Risca Male Choir Blog #20
The end of the year usually brings us to perform our festive events and concerts with a party to celebrate. Unfortunately, we have withdrawn from our events at the Top Club throughout December. However, we are working towards singing in the open air and elsewhere in order to ensure that the hard work we have done since June has an end result. So, please keep an eye on our Facebook page and the website for any updates of upcoming concerts.
I would like to extend my condolences to Cowbridge Male Voice Choir for the events that have transpired after their annual concert. It is a difficult period for everyone at this time and concerts are something we all miss at the moment. I hope the choir recovers from this soon and comes back stronger than ever.
Sadly, we also have some news to share with you. One of our choristers, John Watkins, has passed away after a battle with an illness. He was someone that always loved the social aspect of singing and did his utmost best to bring the choir together as much as possible. For me, he was one of the most hard-working choristers, and I will miss him dearly. I send my love to his family and may he rest in peace.
It is a very trying time at the moment, but I am hopeful that the light at the end of the tunnel is edging ever closer and we will be able to comfortably perform and socialise with each other!
Composers of the Month
Jean Sibelius (8th December 1865 – 20th September 1957)
Jean Sibelius, original name Johan Julius Christian Sibelius, Finnish composer, the most noted symphonic composer of Scandinavia.
Sibelius studied at the Finnish Normal School, the first Finnish-speaking school in Russian-held Finland, where he came into contact with Finnish literature and in particular with the Kalevala, the mythological epic of Finland, which remained for him a constant source of inspiration. (Many of his symphonic poems, such as Pohjola’s Daughter [1906] and Luonnotar[1913], drew on this source.) Although intended for a legal career, he soon abandoned his law studies at Helsinki, devoting himself entirely to music. At first, he planned to become a violinist. Under the guidance of Martin Wegelius, he composed much chamber and instrumental music. He adopted the name Jean, which he used throughout his professional career in preference to his baptismal names. In his mid-20s he left Finland to continue his studies in Berlin and Vienna, where his teachers included the composers Robert Fuchs and Karl Goldmark.
On his return to Finland a performance of his first large-scale orchestral work, the Kullervo Symphony (1892), created something of a sensation. This and succeeding works, En Saga (1892), the Karelia music, and the Four Legends, established him as Finland’s leading composer. The third of the four symphonic poems in Four Legends is the well-known The Swan of Tuonela (1893). In 1897, before the appearance of his Symphony No. 1 in E Minor (1899), the Finnish Senate voted Sibelius a small life pension in recognition of his genius. His tone poem Finlandia was written in 1899 and revised in 1900. Sibelius’ compositions of the 1890s are those of a nationalist composer working in the Romantic tradition.
In the first decade of the 20th century Sibelius’ fame penetrated the European continent. The pianist-composer Ferruccio Busoni, whose friendship he had made in Helsinki as a student, conducted his Symphony No. 2 in D Major (1901) in Berlin, and the British composer Granville Bantock commissioned his Symphony No. 3 in C Major (1907). With this work Sibelius turned his back on the national romanticism of the second symphony and the Violin Concerto in D Minor (1903) and moved toward the more searching and uncompromising mode of utterance of En Saga and the Symphony No. 4 in A Minor (1911). After World War I he published his greatest works, the last three symphonies (No. 5 in E-flat Major, No. 6 in D Minor, and No. 7 in C Major) and Tapiola(1925) but then lapsed into the long silence of his last years. Rumours of an eighth symphony (promised for performance in the early 1930s) and even a ninth symphony were unfounded. No manuscripts survived his death.
The 1930s saw a vogue for Sibelius prompted by such writers as Cecil Gray and Constant Lambert in England and Olin Downes in the United States. Despite a reaction against this vogue in the following generation, Sibelius retained his firm hold over the musical public. Although his inspiration is intimately connected with the Scandinavian landscape, it is not primarily as a nature poet that he is remembered. His achievement both in the symphonic poems and the seven symphonies lies principally in his remarkable mastery of form. The first movement of the third symphony has the clarity of construction of a Haydn or Mozart first movement, yet its organic unity and architecture even surpasses its models. It was in this capacity for organic growth that the secret of his genius lay.
Here is Sakari Oramo conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Chorus to perform his famous piece Finlandia.
Olivier Messiaen (10th December 1947 – 27th April 1992)
Olivier Messiaen, in full Olivier-Eugène-Prosper-Charles Messiaen, influential French composer, organist, and teacher noted for his use of mystical and religious themes. As a composer he developed a highly personal style noted for its rhythmic complexity, rich tonal colour, and unique harmonic language.
Messiaen was the son of Pierre Messiaen, who was a scholar of English literature, and of the poet Cécile Sauvage. He grew up in Grenoble and Nantes, began composing at age seven, and taught himself to play the piano. At age 11 he entered the Paris Conservatory, where his teachers included the organist Marcel Dupré and the composer Paul Dukas. During his later years at the conservatory he began an extensive private study of Eastern rhythm, birdsong, and microtonal music (which uses intervals smaller than a semitone). In 1931 he was appointed organist at the Church of the Sainte-Trinité, Paris.
Messiaen became known as a composer with the performance of his Offrandes oubliées(“Forgotten Offertories”) in 1931 and his Nativité du Seigneur (1938; The Birth of the Lord). In 1936, with the composers André Jolivet, Daniel Lesur, and Yves Baudrier, he founded the group La Jeune France (“Young France”) to promote new French music. He taught at the Schola Cantorum and the École Normale de Musique from 1936 until the outbreak of World War II in 1939. As a French soldier he was taken prisoner and interned at Görlitz, where he wrote Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1941; Quartet for the End of Time). Repatriated in 1942, he resumed his post at Sainte-Trinité and taught at the Paris Conservatory. His students included Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Jean-Louis Martinet, and Yvonne Loriod (whom he married in 1961).
Much of Messiaen’s music was inspired by Roman Catholic theology, interpreted in a quasi-mystical manner, notably in Apparition de l’église éternelle for organ (1932; Apparition of the Eternal Church); Visions de l’amen for two pianos (1943); Trois Petites Liturgies de la présence divine for women’s chorus and orchestra (1944); Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jésus for piano (1944; Twenty Looks upon the Infant Jesus); Messe de la Pentecôte for organ (1950); and La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ for orchestra and choir (1969). Among his most important orchestral works is the Turangalîla-Symphonie (1948) in 10 movements—containing a prominent solo piano part and using percussion instruments in the manner of the Indonesian gamelan orchestra, along with an ondes martenot (an electronic instrument). Also notable is Chronochromie for 18 solo strings, wind, and percussion (1960). Le Réveil des oiseaux(1953; The Awakening of the Birds), Oiseaux exotiques (1956; Exotic Birds), and Catalogue d’oiseaux (1959; Catalog of Birds) incorporate meticulous notations of birdsong. He composed an opera, St. François d’Assise, which premiered at the Paris Opera in 1983.
Here is his O Sacrum Convivium performed by The Cambridge Singers, conducted by John Rutter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0__tgrjTkc
Zoltan Kodaly (16th December 1882 – 6th March 1967)
Zoltán Kodály, Hungarian form Kodály Zoltán, (born December 16, 1882, Kecskemét, Austria-Hungary [now in Hungary]—died March 6, 1967, Budapest), prominent composer and authority on Hungarian folk music. He was also important as an educator not only of composers but also of teachers, and, through his students, he contributed heavily to the spread of music education in Hungary. He was a chorister in his youth at Nagyszombat, Austria-Hungary (now Trnava, Slovakia), where he wrote his first compositions. In 1902 he studied composition in Budapest. He toured his country in his first quest for folk-song sources in the year before his graduation from Budapest University with a thesis (1906) on the structure of Hungarian folk song. After studying for a short time in Paris with the composer-organist Charles Widor, he became teacher of theory and composition at the Budapest Academy of Music (1907–41).
With Béla Bartók, whom he met in 1906, he published editions of folk songs (1906–21). Their folk-song collection formed the basis of Corpus Musicae Popularis Hungariae (established 1951).
Kodály created an individual style, Romantic in flavour and less percussive than that of Bartók, that was derived from Hungarian folk music, contemporary French music, and the religious music of the Italian Renaissance. His works, many of which are widely performed, include Psalmus Hungaricus(1923), written to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the union of Buda and Pest; Háry János (1926), a comic opera; two sets of Hungarian dances for orchestra, Marosszék Dances (1930) and Dances of Galánta (1933); a Te Deum (1936); a concerto for orchestra (1941); Missa Brevis (1942); an opera, Cinka Panna (1948); Symphony in C Major (1961); and chamber music, including two cello sonatas (1909–10; 1915), two string quartets (1908; 1916–17), and Serenade, for two violins and viola (1919–20).
Kodály’s scholarly writings include Die ungarische Volksmusik (1956; Folk Music of Hungary), as well as numerous articles for ethnographic and musical journals. The Selected Writings of Zoltán Kodály, edited by Ferenc Bónis and translated from the Hungarian by Lili Halápy and Fred Macnicol, was published in 1974.
Here is his choral piece Esti Dal for Male choir performed by Bela Bartok Male Choir.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex0pPZpZo_w
I hope you enjoy these extracts. Have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
