Oxford

May 14, 2010

Every day is a great day. We’re just having such an incredible experience. I’m astounded by the opportunity it is to be here to learn and observe some of the best music making in the world. I am proud to announce that I was able to strap on my running shoes this morning and went for a lengthy run around the entire perimeter of Hyde Park. It was a beautiful morning. The weather forecast is showing 60 degree weather with few clouds for the next 4-5 days which is even warmer than Utah from what I’ve heard. Today we took a coach and travelled to Oxford to observe choral activity there. We were split into smaller groups to see the goings on at boy’s schools. I was chosen to go with Dr. Staheli and 4 other students to see the rehearsal of the treble boy voices of the boy’s choir attached to New College at Oxford. The organization of Oxford is really quite confusing. All students are placed within a college. For the most part, the students live, eat, drink and do most of their studies there in the college they are placed into. Each college has a chapel. Each chapel has a choir to perform the weekly services. While some of the choirs are mixed, many consist of the men of the college combined with young boys who are part of the associated choir school. These choir schools are highly specialized and very intense. Most of the professional singers from the choirs we’ve seen all went through these choir schools. Every member of the King’s Singers went through choir schools. The New College Choir is quite famous. (It is called New College because it was built in 1349 and was then the newest college of the university.) They have won Grammy awards in the recent past and are really incredible. For whatever reason, they only allowed 6 individuals to sit in on the rehearsal. It was a real privilege to be chosen to do so. After what I experienced there I wish that everyone had been afforded the same opportunity. What I witnessed there was truly incredible. The boys in the choir at New College are ages 6 to 12. They are auditioned and if accepted, their whole life becomes the training school. They sing 5-6 services per week and sing many hours every single day. Despite knowing the circumstances of their training, I was unprepared for what I heard. We were ushered into their music room and soon the choir boys filed in (they march together everywhere they go) wearing formal dress including robes and mortar boards. They slipped off their robes and hung them with their mortar boards on the wall. They quickly took their places standing on small podiums that encircled a piano at the center of the room. The conductor instructed them to “Open to Gibbons page 12.” Yeah, Gibbons as in Orlando Gibbons, the renaissance composer. They quickly opened their scores and began singing. It was incredible to watch their conductor at work. “What key is this written in?” “A flat major”, came the response from a boy with his hand uplifted. “What key are we singing it in?” “We’re transposing it down by one half step to G”, one boy answered. In their training and ability it wasn’t too different watching them at work as it was The Sixteen the day before. The first half of the rehearsal was in the music room. For the second half we shuffled into the chapel of New College. It was one of the most gorgeous halls of worship I’ve ever been in. They began with a Mendelssohn piece “Lift up My Eyes” in three part harmony. Part way through the conductor stepped back and allowed them to continue singing un-conducted. At the end he asked, “What was wrong with the performance?” One little boy raised his hand and said, “We went flat in bar 5 and remained flat for the remainder of the piece.” Incredible! At one point during their rehearsal of a Heinrich Schutz piece done in German, one boy had to be reminded not to sing a particular word with an umlaut. I don’t know any 6-12 year old boys who sing in German, let alone know it well enough to isolate and correct vowels by omitting the umlaut (the umlaut vowel is the German ‘u’ vowel with two dots over it and is formed by forming a “ooh” vowel mixed with an “ee” vowel and putting a slight “r” sound through it). It was incredible. I couldn’t believe how much theory they understood, how well they sight read music (since they sing 5-6 services a week, each with several large anthems, psalm singing, versicles and responses). After watching that rehearsal, we went to a café to get some hot chocolate and discuss how worthless we are as musicians by comparison (we didn’t really). After the yummy hot chocolate that was served to us at the site of the first coffee shop in England, we went to the Magdalen School (pronounced maudlin, just like it’s spelled). We went on a tour of the school which is a preparatory school for boys age 7-18 and is associated with Magdalen College at Oxford. It was a really neat school. We sat in on a music theory lesson for boys aged 11. They were doing an exercise dictating rhythms. They weren’t to the caliber of the New College boys, but it was quite impressive to see them at work as well. After eating a bite to eat, we met back with the rest of the study abroad students only to break into our singing groups to go rehearse with our respective colleges for the services we will be singing on Sunday. I was assigned to Wadham College with my group. The conductor of the choir was actually an American. She studied at Boston University and Eastman School of Music. While she was delightful, the rehearsal was of a different sort. It was interesting to participate. We certainly held our own despite only a few hours practice on a significant amount of music. The Wadham Chapel Choir only sings 1 service per week and consists of about 25 voices. We were certainly a good addition to the group. Their sight reading ability was quite good, but we didn’t stop to fix much with intonation, good vowels, or proper vocal production. We just crunched through the pieces, stopping only at train wrecks. It was fun to talk with the members of the choir afterward to learn more about their educational experience at Oxford. I think it’ll be a neat experience once we rehearse a little more. After the rehearsal we got back on our coach and headed back to London. It was a really great day. The only bummer was that Michelle and I were in different groups the whole day, so I didn’t get to see as much of her as I would have liked. Now it’s very late and I have to wake up early to rehearse.

The roses were a gift I got for Michelle. I think she liked them because she took a picture of them that I’m going to post before she does.