The Joy of Creating the Universe: Haydn’s The Creation INTRODUCTION

Arun Choral Society is currently hard at work rehearsing for our next concert, Haydn’s The Creation, which we will perform in the stunning setting of Arundel Cathedral at 7.30pm on Saturday 21 October 2023. Dr Joe Paxton will be directing, and we are delighted to be joined by the 40-piece Sinfonia of Arun and three superb soloists Jess Wise (soprano), Dominic Lee (tenor) and Owain Gwynfryn (bass). Tickets are on sale now from www.wegottickets.com/arunchoralsociety or via email at boxoffice@arunchoralsociety.co.uk.

With 4 weeks to go until we perform The Creation, our membership secretary Dee Tilbury has been researching this magnificent work and its composer Franz Joseph Haydn. Here is the first part of Dee’s fascinating blog for your interest and enjoyment. Please do check back each week over the next 4 weeks when we will publish the next instalment in Dee’s blog…

 The Joy of Creating the Universe: Haydn’s The Creation

INTRODUCTION

If you have never listened to The Creation, then you might, as I did, dismiss it as a rather boring, old-fashioned piece of music with no place in our modern world. But I couldn’t have been further from the truth! The Creation by Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) is a musical gem! The whole piece is shot through with light. The music is upbeat, joyous and as fresh as the day it was composed in 1798.

If Bizet’s opera Carmen is considered the perfect introduction to opera, Haydn’s Creation must surely be the perfect introduction to choral music! It is a joy for adults and children alike. It has something for everyone: wonderful orchestral interludes, a marvellous story told with humour and quirky words, beautiful solos and the sudden outpouring of joyful singing from a large choir of angels, unable to contain itself from expressing the wonder at the creation of our rich and incredibly beautiful Earth. And at the end of the concert, you won’t be able to contain yourself either! You will go home with a song in your heart, knowing that you have just experienced something joyously uplifting.

From the moment the orchestra strikes up the first chord, your ears will tell you that something very momentous and amazing is about to happen. And it is! For what follows in the opening bars is the most illuminating music which surely must have inspired Mendelssohn to use in his Midsummer Night’s Dream to capture the enchanted atmosphere needed for his fairy scenes. Here Haydn uses his creative genius to capture the very essence of a growing shimmering light of the first ever dawning of light. It is truly awe-inspiring.

The Creation is the work of a maestro-composer who had refined his musical skills through decades of composing music for the same orchestra. He spent most of his long life working as a court musician for a wealthy Austrian Prince of the Esterhazy family. With a resident orchestra, Haydn had to work hard to keep his players happy and provided them with musical arrangements which were interesting for them to play. Cut off from the mainstream of musical Europe for much of this time, he learnt to develop his own individual style. Thus, if you love orchestral music, you will love The Creation. Haydn is said to have had a very good sense of humour and loved practical jokes, and you will notice this in his music. The piece is interspersed with the most divine orchestral arrangements of woodwind, brass and string which will be a joy for you to hear. But it is also full of unusual sounds which will take you by surprise and make you smile.

To undertake to write an oratorio of The Creation would be daunting for anyone. But by 1798 when Hadyn finally tackled the subject, he was at the height of his powers and at last had the wealth and time to be able to take his time to write it as well as his other masterpiece Nelson Mass. He eagerly began to compose the music for an oratorio which is to this day still as full of life and joy as the day on which it was composed. He expertly managed to capture the astonishment and wonder which the angels must have felt as they witnessed the unfolding of the brilliance and beauty of the Universe which God was creating.

The whole piece is beautiful in its simplicity. Soloists, orchestra and choir complement each other rather than any one of them dominating the others. It is this simplicity which is so pleasing to the ear. It speaks to us of a time when a world which, after long years of wars, had at last achieved a more settled peace and was renewing and expressing the hope of a new, calmer world, free from war when music and the arts could be developed and enjoyed.

Go to the next instalment of Dee’s blog here ☞

Deirdre Tilbury, Membership Secretary, Arun Choral Society 2023

Tickets for Arun Choral Society’s performance of Haydn’s The Creation are now on sale from www.wegottickets.com/arunchoralsociety or via email at boxoffice@arunchoralsociety.co.uk.

New Member's Evening

Ever fancied singing in a large choral society but were afraid to start? Fear no more and come along and join us for a taster session on Monday 11 September at 7.30pm at Arundel CE School, Jarvis Road, Arundel, BN18 9HT.

See what it's like to experience the thrill of making music with a large choir. Everyone working together to make a glorious sound. You don't need to have sung with a choir before, but a willingness to learn is a must!

Find out more about Arun Choral Society by clicking the links below and email us to register your interest.

We look forward to meeting you!

Arun Choral Society members sing their hearts out in THE REALLY BIG CHORUS at the Royal Albert Hall

Being part of a choir has many wonderful effects. Not only is the very act of singing good for us, especially when it is with others, but it can often lead to many other amazing experiences. Just such an amazing experience occurred when, on Sunday 21 May 2023, our Arun Choral Society choir members were given the opportunity to take part in the annual Really Big Chorus at no other than the majestic Royal Albert Hall!

This year the chosen work was Verdi’s Requiem, a stupendous operatic work of the most incredibly moving music. It is a piece which has a special place in our choir’s hearts as we had learned it for months, reaching concert-readiness only to have to abandon it at the last minute because of COVID. After the long break of lock-down, we decided to start again and work it up for the concert which we finally performed at Arundel Cathedral. Of course, the upside of all this disruption is that we probably knew this work better than any other!

You won’t be surprised to hear that we jumped at the opportunity to be able to sing Verdi’s Requiem, especially as it was to be performed at the Royal Albert Hall with the very professional English Festival Orchestra and four professional soloists! Thus, when our alarm clocks rang out at 5.45am on a Sunday morning, we were overjoyed and leapt out of bed to get ourselves ready for the Really Big Chorus.

Maggie, our wonderful secretary, had even organised a coach for us and so we were able to have a hassle-free journey to London and an opportunity to chat and get to know each other even better. We were delivered right outside the Royal Albert Hall and started to see hundreds of other enthusiastic choir singers streaming towards the concert hall. They had not only come from our own country, but also many enthusiastic singers had come from abroad. Some had come, like us, as part of a choir but many came as individuals. The love of singing united all there and the excitement at the prospect of some good singing ahead was palpable to all of us as we waited for the doors to open.

At last, the doors opened and we went excitedly into the circular, red-bricked concert hall, the building a physical, tangible example of Prince Albert’s vision that music and culture are so important for the soul of a nation. We had a few minutes before the morning rehearsal started, so we walked across the road and admired the magnificent memorial to Prince Albert. His memorial is placed on a large plinth approached by four steps on four sides (making it a good meeting place) and his likeness is represented by a life-size golden statue standing inside a magnificent gothic chapel. He looks proudly across at the Royal Albert Hall, the building which has given our nation so many years of memorable Proms concerts and now was about to give us the extraordinary experience of singing in a huge venue together with hundreds of other voices.

Five minutes before the rehearsal started, we found our seats. The choir sat in a horseshoe arrangement with the tenors and basses sitting at the top, the first sopranos and first altos dressed in turquoise and blue sitting on one side, and the second sopranos in red on the opposite side. We spent some time trying to locate the other members of our choir by waving at them. Then, our conductor for the day, Brian Kay arrived. He climbed up the several steps to his podium and welcomed us and introduced the four soloists Rebecca Hardwick (soprano), Amy Hoyland (mezzo-soprano), Xavier Hetherington (tenor) and Ossian Huskinson (bass-baritone). All had superb voices as memorable as their names.

Then we began a long morning’s rehearsal with Brian, who at times complimented us and then qualified his remark with much humour which made us laugh. He gave so many interesting points to improve the quality of our singing and really pushed the men’s sections into making as big a sound as possible. He was a real pleasure. (I read later that he had been a member of The King’s Singers, had sung Papageno in the film Amadeus and was the bass frog in Paul McCartney’s We All Stand Together!)

By 12.30pm it was time for lunch and many of us went across the road into Kensington Gardens for a well-earned picnic. It was a lovely day and London seemed remarkably quiet. Families were enjoying relaxing or strolling in the park and young people quietly practiced their skate-boarding tricks or jogged along the ride around the park. There was also a lovely café inside the Royal Albert Hall where one could buy coffee, lovely cakes and various snacks.

The second half saw the exciting arrival of the orchestral players of The English Festival Orchestra formed in 1984 specifically to provide music for choruses in the southeast of England. They were extremely good and played with unbelievable sensitivity in the quiet parts of the Requiem, but also with terrifyingly, loud scary blasts from the brass sections in the Dies Irae.

Most of us had booked in for a light evening meal so that we would have plenty of energy for the evening’s performance. It was another really good opportunity to socialise with choir members in other sections which is always both interesting and enjoyable.

At last, the time of the concert arrived and we took our seats, marvelling at how many people now filled the remaining sections of the concert hall, all intent on enjoying listening to Verdi’s Requiem. Of course, it is a very popular work and the concert’s programmes were sold in aid of the Barts Cancer Institute. Then the orchestra took their seats and our excitement went up a couple more notches as the orchestra started to tune their instruments.

Finally, the lady soloists in their beautiful, elegant evening gowns and the male soloists looking handsome in black evening suits took their seats with Brian Kay, the conductor, dutifully following. He was dressed in a very stylish white evening jacket which really made him stand out. On his signal, the choir rose from their seats and the concert began. A rollercoaster of emotions ensued.

Quietly at first, the choir sings gently to remind God of his promises to Abraham, but then we are all suddenly plunged into the terrifying prospect of the Day of Judgement (Dies Irae) with the trumpets blasting (Tuba Mirum) and the all-powerful and terrifying King (Rex Tremendae) judging us. Verdi’s expert music-writing skills fling choir, soloists and audience alike into the highs and lows of a startling rollercoaster ride as everyone pleads for the dead person’s soul to be granted the light of eternal life. Heart-felt entreaties are made by the soprano soloist and choir to Jesus in the most beautiful of heart-wrenching music (Lacrymosa) and we fly amongst angels in heaven as the choir splits to sing the soothing holy Sanctus and the Lux Aeterna. The soul seems almost to be safely home, and we relax and are borne along on a river of golden music. But Verdi has not finished with us. He takes us to the very heights of emotion as choir, soloists and orchestra sing and play at full throttle reaching the most incredible final peak in the Libera Me as the soul makes its final plea ‘Save Me Oh Lord’.

I cannot think of another piece of music that ends on such an emotional high! Which is probably why many of the choir members were still buzzing and on a high several days later! Giuseppe Verdi is definitely one of the giants amongst composers!

With that, we made our way back to the waiting coach and dreamed and chatted our way happily home. If you are ever fortunate enough to be able to sing at a Really Big Chorus concert, I and all my travelling companions would thoroughly recommend it. But if you are not already in a choir, come and join us at Arun Choral Society! We can guarantee that you will wonder why you didn’t do so long ago!

Deirdre Tilbury, Arun Choral Society Member & Membership Secretary

Verdi Requiem Review

Last night’s performance of the Verdi Requiem in the magnificent setting of Arundel Cathedral given by the Arun Choral Society and the Sinfonia of Arun produced some equally magnificent music-making. Director Dr Joe Paxton kept a tight grip on the ensemble throughout and showed himself alert to the work’s varied moods from the subdued, pleading, opening to the fire and brimstone of the ‘Dies Irae’. He produced some subtle rhythmic nuancing from both orchestra and choir, and was in complete command of the the bigger moments. The choir sang with a full-bodied tone and an impressive dynamic range, and the venue’s generous acoustic gave added value to the sound.

The excellent choral and orchestral forces were complemented by four splendid soloists. Andrew Rawlings produced some fine tone and ringing high notes in the tenor show-piece ‘Ingemisco’, and mezzo-soprano Deirdre Aratoon sang throughout with warmth, finesse, and sincerity. Bass-baritone Owain Gwynfryn commanded all the vocal resources to deliver with ease, resonance, and authority, and Jessica Wise sang with a clear, focused, soprano; ever alert to the music’s sense of line, she was especially affecting in the ‘Requiem aeternam’ section of the closing movement.

All-in-all, this was a memorable event - a performance of which all concerned can be very proud.

Julian Hellaby

10 April 2022

New Member's Evening

If you love singing, why not come along to our New Members Evening on Monday April 25th at 7.30pm and give it a try? We rehearse at Arundel CE School on Jarvis Road, Arundel, BN18 9HT.