March 9, 2010

Richard Eaton Singers

Leonard Ratzlaff, Artistic Director with the Vancouver Chamber Choir; John Washburn, Artistic Director.� "UNDER THE SINGING SKIES"

Music by Watson Henderson, Lotti, Sch�tz, Nickel, Teehan, Kampen, Chatman, Dvo?ak, Stanford, Hodkinson, Washburn, Macmillan, Willan.

First Presbyterian Church

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I must begin with a frank statement: I went to the recent performance by The Richard Eaton Singers only because they were doing a work set to poetry by one of my former teachers at the University of Alberta, who also happened for a period of time to be one of their singers.� Their annual concert series is advertised this season by a strange slogan, "Let yourself go!", as if their take on choral repertoire really offered unrestrained abandon.�� Well, far from it.� Rock band they ain't - which is OK, really - and to find a fanatical follower in me, someone to let himself go, they will have to work a bit harder (which they will not).� I am not talking about them as performers, for I think the Richard Eaton Singers are a fabulous instrument.� I am talking about the music itself, and this is, as far as I am concerned, bland (here I refer mostly to the ultra-conservative Anglo-Saxon choral tradition).

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Do not get me wrong.� I have not much against a conservative work, a work which is well-written (that's the easy part) and, more importantly, offers a moment of metaphysical astonishment, a moment in which time has stopped - and you let yourself go emotionally, totally overwhelmed by the music and immersed in it, even if the piece is intended as humorous.� However, this seldom happens.� In the North American choral milieu, and the same goes for the organ community here, mediocrity is the norm.� It almost looks like there is a special breed of untalented composers who will only write for choirs (or organ, often for both) because they would not have made it anywhere else.� In a sense, they are like parasites that live off the living dead body of the predominantly white and Protestant (or Roman Catholic) conservatism.� But the mummy does not reject them; it wants more - a symbiotic relationship, bent on perpetuating primitive, Soviet-like populism.

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The concert in question only confirmed what I had feared.� It was a very, very successful performance by any account.� (By the way, I see nothing wrong with the audience members being largely of retirement age.� Again, what's wrong with that?)� This time around, the Richard Eaton Singers sang along with the widely admired Vancouver Chamber Choir, then on tour.� In terms of performance quality, it was a treat.� In terms of the repertoire, a bore.� Had it not been for two Baroque works, I would have had nothing to write about, with a couple of exceptions.

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One of these exceptions was the premi�re of a new work by the Toronto-based Ruth Watson Henderson, a setting of poetry by E. D. Blodgett, Edmonton's former Poet Laureate and the recipient of two Governor General's Awards.� Blodgett is a national treasure, a writer whose vision transcends the boundaries of language, culture, and time.� His poetry has a pure, universal quality (universal in the simplest sense of the word), at the same time being often complex, perhaps even intentionally obscure.� He is, well, normal, an honest artist who treats his potential readers as equals, as partners in a dialogue, in which both sides are expected to rely on each other's intelligence, knowledge, and sensitivity.� That's the way it should be.

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The four poems he wrote for this project represent the traditional bucolic poetry of the seasons.� Reading the text, I had a bout of uneasiness, as I suspected the author forced himself to write in a slightly different, much more "straightforward" style, more suited to the anticipated character of the music, perhaps?� In the end, the poetry was neither simple enough nor complex enough within the context of the resultant musical setting, at least not so to my liking.� Watson Henderson's piece (called rather unimaginatively A Song of the Seasons) did not strike me as particularly adventurous, but was nonetheless better than the usual Canadian fare.� All in all, a satisfying piece, in which good poetry was met by good music.� This work was performed by the two choirs together, and conducted, as always with quiet yet impressive assuredness, by the RES Artistic Director, Leonard Ratzlaff.

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That contemporary choral music is indeed capable of helping you let yourself go was proven by the Vancouver Chamber Choir performance of a gem of a work, a little masterpiece (little in size, not in quality), the onomatopoeic Clocks (the text imitating noises made by various, presumably old, clocks), composed by Stephen Chatman, also living in Vancouver.� In North American choral world, Chatman is a giant and it shows.� His choral music, representing a rather traditionalist stance, is so wisely conceived, so wittily designed, and then so well written, it is pointless to discuss his technique or stylistic choices.� I experience similar metaphysical joy while listening to choral music by Imant Raminsh or R. Murray Schafer (the latter the king of Canadian innovators).� So, here you go - a decidedly conservative work, yet so extraordinary that its style and compositional technique are irrelevant.� What counts is the incredible worth of that piece, reversely proportional to its brevity.� Kudos to the Vancouver Chamber Choir and their Artistic Director, John Washburn, for championing Chatman's work.�

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Two more compositions, also sung by the Vancouver group, stick in my memory, the Crucifixus by Antonio Lotti (1667-1740), written in the style, which even during his time was considered conservative (here you go again!), but incredibly intense and beautiful in its subdued evocation of Christ's suffering; and the Deutsches Magnificat by Heinrich Sch�tz (1584-1672), a piece situated on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum - an uplifting and reassuring confession of simple, unfaltering faith.�

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In a sense, this old music (plus the Chatman) made the choir shine, whereas the majority of new stuff performed on that programme was made shine by the choir.� The difference is significant.

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