Madrid International Choir: What makes us international?

 English speaking choir in Madrid

A choir, like any organisation, is not something just because its name says it is, you have to be what you say you are. In the case of Madrid International Choir, and our Ensemble, we can think about the following: 

Who are our singers and instrumentalists? 

What music do we perform?

Who do we perform with?

Our players and singers are truly international, coming to Madrid from more than 20 countries, including Spain, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Canada, China, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Netherlands, Peru, Philippines, Rumania, Russia, Scotland, South Africa, USA, Venezuela and Wales.

Some of our group have lived in Madrid all their lives, several settled here years ago and plan to stay, while others, especially our younger members, are visiting students who might be with us only for a few months. All are welcome, and each one brings their own personality and experience to our community.

Our repertoire is international since it includes lyrics in English by composers from UK and USA, in Spanish by composers from Spain, Mexico and Costa Rica, a Basque carol, texts in French, Latin, Italian and German, and a traditional Turkish song arranged especially for us by Elif Gozen.  

Collaboration is an important part of our character. In the last two seasons we have performed with a local orchestra, numerous Madrid choirs in the Dreamers concert at the Auditorio Nacional de Música, and with the Coro del Cabanyal both in Madrid and in Valencia. We also have performed memorable concerts with mezzo-soprano soloist Clara Conde, from Castellón, and with the Madrid-based international female barbershop choir The Barbees. The Jolly Holiday Singalong at the International Institute in Madrid was a happy occasion and we hope it will be a regular feature in our calendar.

In June 2024 we hosted our first visiting specialist when Phoebe Martha visited from London to lead a Vocal Improvisation Residency: see her work on Instagram @phoebespockets

We have been happy to welcome and share concerts with Canyon Crest Academy and The Stockton Chorale, both from California, and we had a very special weekend when singers from the Tanti Canti Choir visited from The Hague, Netherlands, with their director Elif Gozen. In the coming season we look forward to visits by the Estudio Coral Armentum from Costa Rica, and other choirs from, USA, Ireland and UK.

Madrid International Choir and Ensemble are international, not just in name, but in our origins, in our repertoire and in our numerous collaborations.

Photo: New Scientist

Madrid International Choir, English speaking choir in Madrid

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Madrid International Choir: Songs for peace

Madrid International Choir, English speaking choir in Madrid

How can you write an anti-war song without using the word peace?  Which pop singer from Liverpool completed a lyric for a classical composer from New York half a century later? Why would you be persecuted for calling for a deeper understanding of peace in your time?

Let’s take the last one first. Peace is not an absence of war is a well known phrase. It’s only a tiny fragment of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza’s extensive output. He was born and died in The Netherlands and he is buried in the grounds of the church in front of City Hall in The Hague: it’s impossible to live in the city without bumping into memorials and statues in his honour as you cycle around: Baruch Spinoza 1632-1677.

Apparently the trouble he got into was not so much for the better known part of the phrase: Peace is not an absence of war, more to do with what followed: Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice. Spinoza was calling for the government of his day to up their game and work to achieve these high aims of benevolence, confidence and justice and his suggestions were not well received in his time. 

The musical setting we will sing was composed recently in The Hague, for international high school students of the city. It’s in C major and starts with a bell like call for Peace, with the sopranos on a high G. One of the students remarked that starting on high G was not an easy thing to do, and the composer replied that achieving and keeping peace is not an easy thing to do.

The song ends with a contemporary observation by the composer: Peace is working out together who we are. 

Amy Beach was a prolific composer and concert pianist, born in the USA in 1867. She wrote numerous pieces in various genres, including orchestral, solo piano and choral settings. Recently we performed a joint concert in Madrid with The Stockton Chorale from California, and to end the concert we sang Peace I leave with you, by Amy Beach, at the suggestion of their Musical Director, Dr Bruce Southard. It’s a beautiful setting of a verse from the bible, John 14, 27: 

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, (neither let it be afraid)

The key is the calm and comforting E flat major and the four part harmony is mainly diatonic and reassuringly familiar. At the significant moment of the text, the first appearance of Let not your heart be troubled there is a crunchy chromatic alteration in the inner voices, to be resolved soon afterwards for Let not your heart be troubled. Musically this is an interesting setting, and the stretched ending, over a repeat of Let not your heart be troubled, gives time to re-establish the tonic key and lets us go in peace. 

There are many positive elements to performing joint concerts with international choirs and one of them is that we get to know unfamiliar music. In this case we were introduced to Amy Beach’s inspiring music, and we will be looking to include more of her work in our repertoire.

Why did the composer end her setting with Let not your heart be troubled, and not include the last words of the verse, neither let it be afraid? I have no idea, but given her expertise and experience, I am sure there was a good reason.

How far is it from Neither let (your heart) be afraid to Let’s hope it’s a good (year) without any fear?

Amy Beach didn’t include the reference to being afraid, but John Lennon and Yoko Ono wished us all a new year without any fear in Happy Xmas, War is over, released in 1971. Here’s a brain teaser: Amy Beach died in New York in 1944 and both Yoko Ono (1933) and John Lennon (1940)  were born before she died, both far away from the city, and they settled in New York where they enjoyed the early years of their son Sean, before Lennon’s tragic murder in 1980.

Happy Xmas, War is over is a secular seasonal song, far from snowy images of Bethlehem and the stable. The lyric on the chorus is War is over if you want it, which was a phrase which John and Yoko had featured in a poster campaign throughout the USA in previous years. Yoko and John were serious campaigners for peace, not frivolous self-publicists. In their time the war in question was being waged in Vietnam, but in their early years they had both seen the devastation of another war at close quarters.

One of our choir members requested that we include this song in our new season so I started listening to it again and with closer attention. For the first time ever, I heard some whispering in the opening seconds, and it turns out to be Yoko and John wishing happy Christmas to the children from their previous marriages: Kyoko and Julian. What a beautiful way to start the song, and what a great way to end the song, with War is over if you want it/ War is over now. 

From the personal to the universal with some unforgettable music in between.

Read more:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/

https://www.nieuwekerkdenhaag.nl/

https://www.amybeach.org/

https://www.stocktonchorale.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flA5ndOyZbI

Photos: Amazon, NewYork Times, The Independent

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Thomas Tallis If ye love me

These reflections on repertoire appear as I start my second season as Musical Director of Madrid International Choir in September 2023

                                                                Thomas Tallis  

This short, exquisitely beautiful piece has become a favourite during our first season and we will keep it in our repertoire for our second season and surely beyond.

Tallis is a fascinating character whose long life 1505-1585 spanned the reigns of King Henry VIII, King Edward VI, Queen Mary I, and Queen Elizabeth I, a period of profound change in England.

Tallis was brought up in the Catholic faith and when the country officially adopted the Protestant faith his work in the Chapel Royal required him to follow the rules of the new faith in his professional role. It is widely accepted that he stayed true to his beliefs in the “old” religion, as did his colleague William Byrd, but the fact that they both remained in favour and in employment with the royal court shows that they were discreet in practising their faith.

The leaders of the Protestant church imposed new restrictions which directly affected Tallis. Latin was dropped and music was to be set to English texts. This is no small matter because Latin makes greater use of vowel sounds while English uses more consonants, so the former tends to make a more lyrical setting of words to music.

Another imposition was the setting of one syllable to a single note, rather than setting a syllable over several notes. The limitations of expression are easy to imagine and easy to hear when we listen to contemporary composers from, say, Italy. 

Finally, Tallis was confined to certain themes and forbidden from others, such as any references to the Virgin Mary.

There was a period of respite for Tallis when Mary I reintroduced the Catholic faith, only for Protestant practices to be restored by Elizabeth I.

Tallis left a considerable number of compositions for us to admire and enjoy. In contrast to the simplicity of If ye love me, look up Spem in Alium, a hugely complex piece for forty individual singing lines.

You can hear a fragment of If ye love me on our Facebook post on 30/6/23

If you would like to join us to sing this and other music, see our Facebook page and get in touch: Season Two rehearsals start on Thursday 7 September 2023

Engraving by Niccolò Haym after a portrait by Gerard van der Gucht - The Musical Times (1913) H.W. Gray, New York; Novello, London (https://doi-org.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/10.2307/907708), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=101138568

Come what may

Looking forward to my second season as Musical Director of Madrid International Choir, starting rehearsals on 7 September 2023 

Moulin Rouge was a revolutionary film: a show that used some well known songs without being a jukebox musical and treated a serious plot with a perfect mixture of comedy and tragedy. I saw it first in a small cinema in Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain, I think I was the only Monday evening spectator.

That was twenty years ago and I have watched it several times since, but I remember that several things bowled me over. One was the use of tiny fragments of songs like Climb every mountain, from The Sound of Music, another was the superb choreography and settings for the company numbers like Voulez-vous and Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.

Even so, the three standout, shiver down the spine moments were: a world class tenor as man in the moon singing a line from Elton’s Your Song; the best realisation ever of Police/Sting’s Roxanne, the most menacing, this-is-real-life-and-death-stuff-not-your-stupid-teenage-infatuation ever set to tango dance steps, anyway you need to watch it….and the great and wonderful duet for the Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor characters Come what may.

I understand this is one of the original songs written for the film by David Baerwald and Kevin Gilbert. There is a fascinating article about the writing process of Baz Luhrmann and his team here

It starts with a pretty standard the universe is perfect since we met lyric and grows to the moving near repeat, starting as I will love you until the end of time: of course we all know we will never see the end of time, even the most pessimistic climate change forecasts give all of us currently alive that much margin, so it’s a fantasy, a love will never end fairy tale. The lyric changes to I will love you until my dying day, which is very poignant in the film because we, the audience, know that the Nicole Kidman character is terminally ill with little time left, but the innocent Ewan McGregor character is ignorant of this, as he is of almost all of life’s essentials. Her understanding of my dying day is very different from his understanding. As usual, the boy is the last to know.

(Spoiler alert: skip the next paragraph if music theory is not your thing)

This song’s emotional impact works because it starts in a conversational mood where the melody follows the rhythm and shape of the lyric and it builds to an anthem like melody ending on Dying day using notes 3,2,1 of the major scale: think Three blind mice, the most satisfyingly conclusive phrase in the classical European musical language. 

The three note phrase for Come what may includes first defiance, in the rising figure from 7th note to high octave in the major scale, starting half way through the bar (measure), and then despair. If the melody had repeated the high octave note on May the effect would have been triumphant, powerful and conclusive. Instead, the fall of a minor 3rd from What to May is the interval of the baby’s cry, the lost soul, hope abandoned. So in just three notes the words Come what may are set so that they catch us up in the most extreme emotions: defiance/exhilaration turns to weeping in an instant. 

The arrangement we are using is from the same OUP book as  Pages  which we have really enjoyed singing in Season One.

The arrangement, by Charles Beale, works beautifully. It starts with unison singing and then mixes two parts, in octaves, three parts, and finally, in the most emotionally charged moments, four part harmony. We will perform the song with the instrumental ensemble with strings, flutes and clarinets. I can’t wait to hear it!

The concept of contemporary music is an interesting one. A certain number of our singers and instrumentalists were not born when I was sitting in the cinema watching Moulin Rouge for the first time. Someone wrote that “technology” is something that was invented after you were born. Applied to music, does this mean that “contemporary” music is what was written after you were born?

Be that as it may, Come what may is a great song for us to perform. 

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Season 2 coming soon!

 

This post is the first for my second season as Musical Director of Madrid International Choir.

 

Six public performances in three venues collaborating with two groups from Madrid and Valencia with a total audience of about seven hundred. 

The composer of our earliest piece of music was born in 1505 and of our most recent in the 1970’s.

Our attendance at rehearsals settled at around forty between February and June and our instrumental ensemble has grown to eleven players. 

Facts and figures!

There are those who say that music is all about numbers and then there are those of us who say that music is about sound and emotions. 

For me, choir is above all about persons. 

Every person in the choir has seen their life move on while joining weekly rehearsals: for some this has meant the joy of finding a job or celebrating a family member’s success, while others have suffered loss or a major health setback. Who would expect to go on holiday and fly home with a broken leg? Yes, all this and more has been going on, in the background as a choir, but very much in the foreground for the individual concerned.

It’s in the nature of an international choir that members will leave: some are here as students and return home to complete their courses while some experienced professionals are given postings in other countries by their employers. We will miss our departing singers and instrumentalists very much and we wish them well in their new/old destinations.

At the same time, expressions of interest are constantly arriving and we’re open to welcome new singers and classically trained instrumental players.

Change, flux, uncertainty and transience are part of life and singing in a choir can be an anchor and a point of reference to keep ourselves emotionally safe. One singer made this clear: after traveling half way across the world to start a new phase of life in a country with an unfamiliar language and customs, she found her way to our rehearsal and as soon as she said soprano and sat in with the other singers and opened the music we gave her, she felt totally comfortable and secure. In a choir we sit in a certain way and use music scores in a certain way and we follow a routine of welcome, vocal warm-up and repertoire. 

Whatever else is going on in our lives, minds and hearts, our choir rehearsal can help us feel at home and at peace.

Madrid International Choir Season 2 starts on Thursday 7 September 2023. You can check out last season’s concerts on the Facebook page, hear us on SoundCloud and contact to arrange to join us!

First rehearsal: From A-Z and around the globe

 

This is part of a series of reflections as I take on the role of Musical Director for the Madrid International Choir, a non-religious English speaking choir in the heart of Madrid.

From A-Z and around the globe

After months of planning we finally had the answer to the questions which have been so much on our minds as the choir re-formed after a 2 year pause:

Where will we rehearse?

What music will we sing?

And, most importantly: who will join the choir?

Our rehearsal venue, St George’s church in the city centre, is not only a beautiful building with an attractive garden, we found it has a perfect acoustic for choral singing, and there were some moments of magic as we discovered what a beautiful sound we made.

Our opening repertoire features peace and hope, with Dona Nobis Pacem as a round and Curtis Mayfield’s People Get Ready. We have plenty of music for the rest of the season, and a short discussion among the singers showed that variety will be the key to our future programming.

We ended up being short of space on our “stage” area as singers kept arriving, both new members and those who were in the choir before the long pause. We are truly an international choir, with singers from Spain, Venezuela, Australia, Austria, USA, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Netherlands, Wales, Scotland and England. The age range was equally interesting, from university students to those enjoying retirement, and all ages in between.

Some singers were not able to attend our first rehearsal, due to work, holiday travels or family commitments. We look forward to welcome more new members at future rehearsals.

I hope you will join us.

By the waters of Babylon, a timeless round

 

This is part of a series of reflections as I take on the role of Musical Director for the Madrid International Choir, a non-religious English speaking choir in the heart of Madrid.

What is this music?

By the waters of Babylon takes its text from Psalm 137, which connects it to Va, pensiero and, more distantly, to People get Ready, and I have written about both of these on recent posts.

You will find different accounts for the song’s origin: some editions describe is Traditional, others as a Jewish melody, while others credit Philip Hayes 1738-1797. 

By the waters of Babylon is a 3 part round. The minor key reflects the melancholy thoughts of the Hebrew slaves who were in captivity in Babylon:

“By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept for thee Zion. We remember thee, Zion.”

Bars 1 to 3 are set to a weeping falling musical figure with a strong emotional pull, and the sense of sadness is reinforced because the same figure is repeated in each bar starting a tone lower each time, a sequence. Bars 5 to 8 continue the falling phrase shape. The last phrase, bars 9 to 12 is another sequence, the melody in bar 9 repeated one note higher in the following two bars. The rising four-note figure seems at first hearing to be optimistic, but each repeat falls and falls in imitation of weeping and the final bar is a fall of a 5th, a very final sound, almost a death knell.

Why are we singing it?

It’s a beautiful melody line. Sung as a round the beauty of the line and the emotional power is amplified. As I have explained in an earlier post on Dona nobis pacem, a round is a simple but effective musical form, and there is a strong connection between the singers.  

This round is timeless: it can be harmonised in different ways, and the most simple way makes it sound modern rather than classical. 

You might recognise it from a version called Babylon on the 1971 American Pie album by Don Maclean, where it sound very much like contemporary folk songs by Pete Seeger. 

Is it relevant to us today?

The comments I made regarding the text of Va, pensiero apply very much also to By the waters of Babylon.

Connecting is a crucial part of singing in a choir: after all, if we simply want to sing we can just stay at home and sing in the shower/wardrobe/loft. The very act of joining a choir says that we want to connect with other human beings through singing.

As a round we connect with our fellow singers, but there is another dimension of connecting: this piece brings to mind far away friends and places. We are connecting with our memories.