Choral Music

Why listen? #

The best thing about choral music, and the key aspect that distinguishes it from instrumental music, is the text. Instruments can play notes alright, but only voices can overlay those notes with semantic meaning. Good choral composers remember that this is their art’s great strength, and they don’t simply toss random text overtop of pre-written music. Instead, they try to achieve a kind of harmony of sentiment between the words and the notes.

This is why I never listen to vocal music in a foreign language without a translation on hand. You simply miss too much of the composer’s art if you don’t know what the words mean and why they’re interwoven with the music the way that they are.

I also think this principle–text and music should speak to one another–explains why so many hymns are a bit dull. A hymn might have four to eight verses, all of which are sung to exactly the same notes (setting aside a possible descant on the last verse). This causes a dilemma for the hymnist. Either all the verses of the hymn will say substantially the same thing, which is boring, or else the tone of the music will jar against the meaning of some of the verses. Still, there are some hymn-like pieces that dodge both horns of the dilemma by varying the music just enough from verse to verse, (1)My favorite example might be the carol “Bethlehem Down.” All four verses are almost the same, but the third verse, the one that foreshadows the crucifixion, is just a bit louder and more anguished. and of course, sometimes the melody is so compelling that you hardly notice it doesn’t suit the words.

Here’s a small example of text and notes working well together. In the second to last section of Bach’s Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden, there’s a moment when the tenors sing “Gnade und Wahrheit” in this intricate phrase with lots of movement, while the altos above them are crescendoing through “in Ewigkeit” on a single note. (2)The moment I’m talking about starts just after 3ʹ 40ʺ in this recording by the Netherlands Bach Society. You can hear two ideas here, neatly superimposed by the musical arrangement. There’s the beauty of God’s grace and truth (gnade und wahrheit) plus the idea of changelessness, eternity (ewigkeit). A bit on the nose, but I quite like it.

Assorted opinions #

Choral-orchestral music almost never sounds good. The basic reason is dynamic mismatch. A full orchestra can overwhelm a choir easily, often without even trying. This has three downstream consequences. (1) The choir struggles to lock in and move exactly together the way that they could if they were singing a capella. (2) The singers feel like they have to strain and shout to be heard over the orchestra, so the quality of their sound gets rougher and less pleasing. (3) The text gets lost. If you don’t believe me, try listening to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy—the symphonic original, not the much improved hymn arrangement. In most recordings, you won’t be able to hear a single word of the Schiller poem. It all just sounds like “ah ah ah ah ah.”

Piano and organ accompaniment almost always sounds better. The piano is a better dynamic match for choir. If a choral-orchestral piece sounds like a mouse partner dancing with an elephant, a piano-choir duet sounds like a smooth tango. This is why I actually prefer the London arrangement of the Brahms Requiem to the original. Of course, the organ can drown out a choir if it wants to, but organ accompaniment still tends not to make choirs shout, perhaps because air flowing through pipes sounds closer in timbre to the human voice than strings and percussion can sound.

Some conductors self-defeatingly refrain from discussing the text with their singers. Maybe they fear coming across as condescending, as if they were questioning their singers’ reading ability. In the first place, I do think many singers’ reading ability should be questioned, and further, it’s not enough for each chorister to independently read the text and arrive at their own interpretation. The group has to unanimously understand what they’re saying and why.

It makes a real difference when they do. Masaaki Suzuki points out in this interview that most of his Japanese singers aren’t Christian, so when he conducts Bach with them, he gets to explain the text to them for the first time. A European choir would come in with more preconceptions about what the text should mean, leaving the conductor less latitude to realise his own vision. And when I listen to BCJ’s recordings, I really do think I can hear them all agreeing on a single vision. Stresses go in idiosyncratic, but interesting places. It’s like Suzuki has gone through the libretto with a highlighter, telling you which phrases matter.

The difference between a great carol service and a forgettable one is choosing good arrangements. People want to hear comforting, familiar tunes when they go to hear carols, but that doesn’t mean they want to hear the stalest and least inspired arrangements of those tunes. Fortunately, better arrangements are out there; you just have to program them. For example, Dudley Buck’s O Holy Night is far more interesting than the plain old Adam/Dwight arrangement. Ola Gjeilo’s version of The Holly and the Ivy has all the liveliness that a folk tune should have (and that the standard choral arrangements lack).

Choral CV #

I’ve been in choirs regularly for the past five years, and I’ve been lucky to sing with some lovely groups. Here’s a list in chronological order.

Feel free to ask me about any of these choirs. I have nice things to say about all of them.

Bucket list #

This is a shortlist of the pieces I most strongly wish to sing some day.

Last updated 24 January 2025