RINGING THE CHANGES
Ringing The Changes, in collaboration with the artist David Ward, will be centred on a performance at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Charminster, Dorset.
The performance will have several strands: a new set of peals; a set of choral pieces to texts by David Ward about the relationship between bells and war; and the projection on to the interior and exterior of the church of images of bell-casting and bell-ringing, making visible activities which are normally invisible.
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In the West, is bell ringing considered music? I have a feeling that, generally, it isn't. I suspect that most people think of it simply as an overall undifferentiated sound (in rather the same way as most people see the countryside as a green blur, in Richard Mabey's words). Of course that sound conjures up complex feelings of loss and nostalgia, like the sound of a foghorn. Nostalgia for a lost world, in this case a world in which religion, in particular Christianity, was pre-eminent, in fact the organising system of society.
The idea of bell ringing as a sound is, in the context of most Western music, not far from the truth. I would describe it as a sounding music: the musical exploration of a sound, the realization of the potential of that sound. This is similar to many Eastern musics, and significantly different from most Western music, in which development and change are paramount, particularly harmonic change. Western music is, usually, about starting in one place and making a journey to another – an odyssey. Eastern music, and bell ringing, are about starting in a place and examining that place with great attention – a meditation.
Are bell peals the nearest thing that Western culture has to trance or meditative music? It’s true that since the 1960s Western composers (La Monte Young, Philip Glass) and bands (Sunn O) have been inspired by and have appropriated Eastern trance musics; but bell peals are different – they are indigenously Western. And certainly, the act of ringing the bells is a meditative act, an act of extreme concentration.
At the same time it is pure mathematics.
COVID CHORAL
Covid choral music has two manifestations: the Zoom choir rehearsal and the virtual choir. Ingenious, frisky, worthwhile. But. For the members of amateur choirs, a million miles from their normal choral experience, and a zillion miles from what made them join a choir in the first place. What a choir offers in the normal world is the chance to sing in amongst people who are singing what you’re singing, feeling the confidence that comes from their support, knowing that your contribution is important but that if your singing is not perfect it’s not the end of the world – your voice is subsumed in a bigger sound. You are a cog in a machine. That might not normally be a pleasure but here it is – the choir makes a sound that you can’t make yourself.
In the Zoom choir rehearsal the choir director demonstrates a line, and the singers sing it back to her. But the director will have muted all their feeds, otherwise the sound would be demented. So she can’t actually hear what comes back. She has no idea if they’re singing the right notes, or if they’re in tune. It’s probably an ideal situation for some choir directors – no need to listen to that racket! - but this is a class of directors who’d rather not be with an amateur choir – they dream of being in charge of a fabulous professional choir. But since 99% of choirs are amateur, the dream is hard to realise.
And what is the Zoom experience like for the singers? There is an agreeable feeling of taking part in a cooperative and sociable event, a feeling that’s hard to come by in lockdown, but this is undermined by the sense of being on your own, singing solo in your kitchen or bedroom (might be better in the bathroom for acoustic reasons). No support from your mates. A choir of one.
For the virtual choir, the director plays you a backing track which you listen to on headphones, you sing along, record yourself, send the recording to her, and she assembles the contributions into a choral piece. There is a result – you get to hear yourself as a contributor to a bigger sound, you sense yourself as a cog in a machine. But the task of recording yourself is, again, a solitary one.
So, you are grateful for the online possibilities. They’re better than nothing. But you’re longing to get back to how things were. Hmm. That’s not going to happen for some time. Choral music could not be more incompatible with social distancing. In a choir you want to be – you need to be – as close together as possible. How to solve this problem? I wish I knew. Singing in face masks? Heck. Singing while spread out is possible, but requires immense skill and concentration. Singing outdoors is the beginning of a solution. Singing outdoors while spread out is fearsomely difficult. There is a possibility of using technology – each singer has a microphone and headphones as if in a recording studio; the sound goes to a mixer and back as foldback to the headphones so that everyone can hear each other. Expensive. And still, actually, very different from singing acoustically.
The nearest I’ve been to a solution so far has been the Stoop Choir. In our street we’ve been singing pop songs after the NHS clap on Thursdays. Outdoors, spread out. Gloriously sociable, enjoyable and hilarious. The singing quality? Ho hum.
COVID CHORAL 2
As the first lockdown came all those of us who normally swear by live performance went scurrying off to the online world - and discovered that we and the people we were working with needed to learn some new skills.
So the little opera I Look For The Think that I was making with Rosetta Life (part of their epic Stroke Odysseys project) and Garsington Opera, due to be performed at Garsington last summer, became a film – the most labour-intensive project I’ve ever worked on. And I wasn’t even in the front line.
Lucinda Jarrett and Chris Rawlence had constructed a beautiful libretto, based on the experiences of Kim and Sarah Fraser. Kim and Sarah had met in their thirties, fallen in love, left their partners. A few weeks later, Kim had a severe stroke. He was completely dislocated from reality and found it almost impossible to communicate. But he could still dance, and he could still sing, he had kept his sense of humour, and he knew how to flirt. He was very good company. During a workshop, I was partnered with him, trying to extract the story of his traumatic introduction to boarding school. (I was very sympathetic as I’d been through the same experience.) The story came in fragments: ‘under the desk’, ‘rugger rugger rugger’, ‘tears down my face’, and then suddenly ‘wanking! wanking!’ and he burst into fits of laughter.
In I Look For The Think we encounter Kim and Sarah (played by Rob Goulden and Melanie Pappenheim) in hospital, a few days after his stroke. He thinks he’s in New Zealand, and, as Sarah says, he’s essentially right – he is indeed in another world. The hospital staff (played by the Garsington Chorus) anxiously look after him, trying vainly to connect him to his past. Then the crucial moment – time for release. Rising anxiety. Is he ready to go? Will they be able to cope in the outside world? And Kim and Sarah themselves excited but alarmed, his thoughts amplified by a chorus of stroke survivors (played by the Stroke Odysseys Ambassadors).
Sarah realises that she is living with a new person, and she needs to learn how to love him again. They create a new relationship, profoundly different from what they had before Kim’s stroke. She cares for him, and he responds. Her thoughts are amplified by a Carer’s Chorus (played by some of the Stroke Ambassadors’ actual carers). They go into the Scottish Highlands, and they walk and they walk and they talk. Kim’s brain is still chaotic, his speech is still hesitant, but he can taste the possibility of recovery. The power of love.
To make this into an online film, we must first record the music. Not so easy. I make a backing track, and then every single performer – there are about 70 – must learn his or her part in a Zoom rehearsal, record it individually, and send it in to be assembled. We have a thousand Zoom meetings trying to work out the most sympathetic efficient way to make that happen. Lea Cornthwaite, Jeremy Avis, Victoria Cooper, Melanie, who will lead the sessions, Karen Gillingham the director, Lucinda, Chris, me. Our brains ache. Zoom is a brilliant platform, but with drawbacks, particularly for singing. The sound is severely compromised by compression, and there is a small sound delay, slightly different for each person.
So a Zoom choral rehearsal is a very weird event. The leader sings the music, everyone sings it back – but the leader has had to mute all the singers, because the platform can’t cope. So it’s impossible to know whether people have really learnt the music, whether they are singing in time and in tune. I log into one of these rehearsals, singing along to music which I myself have written, and find it very difficult – rather lonely, and very exposing of my lousy singing voice. It’s more or less the direct opposite experience of singing live inside a choir.
Then it’s recording time. We are asking amateur singers, some of whom have had strokes, to listen to a backing track on headphones while recording themselves singing. Insane! Some have carers to help, some have children, but many are doing it for themselves. A new multi-dimensionally baffling challenge, new skills, new levels of patience. The results are chaotic but glorious. Understandably everyone feels very proud.
Lea and Jeremy and I assemble what we’ve been sent. It’s a massive task, by turns massively satisfying and massively frustrating. The more approximate contributions can be helped by electronic transformation – it’s possible to put notes in tune (sort of) and in time, but if you do too much of that the result has no life – it’s weird and inhuman. I add in Sarah Homer on bass clarinet and Nicola Bates on violin, and we have a sound mix. Wow! But it’s only sound.....
Now for filming. Karen and Chris (who is making the film) get into action. The performers must learn their moves, remind themselves of the music, and then film themselves, sometimes lip-synching to the audio mix, sometimes doing cutaways without the music. Amazing contributions, some tentative and fragile, some exuberant and robust, some heart-stopping, some pretty bizarre. And Chris must do alone what Lea and Jeremy and I have done together, and assemble these fragments into something that flows, tells the story, respects and reacts to the music.
Six months after we started we have a completed film, ten minutes long. It’s taken about the same amount of work as making a full-length live opera.......
Soon after it’s finished, Melanie and I start working with Kate McGrath of Fuel Theatre on the idea of a live choral performance in the courtyard of Somerset House. Exciting! A return to live performance! Almost immediately....aaaaargh...lockdown.