Local ensemble Dal Niente took over Preston Bradley Hall this afternoon as part of the CCC's Sunday Salon Series. Bryant Manning wrote a nice profile of the group for Time Out magazine.
The concert featured a lineup of American composers. Lee Hyla's Amnesia Redux (2002) led first, followed by Chicago-transplant Shawn Jaeger's Poor and Wretched (2008), the ever-difficult Morton Feldman's Instruments No. 2 (1975), and a premiere of Christopher Fisher-Lochhead's Suicide Squeeze. Hyla, Jaeger and Fisher-Lochhead were all present for the performance.
No matter what you think of the material, it's pretty brave to present a program of almost entirely new music in any venue, but it's particularly bold for a free performance. Despite the nasty weather, a good number of people made it out.
I won't review everything. It was all quality... what I really want to talk about is the Shawn Jaeger piece.
Poor and Wretched was inspired by the "lining out" tradition... which bears some connection to shape note singing and/or Sacred Harp singing (I get a bit fuzzy on the three terms and their boundaries; lining out entails a leader that begins the singing solo in a sort of call-and-response, Sacred Harp singing involves a director that leads but does not necessarily go solo to start the group off, as well as a particular arrangement of the singers... the end sound is rather similar... both are forms of shape note singing, although I'm not sure that lining out has to be shape note). You can read the program notes on Shawn Jaeger's site here.
When I sat down and read the notes I got pretty geeked. Gospel traditions of any sort always get me going, and just yesterday I'd read a discussion board post recommending Awake, My Soul, a documentary on the Sacred Harp tradition. The doc looks pretty great, and shape note singing has long been something that I've wanted to know more about.
(Okay, a bit of background here: my father was a pastor for most of my youth. Church music of every kind - from traditional hymns to white southern gospel to contemporary praise/worship - was a staple in my musical upbringing. This is, presumably, one of the reasons I've long enjoyed a huge interest in a lot of folk music, old roots music and various hymn traditions. It's also undoubtedly the reason that theology, religion and philosophy are all such a big deal for me. Ultimately, my being a PK has a lot to do with my terrible geekiness... thanks Dad! (no really, if you're reading, thanks Dad!))
So after reading the program notes, I was excited. I probably didn't pay as much attention to the Lee Hyla piece as I should've, because I was anticipating Poor and Wretched. And how did it turn out?
Sweet jesus, it's great. I haven't heard a lot of shape note singing, but there are a few defining features that will hit the attentive listener. For one thing, it's loud; even in the soft sections, the group tends to sing louder than a standard group might. Next, the group is rough. Notes aren't polished into exact lengths and tones by the singers. It's not a chorus; it's a group of people gathered to sing. The goal isn't to sound clean and pretty, it's to put it out there, to get it out into the open. I imagine, like the more charismatic congregational singing I can recall, it's more about catharsis and experience.
What Jaeger does - and this really is very cool to me - is mimic that sound with the orchestra, and he does a terrific job with it. Pitches waver, durations of the same note vary between instruments. The melody sounds like a deep gospel melody - although Jaeger writes that he did not directly quote any material - and is set pretty clearly at the outset.
What's so fascinating about the piece, however, is once he's worked through the theme he shifts into another mode and begins to explore and develop the raw material. It has a definite arc, shifting between quieter (but not too quiet!) passages with just a voice or two, and top-of-your-lungs passages with the whole orchestra playing. It exits on a whisper.
The result is that it's not mere imitation. Jaeger seems to have genuinely taken inspiration from the music and then shaped it to his own ends (while managing to pay tribute to the inspiring source material in the process).
The very, very good news is that you can download an mp3 of the piece from Shawn Jaeger's website here, along with a few other pieces.
Now we just need to wait for more good news by way of future performances...
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2 comments:
OK--Lined-out hymnody is *very different* from shape-note music of any sort. First of all, none of the singers actually has printed music to sing from. It was a style of hymnody used in churches back before there were widely available hymnals with both words and music on the same page. Indeed, many in the congregation might be illiterate. In this tradition, a leader might have the only hymnal in the room, and that hymnal might well have only the words [The word "hymn" refers to the poetry, not the music]. Since hymn texts are written to a meter--say "common meter," with eight syllables followed by six, then eight, then six [think Newton's "Amazing Grace"], the leader can match the text to his own repertory of tunes by checking the meter [In a modern hymnal the meter is named under the title, e.g. "C.M." for common meter]. That tune, BTW, may or may not be the one that we sing to the text. The leader [In the Scottish Outer Hebrides, where this tradition survives--in Gaelic!--the leader is called a precentor] then proceeds to sing the hymn to the congregation, one line at a time--hence "lining out." The congregation responds, frequently adding ornamentation. Among Old Regular Baptists in Central Appalachia, or among African-American singers in the "Dr. Watts" tradition, this ornamentation can get really elaborate and hyper-melismatic.
By contrast, shape-note music requires a good bit of musical literacy among the singers, frequently acquired in "singing schools." Everyone has a book, and, instead of repeating a single line fed to them by a leader, the "class" sings in three or four parts, while the leader basically sets the tempo and cues the entrances. The more elaborate shape-note tunes, the "fuging tunes," involve elaborate interweaving of parts in a manner impossible in lined-out hymnody.
That, roughly, is the difference.
Thanks, David, for taking the time to jot those notes down. They're enormously helpful. I certainly didn't understand that lined-out singers weren't working from a hymnal at all, definitely aiding in distinguishing the two (and even more encouragement for me to go back and listen to the few bits of material I have buried on CD-Rs somewhere!).
I wonder if you - or anyone else reading - might have any book recommendations regarding either style/tradition?
Thanks again for the comment; hugely appreciated!
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