Parahyangan choir presents classy love songs

By Y. Bintang Prakarsa

JAKARTA (JP): Once again Avip Priatna renewed his longtime association with the Parahyangan Catholic University Choir to present a concert at the Dharmawangsa Hotel on Feb. 12 with smart programming.

Under the theme "English Love Songs", they performed an interestingly varied repertory of 16th and 17th century madrigals, 17th century solo songs, part-songs from the 19th and 20th century, and 20th century folksong and pop song arrangements.

It might be convenient to see it as a survey of English part- song (vocal music for many voices, or lines, as opposed to music for solo singer) tradition with a solo song interlude.

Before instant-and-canned music became our daily bread, one made music to be heard. Vocal music was naturally a most convenient choice and part-singing had long been a pastime for the rich and noble in England.

First, they imported madrigals (settings of poetry usually for five voices: two sopranos, alto, tenor, and bass), from Italy. Inspired by Italian examples, English composers began to create their own vernacular versions. As with their Italian counterparts, a large proportion of madrigal texts deal with love, but different from their Italian predecessors, English madrigals are more restrained, although as evident in the seven pieces performed at the concert, they do not abandon tone- painting altogether.

In the popular piece Fair Phyllis I Saw Sitting by John Farmer, the phrase "Up and down" is set to short descending motifs and sung repeatedly by the voices in close succession to suggest how Phyllis' lover wandered through the hills and valleys on the mountain side.

The sorrow of Too Much I Once Lamented by Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656), is represented by the minor mode and the use of downward half-tone steps, as well as a rich tapestry of suspensions (a suspension happens when a member of a previous chord is kept for some time while other members have moved to a new chord; the note then clashes with its new environment and creates harmonic tension).

Expensive madrigal books were affordable only for a limited number of people. With the availability of mass printing, part- singing became a vehicle of artistic expression for the middle classes.

Gradually part-songs were more likely to be performed by choirs instead of soloists. Since the end of the 18th century, amateur choirs -- choral societies -- began to flourish in England, increasing the demand for unaccompanied choral music, urging many composers to write in this genre, some masterful pieces of which were sampled by the Parahyangan Choir: Lay a Garland by Robert Pearsall (1795-1856), My Love Dwelt in a Northern Land by Edward Elgar (1857-1934), and Three Shakespeare Songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). All of them share the sumptuous voicing of an eight part choir (except the seven voiced Full fathom five from Three Shakespeare Songs) that requires two groups of sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses.

An exquisite jewel is Pearsall's Lay a Garland, a serene eulogy that barely hides its poignancy. Pearsall's long, sustained tones are enriched with suspensions that make it glow softly, perhaps like Mendelssohn's choral music (this piece reminds me of Mendelssohn's motet Warum tobe die Heiden, also in eight voices).

While Elgar's piece is couched in late Romantic sensuous harmony (Wagner had a significant influence on him), Vaughan Williams' songs are more varied in mood, corresponding to the text taken from Shakespeare's plays.

The impressionistic tone clusters in Full fathom five recall the sea and its deep mysteries; the rambling harmonic progression in The Cloud-capp'd Towers, points, no doubt, to the dreams and sleep referenced in the text, while the whimsical Over Hill, Over Dale is given a folksong-ish, pentatonic melody -- a reminder of Williams' renown as a recycler of English folk tunes.

Between the madrigals and the choral songs, there was a welcome diversion of four solo songs extracted from the dramatic works of Henry Purcell (1659-1695), which gave relief to the surrounding ensemble music.

The most difficult of the four is Sweeter than roses from Pausanias, which opens with a rhapsodic arioso that grows into a lively, melismatic song in triple meter.

Lastly, after the intermission, came the lighter songs, unabashedly intended to entertain. They were folksong and pop song arrangements -- enhanced with a trio of drums, piano, and bass by three Parahyangan university alumni -- that seemed not having anything to do with Weelkes and Vaughan Williams & Co., but again, we can see them as an indication that in Britain, composers still supply music of any style for choirs and that part-singing is still a living tradition.

Needless to say, the audience responded readily to arrangements of popular tunes like the traditional Bobby Shaftoe (by Gordon Langford) the Beatles' Michelle (by Grayston Ives) and Yesterday (by Bob Chilcott), and Richard Rodgers' Blue Moon (by David Blackwell). They applauded after each piece.

But how about the singing? Did the choir manage all the styles successfully? Some of the madrigals were really gorgeous (Tomkins' especially), but others were too heavy and undisciplined, with faulty intonations here and there.

The Purcell pieces were sung wonderfully with a surprising awareness toward Baroque vocal technique by the tenor Christopher Abimanyu. But the piano! I think Avip knew very well that the blunt sound of the piano was no match to Abimanyu's light and crisp voice, and that in the West, people would laugh at the idea of accompanying a Baroque song with piano in a serious performance.

However, starting from Pearsall, the remainder of the show was presented very well. They were most expressive in pacing and phrasing the large gestures of Pearsall, Elgar, and Vaughan Williams pieces, and their ensemble was stunningly beautiful, especially in the Pearsall song.

The pop pieces were delivered with idiomatic aplomb, the choir not missing any inflections and the soloists, especially the light tenors, ornamenting their melodies very admirably (I wish they transferred these to the madrigals!) Thus ended the concert cheerfully for people on both sides of the stage.