jwilzewske: ‘Under the Hood’ of Pyramid-of-Sound: King’s Singers, Music-Minus-One

The King’s Singers treated the audience to a phenomenal a capella program tonight, in Kansas City’s Folly Theater. Bass Stephen Connolly’s mother died several days ago after a protracted battle with cancer, and Stephen was therefore not able to be part of this performance in the Harriman-Jewell series. As a result, Friday’s program was comprised of works specifically arranged for three, four, and five voices.

Given the intricacies of the 6-voice ensemble processes—of tuning, of balancing, of unity of sound and precision—for the works that have been arranged or commissioned specifically for The King’s Singers, it’s not surprising that last-minute substitution on a part is nearly impossible. But Stephen’s absence provided us a novel, fascinating, and thoroughly enjoyable glimpse ‘under the hood’ to better learn how some of these arrangements work—a glimpse into the orchestration of the upper parts, minus the bass.

The English Madrigal [Now Is the Month of Maying (Morley); Four Arms, Two Necks (Weelkes); Fair Phyllis I Saw Sitting (Farmer); Weep, O Mine Eyes (Bennet); All Creatures Now are Merry Minded (Bennet)]
Old Meets New in France [Revoicy venir du printemps (Le Jeune); Ah, Mon Beau Laboureur (Poulenc); Il est Bel et Bon (Passereau); Bonjour, Mon Coeur (di Lasso); Pilons l’orge (Poulenc); Au Joly Jeu (Janequin)]
Music of the Conquistadors [La Tricotea (Alonso); Din dirin din (Anonymous); La Bomba (Flecha)]
An English Romance [My Spirit Sang all Day (Finzi); I Have Loved Flowers (Finzi); Quick! We Have But a Second (Stanford); The Long Day Closes (Sullivan); Phyllis Is My Only Joy (Hobbs); The Goslings (Bridge)]
Arrangements in Close Harmony

The King’s Singers is an a cappella choral ensemble, formed in 1968. The group’s name denotes King’s College in Cambridge, England. The ensemble has always been six singers, with personnel changes over the years. The current group is:

David Hurley (countertenor, 1990)
Robin Tyson (countertenor, 2001)
Paul Phoenix (tenor, 1997)
Philip Lawson (baritone, 1993)
Christopher Gabbitas (baritone, 2004)
Stephen Connolly (bass, 1987)

Most of The King’s Singers a capella concerts are divided into five groups of pieces. The first four are generally taken from the art-music repertoire (madrigals, folk songs, and recently-commissioned pieces), but the fifth group of the concert is usually a ‘close harmony’ set. Often it consists of music of The Beatles, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Queen, George Gershwin, or Irving Berlin. Many of the pop pieces have been arranged for the group by composers like Richard Rodney Bennett, Jeremy Lubbock, and John Rutter. The King’s Singers also have initiated thematic ‘Concept Programs’, including ‘Landscape & Time’, ‘Sacred Bridges’, ‘Triumphs of Oriana’, ‘Treason & Dischord’, ‘The Voice of Weeping’, and ‘Los Impossibles’. The advantages of these programs for local presenters are considerable, in terms of marketing and diversity. The King’s Singers have commissioned pieces from Ned Rorem, György Ligeti, Libby Larsen, Daron Hagen, Francis Pott, Peter Maxwell Davies, John Tavener, John McCabe, Sally Beamish, Jackson Hill, Geoffrey Poole, Joby Talbot, Eric Whitacre and Jocelyn Pook. Several of The King’s Singers members have also arranged pieces. Philip Lawson and Bob Chilcott have been the most prolific composers in the group.

Recently, the group made an experimental recording of Thomas Tallis’ 40-part masterpiece, ‘Spem in Alium,’ with studio multi-track techniques to turn their 6 voices into 40, released on a Signum CD and Iambic Productions DVD. The group has a collection of Salvation Army songs, a CD that was released in December 2006—‘The Quiet Heart: Choral Essays, Vol. 1’. Planned releases for 2008 include a CD of Spanish Renaissance Music and a new studio CD.

In live performance the King’s Singers members have an uncanny sense of precise intonation and unity. They have also an uncanny intuition of the fullness of the sound they project, even if the performance venue is an unfamiliar one and even though in this performance they were ‘down’ one member. Considering that the group usually sings strictly a cappella with orchestrations characterized by a strong bass/baritone blend as a foundation for the other voices (orchestration that’s termed ‘Pyramid of Sound’), the absence of Connolly obviously yields a dramatically different sound. The bass part is not only a crucial harmonic foundation; it’s also a rhythmic ‘core’—an anchor that calibrates the timing of other members of the ensemble.

But with only five voices tonight, we had a unique opportunity to understand the ‘pseudo-orchestral’ writing, the contrapuntal textures, the delicacy. Had there been the full complement of six voices, I would have approached this concert experience armed with expectations grounded in my memories of the ensemble’s recordings and previous performances. Instead, I found myself listening far more open-mindedly and prejudice-free than I would otherwise have done.

Well, maybe ‘pseudo-orchestral’ is the wrong term. More like idiomatic string sextet (quintet) writing, as regards the counter-melodies in the bass/baritone parts. We get an idea of ‘vastness’ through the use of compound intervals in the tenor and bari voices. The melody is often in the lower lines, and the varieties of male voice color are highlighted in the texts. The melodic contour far exceeds the initial statements by the tenor. In fact, many of the contrapuntal baroque pieces remind me of Marin Marais or other writing for viola da gamba ensembles. The gamba-like textures of these orchestrations might never have occurred to me had not Stephen been absent tonight… What a wonderful chance revelation!

These lower parts are vital for the accentual fidelity of the upper parts—regardless whether it’s six voices, or five, or four. The bass/baritone melodies become patterns that are used either as a basso ostinato or with changes, usually within a four-measure scheme. The most noticeable rhythmic feature is a dotted second-beat anacrusis—a sarabande rhythm. The texture begins simply with a tenor or lead or counter-tenor solo, and the thickest textures involve repeated passages in counter-tenor divisi. Cool!

The King’s Singers’ arrangements elegantly fit the tessitura and idiom of each voice while remaining faithful to the music itself. The word-settings are un-finicky, and the rhythms and phrase separations are, while technically challenging, very natural as-received by the audience.

The portamento effects are wonderful, especially in the ‘close harmony’ part of the program. The ambiguity of the pressure of inflected and non-inflected notes in the vertical voicings is distinctive. But these are not ‘go for the jugular’ self-referential portamentos as often happens in competition barbershop quartet singing, for example.

Assuming a unity of timbre—one tonal ‘plane’—when several intervals are combined into a chord, we get multiple intervallic relations, of which some are more important than others. The farther apart the notes of a given interval are in a chord, and the more other notes between them, the less the character of that interval imposes itself. The ‘crunch’ of M7 becomes less important if the interval becomes further separated—a M15.

In other passages we get two or three tonal ‘planes’—countertenor or tenor and everybody else—with varying degrees of ‘blend’.

What is striking in this is that, scholars though they may be, The King’s Singers’ music is music to be immediately loved, not coolly respected. The alteration of their program was done on very short notice, and this fact is correlated with the vitality and intensity of emotional expression—compared, say, to programs labored over for months or years, with progressively less edge and spontaneity. The ‘inner game’ of music is best played fast. Their technique is so light and inertia-free, we leave the concert hall with the sense that the ensemble surely must have somehow miraculously violated the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Bravo!

Totally off-topic, I notice some recent research articles showing that singing increases secretory immunoglobulin A levels (IgA) and reduces the incidence of infections, especially in wintertime (see links below). Singing also reduces the prevalence of depression, compared to instrumental musicians and compared to the general nonmusician public. The inflammatory cytokine TNF-alpha increases in professional singers during/after singing (see the paper by Grape and coworkers in Stockholm). [This is a paradoxical finding insofar as TNF-alpha is a correlate of stress, and, other things being equal, one would expect TNF-alpha in professional singers to decrease and perhaps to decrease by a greater proportion from baseline than would happen in amateur singers. There must be other neuroendocrine-cytokine cascades or feedback loops that the Swedish team didn’t measure, that would explain their counter-intuitive result.] Sing your way to a healthy immune system! You always knew singing was good for you!

T his is the source of the feeling of solidarity and good will that comes with choral singing: people’s physiological arousals are in synchrony, at least for a brief period. In contemporary life, there are few other circumstances in which such synchrony is achieved.”
— Bruce Richman, 1987.

Hyper-Tenors Sing Out!

[ Unbeknownst to the Harriman-Jewell presenters or the Folly Theatre management, several dozen small brown bats have recently taken up residence in the upper reaches of the Folly Theatre stage fly-loft, high in the rigging. The pipistrelli became very active during The King’s Singers’ rousing performance of ‘All Creatures Now Are Merry-minded’ by John Bennet (1570-1615) early in the first half of the program. They careened through the beams of the stage lights illuminating the ensemble below and swooped joyously above the audience seated on the main-floor of the Folly.

Neither we nor the bats heretofore had any idea that The King’s Singers are such ardent environmentalists and opponents of species-ist bigotry. But with the assurance from the symbolically apropos Bennet ‘Creatures’ anthem to embolden them, the not-so-tiny Creatures continued their airborne partying throughout the Theatre for the balance of the program.

Although the Myotis lucifugi did not dive at the Singers, seldom do performers face such monumental visual and acoustic distractions as prevailed on Friday night at the Folly (except perhaps the choir at midnight Christmas Mass at Chartres Cathedral). Any complaints about the ensemble members’ intonation might be fairly chalked up to interference from the bats’ high-pitched echo-location chirps. No joke. ]

jwilzewske

Friday, February 22, 2008

‘Under the Hood’ of Pyramid-of-Sound: King’s Singers, Music-Minus-One

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