Postcards – Nottingham Chamber Singers

Connections

John Hobbs, bass and sometimes pianist of the choir, explores the connections between a composition and two composers living and working in Gloucester.

1910 – what a year to be alive! A time when Elgar, Richard Strauss, Vaughan Williams, Sibelius, Debussy, Ravel, Mahler, Bartok, Poulenc, Stravinsky, Copland, Schoenberg and many other famous composers were adding new music to the classical canon.

That year saw the premier of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. In the audience were two Gloucester men – Herbert Howells and Ivor Gurney. They were so struck by what they heard that they wandered the streets later, unable to rest.

The very first phrase of Howells’ Requiem, to be sung in our next concert, has a feel of the Tallis Fantasia, looking forwards and backwards at the same time.

Ivor Gurney had a troubled life – he served in the first world war and spent his final years in a psychiatric hospital. He was viewed as a composer of immense originality and promise. He wrote mostly songs and poetry. One of his best loved is Sleep.

Howells suffered the most intense grief when his nine-year-old son Michael died within three days of contracting polio. This shaped the rest of Howells’ life and lies behind much of his music, especially the Requiem, Hymnus Paradisi and his tune to the hymn ‘All my hope on God is founded’, known as ‘Michael’.

However I wish to share his most famous song King David which opens with the words ‘King David was a sorrowful man’¹ and also Master Tallis’ Testament, an organ piece with a similar feeling to that of the Vaughan Williams Fantasia

A fellow pupil of the cathedral organist along with Howells and Gurney was Ivor Davies, better known as Ivor Novello. Who’d have thought it!

Image: Herbert Howells window, Gloucester Cathedral, by Jules & Jenny from Lincoln, UK, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

¹ As a choir and to mark our 40^th anniversary we commissioned Libby Croad to write a piece – The Nightingale – using this same text.

And here is a recording of Vaughan William’s Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis made in Gloucester Cathedral: BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Davis.

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Teamwork makes the dream work

This week’s postcard comes from Rachel Bacon, our rugby and singing loving first soprano.

If you’ve been watching the women’s rugby world cup over the last few weeks, you’ll have seen some amazing rugby, record breaking crowds and a masterclass in plaiting hair. You’re probably thinking ‘What on earth has this got to do with NCS?’, but bear with me.

If you follow any sort of sport, you’ll hear constantly about the importance of teamwork and respect for your fellow players. Aside from the fitness benefits of playing sports, there’s a lot talked about the benefits of teamwork to everyday life. But if you sing in a choir or play in an orchestra – indeed if you take part in any sort of group music making – you will also know all about teamwork!

In any musical ensemble it’s critical to a performance that all the different parts work together. You listen to the musical line, watch your fellow musicians, and (probably should have mentioned this before) work with the conductor to produce the performance that you’ve planned as a team.

Perhaps the difference is that whilst a sports team plays to win, and inevitably someone will lose (sorry, Canada), with music we’re all winners. No one has to go home disappointed. All the hard work leading up to a performance allows every participant, and hopefully the audience as well, to go home on a high.

That’s something a sports team can’t match.

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Music of the Stars

Rachel Parkes, who will be conducting our concert at St John’s Carrington, 29 November 2025, has chosen a programme that includes Cecilia McDowall’s Music of the Stars. The score contains a ‘Composer’s note’ that conductor and singer can use to deepen their understanding of both text and the music, resulting in a richer performance for the audience.

Just as we commissioned Libby Croad to compose The Nightingale for our 40^th anniversary, so James Petersen, a member of the Chamber Singers of Iowa City, commissioned Music of the Stars to mark the choir’s 50^th season.

James and his partner suggested a commission that could “celebrate the power of music in these difficult times”. To acknowledge the racial issue that surround us, the texts offered were all written by people of colour. For the middle movement, the composer found and adapted writing from astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson (b.1958).

1st movement: ‘Music of the Stars’, a poem by Brian Odongo (b.1994), evokes ‘dark night clouds’ illuminated by ancient radiant stars as they watch over mortals’ adventures below. Compelled by the horrors unfolding in Ukraine as she worked on the piece, McDowall wove into the poem words from a Ukrainian folksong.

2nd movement: For ‘The hardest thing’, an explanation of ‘light’ and how we perceive it, the composer aimed to bring a more conversational style to her setting of Tyson’s prose.

3rd movement: Of the poem ‘The Gift to Sing’ by James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), McDowall wrote, “These heart-warming words bring an affirmation of what the power of singing can do for us all in times of difficulty.”

Cecilia McDowall, Music of the Stars, pub: Oxford University Press, 2023

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Something for Everyone

Wasn’t the Last Night of the Proms from the Royal Albert Hall fantastic yesterday? We were treated to an eclectic and exuberant programme with superb instrumental players, singers and soloists joyfully conducted by Elim Chan. A thrill for participants and audience alike.

Bill Bailey’s rendition of Leroy Anderson’s The Typewriter was great fun, and Alison Balsom’s final performances outstanding . And those dresses?! Wow!

But what of the choral works?

The BBC Singers brought tranquillity and beauty to Lucy Walker’s Today. Lucy said of her work: “This piece, though small, aims to serve as a brief but poignant musical reminder that hope can overcome struggle.” Quite a contrast followed with the UK premiere of Arthur Benjamin’s Storm Clouds cantata written for a bigger choir, so the BBC Singers were joined by the BBC Symphony Chorus: “…the piece segues from its pastoral opening to its driving middle section, culminating in the cymbal crash intended to serve as an accomplice to murder”.

What an experience for the National Youth Choir! They joined the other choirs, tenor soloist Sam Oladeinde, Alison Balsom, and the legendary Sir Brian May and Roger Taylor for a Proms first: Bohemian Rhapsody. “…[a] delirious pile-up of genres and styles is Mahlerian, Ivesian and Berio-esque … and one of the most popular tracks in history”.

Not forgetting the inclusion in the programme of opera, musicals, folksongs, hymns and anthems. Such is the joy of choral singing – something for everyone, every voice type, every genre of music and for every age.

Take a look at the singing and instrumental opportunities offered in Nottingham by Music for Everyone and come for a play or sing:
Adults: https://www.music-for-everyone.org/whats-on/adult-music/
Children and Young People: https://www.music-for-everyone.org/whats-on/youth-music/

Sourcing copies to sing from

This photo was taken at our Nottingham Chamber Singers 40^th anniversary party in July. Here we’re singing the first movement of Handel’s Dixit Dominus. There seems to be some mischief going on with our first sopranos!

You can see that the four of them have the same edition copy – Novello. Sourcing music for a choir can be a challenge. Being part of Music for Everyone means we can draw on the MfE library at no cost. Choir members usually own a few regularly used items such as European Sacred Music, 100 Carols for Choirs and English Romantic Part Songs.

At times we have to hire music, which we do through the Nottingham Performing Arts Library and other lending services or choirs. Charges are rising, so this can affect what we can afford to borrow and the duration of the hire. Hiring is still cheaper than buying 40+ copies, though sometimes by not a lot. Members might choose to buy scores for music they particularly like or works that reappear in our repertoire. They can then write in them liberally!

Several publishers can have the rights to a particular work – Novello & Co, Bärenreiter-Verlag and G. Schirmer all publish Dixit Dominus – so we can end up with multiple editions. Some scores use section letters, others bar numbers and often the pagination is different between versions. Navigating multiple editions takes up valuable rehearsal time. And then there are pencil markings and rubbings out in copies, but more of those another time!

And we’re back – Season 41

We’re always glad of the summer break, particularly after a season as busy as our 40th. We put on extra performances, sang hugely varied repertoire, gave a concert one sweltering 33 Celsius Saturday and rounded it all off in July with a party and a Desert Island Discs of music we couldn’t live without!

But now we’re glad to be back to start all over again with new music, a new member and seeing each other after 8 weeks apart. Rehearsals resume in two days’ time, Wednesday 3 September.

About the photo… trying to organise 40 people of varying heights and get the photographer into the picture while hoping the camera doesn’t fall off the stand is no mean feat! We’re not quite there yet (not everyone remembered to bring concert dress) but we do love how this image shows a true representation of who we are as a choir – a friendly bunch, having a laugh together and unable to think of anything better to do on a Wednesday evening than to sing our socks off!