present at the creation

[calimac]

Last week, we went to the California Theatre to hear vgqn sing in the chorus for Carmina Burana. This week, we went to the California Theatre to hear her sing in the chorus for Haydn's The Creation. Different chorus (San Jose Symphonic Choir), different orchestra (Nova Vista Symphony), different conductor (chorus director Leroy Kromm).

Despite certain overlap in personnel, the chorus, orchestra, and conductor were not as high-class this week as last, and neither was the repertoire. I expect my high-toned friends will collapse of apoplexy when I say I consider Carmina Burana to be a superior work to The Creation, but I do. There are great 18th-century Biblical oratorios, most of them by Handel*, but this isn't one of them. I love most of Haydn's music, but I've never found his mature choral work to be inspired, and this is no exception.

Most of The Creation consists of a series of overlong recitatives, tedious solo arias, and congested contrapuntal choruses describing the six days of creation in Jacobean and Miltonic verse. Things pick up only in the final part when Adam and Eve come on stage. They sing a lovely duet praising God for what He's done, which also for the first time in the work finds something intelligent to do with the chorus. That our Adam and Eve were exceptionally fine soloists (Christian Pursell and Emma Rosenthal) helped. The others were good singers, too, but failed to conquer their material.

The chorus, when it had anything to do, was very fine in the women's sections, and solid in the bass, but weak and wayward in the tenor. The orchestra was frequently adequate but often conspicuously not.

Nevertheless I'm glad we went. It was a treat to see and hear a familiar face and voice from up there on the risers, and to hear what was good in the performance and work (and much was good), and also a treat to sit with friends, even though we moved to the far back in the second half to be able to duck out immediately at the end for another urgent musical appointment, of which I'll say more soon.

*And for a real treat, try Vivaldi's Judith, parts of which sound like Handel on acid.

Comments

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

You may have higher-toned, snottier, classical-music-loving friends than me, but I think I'm snotty enough to qualify. Carmina Burana is the greatest work by a third-rate composer. If he'd done anything else as good, he might have been a second-rate composer (I reserve first-rate for Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and sometimes Stravinski or Dvorak. Second-rate, land of Haydn, Brahms, Handel, and Shostakovich, is damn good. Hell, third-rate is pretty good, too.) The Creation is an inferior work by a second-rate composer who routinely did much better work.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I use "second-rank" rather than "second-rate" when I wish not to sound denigrating about it.

My favorite Haydn, his weird stuff from around 1770, I like better than anything by Mozart and most of Beethoven and Schubert. So I rank that pretty high. I really like almost everything else I know by him, too. Just not the mature choral music.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

I also use second-rank rather than second-rate when I remember to be careful about my wording. I am too often sloppy.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

You won't get any stones cast on that from this quarter.

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

Glad you enjoyed enough of the performance to make it worth your while. I'm glad to have sung it and came to quite like several of the choral bits (I particularly adore the opening phrases of "The Lord is Great"). I'm also glad to hear you thought the solo parts were tedious -- I thought that was a failing in me to appreciate them sufficiently.

From the point of view of a chorus singer, my biggest objections to the piece were 1) the choral sections almost uniformly followed the same formula of an opening phrase followed by a long fugue section, fun but formulaic; as you say, he finally mixed it up a bit in the Adam & Eve section, and 2) almost all of the chorus texts were variants on praising God. Yes, I know, we were the heavenly hosts and that's our job, but I think he could have been a little more imaginative in HOW we praised. Show, don't tell, so to speak. I wish we had gotten to sing about the whales and the birds and the mammals and insects too.

But it was still a whole lot of fun and I'm glad I did it. The next piece we are working on is Ralph Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem, though sadly I won't be able to perform it because I will getting on a plane that day. Very interesting to work on, though. The other chorale (the Carmina chorale) will be conducted by Barbara Day Turner and will be doing a variety of opera choruses and show tunes, a bit of a fluffy program but will certainly be fun. That one's at the end of May.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

almost all of the chorus texts were variants on praising God. Yes, I know, we were the heavenly hosts and that's our job, but I think he could have been a little more imaginative in HOW we praised

You know the scene from Cook and Moore's Bedazzled that discusses exactly that problem?