Bulletin 3

Bulletin No 3, January 2005

Chairman's Report

Last term we again explored a good range of music, from John’s choice of Beethoven’s Egmont overture, with its sharp contrasts, to Liadov’s vivid tone poem describing the witch, Kikimora and her wicked ways. Library delays meant we started with Steve on the ever-challenging Eroica symphony that we were to have played at Ufton, before another battle with the many key changes of unfamiliar Balakirev’s First Symphony which spelled out a great variety of moods and colours. All the music finally came together with our conductors’ encouragement and we acquitted ourselves well before our Friends And Loved Ones, several of whom were impressed by the way the orchestra is playing now. And socially, as well as our final sherry & mince pies thanks to Dinny, we enjoyed another pub lunch, so well organised by Lynne, at the Fox & Hounds. We were sorry to lose Thierry, cruelly afflicted by Bell’s facial palsy, but can now welcome Gwen Harmston as second oboe. A translator with the BBC, she will be able to help us read our Russian parts.

Dates for your Diary

Spring term: Rehearsals began on January 8^th and will continue, with a half-term break on February 19^th, until FALO on March 19^th.

Summer term: April 16, 23, 30, May 7, 14, 21, Half-term break 30, June 4, 11, 18, FALO 25 if there is still enthusiasm. Meanwhile John Tims has volunteered to conduct at least the strings on April 9^th since many members don’t care for long gaps.

Winter term: Rehearsals will be resumed on September 17^th and the Ufton weekend is booked for October 14^th-16^th.

Recent Committee Meeting

Our Treasurer reports on a good surplus, especially because our conductors do not wish to be paid for their services like our founder and former director. This means we can afford to hire more exotic 20^th-century music, as reflected in our recent programmes. But some of David’s savings result from booking shorter hours, namely 10.15 to 12.45. This being so, we must be promptly out, for the caretaker has a series of calls to make and we must not delay her and abuse her kindness. And do let’s make the most of those hours, when some come early to set everything up. Let’s be ready for baton down at 10.30 – don’t wait to hear what the Radio 3 critic’s final choice is!

The Library is being handled by our conductors, but we must back them by keeping track of parts and returning music promptly at the end. Missing ones can cost us a lot.

Our audience at FALO get an oddly oblique view and unbalanced impression of our sound. Could we experiment to make the best use of Beansheaf, which is in so many ways ideal? There will be difficulties of acoustics, lighting and access, but we believe it would be worth trying your patience. Perhaps an oblique arrangement would work.

David Wilcox has agreed to run our website so well set up by Shirley with all her professional skills, but we shall be very sorry to lose such a long-standing and convivial member when she leaves us for the West Country and its pub gigs. And, thinking of social occasions, what about a skittles evening this term?

Notes on some of this term's Programme

PROKOFIEV – ROMEO AND JULIET, Suite 1

Born in 1891, Sergei Prokofiev received his musical education at the St Petersburg Conservatoire, under such figures as Rimsky Korsakov and Liadov. He lived in the USA and Western Europe from 1918 – 1934, then shortly after his return to the USSR, in 1935 composed the full-scale ballet “Romeo and Juliet”.

It was not well received in Russia, being widely regarded as undanceable. Its first performance was in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1938. However, some of the music from it was heard in Russia in the form of two symphonic suites (and a third was subsequently put together). In the first suite, which we are to explore this term, four of the seven movements are dance intermezzi, and the remaining three, symphonic work-ups of theme material from the ballet.

If your favourite numbers are not in Suite 1, they probably are to be found in one of the others, which we could look at in the future. This is quite taxing music and will require some boldness in tackling it, but I am sure we will enjoy it.

ELGAR – BAVARIAN HIGHLANDS

In the second half of term, as a complete change, we shall have a look at this piece of early Elgar. It was originally a choral work in six movements, written to poems written by Elgar’s wife Alice, after an extended holiday in Garmisch. Elgar revamped three of the movements as orchestral music in 1897, and this is what we shall be playing.

It is a tuneful piece and will form an excellent foil to the Prokofiev Suite.

SMETANA – THE BARTERED BRIDE

Smetana emerged as the father-figure of the Czech nationalist school of composition and was able to rise above the most depressing hardships to produce music of great charm.

The Bartered Bride was the second of Smetana’s eight operas and was first produced in 1866. Despite an initial lack of success it became well-established during Smetana’s own lifetime and in 1882 it received its hundredth performance in Prague, the first Czech opera to achieve that distinction.

The story is one of peasant life and is set in a rural village where the young hero, Jenik, is in love with Marenka, daughter of a local farmer. Smetana was so excited by the Czech writer Karel Sabina’s initial sketch, that he wrote the Overture without waiting for the full libretto to be completed. The opening is full of excitement and challenges for both string and wind players! It is a piece famous for orchestral speed records, but don’t be alarmed - it’s very tuneful and lively.

SIBELIUS – KARELIA SUITE

Sibelius wrote music strongly tied to his homeland and its traditions. He spent his early married life in the Finnish province of Karelia. This area on the Russian border, with its landscape of forest and lakes, was the setting for many of the Finnish cycle of myths and legends known as the Kalevala. The combination of legend and landscape had a deep influence on Sibelius and many of his compositions.

In 1893 Sibelius was asked to provide music for a historical pageant commemorating various incidents in Finland's history, for at this time Finland was a semi-autonomous province of Russia. From the set of eight or so incidental pieces he wrote, he later extracted three to form our three-movement Karelia Suite. The Intermezzo depicts a procession of hunters; In the Ballade a deposed king listens to the singing of a minstrel in Viipuri castle; The Alla Marcia is a call to arms and depicts the siege of Kakisalmi castle.

Further News & Reflections

Why is music so important to us? It can get us dancing, carry us along marching, move us to tears or shouts of joy. My little grand-daughters want to rock in time to music before they are two and start singing before they can talk - clearly they need music as part of their development (Government inspectors, please note). The conductor Leonard Bernstein was carried away into another world when performing once and a neuroscientist and jazz musician watching him has been wondering how. The book I was given for Christmas, Beethoven’s Anvil by William L. Benson, from Oxford University Press, 2001 helped me begin to understand why.

Historically, music seems to have started solely with rhythm, just as babies we learn to crawl and walk, beating time with wooden spoons on our mother’s saucepan lids. All this depends on our lower brainstem and cerebellum, while our highest conscious brain or cerebrum brings the power of speech. We hear our parents’ urging us to do things and in turn we learn to do things and think for ourselves, first have memories then. Melody is the next stage of music’s historical development, as it is for our infants; my littlies were able to sing Twinkle, twinkle, little star, however imperfectly, before they could speak. Then learning to speak using the left side of their cerebral hemispheres will refine both words and tuning over the years. But what intrigues me is how music that we learn consciously gets locked in at a lower unconscious level. As an old friend in choir said: ‘I learn it and then it goes down a black hole’. There it lies, lower down on the right side of the brain, programmed into our emotional and motor centres, ready to be recalled at will. A neighbour had a left-sided stroke aged 32 and was unable to speak, but his mother encouraged his recovery by getting him to sing songs that he had learned as a child.

We sweat away at our parts, learning the notes as accurately as we can, but come FALO we would do well to forget ourselves and our conscious worries, lose ourselves completely like Bernstein in the music, and let out well-trained subconscious minds take over. Certainly singing in a choir with less individual responsibility, I know this happens and I can give myself wholly to the mood of the piece. If only we could do it more often with our instruments!

Antony