Choral life in Europe
  • Pes
    Posts: 623
    I've been reading a little bit about choral life in Estonia and am wondering about choral life in Europe in general.

    The English situation is more familiar, but we hear a lot in the US about the decline of Christian churches in Western Europe. Where are the places of choral excellence? Who are the people we should know? What about Eastern Europe? How vital is choral practice and chant on the continent? If there are particularly important people to pay attention to, who are they?

    (I'm not asking for idle reasons, though I can't say more. Cue film noir soundtrack.)
  • amanda.palisteramanda.palister
    Posts: 82
    Have you seen Libera? Definitely worth a look!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsmA4imWeqA

    Mandee
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,160
    This doesn't answer your question, Pes, but the mention of choral life in Estonia brings to mind the documentary film The Singing Revolution, which takes the country's music as the thread holding Estonia's culture together through the tragedies of the 20th century.
  • richardUKrichardUK
    Posts: 85
    This is a huge subject and would be difficult to sum up. Each country in Europe has, to a considerable degree, its own choral traditions which have survived better in some countries than others. There was a very good article on the choral tradition in Latvia a few months ago in Choir & Organ. It's a very good magazine if you haven't already subscribed to it.

    The countries with a Catholic choral tradition (I'm thinking Poland, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal mainly) have all, to some degree, suffered an ebbing of their choral traditions in the last 40 years or so, but there are many isolated places and individual musicians and foundations or clergy who have stubbornly kept traditions alive. Things are slowly getting better in all of these countries. As far as professional adult singers, they only live in the bigger cities. For example, as far as I'm aware, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is the only French cathedral that employs professional adult singers. Yet you can find isolated places in all these countries where boys alone still sing chant and have for hundreds of years (Montserrat in Spain comes immediately to mind, and Toledo Cathedral in Spain has managed to keep its boys choir all these years). Hope this helps! This is a huge generalisation.
  • Charles in CenCA
    Posts: 2,416
    Off the top of m' noggin, Pes, there seemed to be a confluence of interest in the Baltic/Scandinavian axis over here around the late 80's, early 90's- I remember seeing/hearing (Estonian?) Tonu Kaliuste (sp?) and his Estonian Chamber Choir at an ACDA regional in Fresno in 1990, and he was also a proponent of recording Part. And, of course, one can't forget that there was some serious attention paid in the late 80's to the Bulgarian State Women's Radio Choir, due not just to their forward yet ethereal tonal quality, but moreso for the more eastern trait of non-triadic based harmonic idioms. So you have the Balkans connected to the Baltics and modern Russian compositional techniques in that era. It was quite heady back then.
    What was really cool about all that is that as Americans in curricular choirs (mainly high school and college) we were obliged to explore these "new" idioms along with all the other musics from around the globe. Generally speaking, European choirs pretty much stayed within their own traditions in programming back then.
  • Pes
    Posts: 623
    Thanks, everyone, this is great. I don't mind huge generalizations at all -- they're a good place to start.

    Richard, I'm going to be in Paris in May and will nose around Notre Dame. Are there other parishes in the city I should explore? Aside from choirs, there is of course Naji Hakim at the bench of S. Trinité. I'd love to know who the best composers in sacred music are these days in all the western European countries you mention.

    Eventually I'll be in Milan again and will of course try to meet Giovanni Vianini at the cathedral. I'm wondering whether Alessio Randon is still in Verona, and whether there are interesting things happening there.

    Central and eastern Europe is indeed really interesting for all kinds of reasons. I was delighted to find good things happening at the Univ Monastery outside of Lviv, Ukraine. Charles, yes, maybe I should write to Paul Hilliard (who was of course involved in all that) and ask him for tips. Laszlo Dobszay probably knows the scene in Hungary extremely well.

    My own interest in all this is to find interesting Catholic choral composers in Europe, young and old.
  • richardUKrichardUK
    Posts: 85
    Again, this is such a huge subject, I'm not one who could be authoritative on it. Most of the big churches in the centre of Paris (especially St Sulpice and St Eustache) have a great music tradition. This is more usually to do with organ playing in the French improvisation tradition, than choral singing, though there are good amateur church choirs in Paris like anywhere else.

    I'm not sure what happens in Milan cathedral..the only place I'm really familiar with is the Duomo in Florence (5 visits), where they have a couple of amateur choirs, the usual cantors, and a pretty good organist. The building is of course enormous and the music reverberation time is nearly 16 seconds! Msgr Timothy Verdon at the Duomo (he is originally from New York and holds advanced degrees in art history) is an inspiration and to hear him talk about Florence, Church history, the Renaissance and the visual arts is something everyone should experience!

    As for central and eastern Europe, I couldn't even begin to know what's happening, although in southern Germany there are several fantastic Catholic choirs in a few cathedrals (Regensburg boys' choir springs to mind). I know there is lots going on which doesn't filter out to the wider choral community. Paul Hillier might well be a very good resource to find out the latest goings-on in northern Europe. The Baltic countries all have magnificent choral tradition, and, of course, there is the well-known adage that 1 out of every 10 people in Sweden sings in a choir, and I can easily believe that.

    Perhaps look up the Una Voce Foundation on the web and see where the Latin Masses are happening, and you can begin to find a trail to follow to find out more about the Catholic traditions on the continent.

    http://www.fiuv.org/europe-3.html

    A bit off the choral track, but here is a Msgr Timothy Verdon talk on the subject of Michaelangelo and others:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jjyfb3I3QGg
  • mjballoumjballou
    Posts: 993
    If you're interested in newer streams of liturgical/choral music in France, you'll certainly want to visit St. Gervais where the Fraternites de Jerusalem celebrates its offices and liturgy in Paris. Here's the web address to check hours, etc. The a cappella four-part style is derived from the Russian obihod and the work of Pere Andre Gouzes at the Abbaye de Sylvanes.
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,160
    The Fraternités stream and broadcast their daily offices and Sunday Mass live through the cable channel KTO.
  • JamJam
    Posts: 636
    Eastern Europe is predominantly Orthodox, no? Romania, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Belarus, Armenia, Russia... and so forth. I would say choral life there is booming since the fall of Communism. Check out a list of choirs I found.
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