This week’s Track comes from Jeremy Telford of the L6.

Thomas Tallis was subject to a lot of pressure, even bullying, during his composing career from other composers (this wasn’t uncommon; Ravel and Debussy were at each other’s necks and Salieri’s rivalry with Mozart was long and bitter), with Italian composers taunting him, waving their 40-part (and even 60-part) motets in his face. To overcome this bullying, he simply had to write a 40 part motet himself that would put these Italian composers in their place. He did exactly this by writing his heavenly Spem in Alium.

Spem in Alium is written for 8 choirs of 5 singers each (soprano, alto, tenor, baritone and bass). Beginning with just a single voice from choir 1, every part enters in one by one and the melody is passed through choirs 1 to 8. In the middle of this are sections ranging from where all 8 choirs are singing to sections where there might be only 1 or 2 choirs. The effect on the listener of the sheer number of ideas contained in the work, together with the effect of different parts coming from different places around the huge choir, can be overwhelming. The work is not often performed, as the piece in itself is very difficult and 40 parts are required.

There are not many other pieces written for so many, and when they are written, it is difficult for them to be performed so these pieces are usually performed together, or in the same concert and of course writing for 40 parts is a very difficult task indeed. Some contemporary 40 part works include Gabriel Jackson’s sanctum est lumen verum, Evdokija Danajloska’s Allele and Antony Pitt’s XL but, in my opinion, none of these compare to Tallis’ Spem in Alium. My recommended recording of this is a performance done by none other than the Tallis Scholars themselves.

edited by KZA to say that Mrs Cooke is singing Choir 5, Sop 2!

Port Isaac

Happy New Year to all. May 2012 bring you some satisfying challenges and lots of contentment.

Port Isaac’s Fishermen’s Friends have recently shot to fame with an album deal and being featured in the Young’s advert for breaded cod as well as a spot on BBC1′s Breakfast shortly before they performed on the main stage at Glastonbury last year!

I remember seeing them sing on ‘The Platt’ in front of the harbour of the tiny North Cornwall fishing village of Port Isaac (also famous as the setting for Doc Martin) many years ago as they still regularly do. And yes, those cars really are parked on the beach – there’s a blackboard with the time you need to get off before high tide – but every year some tourists ignore it and have to have their cars rescued from the sea!!.

This clip gives a good background to the Port Isaac’s Fishermen’s Friends.

Removes will be studying Folk Songs this year, including The Drunken Sailor. I thought this was an excellent opportunity to hear how real fishermen sing this sea shanty. The drones are a classic folk music accompaniment.

Michael Nyman

Michael Nyman is a very prolific composer and one who has fascinated me for many years (I did my undergraduate dissertation analysing his opera The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, first performed in 1986). He is also a musicologist and it was he who invented the term minimalism in the 1960s. Michael Nyman formed his own band in 1976 which is still going today and it is with this group that he explores many  of his compositional ideas. He directs the band himself from the piano (as you will see in the youtube clip) and there is an unusual combination of instruments involved. The Draughtman’s Contract (released in 1982) was the first film score that Nyman wrote and was the first of a dozen that he did with the director Peter Greenaway. He also wrote the music for The Piano (1993) and has composed for symphony orchestras, choirs, string quartets and other chamber ensembles and ballet music as well.

In some of his works, Nyman uses a technique where he will take melodies or chord progressions from another composer who is relevant to the setting of the music and rework it extensively into his own style. The Draghtman’s Contract was set in 1694 (the Baroque era) and Nyman used Purcell‘s music as a starting point. Likewise in The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, based on the neurological study by Oliver Sacks, the man of the title was a singer who could still sing his Schumann songs despite his neurological problems; therefore Schumann Lieder are woven through Nyman’s music, although you have to dig pretty deeply to find it in places!

Bill Tapia, aged 103

This post will serve several different purposes: firstly, you may have heard the sad news of the death earlier this week of the 103 year old ukulele player Bill “Tappy” Tapia, described as the ”oldest performing musician ever to take to the stage”. You can read more here about this legendary ukulele player, who performed with the likes of Elvis Presley, Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong to name but a few. Born in Honolulu, he started playing the uke at the age of 7 and never looked back, although his first CD wasn’t released until he was the ripe old age of 94!

Secondly, I am very proud to announce the formation of The King’s School’s newest musical ensemble: the student-led King’s Ukulele Society. The group is open to all pupils, both those who already play and those who would like to learn, and was founded earlier this term by sixth form student, Polly Morris. They meet every week at 12.45 on Fridays in the Music Classroom – new members are most welcome – and one of the first songs they are learning is this Nirvana classic, which has been transformed by the wonderful Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.

Finally, I would like to thank our wonderful lower sixth musicians for their extremely kind wedding present of two tickets to go and see the UOGB live in concert - Mrs R and I both had a wonderful evening!

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Throughout his composing career he would travel around Estonia collecting folk songs using recordings from a phonograph, a primitive piece of recording equipment, and his harmonisations of these melodies took up most of his time as a composer. His requiem is largely considered to be his greatest work. In this he used an Estonian translation of the words to Mozart’s requiem and set it to his own music. His settings of the Psalms of David are his most regularly performed works, with performances being given regularly by choral societies across the world, including the King’s Singers.

Blog post written by Jeremy Telford, L6

Requiem – 1^st movement

Here are some other lovely pieces by the same composer:

Hector Berlioz

Most symphonies have a different theme for each movement, but here Berlioz uses an idée fixe – a fixed idea – to represent the young woman. This theme returns in each movement and is gradually altered and made more grotesque as the artist’s slips into his hallucinating nightmares. A thorough programme for the complete symphony can be found here on the Hector Berlioz website. The first movement lasts for nearly 15 minutes and so is split across two parts, conducted here by Leonard Bernstein with the Orchestre National de France.

BBC4 is currently running a series called Symphony in which Berlioz featured in episode 2 of 4. The final episode is on this Thursday at 9pm and all previous episodes are available on iPlayer for another 10 days. I would recommend you watch them!

Heitor Villa-Lobos

 I was directed to this composition very recently and I think it is charming – it certainly brings a ray of sunshine onto a chilly November evening! Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) was a Brazilian composer and he has become probably the most well known Latin American composer yet (despite his mother wanting him to go into medicine). His Suite Popular Brasileira for solo guitar was composed in 1928, but he revised it 20 years later. This second movement has a real flexibility of tempo to it and a very relaxed feel.

The performance here is by Leon Koudelak, a classical guitarist who moved to Switzerland aged 10 from Czechoslovakia via Algeria. I was recommended Norbert Kraft but was unable to find a performance of this piece by him on youtube.