Sacred music educational concert: feedback please!
  • sergeantedward
    Posts: 195
    https://vimeo.com/153359533

    Above is a link to a (professional, high-def) video of a concert I just gave at both of my parishes. It was a narrated concert, going from 700 B.C. to the present day, to give the audience a general idea of the development of Western Music. The idea was to briefly narrate developments of music, and then perform each seminal piece as it came up in the timeline. The title of the concert is "A Bullet Train Through Western Music."

    I would love the feedback of members of this forum! Honest, critical feedback. I'm soliciting feedback because we want to improve the product here. It's something we don't want to do just once: we want to take this idea, and keep developing and iterating upon it, to make it more effective and interesting.
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,799
    I'm not very far in yet, but the temptation to talk about music (talk/music ~ 3/1) is hard to resist, isn't it? The derivation of Gregorian scales from Hebrew and Greek music has a bit of the speculative to it, and isn't followed up with Seikilos (maybe better Oxyrhynchus) or Jewish cantilation. I notice coughing after two minutes and about full a minute before the first music (excellently chanted btw): why not start out with a bang instead?

    Having finished, like MJO I too found the last pieces anticlimactic. The thread title seems more truthful (in fact why not just Christian music?) than a 'Western music' survey that purports to start from the founding of Rome but omits Beethoven. A Schubert Palm antiphon would at least represent Vienna as well as show the persistence of chant, and Messiaen's O sacrum convivium fits the 4vv limit (clever as the SATB pocket Durufle is). You did ask!
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen sergeantedward
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,415
    This is very well done, finely conceived, and should indeed be refined. Your singers deserve high praise. About the early chant: I think that your examples of this are rather tame as compared to what chant likely sounded like in those early years. You might attempt some early cantillation, and avail yourself as well of some of the (admittedly speculative) scholarship of such as Marcel Perez, not to mention Cardine's semiological methodology. On the other hand, I can understand that you don't want to get bogged down in chant wars in a presentation of this kind. Still.... Also, an example of a French grand motet and other more complex baroque offerings from your fine singers would be appropriate as well as the simple German chorales. The XXth century is not really complete without the likes of Stravinsky, et al. Your twentieth century music is far too tame. You illustrated beautifully the breathtaking development of polyphony. You might, also, illustrate some breathtaking developments in truly modern (as opposed to 'contemporary') sacred music. Congratulations to you, and kudos to your choir. (You did ask for critical feedback.)
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen sergeantedward
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