Choirs in art over the centuries

Okay, a bit of a sideline, but it's interesting sometimes to stand back and see how the rest of the world sees us singers. Here is a whirlwind tour in 3 short sections of how choirs have been portrayed in paintings over the centuries. Given how popular singing is as a pastime the main surprise is how few paintings there actually are. Opera singers and singers performing solos or duets with attendant pianos or small groups of instruments get a bit of a look in, but poor old choirs - blink and you'll miss them.

Phase 1 - the heavenly choir:
Whizzing back to medieval times everything was so simple. Choirs existed to sing in praise of God, so naturally they might as well be angels. Here from the early 15th century is a lovely example from an alterpiece by Jan van Eyck.

Phase 2 - the rowdy / disobedient / inattentive choir:
Suddenly post-Renaissance choirs became human, with all of the faults you would expect to see magnified a hundred fold in cartoons and paintings covering this topic, right up to the start of the twentieth century. Typical examples from the 19th century include 'A Village Choir' by Thomas Webster (not shown) and the painting below by the lesser known Auguste Joseph Trupheme called simply 'The Choir Lesson'. At least in this one some of the boys are actually singing.

Phase 3 - the blobby semi-abstract choir:
The last hundred years or so have seen 'serious' paintings of choirs disappear even further into the undergrowth. What we seem to be left with now is individual choirs commissioning paintings of themselves, which invariably veer towards colourful semi-abstract (or at least vague and blobby) portrayals. The final example, below, is one such item produced on demand by a local artist to show my own choir, Oxford Harmonic Society, in all its glory, performing amid the neo-Baroque splendours of Oxford Town Hall. And yes, I am in there somewhere (probably back row towards the right) but I can't say it's a good likeness.

The end is nigh, in more ways than one.

Next week - The History of Choirs as portayed in pottery, sculpture and interpretive dance.




Only kidding.

10 Top notch choirs not in Gramophone Magazine's Jan 2011 edition 20 greatest choirs listing

Snappy title isn't it, but basically it does exactly what it says on the tin. This list will sit under my profile for a week or two, but it's repeated here so that you can still see it when that version gets replaced by a new list.

So, in alphabetical order:

Atlanta Symphony Chorus
Bach Collegium Japan
CBSO Chorus
Corydon Singers
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
Gabrieli Consort
London Symphony Chorus
Namur Chamber Choir
New London Chamber Choir
Taverner Choir

I can personally recommend all of these either from recordings or concert performances, or both, and you'll find most of them featuring strongly in any 'recommended recordings' lists for the major choral works. I should point out that I've excluded any Oxford choirs from my list to avoid anyone local sulking or gloating about who was in or out.

Although you probably know all about most of these choirs I will highlight a couple of them:

New London Chamber Choir are amateurs, but you won't believe it when you hear them sing. They do a lot of contemporary stuff and I was lucky enough to hear them perform locally the other year - they totally blew me away! Find out more about them on their website ( NLCC ) and if you ever get the opportunity to go to one of their concerts don't pass it up.

The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir probably aren't as well known as they should be either, partly because they tend to record Baltic music (a favourite category of mine, but a minority taste overall) and they don't tour the UK all that often. Having heard them sing at the Cheltenham Music Festival a few years ago, and owning at least half a dozen of  their recordings I would definitely have put them in the '20 greatest choirs' category, and even Gramophone admitted that they were close runners up. Their website ( EPCC ) contains info about recordings and concerts. You'll be hearing a lot more about them in future posts too.

For now have a listen to the videos at the bottom of the page - be warned, however, that some of the works performed by the New London Chamber Choir can be a little bit wild.

Finally for those of you who haven't read the original article, the Gramophone 20 greatest choirs (and I wouldn't really argue with most of them) from 20 to 1 were:
I Fagiolini, The Arnold Schoenberg Choir, Stile Antico, The Balthasar Neumann Choir, Westminster Abbey Choir, Les Arts Florissants, The Choir of New College Oxford, The Tallis Scholars, The Choir of Kings College Cambridge, The Dunedin Consort, Swedish Radio Choir, Rias Chamber Choir, Accentus, Collegium Vocale Ghent, Wells Cathedral Choir, The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, The Sixteen, The Cardinall's Musick, Polyphony and at the top The Monteverdi Choir.

Mind you, two Cambridge choirs above New College Oxford - what were they thinking about?

Ramble on

For those of you who don't recognise the title of this, my very first blog, it's actually the name of an early Led Zeppelin song. Hardly the sort of thing you would expect to see in a blog about Oxford choirs, but then my tastes are fairly widespread so you might have to expect the unexpected. Plus the title probably pretty well sums up my style overall.

By way of introduction I should say that I've lived in Oxford for over half my life (27 years so far, and no sign of moving on) and I've been singing with one Oxford choir, Oxford Harmonic Society for all that time. Apologies if I mention them a lot in various posts, but I will be drawing on personal experience so it shouldn't be too surprising.

What do I have in store for you? Well definitely a review of Oxford choirs to help you identify which ones you might want to join or hear in concert, a bit of information about the various Oxford concert venues, my opinions on various recordings of favourite choral works, the odd list or two (ten obscure but wonderful choral works, the top 10 choral works in Classic FM's Hall of Fame over the years and so on), interesting titbits I've discovered about various composers ......

Yes, I know, I'm rambling on already. Just wait until I really get started.