Re: Hilliards - for Jon - was[tuning] Digest Number 1374

jon wild wrote:

> Alison wrote:
>
> > The Hilliards could sing anything from any repertoire with consummate
> > ease, believe me.
>
> They are terrific, but your description doesn't correspond exactly to the
> experience we had recently when the Hilliards were here in Boston for two
> concerts. They took on the task of working up 7 new pieces in three days.
> Some of the pieces were extremely difficult. For my piece, which was
> medium-difficult and only 7-8 mins long, they spent about 90 minutes of
> hard work on it, with me present. I would have liked another half-hour,
> though I'm really not complaining about the job they did. Other tougher
> pieces had more than 3 hours spent on them with the composers, plus
> whatever time the Hilliards had spent before coming here (they had the
> scores for about a month, but of course they were very busy - they did at
> least read through everything and do some preliminary work before getting
> here). In any case, two or three of the composers wrote foolishly
> difficult pieces, unsuited to the group, and in one case one movement of a
> multi-movement piece had to be left out because the group couldn't get it
> prepared in time.
>
> My point is, they might be terrific musicians and the world's greatest
> singers of a certain kind, but even 12-tet music, if written in a harmonic
> style they're not familiar with, can pose very difficult pitch problems
> for singers (and I'm not even going to broach the subject of rhythm - oops
> I just did). Only one of the four members of the Hilliard ensemble who
> were here has perfect pitch sensitive to tiny fractions of a semitone -
> Rogers Covey-Crump, who also writes the tuning notes as companion to their
> CDs on the HilliardLIVE label. To get choral or vocal works done precisely
> in new tunings won't take simply the best singers, it will take people
> willing to dedicate a LOT of time to ear-training in the new systems. With
> over 100 concerts a year, the Hilliards or similar professional groups
> won't be able--or even interested, I imagine--to put in that sort of time.
> Unless you could pay them for a year. The really good singers are too busy
> succesfully earning their living, and the pretty good singers are too busy
> trying to become really good, really succesful singers.
>
> Cheers --Jon

Interesting. I'd love to get one of my pieces performed by such an ensemble. The point I was
making initially was that I reckon they could sing any of the existing (mostly tonal) repertoire
with ease. I agree with your point about the microtonal repertoire.

You're absolutely right about the singers moving along the assembly line. My early music trio,
Solsequium, is about to lose its soprano who has a wonderful voice to a college . She hopes to
'make it' in the world of opera. If only I could persuade her to join 'the cause'. But every time
I mention microtonality I get the "you've grown another head" look.

Best Wishes.