

2009-10-02T18:12:00.000-07:00

Windsbacher Knabenchor
There is a famous choir that I have neglected, so far.
Windsbach is a town in the district of Ansbach, in Bavaria, Germany. According to Wikipedia they are proud of two institutions, their high school, the Johann Sebastian Bach Gymnasium, and their renowned boys choir, Windsbacher Knabenchor. (Gymnasium, in German, is a secondary school for gifted students).

I’m sorry to say that I only have one of their CD’s but I‘m sure that more will arrive sometime in December. The one I have was recommended by a friend, Johann Sebastian Bach - Die Motetten.

I’ve complained before about the way boys’ voices are often overpowered by the adult voices and even by the orchestra. Here the young men sing beautifully, but it’s the trebles who are prominent all the way through. Plus the motets are a cappella so the boys’ voices are not hidden at all and the purity of their sound is wonderful.
I don’t know what to say about their singing except that it’s great. That’s not very poetic, I’m afraid.

The name Motet comes either from the Latin movere, ("to move") or a Latinized version of the French mot, “word”, (I love Wikipedia).
There are 6 motets on this CD and I’m not familiar with any of them, but they have names like Komm, Jesu, Komm; Jesu, Meine Freude and Furchte Dich Nicht, Ich Bin Bei Dir. I’m sure that true Bach fans know them well.

Apparently, Bach encountered a “miserable quality of singing” at St Thomas’ Church so the motets originally had musical accompaniment, but later the a cappella versions became favored.
　
According to their web site, “The Windsbach Boys Choir is one of the leading ensembles of its kind. Sacred music - spanning from the Renaissance to the present - forms the core of its repertoire. In addition to many a cappella pieces, the major oratorios of Bach, Handel, Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Stravinsky are its primary focus. Founded in 1946, the choir gives approximately seventy performances a year in Germany and abroad, reaching some 35,000 concertgoers.

2009-09-29T17:48:00.000-07:00

I’ve wanted to say something for a while now about a CD from the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge titled Credo. The trouble is I can’t find a lot to say about it. It’s a 1997 album that was recorded in their chapel and it has great resonance, but it’s been around for bit so I can’t find any information on the internet that refers to it. All I can go by is the booklet that came with the CD.

It says that the Eastern and Western churches have been separated since 1054 and this album looks at the common heritage of both churches.
Apparently the Orthodox East and the Latin West couldn’t agree over the contention of a word ‘Filioque’ which is “the assertion that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as the Father”.

That seems like a pretty small reason for a schism. I would have thought that Christians would say, “You may very well be right. We’re just guessing anyway and what does it really matter?”

It’s all beyond me since I know nothing about either the East or the West. I just like the music. This is some hard-core cathedral music, too, with the eastern Europeans represented by Rachmaninov, Stravinsky and Penderecki while the burden of representing the west falls solely on the shoulders of Andrzej Panufnik, a Pole who made his career in England.

Actually, some of the pieces like Credo and Ave Maria are done in both Plainchant and a Stravinsky version so I assume the Plainchant is western. Also, Blessed is the Man and Praise the Lord, O My Soul are from the Common Book of Prayer.
There are 3 versions of The Lord’s Prayer.

All of the songs and chants are done without music and most are very slow. The vocals are sophisticated and complex with some beautiful decorations.

I like to listen to this when I’m doing housework, some very slow housework, but there are times when I just have to stop and focus on the music. In the right mood this can be very moving.

2009-09-26T09:12:00.000-07:00

The Medina Music School Boys Choir

It’s comforting to know that there are a lot of music schools around the world that are teaching boys to sing and that we have many years of beauty to look forward to. The most famous school is probably the Vienna Boys Choir, but there are many more. One that I didn’t know about is the Medina (Jazeps Medins) Music School which was founded in Latvia in 1981. It is a boys’ school with a good choir.

I picked up their 2004 CD What A Wonderful World and I’ve been enjoying it.
The variety of the 18 songs on here reflects the varied repertoire of the choir. Some are English, some French, German and some I can’t identify the language, but I like them.

Of course, the title song is on here and it’s a pretty version except for one thing that I probably shouldn’t mention. There is an adult voice doing a solo on one verse and for some reason I laugh every time I hear it. I can’t explain it, it just sounds like a cartoon voice. The boys sound lovely, however.

I really like the South African song Tshotsholosa which is accompanied only by a drum. The mens’ voices maintain a nice beat with the drum while the boys’ voices weave in and around them. It’s really pretty.

As always, I like to look at the translations for some of the music. The song Kur Tad Tu Nu Biji, in English, means ‘Where did you go my little goat?’

The words to Je Ne Fus Jamais Si Aise are nice and begin:
I never have enjoyed myself so much before
as in these past three days.
I have danced the time away
to the sound of fifes and drums.

Their White Christmas is good and they have a different arrangement, by Ray Charles, of Jingle Bells that is interesting and nice.
For even more variety the final song is Clap Yo’ Hands by the Gershwins.

There is usually some fun information that comes with the CD and here is something, a delightful description of general boy-ness, that I wanted to share.
It says, “The members of boys’ choirs are regular, indeed commonplace boys. Their lives are about (a lot of ) studying, (a tiny bit of) leisure, sometimes knocking about and always getting excited. Some of them are composed and clever, some unyielding and intractable, there are some bright minds and some windbags, there is always someone who reports and someone who sulks.”
But they can sing wonderfully and the teachers are experienced at handling all sorts of boys.

They also say, about their voices, “No other instrument can be so sincere”.
So true.

2009-09-22T15:53:00.000-07:00

I’ve been trying to look at as many different boy choirs as I can without focusing too much on any particular one, but I have my favorites and lately I noticed that I haven’t said anything about Libera in a while.

On April 9th, 2008 they came to Pittsburgh and did a concert at the Byham Theater. It was by far the closest venue to me so I made up my mind to get up there. I invited a friend who had a more dependable car and can navigate perfectly, even in cities where he’s never been, and we set off on a road trip.

It is 500 miles to Pittsburgh and we didn’t rush so we arrived at our hotel 10 hours after we left home. I only mention that to show how dedicated (insane) a fan I am.
The concert was the next night and I was hopping up and down with excitement. My friend kept laughing at my impatience, but he wasn’t a fan, he was just along for the ride.

Libera was promoting their newest album, New Dawn, which is still one of their best. It has several new songs like Love and Mercy, Oronoco Flow (okay, that was on Angel Voices 1), Jerusalem and others.
New Dawn has a good solo by Josh, Secret, and Ben’s version of The Lamb is still the prettiest I’ve heard. Tom is still in top form on this album and does a great job, with Josh, on Love and Mercy. It sounds a lot better than it did on television at the Kennedy Center awards.
Liam and Ed are excellent on their solos, as well.

This CD was the first for a lot of the new boys, Henry Barrington, Daniel Fontannaz, Kavana Crossley, Flynn Marks, Ralph Skan, James Starkey and James Threadgill.

I'm happy I have the CD because the show went by way too fast. However, my smile lasted for a couple of weeks. Fortunately the boys signed autographs after the show and my program is framed nicely and hanging on the wall beside my computer.

2009-09-19T17:07:00.000-07:00

As much as I love all of this music I still find that I enjoy certain choirs a little more than others. I guess it’s only natural to have favorites. I’ve been trying to collect all of the available CD’s by the American Boychoir, a group that I never get tired of listening to. Their version of Amazing Grace always makes me pause to listen closely and songs like There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy always make me smile.

I would never have believed it possible but I came across an album by the American Boychoir that I don’t really care for. It’s a CD that was recorded in 1991 and is titled Dixit Dominus.

There are two compositions on here, one by Handel and the other by Vivaldi.
They both have the same lyrics which are from Psalm 110.
The title means The Lord Said.

The music is nice and it’s all very well done, but they are singing with the Albemarle Consort of Voices, an adult mixed choir.
I have nothing against adult mixed choirs but, seriously, I can’t tell when the boys are singing and when the women sopranos are singing. It all runs together. That's my only complaint about this album.

According to the booklet that came with the CD there is a reason for the mixing of the choirs. While Handel’s music was composed for choirs of boys, men and castrati, Vivaldi wrote specifically for girls and young women. He was associated with the Ospedale Della Pieta, a school for orphaned girls that stressed musical education.

It’s also sort of interesting that the Vivaldi piece was only discovered fairly recently, having been attributed to a different composer all this time.

What’s very good here is the music which is provided by The Eighteenth Century Ensemble of Period Instruments. It’s so appropriate.

2009-09-15T19:33:00.000-07:00

Before I joined the informal and unofficial club of boychoir music enthusiasts I had other musical passions. One of those interests was Irish music. There’s something about the language, the rhythms and the instruments that, maybe, awakens some ancestral memories.

That’s why I was so happy to finally get this 1999 CD titled Air by the Boys Air Choir. It combines the best of the two genres.

There are 11 songs on here, mostly with English lyrics with a bit of Gaelic tossed in for fun.

Silent, O Moyle is a poem written by Thomas Moore and here it’s sung by Andrew Johnson accompanied by a harp. It relates part of an old tale about children who were turned into swans and it sounds really sweet.

Sliabh Geal gCua is a classic poem by Padraig O Mileadha and is one of Ireland’s greatest songs of exile. Those special Boys Air Choir harmonies really get to shine on this one.

I think my favorite might be Shule Aroon, sung by Patrick Burrowes. It’s a foot tapping tune, very traditional sounding.

Dulaman also sounds very traditional and is faster paced.

The haunting song O magnum Mysterium is a responsorial chat from the Matins of Christmas.

All of the songs are great and I love that the music supports the voices without overpowering them as happens on some recordings by other choirs.

If you look at Amazon you probably will be surprised to see this album going for as much as $98, used. I opted for the $35 one. The price was one reason I held back for so long on ordering this but I suppose it isn’t going to get any cheaper. I should have invested in music CD’s instead of bank CD’s.

2009-09-11T17:03:00.000-07:00

Live, from New York, it’s… the Saint Thomas Tradition.

The men and boys choir of Saint Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue have an album, The Saint Thomas Tradition, that has been around for some time now and it’s worth looking at. Recorded back in 1978, this was first released as an LP but it must have been recorded digitally because the sound quality is good.

This is one of my favorite types of singing where there are many layers of voices each doing something different, each now and then bubbling to the top and then sinking into the background once more while another piece grows into prominence. I like to try and follow the different layers but it’s not easy because of the complexity of the compositions. It also has that beautiful resonance that comes from being recorded in a big cathedral.

The CD begins and ends with a couple of organ pieces by Marcel Dupre, that are pretty powerful. One is a Prelude and Fugue in G Minor and the another Prelude and Fugue in B Minor.

The rest of the songs are unaccompanied by music, but it is not noticeable at first. There are songs by Tallis and Purcell, Ned Rorem and others. The titles are mostly familiar ones. I'm not sure what I can say about them except that it all sounds really nice.

The 14 Men of the choir are professional singers; the 18 boys attend Saint Thomas Choir School, a boarding school situated in a striking building a block from Carnegie Hall. Approximately eight new boys are accepted each year.

There are some first rate singers in this choir. I expect that the talent pool in New York is a large one to choose from so it’s no surprise that the voices are excellent. After all, if they can make it there… well, you know the rest.

2009-09-06T16:09:00.000-07:00

You might not know it but I’m a manly man, very manly. Don’t let the teacup collection fool you. I like manly music about macho things, like the sea. Seafaring songs, that’s what I like.

When I first got the 1999 CD from Ely Cathedral Will Your Anchor Hold I had tepid feelings about it but after a few listens it grew on me until it became one of my favorite CD’s. Our friend, Kelsey, pointed out that there is a companion album titled They That Go Down To The Sea. The title is taken from Psalms 107.

This album came along two years later and is very different from the first one. The covers look similar, an old sepia photograph of a traditionally dressed fisherman, and they are both made to benefit the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, but the similarities stop there.

While the first CD focused on hymns, this one is more secular. There are some well-known names here, Ireland, Holst, Britten and others and the music varies from folk to opera.

Britten’s Golden Vanity is a one-act opera that, if I’m reading correctly, was written for the Vienna Boys Choir back in 1967. It “follows the operatic tradition of greed and betrayal and the ensuing guilt and introspection prompted by a tragic death“. All that in one act.

The Ships of Arcady, by Head, is really beautiful. Originally written for three women’s voices it’s performed here, of course, by boys.

Vaughn Williams has Five English Folk Songs that are easily likable. They are love songs except for the last one, Wassail Song, which is humorously about drinking.

George Dyson has Four Songs for Sailors. The music in these songs moves like the river and the sea, majestic and powerful.
There is a great line in one of them, A Wet Sheet and Flowing Sea, that says, “The world of waters is our home, and merry men are we. While the hollow oak our palace is, our heritage the sea.”

I’m glad I finally caught this one in my net.

2009-09-02T07:07:00.000-07:00

I’m afraid I was a little overly optimistic about my recovery time. I came home on Saturday but it’s taken me a few days to get my thoughts together. The operation went well and now I have a new friend that I like to call ‘Mr. Percocet’. If I tend to stray a little we’ll blame it on him.

I’m still enjoying my DVD of L’Or Des Anges. It follows five choirs, Worcester Cathedral, Knabenchor Hannover, Wiener Sangerknaben, Les Petits Chanteurs a la Croix de Bois and Polski Slowiki, and has some fun and interesting scenes of the boys practicing, auditioning, performing and playing.
I enjoyed watching the Worcester boys playing cricket and lolling on the lawn in their cassocks (but Mr. Percocet kept worrying about grass stains).

Two well known trebles are featured, Terry Wey and Dennis Placzkowski. There is a classic staircase scene from Mozart’s Bastien and Bastienne with Dennis and Wojciech Dzwoniarski, although someone says that Dennis is only lip syncing to another boy’s voice here. It may be true because I thought I saw a moment when it didn’t quite line up, but that could be the Percocets, too.
The narrator gives some interesting facts about the history of boy choirs and there are some great song choices throughout the film.

I’m still surprised that with all the wonderful things they could have shown us the producers only came up with 52 minutes of footage. I’m sure the length was chosen to fit a television time slot, but it’s like gathering Chaucer, Zola, Dante and Victor Hugo all together just for a short story.
It’s still fun to watch though and happily there are two other good films on this DVD to fill it out more.

A Slight Fever is a short film about a young cellist remembering his days in the choir as his voice changed and his subsequent choice of the cello to take its place.

Rejoice is about the 7th World Festival of Boychoirs of Poznan, 2001. This film gives us samples of a lot of great choirs as they come together for a wonderful festival. I counted 18 choirs from several European countries and the US is represented by the Madison Boychoir. That must have been something great to see.

I have wanted this DVD for quite a while but I held back because of the expense. Lately I’ve noticed that it is growing less available every year. I figured I had better grab a copy now because the price probably will never go down.

L’or Des Anges

2009-08-24T16:45:00.000-07:00

Want to hear something crazy? I have to go in tomorrow for a coronary bypass operation. I told the doctor, ‘no way. That only happens to old people‘. He says not to worry.
Anyway now I have to be away for a few days and I won’t be able to post again until probably Friday or Saturday. So, don’t touch that dial… I’ll be back.
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I have been as nervous as an expectant father, pacing the floor and wringing my hands, waiting for that special delivery. It’s finally here and it’s a boy. In fact, it’s lots of boys. I just received the DVD of L’or Des Anges, the pseudo-documentary about boy choirs.

Interestingly the first 4 letters of the title spell L O R D, as in ‘Lord, this is too short”. These things are never long enough and the 52 minutes of the feature go by much too quickly, but there are some behind the scenes footage and some outtakes that are fun.

I’ve only had the chance to watch it once so I’ll report more about it when I return. It may take a couple of posts.
If I had any cigars I would pass them around.

2009-08-22T16:15:00.000-07:00

I used to think there was only one song called Ave Maria and that was the one by Schubert. Then I started getting educated about these things and found out, of course, that there are lots of Ave Marias.
I have a sweet album from Zurich, Switzerland, recorded by the Zurcher Sangerknaben and the title of the album is Ave Maria. They have one version of this song by Charles Gounod which uses a portion of a song by Bach as its base. This is a great version, sung with intense feeling and some really high notes.

It’s interesting that Franz Schubert’s Ellens Dritter Gesang is often misidentified as "Schubert's Ave Maria" because it opens with the greeting "Ave Maria", even though it is not a setting of the traditional Ave Maria prayer. The original text of Schubert's song is from Sir Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake.

Anton Bruckner has an Ave Maria and so do Cesar Franck, Francesco Paolo Tosti, Jakob Ardadelt, Camille Saint Saens and, of course, Schubert. They are all on this CD along with Franck’s Panis Angelicus and Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus, and a few others. There is even a Verdi number Laudi Alla Virgine Maria (which I believe is another way of saying Ave Maria) from his opera Otello.

There are some men’s voices helping out in here but mostly it’s the boys who make it such a pretty recording. The cover mentions Daniel Perret and Arian Hohn as sopranos and Roy Egger as alto.

Alphons von Aarburg directs The Zurich Boys Choir which he founded in 1960. More than 130 youngsters from all backgrounds belong to the various groups that make up the choir. Choir members who come from the greater Zurich area rehearse two to three times a week. They also spend two or three weeks at the choir's singing camp in Burgundy (France) during spring and summer holidays. This ’camp’ is at a beautiful castle on a private lake and is far from the rustic image that’s suggested by the term ’camp’. Lucky kids.

Seven and eight year-old boys receive their first training at the Singschule (singing school) and their education culminates in being part of the concert choir. Older boys are given the chance to perform with the men's choruses. The Zurich Boys Choir has toured extensively in Europe and the US and perform also in the Zurich Opera.

2009-08-19T17:09:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of choirs around the world and it’s a lot of fun to explore their music and learn things about them and there are many that I want to hear but I just haven’t gotten to them yet. One choir that I kept putting off is the Pacific Boychoir and I don’t know why. I think for some reason I expected them to be sort of ordinary, not a top notch group, but I was very wrong.

I’ve had a lot of CD’s on order for a week or so and the first to arrive was Cantate, by the Troubadors of the Pacific Boychoir. This is music of Bach, Mozart, Posch and Mendelssohn and the singing is top notch after all. These little boys have some great voices and great skill.

According to the booklet the intent on this CD was to perform these works the way the composers intended, with boy sopranos instead of the female sopranos that are favored today. It’s intended to be more historically accurate, combining both boy’s and men’s voices along with a chamber orchestra of “historically informed practice”. It all works so well.

They start with Bach’s Cantata 150 which is in 7 movements. The writer points out the great “tone ladder” in the 4th movement where the voices step up continually from the bass line to the first violins in a beautiful way. You just have to hear it.
Bach also has Mein Glaubiges Herze (from Cantata 68) which is one of my favorites.

Mozart is represented by Sub Tuum Praesidium and Ergo Interest/Quaere Superna which, according to the notes, are little-known or performed church works from his early years. The first is a duet by a great treble, Julian Abelskamp and 11-year old mezzo-soprano Jacob Wilson.
The reviewer says about the second piece it “demands a singer of technical mastery capable of … the vocal range with Bach-like disregard for a singer’s need to breathe from time to time”. Pretty funny.

They give us Cantate Domino by Isaac Posch, another duet by Ableskamp and Wilson, and Mendelssohn’s Surrexit Pastor Bonus, written when he was only 17.

If you are familiar with these songs I don’t need to say much about how beautiful they are and if, like me, you don’t know them then you should check them out on this disc.

2009-08-16T18:40:00.000-07:00

I’ve been reading Alan Mould’s book The English Chorister, A History, again and it’s amazing how much ancient information he has managed to find about the various cathedrals and their choirs. The life of a choirboy in those days was often a difficult one filled with hard work and few luxuries. Some of the stories he tells are amusing and some are pretty sad. That the boys stayed with the choir meant either that they loved the music or perhaps that their other life choices were even less favorable.

I was looking at Salisbury cathedral, for example, and learned these things.
At Salisbury, Bishop Roger Martival in 1322 reported that the 14 choristers were not well taken care of and were so hungry that they had to go begging each day at the dwellings of the resident Canons to get enough “victuals to keep the wolf from the door”. They also had to work as domestic servants in the homes where they were lodged.
Bishop Martival improved their situation by providing funds for their welfare, housing them together in one house and in the charge of a warden who would educate them a bit and see to their needs.

In 1519 a serious outbreak of the plague afflicted the Close at Salisbury and several choristers fell ill. At least one died.

The period of high inflation during the late 16th century caused a lot of poverty which in turn caused cathedrals to cut back on the care of their choirs. By the early 17th century Salisbury still retained a house for its boys but there was only one resident. The rest had to find lodging with whatever friend they could.

At Salisbury, their master of choristers, Thomas Smythe was reported to be frequently “quarrelsome in choir… and author of dissention and brawling between the vicars of our church and was a swearer and a drunkard and up all night and player of dice openly and publicly…”
He also got in trouble for engaging in a stone fight with the wife of the organist.

His successor, John Farrant, was also no role model for the boys. There is a great account by one of the choristers describing Farrant’s leading him, in the middle of a service, to the dean’s house and threatening the dean with a knife, tearing his gown and then going back to finish singing the service.

Also at Salisbury in the mid-1680’s a chorister, John Freeman, had a run-in with an unpleasant vicar choral, William Powell, who “reacht over the seate and caught him by the haire and pulled his head back against the seate, and struck his face agst the seate with such force as caused his mouth to bleed, and called him ‘bastard’ which caused him presently to cry.”
The boy’s father made a fuss, not over the abuse but over the term ‘bastard’.

I don’t think I would care to live in ‘ye days of olde‘.

2009-08-13T15:16:00.000-07:00

I wish there was a web site for people to swap their CDs with other people. I have a lot of older music that I would gladly exchange for some more boy choir music. I'll trade five Talking Heads for one Tolzer Knabenchor or how about Moby and the soundtrack from Pulp Fiction for something from the Pacific Boychoir?
If anyone decides to start a site like that I hope you'll tell me.

One of the very first choirs that I came to like is the Vienna Boys Choir and I bought quite a few of their CDs. I have more of their albums than any other choir.
An interesting one is their 500th Anniversary CD. It’s a 2006 reissue of an album from 1998, the year of their anniversary.

In 1498 they were known as the “Court Choir Boys” and sang for Emperor Maximilian I and this CD is a collection of music from that time period. Here they share the stage with the Chorus Viennensis, a male choir made up of former Vienna Choir Boys and created in 1952 “to provide the Choir Boys with a matching ensemble of men’s voices“.
There are two male soloists as well, with great voices. Music is by the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, directed by Agnes Grossmann.

I wish the boys were more prominent on this CD but with the loud music and the men’s voices they are often a little overshadowed.

There are two pieces by Schubert, who was himself a Vienna Choir Boy, Magnificat in C Major, D. 486 and Gesang Der Geister, D. 714 and they are both great songs. Magnificat has a really good boy soloist but I don’t know who it is because the liner notes on the reissue don’t tell us anything about the boys.

I really like the first song, Haydn’s Grosses Te Deum. It’s a powerful piece and beautifully written with some exciting violins and soaring violin-like vocals.

Antonio Salieri, whom we all know from the movie Amadeus, has a song here that had never before been recorded, Coronation Te Deum, written for the coronation of Emperor Franz II. He was probably not as bad a person as the movie made him out to be.

Salieri is followed by Mozart’s Mass No. 15 which I like a lot better. The boy soloist here is nice but not as strong as the other one.

All in all it’s a pretty good CD. I can’t imagine a better choir than Wiener Sangerknaben, no matter what they do. Their singing always is distinctive and beautiful.

2009-08-10T16:48:00.000-07:00

I have so little musical ability that when I enter a room the average level of musical talent drops dramatically. I do have a cousin who is a musician and I’m trying to get him to learn some of the songs that I like, but somehow Miserere just doesn’t sound the same on a banjo.

Stephen Cleobury, the music director of the Choir of Kings College, Cambridge, said of Kings College…” as well as traditionally minded Christians, we welcome those of all faiths and of none, to whom nonetheless the words and music of the services evidently speak powerfully. Although our services are primarily choral, there are frequent opportunities for congregational hymn-singing, and few sounds are more stirring than the combination of pealing organ with massed voices lifted in song.

I had no idea that they had congregational hymn-singing there. I would love to hear it sometime, but until then I can at least practice with their 2001 CD Best Loved Hymns. This is one that I listen to on Sunday morning with a cup of tea and a Danish but it gets played a lot of other times, too.

There are 18 great songs on this one and they are all done in that powerful King’s College style. It starts with sort of a fanfare, a full orchestra with lots of brass and deep drums on All My Hope On God Is Founded. It’s a very uplifting hymn and the orchestra is fantastic.
There is a stirring version of A Mighty Fortress Is Our Lord and Praise My Lord, the King of Heaven.
For contrast they do When I Survey the Wondrous Cross without music but its so nice I didn’t even notice for a long time.
I love Be Thou My Vision and Dear Lord and Father of Mankind and, as always, I like when there are songs that I don’t know like Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent and several others.
There is one song, Thine Be the Glory, that always amuses me a bit because when they sing the phrase ‘thine be the glory’ is sounds to me almost like they are going to sing ‘frosty the snowman’.
Another fanfare brings up the end with All People That On Earth Do Dwell, lots of horns and that deep, rumbley organ.
This is seventy minutes of really good music, even if it doesn‘t have Miserere on it.

2009-08-06T17:54:00.000-07:00

Someone kindly told me about a web site that I have been visiting a lot lately.
UK Cathedral Music Links has an amazing amount of information about various Cathedrals and their choirs, but it also has links to some interesting boy choir history, books, articles and a ton of other stuff. It’s very educational.
http://www.cathedralmusiclinks.org.uk/1153.html

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Libera is not the only talented bunch of boys from south London. There is also the Trinity Boys Choir from Croydon and I have wanted to hear them for some time, but the only album of theirs that was available from Amazon was Christmas With The Trinity Boys Choir. Despite the holiday title only about half the songs are seasonal, the other 8 are a variety of popular songs. They are:
Jerusalem
Let It Be
Over the Rainbow
Eleanor Rigby
Bridge Over Troubled Waters
Sailing
Windmills Of Your Mind
Amazing Grace

Since it is still the middle of summer I will save the carols until December and talk about the others. The singing is really good here. Bridge Over Troubled Waters is particularly beautiful and Windmills of Your Mind was a nice surprise. I’ve always liked that song.

The only problem I have with this CD is that track 7, Jerusalem, sounds distorted and really fuzzy. Maybe the machine goofed a little when it was printing my copy, but if anyone else has this CD maybe you will tell me if it’s the same on yours. If it’s supposed to sound like that then it’s very, uh, experimental and daring.

Despite the one odd song this CD is a very satisfying one.
This choir must rehearse a lot because they sing so perfectly together. From the information I found on the internet about them I can tell that they are very professional. I lifted some of that information and edited it here, like I usually do.

They have performed all around the world in concerts and cathedral recitals and they have been broadcast on TV and radio in different countries.
The choir has sung on the soundtracks of several feature films and its recordings range from opera to backing for pop albums.
The boys are particularly known for their part in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which they have appeared in more than 150 professional performances, as well as on CD and video.
In the world of opera, the boys appear on prestigious stages all over Europe. On the concert platform, the Choir is regularly invited to perform at the BBC Proms and was honored to perform in Her Majesty the Queen's 80th Birthday Prom Concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 2006. The boys have performed with all the major London orchestras and in Vienna with the Vienna Boys Choir.

One other thing I like about them is the photo of them dressed for a performance in military uniforms and big, black, waxy moustaches. It’s a riot. I think it’s a great picture and I hope I get the chance to see them someday.

2009-08-03T09:02:00.000-07:00

This is post number 70. I'm a little surprised that I still have things to say. Thanks, everyone.

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Several years ago I started turning British. It was a gradual change. First I started reading Agatha Christy mysteries, then I switched from coffee to tea, bought tea pots that are in the shape of cottages, and picture books about English villages. I even started buying commemorative plates with the Queen’s picture on them. My friends rolled their eyes as I drifted deeper into anglophilia and one friend accused me of channeling Miss Marple.
I’m learning to say lift instead of elevator, flat instead of apartment, loo instead of rest room, but I‘m still not clear about Bob being my uncle.
Also I was relieved to learn that Bubble and Squeak, Spotted Dick and Toad in the Hole are dishes and not ailments.
Yesterday I had an almost irresistible urge to drive on the wrong side of the road.

There is a Brit whose voice I have admired for a while, now. Andrew Johnson began singing when he was 7 with the Bath Abbey Choir and after two years joined St Paul's Cathedral Choir School, becoming Head Chorister in his final year. He was often featured as a soloist on recordings for the BBC, Disney (Prince of Egypt), and others.

Most importantly he was the main soloist with the Boys Air Choir, featuring on four CDs and in two tours to Japan. My favorite CD by them is Boys on Bach where he is the soloist on most of the songs. I especially love tracks 1, 3, 6 and 13 which are songs I was familiar with. They are Ave Maria, BWV 208, BWV 147 and BWV 170 (It’s easier to give the numbers than to write out those long German titles). This is a great CD if you are a Bach fan.
Andrews voice was a very pretty treble with a certain quality that is appealing.

With Sir David Hickox, young Andrew performed concerts at the Barbican and Newbury festivals. He was awarded a music scholarship to Prior Park College where he played the viola in the Wiltshire Youth Orchestra, and in his final year performed Grieg's 'Piano Concerto in A minor'. He was known for sneaking Westlife renditions into church services whilst playing the organ.Today Andrew is a baritone at Magdalen College, where he studies music and plays rugby. He is now part of an a capella group, the Oxford Clerks.

2009-07-31T13:21:00.000-07:00

I thought it was time to pay another visit to Downside Abbey and say ‘sup to the monks and choirboys. They have a CD from 2004 titled The Best Gregorian Chant Album In The World…Ever! I couldn’t let that claim pass without testing its veracity. Not that I’ve heard every Gregorian chant album in the world, but hey, how many can there be?

This is a two CD set but only the first disc is by Downside Abbey. The other disc is the St Dominic’s Priory Choir. Actually, track 4 on the first disc, Nos Autem, is by the Coro de Monjes Monasterio Benedictino de Santo Domingo de Silos. Never heard of them but their name is longer than their song.

For my taste this album could have had a lot more choirboys and fewer monks.
11 of the 17 songs from Downside Abbey are repeated from their other earlier CD Gregorian Moods so there are only 6 new ones.

The second disc by St Dominic’s has no boys at all that I can tell. It’s just all monks. The liner notes on this CD are of little help. It only lists the songs on each disc and doesn’t tell us anything about the choirs.

Anyone looking for treble voices would be better off with the first album from Downside Abbey, Gregorian Moods. Is this the Best Gregorian Chant Album In The World… Ever? I certainly hope not.

Personally I think the Enigma album MCMXC a.d. from back in 1992 is a lot more fun. It has some modernized Gregorian style chants and though it too has no boys’ voices I still listen to it often.

2009-07-28T17:19:00.000-07:00

Things to watch out for:

Sometimes when purchasing music from the internet I don’t read the information closely enough and I sometimes end up regretting it.
The Choirboys (the first incarnation with CJ, Patrick and Ben) had two CD’s and I ordered both only to find out that they were really the same except for a song or two. One has Miserere and the other has Walking In the Air. They even have the exact same liner notes and pictures, just different covers.
Maybe one was the English release and the other was the U.S. release. I should have looked closer at the track listings.
Of course, I'm happy to have both in my collection but I was still surprised.

Most recently I received a CD that I had really been looking forward to, The Westminster Choir sings familiar American and British folk songs.
How was I to know that there is a Westminster Choir in New Jersey and that it isn’t a boy choir? I thought this was from Westminster Cathedral and that would have been a charming album but this adult mixed choir is not at all what I wanted.
Unfortunately I had unwrapped it before realizing my blunder. There was small print on the back that would have told me who it was if I had read it first. Once a CD is unwrapped Amazon won't take it back. That’s 16 bucks that could have been spent on Tolzer Knabenchor or something.

On one CD I luckily investigated before I bought it. It was a CD from the Athens Boy’s Choir, which sounded like it could be good until I looked further. Then I saw that it was something totally different from what I expected. Turns out they are a "transgender spoken word duo based in Athens, Georgia". Oops.

So, my point is to always read the descriptions and labels carefully and don’t unwrap a CD until you’ve looked it over.

2009-07-25T10:56:00.000-07:00

Are you familiar with the principle of sympathetic harmonics? It's when a vibrating object like a tuning fork or a string can cause a like object that is tuned similarly to vibrate as well, without touching it. Strike a tuning fork and hold it near another with the same pitch and the passive one will begin to hum.
If I understand it correctly, some musical instruments, like harps, have a set of special strings that will resonate harmonically with others.
Sometimes I feel like I have a metaphysical tuning fork inside me and when I hear certain music I can feel it responding.

I really responded to a new CD I have from the American Boychoir (new to me, at least) titled Litton Live, The Farewell Concert. It was recorded in 2001 at Princeton University and it’s pretty wonderful.

One of our most prominent choral conductors, James Litton was music director at the American Boychoir school for sixteen years. He had a professorship at Westminster Choir College and Princeton Theological Seminary and was also the organist and music director at St Bartholomew’s Church in New York City for thirteen years.

This was a big show with 106 alumni members returning to sing along with the 79 members of the class of 2001. More alums wanted to be part of the tribute but there wasn’t room for them all.
I’ve never said this before but I wept at times listening to this CD. I don’t mean misty or moist, I had water running down my face. Thank goodness I was home alone because it was embarrassing.

Many of the men are now professional singers and when all of them come together they have a rich powerful sound. When the boys voices join in they bring it to a majestic level. The harmonies are amazingly smooth and sometimes multiple voices will be so synchronized that they sound like one voice.

They open with a stunning performance of Introit-Requiem aeternam, Kyrie eleison from Requiem by Marurice Durufle. Other songs include Prayer of the Children by Kurt Bestor, Greig’s Brothers Sing On, and some African American Spirituals. Bruckner’s Locus Iste was especially sweet. In all, there are 73 minutes of music and I found myself paying attention through the whole thing.

2009-07-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

Just a few more Lyrics that I happen to like…

Kyrie, Eleison (Lord have mercy)
Who would have thought that a word like Kyrie could be repeated, expanded and embellished in so many ways. It took a while for me to figure out that the only words to Kyrie were Kyrie and sometimes Eleison. At least, I think that’s right. I’m sure that someone who has spent more time in mass would know.
Surely the record for getting the most out of a word has to go to Libera. They managed to put 18 syllables into the word Sanctus.

A really pretty song that I see a lot is Morning Is Broken whose words come from the English poet and children's author Eleanor Farjeon.
She had been asked to make a poem to fit the lovely gaelic tune Bunessan. Everyone knows this song. It begins:
Morning has broken, like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird.
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning,
Praise for the springing fresh from the word.

Beautiful imagery. A lot of people thing that Cat Stevens wrote that but he only made it popular.

I have two versions of a song titled Bailero. One is by Anthony Way but the better version is by the Saint Philips Boys Choir. It’s a beautiful and haunting melody from the Auvergne region of France. A lot of opera sopranos have this in their repertoire. I really like it, but I looked up the lyrics and basically it says:

Shepherd, across the water, you are scarcely having a good time.
Scarcely, and you?
Shepherd, how do I get over there, there’s a big stream.
Wait, I’ll come and get you

That’s not nearly as romantic sounding as the music suggests.

There is another strangely popular tune of which I have several versions. Sure on This Shining Night was a poem written by James Agee, a local celeb, here where I live, and was set to music by Samuel Barber.

Sure on this shining night
Of star-made shadows round
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground

The late year lies down the north,
All is healed, all is health
High summer holds the earth,
Hearts all whole

Sure on this shining night
I weep for wonder
Wandr’ing far alone
Of shadows on the stars.

I’m not sure I understand what all of it means but it sounds great, especially when James Rainbird sings it.

One more thing and I’ll shut up about lyrics. Just this… Venite Spiritu Et Emitte Caelitus.

2009-07-19T05:52:00.000-07:00

Songs lyrics

I remember a book from several years ago that listed some of the many song lyrics that have been misunderstood by listeners, usually with humorous results.
The title of the book referred to an old Credence Clearwater Revival song that said, “There’s a bad moon on the rise”, but a lot of people heard it as “there’s a bathroom on the right”. I was one of those, but only at first.

Thank goodness for the internet because now we can look up those words that are sung indistinctly or in a foreign language and not embarrass ourselves, well, myself anyway. I love to know the lyrics to songs because they are often charming, moving or just beautifully written.

An example of a funny song is Sur Le Pont D’Avignon, sung by WSK. It says:
Sur le pont d’Avignon
L'on y danse, l'on y danse
Sur le pont d’Avignon
L'on y danse tout en rond
Les beaux messieurs font comme ça
Et puis encore comme ça.
Les belles dames font comme ça
Et puis encore comme ça.

That sounds great but what they are really saying is:
On the bridge of Avignon
We all dance there, we all dance there
On the bridge of Avignon
We all dance there in a ring.
The handsome gentlemen do like this
And then like that.
The beautiful ladies do like this
And then like that.

And it goes on.

A sad one is Dennis Placzkowski singing Minuit Chretien.
The tune is O’ Holy Night and the words are of a little boy talking to God. His mother died and he wonders if she still loves him and asks if God will send her back.
He says, “Tell her, please, that at school I learn my lessons, I wash my hands and do the things she wanted…”
Dennis sings it with a convincing feeling that always makes me a little misty. Oddly, I can't find these lyrics on the internet. That title shows a different set of words.

A lot of songs use poems and set them to music, like Jerusalem which Ben Phillip sings on Libera’s New Dawn CD. It was written by William Blake during the days of the industrial revolution.

And did those feet in ancient time, walk upon England’s mountains green,
And was the holy lamb of God on England’s pleasant pasture seen?
And did the countenance divine look down upon our clouded hills,
And was Jerusalem builded here among those dark satanic mills?

Libera kindly provides their lyrics on their web site.

Another good thing about knowing the lyrics is that, while I can’t sing, I can still lip-sync.

2009-07-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, when I moved into this house, I realized that there was no aerial television reception here at the foot of this hill and surrounded by trees. There was no using a satellite dish and I’m too far from the main roads to get cable so I decided to forego television and see if I could live without it. It was easier than I thought it would be.

I watch DVD’s instead when I need something visual and not just movies. I like to watch performance DVD’s of boy choirs and I have several. Probably my favorite one is Ave Verum by the Choir of Saint John’s College Cambridge.
There are no special effects, no fancy camera work besides panning and zooming; it’s just the choir standing in the chapel, singing, but it’s fun to watch. Many of the boys, especially the younger ones, have such earnest expressions and it’s easy to see that they are taking their music seriously.
It’s also a bit funny to see them trying hard not to look at the camera, even when it comes very close to them.

They do three Ave Verums, one by Mozart, one by Byrd and one by Elgar. I don’t know which one I like best.
Some of the other songs are How Lovely are Thy Dwellings, Locus Iste, O! For a Closer Walk With God, Pie Jesu Domini and one that I like a lot, Cantique De Jean Racine.
One of the older choristers leads in Panis Angelicus and he has a wonderful, strong tenor voice. They are joined by an cello and harp on that number.

I think my favorite song is Haydn’s Insanae Et Vanae Curae. Listening to a CD I can hear how all the vocal parts come together but watching it I can see how it’s done. On this song they repeat the phrase "saepe furore" five times with a different combination of voices each time. The fifth time they go really high and loud. It’s really sort of thrilling.
There is a clip of that song and some of the others on Youtube so here's a link for anyone who wants to see it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSYK5JHgRnA

2009-07-11T17:15:00.000-07:00

Boni Pueri, Czech it out.

There is a very famous choir called Boni Pueri, from the Czech Republic.
The CD that I have is also titled Boni Pueri and the cover shows sixteen boys in gold and white, full length robes standing around a piano with their pianist and their organist.

The album is divided into three main parts, first some traditional religious songs like Halleulujah (Handel), a haunting Pueri Hebraeorum, and Kyrie and Gloria. They do a nice version of Panis Angelicus with the organ throbbing out those deep, deep notes that I like.

Then there is a song that I have only heard Libera do, Going Home, by Dvorak with words by William Arms Fischer. That’s followed by a couple of folk songs and the chorus from the opera The Bartered Bride by Smetana.

In the third part they lighten things up with a jaunty rendition of Waltzing Matilda, from Australia; Sakura, from Japan and Siyahamba, that beautiful Zulu spiritual that has the line, “We are marching in the light of God, we are marching in the light of God“.

The best part is when they do a Broadway medley of Hello, Dolly, Over the Rainbow, I Got Rhythm, Somewhere, and a really cute version of Chattanooga Choo-choo. That one made me smile but perhaps the most charming bit is when these little Eastern European boys sing America, from West Side Story, in English with Puerto Rican accents.

Boni Pueri was founded in 1982 and has become one of Europe's most notable musical bodies. The choir is a part of the newly opened Boni Pueri choir school under the patronage of the Czech Ministry of Education. It has 350 members and has given more than 2500 concerts all over Europe, America and Asia.Also, Boni Pueri is a cultural ambassador of the "European Federation of Choirs of the Union".

2009-07-08T15:45:00.000-07:00

There is a song on The Choirboys CD called Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) and it was written by Howard Goodall as the theme to the BBC series Mr. Bean. I believe it’s the Christ Church boys who sing it on the show. It’s really a beautiful piece of music, very classical sounding.
Goodall has written theme music for other shows like The Vicar of Dibley and Blackadder and has won awards for his work.

In 2006 he came out with a CD called Winter Lullabies which he recorded with The Boys of Christ Church Cathedral Choir, Oxford. This CD has six songs that were composed by Goodall using words from the writings of Thomas Campion, Joseph Mohr, Theo Dorgan and two anonymous pieces. The lyrics of Lullaby of Winter were written by Goodall, himself, and it speaks of the Christian Nativity story.

Now Winter Nights Enlarge paints a cozy picture of winter nights with blazing chimneys, cups of wine and yellow waxen lights while Crossing the Border is bleak and sad. “Home is where they broke our hearts and burned our houses, laid us low…”

These compositions were written with the great voices of the Christ Church boys specifically in mind. They also included some standards like Panis Angelicus and Ave Verum.

One interesting thing about all of these songs is that the music is provided by the great harpist Catrin Finch, called the queen of harps. She is young and beautiful and plays magnificently. Sometimes it sounds like two people are playing or one person with an unusual number of fingers.

Even though this CD has winter as a theme there is nothing particularly Christmasy about it except for the last song, O Holy Night. This is good, easy listening for any time of the year.
Oh, and I really like the artwork on the cover.

2009-07-05T12:49:00.000-07:00

In the northeast corner of Spain is the region known as Catalonia (Catalunya), the home of the Basilica of Montserrat and L’Escolania de Montserrat, a really great boys choir. I just got a CD titled O Vos Omnes and it’s beautiful.

With the exception of Cantique de Jean Racine the songs on this CD are new to me and I like that. There is the title song O Vos Omnes and others like Ubi Cantas, Rosa Vera, Nigra Sum, Virolai and more.
Accompanied by an organ and backed up sometimes by the men’s choir the boys sometimes sound majestic and powerful and at other times hauntingly sweet.

I usually rely on liner notes to tell me something about the CD and the choir, and often those are in a foreign language, but this one is just blank on the inside so I had to go to the internet to find out something about them...

“At present the l’Escolania choir school is formed by more than fifty boys, from nine to fourteen years old, who come from all over Catalonia and also from the other Catalan Countries. During the four years they stay at Montserrat they study the last stage of Primary school and the first stage of Secondary School, along with their corresponding musical studies. Each student studies two instruments, piano and a second instrument of their choice, as well as Musical Theory, Ensemble and, of course Choral singing, which is the speciality of l’Escolania.”

“When the repertory requires it they are accompanied by the Montserrat Chapel Choir, formed by old choirboys and by the monks of the Ministry Chapel Choir."

“L’Escolania sings every day in the Basilica of Montserrat often to a great affluence of pilgrims and visitors from all over the world. With their song, the choirboys transmit the beautiful message of the gospels which transcends linguistic, cultural and even religious frontiers. The midday Salve has become, over the past decades, the most visited daily act of the Sanctuary.”

They have toured locally and internationally and have a lot of recordings.

“Located within the Abbey of Montserrat… the origin of the Escolanía could be traced back to the monastic schools of the Middle Ages. The monks who founded the monastery (1025) hailed from the abbey of Ripoll, where there was a flourishing monastic school. The "Escolania" soon developed its own characteristic by enhancing religious services with its fine singing as early as the XIV century.”

2009-07-01T15:28:00.000-07:00

I would like to say Happy Birthday to everybody’s favorite choir boy, Tom Cully, who turns 15 on July 2nd.
-----------------------------

Phoenix boys choir

Just in time for the 4th of July we have a CD by the Phoenix Boys Choir titled Let Freedom Sing. It’s a good way to pay tribute to America’s independence day, the anniversary of when our ancestors won their freedom by licking the Brits… oh, no hard feelings from our English cousins, I hope.

This is the first CD that I have from this choir and it’s pretty good. It was recorded in 2002 and has a cute cover with the boys dressed as the 1776 signers of the Declaration of Independence in powdered wigs and tricorn hats.

This album has several patriotic songs such as America the Beautiful, God Bless America, The Star Spangled Banner and the one they always sing when they board a plane to go on tour, This Is My Country.
The last song is George M. Cohan’s Patriotic Fantasy, a medley of American songs.

Most of the other songs are from America’s past, like Alexander’s Ragtime Band, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Working On the Railroad and When the Saints Go Marching In.
There are also some international standards like Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Hymn to Freedom and How Can I Keep From Singing. Actually, some of the songs are sung by and with the men’s choir who are very good.

In 2001 the Phoenix Boys Choir won a Grammy award for Best Choral Performance for their recording of Penderecki’s Credo. I think I'll give that one a try. They began singing in 1948 and have become quite popular, even touring around the globe.

I like this CD but I don’t expect I’ll listen to the patriotic songs all that often. I mean, it’s not something to listen to every day, but it’s good to have them at this time of year to get in the proper mood. On the 4th we will raise the flag, shoot some fireworks and play this CD.

2009-06-28T17:19:00.000-07:00

When I first started to collect boy choir music I very quickly came across the American Boychoir and fell in love with their sound. It’s not surprising that even after hearing dozens of other choirs this is still one of my top three favorites. It’s useless to try and describe what they sound like, they just have to be heard because it’s a great sound, sophisticated and imaginative, that is easily recognizable.

One CD that touches me is the album Hymn.
This is from the liner notes, “Hymn singing has been a part of the human experience for many centuries. We might remember our first experiences of singing together when we were children, singing hymns, psalms and spiritual songs in churches, synagogues and temples. “

This CD has hymns from the Middle Ages through the Reformation as well as more recent works. There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy is the best version I’ve ever heard and Fairest Lord Jesus is very moving and emotional.
Anyone with a Southern Baptist background, like myself, will have fond memories of Softly and Tenderly which starts out with a sweet treble soloist. That was a favorite at our church.
Their version of Amazing Grace features a classical guitar and the warm, clear voice of Steven Curtis Chapman.
A few of the other songs are Morning Has Broken, A Mighty Fortress is Our God, Praise to the Lord and several others, all really great.

Music is provided by the wonderful St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, a prefect choice for this choir’s style. This is a CD that I keep listening to and I never seem to get tired of it.

2009-06-25T16:36:00.000-07:00

Die Wiltener Sangerknaben, Innsbruck, Tyrol

The Wilten Boys Choir is among the oldest and most traditional boys’ choirs. They’ve been around at the Wilten monastery since the mid-thirteenth century. The concert choir and junior choirs have more than 150 boys.
Their foundation is in liturgical choral singing but they also do sacred vocal music from motets to oratorios and secular choral music like Tyrolean folk music and operas.

The CD that I have is the Joseph Haydn oratorio Die Schopfung (the creation) and like so many CD’s from that area the liner notes are all in German so I have to try and decode a few things here and there.
From what I can tell, there are two boy soloists, Thomas Reitner and Philippe Spiegel. The music is provided by the Timisoara Philharmonic and it’s great.
This is a two disc CD, recorded live in 2003, and is divided into three parts. The first and second parts are conversations between the angels Raphael, Uriel and Gabriel. Raphael and Gabriel are sung by men but Uriel is a boy’s voice. The third act is conversation between Adam and Eve. I have no idea what anyone is saying but I suspect it has something to do with an apple.

The great thing about classical music is that, like opera, you don’t have to know what the words mean. They just sound great and maybe not knowing the meaning of the words makes it easier to hear each voice as another musical instrument.

The choir comes in several times in this oratorio but I wish they had a bigger part because they are really excellent and so are the two young soloists. These are some very accomplished boys.
I’m getting more and more into classical, as long as it’s sung by boys, anyway. This is one of Haydn’s great compositions and act two has that famous trio of Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael, In Holder Anmut Stehn, Mit Jungem Grun.
At least I think that’s the title. It’s probably like opera arias where the song is known by its first words, but I could be wrong.

2009-06-23T13:25:00.000-07:00

If you can't say something nice about someone... then come sit beside me.

It happens fairly often that I will get a new CD only to find that I'm not very excited by it, but I always give it a fair trial and listen to it at least five times. Almost always I discover things that I didn't notice at first and soon I find that I do like it after all. Sometimes those iffy CD's have become some of my favorites, but that isn't always the case. There are some CD's that I put on the back shelf for one reason or another. You may like them, though.

A Quiet Conscience by Connor Burrowes is one of those. It's actually sort of interesting because it’s Renaissance music but somehow it never makes me tap my feet. These are sacred songs from the 17th century and they are not choral music. It's the voice of Connor Burrowes accompanied by lute and harpsichord and I'm afraid it's pretty dry.
I like Connor, I like all of the Burrowes boys; they have given us some great music and this may well be a great CD. Just because it makes me yawn doesn't mean that others won't like it. Looking at Amazon, though, I see that it is no longer available and has been discontinued by the manufacturer, so maybe I wasn't the only one.

Another CD that I didn't bother putting on my iPod is Kein Schoener Land by the Regensburger Domspatzen boys. Here is a great choir, it's just this CD that I don't like.
I thought it was going to be them singing German folk songs because the blurb said 'featuring Rebensburger Domspatzen, but they only sing back up and not even on all the songs. There is only one where they have a strong role and the others are sung by German men. That's no fun.

The one song that I did keep was Zu Regensburg Auf Der Kirchturmspitz. The lyrics are weirdly funny, that old world humor, and it talks about a group of tailors sitting down to feast on a roast flea. Tailors were supposedly so small and insignificant that their festival gatherings would take place on a spire.
What I like about the song is that it sounds very comical. The line “Schneider meck, meck, meck” is repeated a lot and it puts me in mind of a Looney Tunes cartoon of chickens scratching in the barnyard.

Unfortunately, one good song is no reason to buy the CD.

Everyone loves Declan Galbraith... except me. His first CD is gathering dust as we speak. What a cute kid and what a big voice but songs like Mama Said, Imagine, Tell Me Why and so on, are just the sort of pop music that I don’t care for.
I grew tired of these songs when I was a kid and some of them are older than me. Sometimes he has backup singers that sound like something from the seventies.

Declan has a fun story about his musical beginnings and I'm sure he's a great guy but looking at the numbers on his later albums I see more of the same so, unless someone recommends a particular album, I think I’ll pass.

2009-06-20T16:26:00.000-07:00

Aled Jones

One boy whose talent has carried him beyond his treble years and into adult stardom is Aled Jones. He has an interesting story in that a woman, Hefina Orwig Evans, attended a service at the Bangor Cathedral where she heard Aled sing Hear My Prayer. She was so impressed that she wrote a letter to the Recording Studios of Sain advising them to listen to him. They did and liked it, so 12-year-old Aled started his recording career.

He actually started singing at the age of 9 with the Bangor Cathedral Choir in Wales where he became lead soloist within two years. By the time his voice changed at age 16 he had recorded sixteen albums that sold more than six million copies. His voice really was remarkable and it’s not just the sweet tones but the skill that he possessed at that early age.

The CD that I have is the Best Of Aled Jones and it has that perfect version of Hear My Prayer that got Ms. Evans so excited. It’s the best version I’ve heard so far.
There are some songs with titles that I assume are Welsh like Yr Ehedydd, Ddwyfor Iesu (Pie Jesu), and Bugeilio’r Gwenith Gwyn. Oh, how I wish I could pronounce those names.

I like Mozart’s Laudate Dominum, Frank’s Panis Angelicus and especially Bach’s Ave Maria in which he belts out some super high, powerful notes. There is also Agnus Dei, How Beautiful Are The Feet, Where’er You Walk and several others, all great.

The CD cover calls him “one of the best treble singers the world has ever seen” and I can’t disagree. I doubt that there are many boy singer fans who don’t have some of his music.
Too bad he had to grow up, but I’m sure he’s a great guy. After all, he’s a big Libera fan.

2009-06-17T17:39:00.000-07:00

I like compilation albums. Sometimes they’re like a Whitman’s Sampler with an assortment of good things. One that I like a lot is Miserere, A Collection of Choral Classics. Here we get to enjoy the Winchester Cathedral Choir, The Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, Seaford College Chapel Choir, The Huddersfield Choral Society and the Viols of the Consort of Musicke.

Not only that, we get some excellent renditions of standards like the title song, Miserere Mei. It’s a popular song so, like everyone, I have a lot of versions of it and this one is really good. The soloist, little Barnaby Lane, gets to show-off a bit with those high, long notes and the rest of the choir does some pretty complex sounding vocals.

Other popular songs by the Winchester boys are I Waited For The Lord, Salvator Mundi, and my favorite This Is The Record Of John with soloist Michael Liley. I tried to find some information about Michael Liley on the internet but came up blank. Sometimes he’s referred to as an alto and other times as a countertenor. I have no idea what the difference is, but I love his voice. It’s different.
The piece is divided into three sections, each beginning with a verse for the soloist followed by a full section, echoing words of the verse but in a beautiful and different way.

They also do, from Handel’s Messiah, the Hallelujah Chorus and For Unto Us A Child Is Born which I like better because I hear it a lot less frequently than Hallelujah, plus it has some really cool vocals.

The Christ Church Cathedral choir does Ave Verum Corpus by Mozart and that great Bach number, Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.

The Seaford College Chapel has three numbers. The Lord Is My Shepherd and Abide With Me are beautiful and, while Parry’s Jerusalem is good, I have to say that I like Libera’s version better than any other that I’ve heard.

The boy choristers of the Seaford College Chapel Choir, aged from 11 to 18, some of whom are choral scholars from Cathedral and Music Schools, make up the four-part choir. The choir has performed in numerous capital cities: London, Paris, Washington, Moscow and more.As of 2001, the choir is mixed - with both male and female members, but this recording is from 1989.

Christ Church has been around since 1526 when John Taverner became Organist and Master of the Choristers. The present choir consists of sixteen boy choristers and twelve men.

This may be one of those CD's that is becoming hard to find. It seems to be out of production, but get one if you can.

2009-06-14T11:46:00.000-07:00

I’ve been practicing and trying to perfect a new skill or science. I call it retro-phrenology. It’s based on the old belief, Phrenology, that a person’s personality could be analyzed by studying the lumps and bumps on their head.
In retro-phrenology, however, I believe that I can affect and direct someone’s personality by making lumps on their head. I got the idea from my mother who used to do it to me all the time.

I deserve a lump on the head for not going to see the Atlanta Boy Choir perform when I lived in Atlanta. I lived there for several years and I can't believe that I didn't once go see them. A good friend had a son who sang in the choir and they invited me to go on more than one occasion, but I passed it up thinking I wouldn't like it. I can be such a doofus.

Now I've been listening to their CD Garden of Beauty and it really is very good. I think their sound is a bit like the American Boychoir's. It's smooth and quietly beautiful. It’s interesting that there are no soloists on this album, no voice or voices that rise above the others to lead. It also has a slow tempo so that it sounds serene and contemplative.

The songs are not from the ususal choir repertoire and some of them use text from various poets. Garden Of Beauty comes from poems by an interesting trio of Sara Teasdale, E-Yeh-Shure and William Blake. The words to O Music come from Kalil Gibran and Nigra Sum is from the Song of Solomon.
The oddest one is adapted from an 1120 bestiary by Philippe de Thaun and tells a weird story about the pelican. It begins: “Pelicanus is the word for a certain breed of bird who truly is a crane; Egypt is his domaine.” It says the Pelican kills its young and then, in remorse, pecks its own breast so that its blood will revive them. Hmmm, I never knew that.

This choir has been around for more than 50 years, which is a long time by American standards, and has toured quite a bit. They have performed at the White House and they even won a Grammy award back in 1989.

2009-06-11T16:04:00.000-07:00

Odds and ends
Fashion
A question occurred to me the other day and I still have not found a good answer. I was watching one of my choral dvd’s and started thinking about the boys’ costumes and whether there is a difference between those worn by Church of England choirs and those by Catholic church choirs. I went to Wikipedia and, while there was a lot of information about both types of churches, they didn’t say anything about the choirs. I looked at a list of Catholic churches in England to see which of the choirs whose recordings I have would be on it, but I didn’t see any of them. Winchester cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Ely, Tewkesbury, Saint Paul’s, Saint John’s college and the others, are they all Church of England?
That leaves me with my original question of what do Catholic boys’ choir robes look like?
I may be misunderstanding all of this because it’s never been a part of my world. I gather that C of E is sort of like Catholic lite, or reformed Catholic, but is that the wrong way of looking at it? Do the Catholic choirs record their music?
Inquiring minds want to know. These unanswered little questions bug me, especially if it means that I might, through my ignorance, write something that is somehow incorrect.

Literature
Looking through my old books for something to re-read I picked up one that I’ve read twice but it was several years ago. It was Cry To Heaven by Anne Rice. Written in 1982 this is not a vampire story, it’s not about anything supernatural, or as she likes to say, preternatural. It is a well researched and fascinating tale about Venice in the mid-1700’s, and a boy who has a great singing talent.
This book looks closely at a sad bit of history, the world of the castrati singers of that time, their social status, musical training and careers. It’s a pretty racy story so be forewarned, but Anne Rice is such a masterful writer that she makes that period come alive and you can almost hear and smell and taste Venice. She takes us to a music school in Naples and to the opera houses of Rome. She talks about the teaching methods used back then and shows us the excitement and passion that people felt for opera and the adoration they had for the great singers.
It also contains drama, sex, suspense and revenge, a nice combination in any story.

Music
I started noticing that a lot of the cathedral choir CD’s that I have are from Hyperion records so I took a look at their web site. They have an amazing number of classical music albums to choose from and the cool thing is that if they don’t have one in stock or if it’s out of production they will print you a new copy of it from their archives. I don’t own stock or anything, I just thought that was a nice idea since no choir can keep all of their music in production forever.
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Did you know…?
The compact disc is a miracle of modern technology. Here are some facts:
They are made principally of injection-molded polycarbonate.
The diameter is 120mm.
They are 1.2mm thick.
They contain up to 680 megabytes of data. This is the equivalent of 250,000 double-sided leaves (500,000 pages) of A4 text (which would be 83 feet high and need 8 trees to make).
The music on a CD is imprinted in the form of pits of varying length on a spiral track 3.52 miles (5.66 kilometers) long.
There are approximately 16,000,000,000 pits 0.11 micro-metres deep.
The largest pit dimension is 3.054 microns; the smallest is 0.833 microns.
The width of the pits is half a micron -- which is the distance a human hair grows in two minutes and a fingernail in seven minutes. It is 700 times smaller than a pinprick.
The space between tracks is 1.6 micro-meters.
Read by a red-light laser beam, the CD plays from the centre to the edge, rotating at a speed varying from 400 times a minute at the beginning to 250 times a minute at the end. This is equivalent to flying round the earth one inch above the surface, up to 400 times a minute, counting every blade of grass on the way.
Your CD is read by the laser beam and makes over 44,000 arithmetical calculations every second in at least two dimensions. It is adding up columns of numbers ('digits'). But many of the numbers are missing because there are thousands of errors on the average CD. Therefore the numbers are added up laterally as well as vertically, enabling the CD-player to fill in the missing numbers by cross-checking them. This is all quite normal and is called 'error correction'.

2009-06-08T15:04:00.000-07:00

Oliver Lepage-Dean

There was an inexpensively priced CD on Amazon one day titled An Evening Hymn. It was from the Choir of Saint John’s College so I knew it would be good and at the price, I think it was only $7, I jumped on it.
This is the sort of quiet CD that should be listened to when you are settled in with a glass of wine and no distractions.

The subtitle of the CD is Music For Solo Treble and the soloist is Oliver Lepage-Dean, a brilliant singer. He sings with an organ for accompaniment, played by Christopher Whitton, on most of the songs, but there are some where he sings with a piano or a cello. A couple of songs have the choir backing him up.

Oliver sings songs by Purcell, Stanford, Mendelssohn, Ireland and Britten and several other composers. There are 25 numbers on this album, some sacred and some secular. I like the two funny folk songs, The Plough Boy and Oliver Cromwell with their strange lyrics.

On Pie Jesu he drops his voice to blend with the cello and it’s really nice the way he echoes the deep notes. A lot of the songs are familiar and all of them are good and just to mix it up a little more he finishes up with a great Gershwin number, Love Walked In.

The biographical information I’ve found for him comes mostly from the liner notes. I don’t know how old he was when he made this CD but it was recorded in 2002. There is a great photo of him that shows him to be a very happy boy if that smile is any indication.

He joined the choir at St. John’s at the age of eight and served as a chorister for six years, culminating in two years as Head Chorister. He performed with Jose Carreras at the Royal Albert Hall and he toured extensively with the choir, including Japan, South Africa, the United States, Holland and his native Belgium.
It’s sad to note that his voice broke midway through the American tour, just five weeks after completing this recording.

2009-06-05T13:38:00.000-07:00

Several years ago there was a robbery at a shopping mall in Atlanta. Someone stole a pickup truck and, in the middle of the night, drove it through the glass doors of a department store then started loading it with anything they could grab. They got away long before the police answered the alarm but they were later caught.
All of the newspapers reported it the next day but the headline in one of the smaller papers read “A Mall and the Night Visitors”.

That’s my clever segue into this piece about James Rainbird and his role as Amahl in the Gian-Carlo Menotti opera Amahl and the Night Visitors. I know that June is a little early to be listening to Christmas music but I feel like talking about James Rainbird and he doesn’t have very many recordings to choose from.

Anyway, the story is about a poor, crippled shepherd boy and his mother who receive a visit from the Magi who were traveling to Bethlehem, following the star. They asked if they could rest there in their humble home. The Magi tell them about the baby that is newly born and explain that they are taking gifts to him. Amahl wants to send a gift too, but he owns nothing except his crutch so he decides to take that to the child. It shouldn’t be a surprise that having announced his intention he was miraculously healed and could walk again and everyone is happy.

This was obviously written for kids, but even so I’ll bet a lot of them wondered why Jesus needed a crutch. He hadn’t even started walking yet and if he happened, for some reason, to become lame he could surely heal himself in the blink of an eye. Also, the Magi are pretty silly, especially the one with the parrot.

Despite the simple story line the highlight of the show is young James Rainbird. His singing is clear and sharp and he says his lines distinctly, convincingly and with a natural ease. He’s obviously comfortable on the stage. There is a scene where he hobbles to the door and sees the three Kings standing outside. He gasps loudly, knowing that his mother is never going to believe him when he tells her who is outside. He does it in a way that makes me laugh. It’s really charming.
I suppose there are other people in the play but they are not important. James steals the show; even Menotti said that he was marvelous.

This version of the opera was recorded in 1988 and was directed by Menotti himself, who also was present for the recording of this CD. It features the chorus and orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
I don’t know what it is but I love to listen to James Rainbird’s voice, singing or talking. He was the first boy soloist that I noticed and I still rank him at the top of my list of favorites. He had a wonderful range and could sing loudly or softly and always with that great boyish quality in his voice.

I shouldn’t do this but I'll end with a bad joke.

It seems a woman gave birth to twin boys but was so poor she had to give them up for adoption. Years later she regretted her decision and now, no longer poor, she hired a private detective to track them down so she could know that they were both doing well. The detective came back with news for her.
“One boy was adopted by a Spanish couple. They named him Juan and he seems to be very happy. Here is a photo of him.
The other boy was adopted by a couple from the middle-east. They named him Amahl and he too is in a loving home.”
She asked, “Don’t you have a picture of him?”
The detective said, “Why? They’re identical. If you’ve seen Juan you’ve seen Amahl”.

2009-06-02T17:20:00.000-07:00

I hope Libera tours in the US again soon and that they come to the south, maybe to Atlanta or Nashville. I can imagine them singing in Nashville with cowboy hats and rhinestones on their robes. Wouldn't that be funny? I’ll be there wherever and when ever they come.

The most unusual of Libera’s albums is the one from way back in 1999 that is simply titled Libera. These twelve songs have lyrics that have been adapted by Robert Prizeman and, for some, Ian Tilley. Prizeman composed the music for almost all of them, too.

The music for Sanctus is adapted from Pachelbel’s Canon and Te Lucis from Tallis’ Canon. Dies Irae is based on “Dies Irae, Dies Illa”.
The words of Mysterium are from the hymn “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence” (An ancient chant set to a French medieval folk melody) and Beta Lux from “How Shall I Sing That Majesty”. Prizeman also took a lot of Latin words from well known church songs.

There are not the familiar popular songs like I Vow To Thee My Country or Abide With Me that we hear a lot on later Libera CD’s but all of the songs are very beautiful and have those wonderful Libera harmonies that have become such a trademark of theirs.
Anyone familiar with their later albums will recognize the songs Salve Me and Sanctus and Libera, but Mysterium, Agnus Dei, Jubilate, Beata Lux, and the most of rest are unique to this collection.
Te Lucis reappears on the 2008 New Dawn album as Tallis’s Canon.

Some Cully and Horncastle fans may disagree but I think the soloists during this period, Liam O’Kane, Adam Harris, Steven Geraghty and Alex Baron, were the most talented and had the loveliest voices, at least until Ben Crawley came along. When I listen to this CD I find myself paying attention to the way the voices interact and to the things being sung in the background. It sounds very complex and is what makes Prizeman’s music so recognizable.

Sometimes I forget how great this CD is until I hear it again and then I wonder why I don’t play it more often.

2009-05-30T19:11:00.000-07:00

I had a small problem the other night and took a trip to the emergency room where I thought I would have a quick EKG and go home, but they wanted to keep me for tests the next day. They have a torture device there called a treadmill. A few more seconds on that and I would have confessed to being a terrorist.
Anyway, the day was boring and a little worrisome but I had my iPod and I learned just how comforting it can be listening to boys singing spiritual songs.
For example, Hear my Prayer from the Choir of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, with treble Jeremy Budd.

One of the very first songs that I heard and one that drew me to this sort of music was Stanford’s Magnificat in G sung by Jeremy Budd. I came across a clip of it on YouTube and I thought it was a really pretty song so I bought the CD and one thing led to another. Before I knew it I was hooked.
Jeremy has a nice voice and he does a fine job with Miserere, Magnificat, Feast Song for St Cecilia, and I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes.
The only unfortunate thing here is that his voice doesn’t come through as strong as it should on other parts of this CD. In the title song the choir sings much louder than him, but I don’t think it’s weakness on his part. Maybe the producer could have balanced it better in the recording studio or, too, maybe that’s just the way it sounds in the cathedral. It’s not bad, it’s just that I’ve heard better.

Still, it's a good CD and if anyone is looking for great choir music you can’t go wrong with St Paul’s Cathedral. They are always in the top tier of cathedral choirs and they sound great here.

2009-05-27T16:33:00.000-07:00

I hate it when I ask a question or try and tell a friend about some new discovery of mine and the friend says, “Didn’t you know that? I knew that years ago”, with a tone in his voice that hints at an unspoken ‘stupid’. That’s when I hit him.

This is probably something that I am the last person in the world to find but there is a great website called Boy Soprano and it has a long list of boy singers.
http://www.boysoprano.org/index.html
They provide some biographical information on all of them and some sample music by many. I’m still working my way through it but I found a great singer that I didn’t know about. His name is Bejun Mehta, a cousin of conductor Zubin Mehta. I bought his CD titled Songs and Arias of Handel, Schubert, Brahms and Britten and it came in the mail today. This was recorded in 1982 when Bejun was 14 and nearing the end of his soprano career. Fortunately it was recorded digitally on tape so the sound quality is good.

There is a quote on the cover by Leonard Bernstein, “It is hard to believe the richness and maturity of musical understanding in this adolescent boy.”
Bejun’s voice was made to sing opera and he sounds surprisingly like a female soprano. In fact, if you didn’t know it was a boy singing you probably wouldn’t guess. He sings passionately with the authority of a mature singer who has years of experience.

Some things from the liner notes that other people have said are, from the LA Times critic, “…incredible sophistication and sensitivity. Here was a technique that could do florid things and diminuendos on high notes. Here was an artist with an extraordinary sound the likes of which I don’t think I’d heard before” and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas called him an extraordinary prodigy.
He has “the unique gift of an inborn mezza-voce technique” so he can move between the highs and lows while maintaining a consistent quality. In February of 1983 he in New York he gave a recital that was both his debut and farewell. He was fourteen and shortly after began to mature. Prior to that his family wanted him to have a normal childhood so he only performed at local concerts in Michigan. I think this may be his only recording, but I’m not sure about that.

The CD had Britten’s The Last Rose of Summer and Schuberts’ The Shepard on the Rock (which has an amazing ending). Some Handel songs are If God Be For Us, Where’er You Walk, With Thee the Unsheltered Moor I’d Tread, and others. His choices from Brahms were Ladybug, My Sweetheart Has Rosy Lips, Down Deep in the Valley and A tree is Standing.
This is really worth getting.

2009-05-24T05:38:00.000-07:00

I’ve been reading from Alan Mould’s book The English Chorister, a History and he has some fascinating stories.
In the middle ages the boys of the choir were called upon to act in certain church plays. Boys took the place of monks as the women and the angel in the Easter play where the Maries come to Christ’s tomb. There are records of choirboys acting in the play Zaccheus and in the Play of Saint Nicholas but the really funny one was this one.

“Perhaps the most comic example comes from Lincoln where, in the Drama of the Prophets, a boy was tied beneath a real donkey, from which unbecoming position he was required to speak (or perhaps sing) the words uttered by Balaam’s ass.”
I always hear it referred to as Balaam’s ass, but couldn’t they just say Balaam’s donkey? Fewer people would giggle.

An interesting role that I’ve never heard of was the Boy Bishop, part of what was widely known as the Feast of Fools. That was a medieval custom that took place during the days between Christmas and New Year’s Day and was derived largely from of the pre-Christian revels from those times. A day was giver over to different groups in the church but the day given to the sub-deacons saw the most outrageous misuse of the liberties given to them. There is a report from 1445 that Gould cites.

“Priests and clerks may be seen wearing masks and monstrous visages at the hours of office. They dance in the choir dressed as women, pandars and minstrels. They sing wanton songs. They eat black puddings at the horn of the altar while the celebrant is saying mass. They play at dice there. They cense with stinking smoke from the soles of old shoes. They run and leap through the church, without a blush at their own shame. Finally they drive about the town and its theatres in shabby traps and carts and rouse the laughter of their fellows and the bystanders in infamous performances, with indecent gesture and verses scurrilous and unchaste.”

These things were eventually banned except for the festivities on Holy Innocent’s Day which was the choristers’ day when the choristers elected a Boy Bishop. He was later enthroned and feasted and presided over the offices for twenty-four hours. In January he would make a visitation which delighted the populace and garnered the boy a considerable amount of money.

It was all a serious ceremony and sounds like it would have been fun to see. Too bad it isn’t practiced today, but maybe someone could petition for it to be returned.

2009-05-21T17:49:00.000-07:00

I was kicking around on Amazon the other day, looking for something by the Tolzer Knabenchor, when I came across this CD of the Mozart opera Apollo and Hyacinthus. It sounded like it would be fun so I ordered it and it arrived on Tuesday. I love it. I knew that in the 1700’s the roles of women in the opera were played by boys but this is the first time I’ve heard them do it.

The boys here are Christian Fliegner, 13, Sebastian Pratchske, 12, both sopranos; Christian Gunther, 12, and Philipp Cieslewicz, 13, both altos;
Markus Schafer, tenor and Christian Immier, basse.
My first thought was ‘they sound so cute’.

The liner notes on this one are in Russian so I went to the internet to find out more about it. While I was there I found a couple of clips on YouTube showing Allan Bergius and Panito Iconomou, both of der Tolzer Knabenchor, singing the Zephyrus aria and dressed in period 18th century costumes. They not only sound cute, they look adorable. Especially little Allan Bergius in that pink gown and blond wig. It made me smile so much I wish I could see an entire production. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOmwJ0lb_jY
There are other clips from that production on YouTube as well.

Apollo and Hyacinthus was written in 1767 ,when Mozart was 11 years old. It is Mozart's first true opera and is based upon the Greek mythology story about Hyacinth being struck on the head and killed by a discus thrown by the god Apollo. It was the wind god Zephyrus who was actually responsible for the Hyacinth's death because Zephyrus, out of jealousy, blew the discus off course in order to injure and kill Hyacinth. When he died, Apollo made the Hyacinth flower spring out from his spilled blood.

The music and singing in this CD are excellent and even non-opera fans would like it.

2009-05-18T13:44:00.000-07:00

A Cappella: in the Chapel style

Music is an integral part of the choir experience except when the choir sings a cappella and then the voices take the place of the instruments. It's surprising how well that works. Sometimes I've listened to half a CD before realizing that there is no music. It’s great the way certain harmonies can replace the other instruments so effectively.

A particularly good a cappella CD that I have is Cantate Domino by the German choir Knabenchor Capella Vocalis, Reutlingen.
They have a web page: http://www.capella-vocalis.de/cms/index.php?page=start&page_id= and this is taken from their site:
"The boys' choir Capella vocalis e. V. has existed since 1992.
…This choir is special in a number of ways: it is not linked to any religion, nor is part of a communal institution - Capella vocalis is an independent choir… financed solely with the member's fee and sponsoring.”
“The boys sing religious and secular music and perform in churches as well as at numerous other venues, such as large private functions or official receptions.Capella vocalis does not have a central meeting-point. Parts of the choir practice in Reutlingen, others in Besigheim and its region. This not only means that potential members can be recruited from a larger area - an important requirement for a successful choir - but also that they can meet and practice more easily. In each of the choir's age-groups the singers receive solo and group training.A new course for beginners starts two or three times a year."

This CD has music by Grieg, Buckner, Bach and Mendelssohn, but also by some German names that are new to me, such as Hugo Distler (Es Ist Das Heil Uns Kommen her), Siegfried Reda (Herr, Ich Habe Lieb) and Heinrich Kaminski (Psalm 130)

This is very different from most of my other CD’s and I like that. Different can be good, sometimes really good.

2009-05-15T13:13:00.000-07:00

It seems a shame that boys can work so hard to perfect their singing only to have those beautiful treble voices fall prey to maturity. Opera singers can have a career that lasts for decades but a boy has only a few fleeting years in which to shine. Sometimes I wish they could stay young forever, but I may have found a solution to this persistent and vexing problem.

I was at my niece’s birthday party and we were sucking the helium out of some balloons and talking like Alvin the Chipmunk, as helium will make one do. I started singing Pie Jesu and to my surprise it sounded pretty darn good. I was no Tom Cully but it wasn’t bad. I’m thinking that if they put a small tank of helium on a boy’s back under the choir robe and ran a tube up to his mouth, perhaps disguised as a microphone, then the lad wouldn’t have any trouble hitting E above high C. Unless, of course, he passes out from lack of oxygen.

Yes, a treble’s career is sadly short but then so is life. I suppose we just have to enjoy life and music while they last.

One choir that I think sounds especially youthful is the Choir of the Abbey School, Tewkesbury on their 2001 CD Favourite Hymns for All Seasons. This is one of the youngest choir schools in Britain, founded in 1973 and they did a lot of touring.
I say did because the Abbey school closed on 15 July 2006 at which point the choir moved to Dean Close Preparatory School, Cheltenham and was renamed 'Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum', a choir of men and boys which sings the weekday services in Tewkesbury Abbey.

The choristers moved to Dean Close Preparatory School, Cheltenham in September 2006 when The Abbey School closed. They have a cd titled ‘The Three Kings’, a Christmas album, that is supposed to be good. I have it on order so we’ll see. I’m sure it’ll be great.
Some of the songs on the Favorite Hymns cd were familiar ones like I Vow To Thee, My Country, There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy and O Little Town of Bethlehem, but I’m always happy to find songs that I haven‘t heard before.
I, the Lord of Sea and Sky is so stirring and Sweet Sacrament Divine is a really pretty song. There is one called I Would Be True that uses the tune to Danny Boy. I looked it up and learned that the tune has been used several times before Danny Boy, something I didn’t know.

There are three soloists, Adam Jondelius, Toby Marshall, both trebles and James Mustard, bass. They are all just charming. One voice sort of leads the way on most of the songs and I’m not sure which one it is, but the boy has a wonderful tone.
This CD is sort of addictive.

2009-05-12T16:47:00.000-07:00

I am in awe of musicians. How wonderful it must be to pick up an instrument and make music. Those who can do it probably won’t understand how envious we are, those who, like me, are musically inept. But I guess someone has to be the audience.
It’s amazing the way the members of an orchestra make such complex and interesting sounds and then combine those sounds with all the others at just the right time, all blending together into something grand.
But it’s not just orchestras. Just to play the piano nicely would be great, or the church organ, or a guitar, a sax, an accordion… well, maybe not so much the accordion.

The choirs I have seen and heard use a wonderfully wide variety of music.
I know I’ve mentioned it before but I like it when a big pipe organ, like the one at King’s College, is played loud on a stereo with a good sub-woofer, one that can shake the walls. On their Heavenly Voices CD there is the final number by Karg-Elart that takes the bass notes down into a subsonic range and vibrates through me and makes the neighbors dogs bark. It feels good.

Libera’s DVD from their Leiden concert features a small but gorgeous orchestra along with, of course, Fiona Pears in that slinky black gown, and her beautiful violin.

The orchestra in Les Choristes en Concert is larger and they do some fancy things I’ve never seen like plucking the violin strings with their fingers. The percussionist uses some odd instruments and in one song he keeps time with a couple of smooth palm-sized river stones (a type of rock music I guess).

Saint Johns’ College Ave Verum DVD features their really talented organist, but the choir also does a couple of numbers with just a cello and a harp, a nice combination.

I have a version of Amazing Grace by the Vienna Boy’s Choir that incorporates a surprising electric guitar and a guitar also plays a large role in some of the American Boychoir songs.

When I saw the Vienna Boy’s Choir last fall I was a little surprised that most of the songs were a cappella while only a few were accompanied by the piano. Those kids are great with or without music.

The thing is, I am grateful to all of the musicians of the world for what they give us. What would the world be like without music?

2009-05-12T13:36:00.000-07:00

I made a couple of mistakes.

I thought that because the stat counter at the bottom of this page was approaching 2,000 visits that I was saying something interesting, something fun that people liked reading. It looks like I was wrong, that was one mistake.

The other one was in actually looking at the stats. I didn’t know I could see more information until someone pointed it out to me so I got curious and looked. Turns out that only about 3 or 4 people read this blog more than once. About 85 percent of the visits are one-time only; people who glance at it and move on.

Suddenly it’s not as much fun as before. Oh well, it was only an experiment anyway. Thanks to those few people who were kind enough to leave comments.

2009-05-09T17:23:00.000-07:00

I probably shouldn't have bothered a monk... after I made a previous comment about the monk taking a vow of silence in response to my request for information about their choir, Dom David of Downside Abbey did respond and thought it was an amusing comment.
He had passed my request on to their music director, Christopher Tambling, who is still being mum (so no down side Kelsey). Oh, well. I don’t want to annoy them because I understand they have friends in high places.

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First was the CD of Silk Road by the Vienna Boy’s Choir, which I have mentioned in a previous post, but now I have the DVD of Silk Road. It's not what I expected but it's still really good. The premise is that they are going to make a movie and are deciding which boy will play the lead. The weird thing is that we never actually see the movie they are pretending to make.
There is no story line here, no plot. Instead, we get a fascinating look at the inner workings of the world of the Vienna Boys Choir. We see where they live, where they sleep, where they sing. It's a beautiful palace, inside and out, and it’s very well maintained.

There are a lot of scenes of practice sessions, both individual and group, and a lot of the boys are introduced and interviewed. The boys are not all from Austria or even Europe; there are a few from America, some from Japan, Congo and other places. They talk about being homesick sometimes and being so nervous on stage that their knees shake and how much they like the friends they have made at the school. They have names like Kay Olugbenga, Hibiki Sadamatsu, Tilman Tuppy. I recognized some of them from the Hydenchor’s tour last fall.

Also, we get to see them traveling to China, eastern Europe and other really fun, exotic places where they meet people and sing with them and learn their music. A good bit of the filming is done in the studio with the green screen background but a great deal of the trips are real.

How exciting would that be to be twelve and going to the desert to wear Bedouin robes and ride camels or wandering around the market place of a Chinese village sampling the food. If you ever read the blogs on the WSK web site you know just how seriously these boys take their meals. They don't seem to care for steamed chicken feet.

Many scenes take place in historical times, like the court of Emperor Joseph where they sing Haydn's Insanae et Vanae Curae. The costumes were perfect and must have been expensive to make. You should see the boys wearing powdered wigs. It's really amusing.

Naturally they paid a lot of attention to the sound quality on this film so it not only looks great, it sounds great. The final scene is in the tomb of the first Emperor of China with those life size clay statues of Chinese soldiers and the music there is Dies Irae from Mozart’s Requiem. The boys actually touch the statues and I couldn’t help thinking that if one of them toppled over it would start a domino chain reaction that would be terrible.

I liked this DVD and I’ve watched it a few times now.

2009-05-07T16:58:00.000-07:00

There is so much beauty in the world that sometimes I feel almost overwhelmed by it all. I don't walk around in a constant state of bliss or anything like that, but several times each day I will see or hear something that makes me stop and pay attention. I'm lucky to live out in the country where I do with a forest behind me, a mountain stream in front and meadows on either side. It give me a chance to see how nature can change with the light each day, the glowing mornings, softening fog or sparkling frost, the long shadows in the late afternoon when the setting sun gives everything that warm red tint.

The world can often seem like an ugly place, but beauty is still all around us, just waiting to be noticed. In museums I have seen paintings and other works of art that caused me to stop and stare for several minutes in silence. Most frequently, it’s music will that make me put down what I am doing and close my eyes for a bit.

If I had to pick one favorite song (and thank goodness I don’t) I think it would probably be Suo Gan, the Welsh lullaby. I have three versions and they are all great. The first one I ever heard is by James Rainbird who sang it in the movie Empire of the Sun. His voice is so unique and I still don't understand why he wasn't more well-known.

There used to be several videos on Youtube of the opening sequence when Christian Bale is in the church with the Ambrosian Junior Choir (I think they were just formed for the movie) and he does a great job of lip-syncing to Rainbird’s voice. I think those are all gone now but I did find a clip from the second occurrence of the song later in the film. I’ve linked it here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWWIVuoxEGM&feature=PlayList&p=E2CBF207C499AF12&index=64&playnext=2&playnext_from=PL
The first scene is better so rent the movie. It’s a good film anyway.

Another version is by the Vienna Boy's Choir from their 2003 Christmas album, titled (what else?) The Christmas Album. They sing the English lyrics and when the violins lead to the big crescendo the voices, sounding like violins, also climb with them to the heights. I always get goose bumps at that part because it’s very powerful.

The other version is by Anthony Way and it‘s good in another way. He sings the Welsh lyrics and sings more stanzas than the others do and although Anthony's voice wasn't really on the same par with WSK or Rainbird he still sounds sweetly appealing. This one is softer but the music is really good and I love the big drum that slowly booms near the end.

It’s wonderful that a song can be sung in such very different, beautiful and interesting ways.

2009-05-04T17:27:00.000-07:00

The Monks and Choirboys of Downside Abbey have a cd titled Gregorian Moods.
It has both Gregorian chants and Choral music. There are standards like Ave Verum Corpus (one each by Byrd, Mozart and Elgar), Cantique de Jean Racine, by Faure, Locus Iste, by Buckner, and more. The choral pieces are separated by Gregorian chants which I am much less familiar with but which, as it turns out, I like a lot. I thought they would just be a bunch of low voices all groaning on in Latin with no music but it’s much nicer than that. Guess I was thinking of the Tibetan monks. These monk’s voices are rich, the songs are pretty and they’re accompanied by some nice organ music.
Listening to these chants is like stepping back in time to a dimly lit cavernous cathedral with rows of hooded men invoking a special magic with their echoing voices.

There are about three dozen boys in the choir and their singing is first rate.
I wanted to find out more about this choir but there isn’t very much information on the internet, not even on the Abbey’s web site. They do have a section called “Ask a Monk” where you can request various information so I asked about the choir, but the monk didn’t reply. I guess he must have suddenly taken a vow of silence.
It would be interesting to know, for example, how it is they wind up with so many men who can sing and who also want to lead a monastic life.

I did come up with a few facts but they are not really about the choir. They run a boarding school for three hundred boys that in 2004 became co-ed. I don’t know if girls are now singing in the choir but this CD is earlier than that.
Founded over a century ago, Downside's Schola Cantorum is the oldest Roman Catholic school choir in the United Kingdom.
“The Schola Cantorum gives concerts of sacred music throughout the year…
Downside Abbey is a Roman Catholic monastery… It is the home of a community of Benedictine monks.”
“The church provides a place of worship for the pupils of our School as well as other visitors, but its primary purpose is for monastic prayer. The monks spend about 2 1/2 hours here every day together in prayer.”

This is a pretty good CD.