Matthew Halls on J.S. Bach and the Oregon Bach Festival
Part 2 of 3
Continued from An Interview with Matthew Halls (Part 1)
I asked Matthew Halls what he felt about dramatizations of the Bach Passions – for example, the stagings of the St. Matthew and St. John Passions by Peter Sellars with the Berlin Philharmonic.
Matthew Halls: I have many different feelings on this. The work that Peter Sellars did with the Berlin Philharmonic is wonderful – it’s inspiring, it gives you a new insight. I also saw an incredible realization by Deborah Warner (with the English National Opera), and Katie Mitchell’s done some work in this field as well. There seems to have been a trend in recent years to give dramatic presentations of Bach’s great sacred works.
Fundamentally, I have nothing against this. Any way we can present music from the distant past in a way which is going to make the presentation of the ideas more vivid for someone coming to see the piece for the first time: that gets a big gold star in my book! That a wonderful way of helping and reinterpreting the music of the past.
I think that it comes with the acknowledgement that I’m not quite sure what Bach would have made of it. But at the same time – this is the 21st century and we face different challenges. As long as the integrity of the music survives then I’m really interested and excited by all sorts of approaches to the music.
Nashville is Music City
Lalo Davila & Friends hold forth at Conexión Américas’ Hispanic Heritage Celebration #THELATINPARTY at The Cannery Ballroom, Nashville, September 12, 2015
This weekend has been a typical example of how incredibly diverse and dynamic the music scene is in this town – and I’m only speaking for events/activities I witnessed or was a part of.
For today’s post I depart from my usual in-depth-article format and bring to you a brief, breezy, gossip-column style rundown of my weekend.
As anybody who’s lived here for any length of time knows, this cornucopia of musical delights is typical of what Nashville has to offer on a regular basis. It’s simply the best town to be a musician or a music lover in, period.
Solfège With Amadeus
Part 4 of a 4-Part Series
Go to Part 1: The Joy of Solfège
Go to Part 2: The Legacy of Guido d’Arezzo
Go to Part 3: Teaching Music With Solfège
This Epilogue to my series of posts on Solfège recounts examples of solfège exercises I used in high school choir rehearsals, some anecdotes about singing Mozart’s Requiem on solfège syllables, and some unexpected things we learned from doing this.
Teaching Music With Solfège
Part 3 in a 4-part series
Go to Part 1: The Joy of Solfège
Go to Part 2: The Legacy of Guido d’Arezzo
This is a simple but somewhat thorough description of the syllables for movable do solfège with la-based minor and how I applied them in my work as a teacher. I do not claim this method as an example of haute Kodály, Gordon, or any other technique – for me solfège was always a means to an end, not an end in itself. We used it for exercises to develop skills, and to learn notes accurately – and when these goals were achieved we left it behind.
The Legacy of Guido d’Arezzo
Part 2 in a 4-part series
Go to Part 1: The Joy of Solfège
Solfège is a practical method for teaching sight-singing (singing music from written notation). Each note of the diatonic scale is assigned a solfège syllable. This practice is called solmization.
The Joy of Solfège
Part 1 in a 4-part series
Most of the country is still enjoying summer vacation, but here in Nashville the school year begins the first week of August – no lie. This will be the first fall in many years that I am not starting a new school year as a teacher, although I am still vicariously experiencing it as a parent. Forgive me if I wax nostalgic.
For all of my teaching career – save for 2008 – 2011 when I ran the piano studio at Nashville School of the Arts and simultaneously directed Music City Youth Orchestra – I was in some part, often for the most part, a singing teacher. And so it is natural for my thoughts to turn, at this time of year, to the wonders of solfège. For so many years, the use of this invaluable tool, the practice of this incomparable method was a staple of my daily life. How many thousands of hours have I spent solfèging songs or vocal parts, or teaching students to do so, or doing it with them? How could I have done my work without it? Oh thou noble art. (more…)
Sumer Is Icumen In
the earliest known copy of Sumer Is Icumin In; British Library Harley 978 folio 11v
When I was an elementary and middle school music teacher (1991 – 2007), I structured a lot of my curriculum – especially the songs I chose to teach my students – around the seasons. While it may seem like an obvious educational strategy, I think it is important to stress the value of this. Children in our society are living in environments that are increasingly divorced from any sense of connection with the natural world. Part of a music teacher’s mission is to give children not only a developed set of skills but also a generous survey (content) of our musical tradition, and the music literature – especially the song repertoire – includes a wide variety of examples of the use of music to evoke, celebrate, and otherwise honor many aspects of the natural world from which we come – and which we are still a part of, whether we recognize it or not.
The End of the Season
The Nashville Symphony Chorus assembled moments before a performance of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, Op. 66, May 29, 2015
For months the chorus met to learn their parts,
Taking time from family, work, and school;
Bolting a snack on the way to rehearsal
To arrive in their seats in time for the downbeat.
The orchestra’s sound only imagined,
Or for those to whom this weekly work has come
To hold a place of honor in their lives,
A memory of previous performances.
How Anna Joined The Symphony
This is the story of how Anna joined the Nashville Symphony.
Nashville Symphony Principal Keyboard Robert Marler takes Anna for a test drive on the stage of Laura Turner Hall
It’s a bit of a convoluted tale – like many stories, some unexpected things happened, one thing led to another, and once you start trying to find all the threads in the fabric you realize that the real beginnings probably go back a lot further than you originally thought.
Anna is a ten year old double-manual Franco-Flemish harpsichord.
Brahms Requiem at West End UMC
Brahms Requiem at West End United Methodist Church, April 19, 2015
This weekend I was reminded of the embarrassment of riches we have in Music City. The symphony presented fabulous concerts on Friday and Saturday, featuring two works by American composer Michael Daugherty, both recent and one (Tales of Hemingway for Cello and Orchestra with the incomparable Zuill Bailey) a world premiere, alongside standard repertoire by Beethoven and Stravinsky. On Sunday, Music City Baroque presented their 10th Anniversary Season Finale with a performance of the Vivaldi Gloria at St. George’s Episcopal Church, and West End United Methodist Church presented a performance of A German Requiem by Johannes Brahms featuring their Chancel Choir under the direction of Matthew Phelps, with Margy Bredemann, soprano, and Jonathan Carle, baritone. Both of Sunday’s concerts were free.
Walter Bitner 