This afternoon, I indulged – once again – in another excessive, incessant and inefficient telebabad with my musical friend, GP. The phone conversation ran three hours and covered the stable of topics from high school: our other musical friends, current musical pursuits (or, as I am – now – non-practising, his musical pursuits and whatever I hear online), moral, social, emotional and intellectual dilemmas, food, TJ (and my other carnal and/or romantic imaginings and aspirations) and Madz. And/or choral music in general.
We are older. So when it came to comparing the performance clips of two of our favourite choirs, performing Randall Z. Stroope‘s “Riveder le stelle” (We beheld once again the stars), there were new learnings as always.
A brief primer on the piece: it is a disarmingly simple and melodic, double-choir setting of a passage from medieval-Italian poet and thinker, Dante Alighieri’s, “Divina Commedia” (Divine Comedy).
The performances couldn’t be more different. One was straight-forward, the other, more nuanced. One sounded even and solid, the other intimate and textured. One was by a double-choir, the other by a choir.
That I still prefer one over another is not what surprised me after our chat. It wasn’t even the change in language (and, as another good friend points out, meaning) – from “I think the other one…” in 1999 to “I prefer the other one’s…” in 2009.
I paused after removing my headsets and minced my words about the joint choir performance: “nice, mas straight-forward siya…”
“Yun lang?…”, as if encouraging me to regurgitate more from the last eight minutes.
A full-length discussion ensued.
This is, perhaps, how the composer intended it heard. After hearing the other one, I guess I was looking for more intimacy in some parts, and intensity in others. What part? Uhm..che tuhtto… veDUHtto, RitornaaaAAAAaaaAAAAAAAAR! Of course it will feel more intimate – only two S1s are singing it. But I like that Verdisic drama there, the intensity. The other feels more intense because you’re hearing more individual voices versus groups. And so on.
We arrived at several Aha! moments (GP: a piece will always sound different if there are 60 vs. 20 singers singing it) and I arrived at several conclusions myself (JP, thinking: if you don’t have 60, ten-pound voices on stage, make sure you have 20, thirty-pound voices instead).
The insight, now, is that I had stopped singing ten years ago and yet I never. felt. any. lesser. discussing his craft with him. If nothing else, I’m blessed with such friends.
Enjoy my personal preference: the 20, thirty-pound version.
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh-sPFz9wBg&hl=en&fs=1&%5D
Made with sugar, spice and everything nice. 