Day 5 - Final Rehearsals and the Concert

What a day!

This morning, after Werner's warm-up session, I ran a last rehearsal of the Rollright Stones, which we did on the stage so as to be sure how the balance and acoustics worked.   All sounded good, I was told from those on the floor of the auditorium.   We sang through the piece complete, while I took a high-tech recording on my iPhone, which I placed in the acoustically perfect location on top of a pumpkin (don't ask).  Werner arranged for the whole concert to be recorded properly with proper microphones and things, so a decent recording will come along eventually.

This was followed by the ensembles singing each of their pieces for the evening concert, in whole or in part.  This confirmed that everything was ready for the evening.

The plan was that Werner, Marie (his wife), John and I would go to Ingelheim this afternoon to go for a walk, but as we arrived at Werner's house, the skies opened and put paid to that.  Instead, after coffee, Werner drove me back to my hotel in Saulheim, which gave him the opportunity to go back to the hall to look for his wallet (which he told me he eventually found at home!).

At tea, coffee and cake time, the Jubiladies Quartet presented John, Werner and me with chocolates and lots of thanks.  My package included a Playmobile knight on a horse.  Perfect!

The concert was quite well attended, considering it was just an end-of-course concert, but there were plenty of friends and relations of the singers there, and people from the Sangehalle and Singakademie organisations.   The first half and the start of the second consisted of performances by the three ensembles, of which Nobiles as the biggest professionals took the lion's share.   All the performances were excellent (including performances of my "Sanctus" and "Agnus Dei") and were nicely varied.  Nobiles also sang an old German song with Werner on guitar and John singing a tenor part, which was greatly appreciated.

Then we all took to the stage for "The Rollright Stones".  Werner told the story, briefly, in German so that the audience had a fighting chance of understanding what it was all about.  We then performed the piece with great gusto (and, to fair, a lot of subtlety too) and we were treated to a standing ovation from the audience.  After a good number of photos of the ensembles, plus John, Werner and me, we had a good chat over a glass of wine, before Nobiles left to drive to Leipzig, the Trio and Quartet left for their homes and the rest of us back to hotel/home/accommodation.

Finally, here are the various participants of the five-day masterclass:

Ensemble Nobiles

Christian, Paul, Felix, Lukas, Lucas

Trio Avijo

Viola, Aaron, Johanna

Jubiladies

Marianne, Sandra, Hanna, Carolin

Jubiladies presenting John, Werner and me with gifts

Day 4 - Last Day of Individual Sessions

Today was the last day in which individual ensembles worked with Werner, John or me.  This gave me, at least, a chance to go through a number of things I wanted to do, such as parts of the Rollright piece with the Trio and Quartet, as well as looking again at my "extras".

The Trio and I finally managed to get some time to learn the "Kyrie" I wrote for them and they mastered all the notes pretty well, but I think they will need some more time on their own or with Werner after the masterclass is over in order for them to feel secure with it.   The Quartet can now perform their "Agnus Dei" without me (which is tricky for the opening because of the off-beat rhythm following a quaver rest at the start of bar 1) and I have to say they are singing it really well.

Nobiles rehearsed their "Sanctus" on their own and, towards the end of the morning, asked me if I would like to hear it.   This, of course, I did, and I was really pleased how well it sounded - and I think they were too.

We've now, this afternoon, run through all the joins between sections, where the tempo and/or the key changes, and I am happy that these now run through smoothly.  One of the ladies in the quartet said to me this afternoon, that the section where the music describes the sun rising through the mist and the witch appears gave her goosebumps (though she needed to gesticulate as that particular word was a  bit beyond her excellent English vocabulary).  Anyway, that sounds like it works!

Tomorrow, we have one last rehearsal of the Rollright Stones together and then each ensemble sings their other pieces for the concert to each other.

This evening we have had the Sangerhalle 110th Anniversary Celebration and Concert, with guests in the audience who are the descendants of Friedrich Weyerhauser who, having been born in Saulheim, emigrated to the USA in 1834 and making a lot of money from timber, paid for the building and establishment of the Sangerhalle in his home town.  So the concert had speeches (in two languages) and performances from all the groups based at the hall, from a young children's choir to adult choirs (one female, one male).  Other performers were the Trio Avijo and Quartet "Jubiladies" both of whom are involved in this week's masterclass, Werner's "The Four Reasons" (two of whom are part of the quartet too) who sang and then played a lively Irish jig.  Finally, Nobiles performed half a dozen songs ranging from Tallis to a fun arrangement of "It's a Wonderful World".  All very enjoyable.

Day 3 - Great progress

It's now the end of another busy day at the Saulheim Masterclass.  I have worked with each of the three ensembles and have taken a full session of everybody.   Some really good work has been done and I feel the Rollright piece is shaping up nicely.   We have now been through all of the music and I think everyone now knows their music.  It will probably be necessary to spend a bit more time with the trio, as they are the youngsters and the amateurs, but I have to say that they are very quick at picking it up; all they need is a bit more time to gain the confidence and I am sure they will do just that.

All participants are really engaged in the piece and are contributing to how the performance will be presented, which is exactly what I wanted.   They are also kind enough to say how much they are enjoying it, which is a relief.

Of the "extra" pieces, I have only been through the Agnus Dei with the ladies' quartet today - they are so keen on it, that that is the music they most wanted to do this morning.  By the time we had been through it, they were singing it beautifully.  Hopefully I will have time to go through the Kyrie with the trio tomorrow and the Sanctus with Nobiles too.

The evening ended with a concert by "Ensemble Wortart" from Dresden, whose programme consists of poetry, and music inspired by words and poetry.  I have to admit to leaving half-way through (German poetry being a little hard for a non-German speaker like me).   They were certainly very slick, but everything was through microphones and the choreography and speech was very "arty" - which will have meant more to German speakers!

Tomorrow is another day of individual sessions and a tutti hour led by me, so a good night's sleep is in order.

By the way, I'm sorry about the lack of photos, but I can't take photos and run sessions at the same time.  Sascha, the Nobiles manager has promised to email the photos he is taking, so I'll have some eventually.

Day 2 - A Busy day

I now have a free evening, but after a busy day, that's no bad thing.

This morning, Nobiles was still the only ensemble here, so Werner's warm-up was just for them. Werner's warm-up has a lot of stretching, breathing, pummelling and other mutual ice-breakers, but when you consider how much singing they were going to do today, it was probably a good thing they were physically ready for it.

John took them for a session in which the ensemble sang a couple of pieces and he gave them advice and feedback. The first piece they did was the lovely "Ave Verum Corpus" by William Byrd and this was followed by a generally unknown Renaissance piece which Werner told me he found in a secondhand bookshop and, because it was in 5 male-voice parts, he had sent it to Nobiles.

I took over for the second session and their first request was to go through the "Jauchzet dem Herrn" which I composed for them a while ago and which they had included on their new CD.  I think I was able to help them bring out the different voices at the appropriate moments and we were quite pleased with the final sing-through.  We had a brief look at my "Sanctus" (my extra piece for them) and then moved on to the "Rollright Stones" piece I have composed for this masterclass week and learn quite a lot of it. It had been agreed that they could have an hour to themselves in the afternoon, during which they would go through the Rollright music again, and prepare some pieces for their contribution to Saturday's concert.

After a lunch of fish and chips (in honour of the two Englishmen present) the afternoon sessions got underway. There were three hour-long sessions from 3 to 6pm; in the first I was with the Quartet (SSAA - the quartet originally assembled for my "Jubilate" last year, but who now sing together anyway) and we went through the Rollright music and the "Agnus Dei" which I give them as an extra gift.   In the second session I took the Trio Avijo (timed so that they could join us after school) and we covered the Rollright music and a bit of their "Kyrie" extra piece.  John, of course, was working with another group at the same time.

The third session was tutti which meant me working with all three ensembles for the first half of the Rollright piece.  I was pretty pleased with how it all came together and how they all responded to ideas and suggestions.  It's still a bit rough round the edges, but I think it bodes well for the rest of the piece and the final performance on Sunday.  The singers all seem happy with the music and John was kind enough to say that he thought it was a good piece and very enjoyable.

After our early evening meal, Nobiles had decided, quite reasonably, that they had done enough singing for one day, so the only evening session remaining was for the Trio with John, though Nobiles and Werner were going to get together individually for a few voice-coaching things.   That gave me my free evening, so this blog can be typed up early!

Day 1 - Arriving

This first day has mostly been about travelling.  The flight was on time (well, pretty much) and I had a great view of the Rhine from Bingen to Mainz as we came in to land.  Werner was waiting for me as I walked out of the arrivals gate.  We drove around to Terminal 1 and I grabbed a sandwich and a coffee while we chatted and waited for John Potter's plane to land and for him to get through the arrivals process.   It was not long before we were on the road away from Frankfurt airport and heading towards Saulheim.

Actually, we went first to Werner's house at Udenheim, where we met Marie and were treated to coffee and cake.  Then Werner drove me to Saulheim and I checked in to my hotel.  Practicalities over (like getting in, getting on to the wi-fi and a getting-your-bearings kind of walk around the centre of the town), I made my way to the Sangehalle in Bahnhofstrasse in perfect time to meet Werner and John and, very soon after, the members of Ensemble Nobiles.

After a meal together, we set ourselves up in the main hall, where Nobiles sang a few pieces - one by Tallis and others by composers of the same era.  John, Werner and I commented on how they had performed - John especially, as - let's face it - he's the expert!


A pleasant hour after was spent with a glass of wine and general chat, during which my friends in Nobiles gave me, Werner and John each a copy of their new CD, which includes the "Jauchzet dem Herrn" which I composed for them earlier this year.   I look forward to listening to it in a minute...