The Parish Magazine April 2024

the parish noticeboard — 1
Church and
churchyard
building works
In recent months essential work has
been undertaken on the interior
and exterior of the building by
specialist contractors.
Some of this has been kindly funded
by FoStAC (Friends of St Andrew’s)
and the majority from PCC reserves.
A major outstanding project is the
large red brick wall (below) going up
to the lych gate and this will take 2
months to complete, starting in May.
The total cost will be over £30,000,
and we are most grateful to the
Sonning Fire Station Trust for making
a grant of £10,000 towards this.
For your prayers in April
— His Majesty the King’s
treatment for cancer
— All recently bereaved
— The release of the Hamas
held hostages
— All preparing for exams
Tom Farncombe
Eric Gevaert, dreamstime.com
Finding your
voice part
By Richard Meehan
Singers who find themselves involved
with the European Choral Tradition
will generally identify themselves
according to a voice part. This enables
choirs to be organised in standard
configurations and access the
repertoire in much the same way an
orchestra would with its instruments.
It is here I notice that the different
expectations of the composers can
reveal themselves.
While, for example, a cello has its
four strings in standard tuning, and
a broad consistency of tone thanks to
common design, each individual 'bass'
is a human animal with a distinct
voice, whose differences our ears are
primed to identify.
One of my favourite phrases for
how European classical music and
the styles it informs works is, 'The
bass is the controlling voice in Western
Tonality'.
This means the lowest sounding
part and the way it acts tells the
listener the context in which the other
sounds are heard, and therefore gives
the music 'meaning'.
BEDROCK
Surprisingly, this is a recent
innovation. It derives from the later
16 th Century in which organs started
supporting choirs by playing the
lowest notes and added the other notes
of the chord through an improvised
technique known as figured bass.
As a bass, there is a particular joy in
being this bedrock foundation, and in
feeling the sheet music you are holding
vibrating in sympathy with the sound
emanating from you.
Sopranos usually lead the texture,
and so are prized if they have a clear
pleasing tone and an ability to reach
the high notes. Learning to be a good
choral soprano involves keeping the
intuition gained from many years
of singing the melody line, while
improving reading and navigating
those times not singing the tune.
Most people start on this part as
children, when their learning is most
imitative, so this can sometimes be a
tricky transition to make.
The Parish Magazine - April 2024 7
From
the
organ
bench
Altos often begin by trading off
their preference not to sing the high
notes of the soprano parts, with an
ability to read and navigate the nonmelody
part.
This is usually not the highest note
of the texture, and therefore more
difficult to imagine and locate. It is
always a pleasure to hear the rich tone
of a good alto section on which the rest
of the choir can securely pivot.
Although most alto sections are
female, much of the English choral
repertoire was written with male
altos, or countertenors, in mind. Their
lines encompass a smaller range, and
sometimes leap down an octave in
single-line textures to join in with the
basses and tenors, rather than meet
the higher soprano notes.
TESSITURA
Tenors have a certain prestige,
due to their taking of the heroic roles
in opera, their rarity, and perhaps
their ease in being arranged for, and
engineered in a more pleasing way in
pop music.
The challenge of a tenor part is
much more to do with the tessitura
— the general place in the voice a line
will take — rather than the high pitch
of any one note. Also, unlike the bass
part, which often follows set patterns,
or alto lines, which can frequently be
quite static, they can follow expressive,
less intuitive shapes.
Stereotypes can develop for the
singers of various voice parts within a
choir.
Although not wholly untrue, it is
important not to allow them to become
restrictive in the music we make. They
are merely a way of helping a group of
singers access the amazing music of
the tradition we inherit, getting us to
a certain point more quickly but not, I
hope, getting stuck there.