Elizabeth Parcells
Comments About Singing
Singing the Mozart Motet
Motet score pdf Motet mp3
Elizabeth: As a recording, this is the best
one on the site. The Motet is so standard. Every soprano who gets to a certain
technical level is going to do it. It’s
the only Motet Mozart wrote for soprano and small orchestra with no chorus or
other soloists. This can be put on a
recital with piano.
Charlie: How many times did you perform
it before you got to the occasion of this recording?
Elizabeth: Lots. This orchestra was flawless. It isn’t that the Motet goes that well every
time. You get lucky. You’ve got the right venue, you’ve got the right
conductor, a fantastic orchestra. I was
hot that night. Then it all comes
together. The only flaw I can hear on
that tape is when somebody in the audience coughs but the audience adds
something because it’s them you are bouncing it off. It’s not like a straight recording. The reason this one is great is because it is live. We did it in one wash, there it was. We got to the end of it and I looked at the
conductor with disbelief.
Charlie: Do you say the Motet isn’t
terribly difficult to sing?
Elizabeth: I don’t say that. Here it is, everybody says Mozart is too
easy for the beginners and too hard for the pros. If you take the student approach to it and just do what’s on the
page, it’s not so hard. What’s hard is
when you want to do it exceptionally well.
To go the extra mile with Mozart raises the difficulty.
Charlie: If you are going to go the
extra mile with the Motet what does that entail?
Elizabeth: You sing it without
flaws. Every note is in place, every
phrase is shaped, every breath is full, every note is sung, every word is
clear. That applies to other music but
Mozart is particularly transparent so that flaws are more noticeable. To hear Mozart done clearly and flawlessly
is a revelation. There’s a long way
between good and great. When it works,
it’s a feeling like no other.
There
is room for two cadenzas in the Motet.
The point of cadenzas, as when instrumentalists use them in concertos,
is to pick up a theme from the piece and develop it some more in that cadence
point. If you look at the introduction
in the first movement there are some violin lines that are thematic to the
piece. So, for the first cadenza, I
stole some of the fiddle part, developed it slightly and resolved it.
I
wanted the second cadenza to soar up, in one phrase, in one breath. I used the violin part in bar 18 of the
introduction to Tu Virginum (sings). Only
the violins get to play it. I was a
little jealous so I picked that one. I
didn’t need to write the cadenza, I let Mozart do it! I wrote more cadenza in the score than I sang, it’s a study.
Charlie: Does the conductor have a say
in the cadenzas?
Elizabeth: Sure. Leopold Hager helped clean them up a little
in earlier performances. By the time of
this performance they were developed.
The conductor for this performance was fine with them.
Charlie: Did you have any expectations that
the performance we are hearing was going to be special?
Elizabeth: It was Berlin. I knew that the concert was
significant. It was an honor to be
there. I was not intimidated but I was
certainly aware of my surroundings. I
did what I always do it to be at my best.
It just happened that everybody else did the same thing and it was
magic.
Charlie: Did you get any sense about
the orchestra from the rehearsal?
Elizabeth: Yes. I found them highly professional, very cool. When we finished the first run-through, they
honored me with a little bow applause on the music stands. I thought, well, lucky me. I've got my colleagues behind me. The conductor was very gracious. I was introduced to the orchestra as a
discovery of his.
It's interesting how I met him. Felix and I, the voice and guitar duo, had gone down to perform at a resort for reclusive celebrities. The conductor was taking a week or two for a rest cure there. He heard our performance. He heard us do the Adelaide for instance, the Beethoven. He asked if I'd be interested in doing a concert sometime. I said of course, just let me know Maestro and I'll be there. Not long after he worked me into his following season.
Charlie: A good conductor?
Elizabeth: Fantastic. The whole thing was fascinating. It becomes very meaningful when you realize
where you are and who you are with.
Here I am the silly naïve girl from America stepping into this amazing
culture and history and singing Mozart for the Germans.
Charlie: And they liked it.
Elizabeth: Yea, I did all right.
Singing Bach Cantata 51
Elizabeth: I performed Cantata 51
before it was recorded but never where the Chorale and Alleluia were the same
tempo and that worked perfectly. Those
two tempos are identical. There’s no
tempo change indicated. The conductor
did it that way and it worked.
Boy
was I glad I had practiced singing scales, quads, and triplets with a metronome
in good time. That is what the music
demands. The conductor and I were able
to deliver that because I’d practiced the techniques and could sing my melismas
evenly.
When
all the notes are created differently the melismas get choppy. The singer has to smooth out the legato and
sing the notes evenly in rhythm. That
has to be trained. When you get to your
professional thing and that’s what the conductor wants and what the music
demands you want to know that you are technically ready to deliver. If there is a lack of precision it means the
singer has neglected their exercises.
Score pdf
Cantata
51 mp3
Singing Mahler's Symphony No. 4
Elizabeth: The conductor felt my voice
might be on the light side for Symphony No 4.
But, because it is from the Knaben Wunderhorn, which means the magic
horn of the boy, the person singing is a boy.
It shouldn't be too terribly matronly in the sound, it should have a
youthful sound. I certainly always had
that. We recorded it. There are three movements before my part. When I sang it later in concert I was
obliged to sit through the first three movements before singing. I thought that was better because it would
be a disturbance for me to come clomping onto the stage in the middle of the
piece. That’s quite a sit because
Mahler is a bit long winded. My part is
a lovely little thing. It’s one of my
favorites, I love the piece.
Singing Sheherazade by Maurice Ravel
Play Sheherazade mp3 Open score pdf Home page
Elizabeth: Sheherazade is not typical repertoire for me because I’ve followed the coloratura bel canto way. This particular conductor was interested in having me sing this piece. It’s often assigned to a mezzo these days because it does lie low.
It’s a large orchestral piece with three songs. Ravel is a good orchestrator, he pulls it back when the singer needs to be out front. There are very few spots where you might get overwhelmed.
I decided to give it a try. I spent some months training it to make sure there would be the necessary richness. I had to work hard on the center of the voice.
Charlie: How did you work on that that?
Elizabeth: The French vocal sound as a lot of voix mixte, mixed voice. You are using a registration that includes both your head and some chest voice and mixing it together. You are developing a broad resonance in the middle of your voice so it carries well.
You are working across registers. Those registrations need to be supported. I had to get my breathing muscles into good shape to support those tones so that the registrations would be smooth. Voix mixte is prone to little breakups, registration bumps. It’s a matter of breath control to get over those. To keep the voice ringing in that range takes a lot of breath energy. It’s a French sound.
I was coached by Eugene Bassert who worked in New York for many years then came out to University of Michigan as a professor later on and settled here. He gave me a lot of good ideas for the performance and to make sure the assignment of the music could be fulfilled with the breathing, breathing in the right places. He gave me more confidence to make some adjustments that I might not have done. It’s wonderful to work with someone who has so much experience coaching singers.
Charlie: How did it come out in the end?
Elizabeth: I was pleased with how well it went. To prepare for this one I wanted to hear another singer do it. I chose a recording with Victoria De LosAngeles who sang it brilliantly and has a soprano voice, my sonance. Her performance was a confidence builder.
Singing Brahms Requium
Elizabeth: This Brahms Requiem
performance was recorded live in France.
Brother Fred was visiting me on his birthday and it was the night the
Berlin wall came down. Those two things
made it memorable. It was definitely
German night. This aria is the only
time I take a little hit at the German style.
I give the sad bits of the aria more German-style pathos than I would
normally. Then, in the happy bits, I
lighten up again. I wanted the variety
of color.
I don’t have anything against the heavier registration in the right spots. When you get too dogmatic about a certain color the voice can lose its ability to achieve a wide range of dynamics, colors, and tones. If you are locked into one type of production, singing can get monotonous. Be able to sing light, dark, up, down, and all over the place. You don’t want your voice to be inhibited and prevented from producing any type of sound your artistic impression and interpretation would demand. What makes singers insecure and feeling inadequate is when they are trying for an effect and can’t get it. That’s when they ask for help.
Singing Hydn's Creation
Charlie: Have you ever had a conductor who didn’t want you to do a cadenza?
Elizabeth: Oh yes. I got to
Metz. I was taking over a Haydn
Creation. I had been studying the
Creation in Boston with all our florid funny business and had decorated the
heck out of all those arias. The
conductor turned out to be one of those German purists. He didn’t want so much as a trill. He’d never met me. I was just coming in to replace another soprano. He had no idea who I was. I began to sing. I put in the first little thing and he STOPPED the orchestra and
looked at me and said, no embellishments.
I looked down at my scribbled up score and thought, I can’t even see the
original notes any more. I had to ask for
a fresh score because I couldn’t read mine.
I asked, can I have the edition you are working with then please so I
can sing it the way you’d like it? They
had to get me a fresh score.
Charlie: How did it go?
Elizabeth: He never hired me again (laughs) but I did all right. I sang it the way he wanted. This
With
verdure clad is from another performance with a different conductor.
Singing Betsy Jolas Compositions
Elizabeth: I’ve
done two Betsy Jolas things. Both are
on the website I met her at
Tanglewood. She came as a visiting
composer. I spent that summer learning
and performing her
Quatour IV. It’s a
string quartet where the first violin is replaced by a soprano. I saw her quite a bit that summer. She would come to our rehearsals and give us
tips. She was very gracious to me. When I came to Paris years later to sing for
Radio France I included a
Vocalise she had written on the program and she came
to that. That vocalise is also in the
website collection. She is a dual
citizen of France and America. Born in
Paris of American parents. I hear that
she is busy and traveling. She’s
written some operas. She gets
commissions.
Singing Linda di Chamounix
Elizabeth:
Linda di Chamounix isn’t performed very often any place. When you are a coloratura soprano you are
usually the title role of the opera you are in if it’s any kind of a part. There are no comprimario coloratura
parts. They are all starring roles. The way your career goes determines how
many of those key roles you are going to get to sing. There are other voice types that can make a good living singing
secondary roles. That’s tougher for a
coloratura. A coloratura has to be
aggressive about her career.
Singing Olympia from Tales of Hoffman
Play Olympia mp3
Open the score pdf
home page
Elizabeth: Olympia was one of those roles that I scorned as a student because I didn't consider it great music like Mozart and Strauss and the modern things I was doing. I think the devil heard me say that because Olympia turned out to be one of my main signature rolls. I sang it a lot. It is a crowd pleaser. It is one of those arias that brings you notice and success every time. It actually isn't that simple. It is written to sound simple but requires a lot of technical ability. You have to sing as precisely as possible. The singer is playing a machine which is perfect so the aria should come off perfectly. A machine doesn’t make mistakes. I have heard it sung mechanistically and I was bored with it. There are hints she is human because there is feeling in her singing. She is spooky that way. I had a lot of opportunity to think about the role and how to interpret it. I knew it was about the bravado of the exact notes but it's also interpolating high notes that would excite everyone. The machine part was to hold the high E flat at the last to an almost unreal length. I would make it to nine counts before I would come down on it. Well, she is a machine so she can hold that note as long as she wants.
I think the best staging I ever did for that role was in Frankfurt. Olympia sat perfectly still on a pedestal that turned. I never moved a muscle the whole time I was on stage. It’s challenging to sing an aria that way. I was in 30 performances of that production.
Charlie: I saw you do Olympia at MOT in Detroit. You moved around on stage but it seemed like your eyes did all the communicating.
Elizabeth: I wanted Olympia to be a little strange and spooky. The costume made you look like a Madam Alexander doll but I wanted her to be a spooky doll.
Charlie: If you could have played Olympia exactly as you wanted what would that be?
Elizabeth: She would be a porcelain figurine. She wouldn’t look comical with little round cheeks and a puggy nose. She’d be more like a mannequin—a stepford wife, Olympia played as a debutante, not a 10 year old child.
Charlie: I noticed she didn’t have facial expressions but she seemed to express a lot in her face.
Elizabeth: Her eyes are alive. Read the libretto. Her eyes come from a magician. It’s almost a Frankenstein story. Her eyes are alive. That’s why she’s spooky. Eyes are a mirror of the soul. She’s spooky because everything else is dead but her eyes are alive so she has that human quality. The bad guy comes back at the end and takes her eyes back. That’s what kills her. That’s the story.
Singing Zerbinetta from Ariadne auf Naxos
Charlie: Did
you ever perform in a full production of Ariadne auf Naxos?
Elizabeth:
Yes. I did it in Boston.
Charlie: Is Zerbinetta like
Olympia where she only plays big in one part of the opera?
Elizabeth: No,
it’s a full part. It’s a two act
opera. The first act is called the Prologue. Zerbinetta has a part in that where she
interacts with the composer. Then in
the second half she is acting on the stage interacting with the tragic actors
who are Ariadne and her bunch. That’s
when the big aria occurs. We did it in
an English translation that time. I wrote my part (and can’t find it). It was very cute. We probably have a picture of it someplace. I remember a bright pink costume—a little
unusual. I was in good shape for
it. I kept missing the opportunity to
play it in Germany. Augsburg was
planning a production and I moved on to Wiesbaden and somebody else sang that
production. Then, when Wiesbaden was
planning it I moved on to Frankfurt, so I missed that one. In Frankfurt they already had two singers
doing it. Then I auditioned for it and
got the job in Holland but my theater wouldn’t release me. I missed about 4 chances to do it in Europe
and it just didn’t happen. I’m glad I
got to do it in Boston. I was quite
secure in the role for the singing and acting.
I always loved
Strauss’ music, whether it was the songs or orchestra pieces. The Zerbinetta became sort of a warhorse concert
piece rather than a role. I performed
it a good bit in concert. It’s not an
easy piece to sing well. It would have
been fun to do it on stage.
Play
Zerbinetta
mp3 Open the score pdf
Home page
Singing Lucia
Elizabeth: I
did three performances of Lucia at Bob Jones University. I auditioned for that fair and square in New
York City. It was a real opera
production, one of the best I’ve ever been in.
It is a real coloratura role, a dream role, a star vehicle. I enjoyed every minute of it. If things had turned out differently, I
probably would have done more of them.
Charlie: I
recall you saying they gave you the best costumes of any production you’d ever
been in.
Elizabeth:
They were mounting the production brand new that year. The entire production was brand new. Those costumes were built for me. There were three gorgeous dresses, the blue,
the red, and the wedding dress and then the bloody boudoir nightgown. I did my very best with it and felt a lot of
satisfaction from it.
Charlie: You
got a nice letter that seemed to be appreciating your contribution to the
production.
Elizabeth:
They were happy with the teamwork.
I was helpful by sharing the experience I had. I assisted with the costumes and the wigs and the makeup for my
character. I didn’t just hold out my
arms and say dress me. Getting everybody
on your team, working together well, is worthwhile.
Singing Joe Pehrson Compositions
Elizabeth:
Joe Pehrson and I are the same age, grew up in the same town and went to
the same church as kids. I asked Joe
for a piece I could just pull out of my pocket and perform. If chamber instruments are included that I
have to hire and pay for I won’t be singing it much. So how about a vocalize to show off some gestures in the
voice. He wrote that for me and I performed
it often. It was effective, well
written and can be performed without any production. It’s a nice little piece.
He created a haunting theme, developed it, and returned to it. A lovely theme that shows off the voice
nicely. I told him the range I wanted,
how high it should go, types of gestures he could include, and he composed me a
beautiful vocalise.
The composers make it look so easy. When I sit down and try to write like that I realize it’s not so easy. So I’m the singer, he’s the composer.
Charlie: What can you say about these
Tomas Arne songs?
Elizabeth: Appropriate for a voice
student. I started them in school. The 1978 Pro Musicis recital was shortly
after I graduated from Conservatory so there was a lot of the repertoire I
worked on during those years. The
conventional wisdom back then for recital programming was to start with an
early English piece. It was the old
nymphs-and-shepherds-haste-away theory that you would begin your recital kind
of tame with something early. In the vocal
production of that piece I use a lighter sound with less vibrato than I would
in a more romantic or dramatic piece from later in history. For some reason we believe the performance
practice in Arne’s day had lighter voices and that less vibrato was used in the
tones in that music. I embellish the
heck out of the piece because I was, by
this time, a very ambitious singer so the interpretation has a lot more
technical complexity than in the original score. As written it’s straight forward and charming.
Charlie: Are there any tough spots in
the Thomas Arne pieces.
Elizabeth: Everything has to be sung
well. You have to attack your tone,
sing in tune, get all the notes.
Charlie: Who performs this?
Elizabeth: It’s written for soprano. It could be for tenor. 3rd year of voice lessons might
be the time to start on them. A student
spends just about 100% of his time on exercises the first year. In the second year you are allowed to start
your early Italian arias from the famous 24 Italian Arias book. Those are all from roughly the same time as
Arne, they are just Italian. Those are
the arias that most classically trained singers teethe on. They are all in that yellow Schirmer
book. Everybody knows it.
Once
you’ve done your Caro Mio Ben, etc, then you work on things like Arne, Purcell,
and some easy Handel. You are singing
mostly Italian and English and then as you move along you begin picking up the
techniques to sing other languages, French, German. As a general rule we start training the singers, first in native
English so it’s not too awfully hard.
Then we want them to get going on Italian right away.
Singing Schubert
Home
Play
Schubert mp3
Elizabeth: These Schubert are
challenging. To sing them
professionally, as I was doing here, you need a good command of the German
language. That takes a few years all by
itself. To sing bad German on Schubert
isn’t going to advance you. There are
too many people out there that know this stuff cold. Your name is mud if you don’t do it right. Also,
the variety of dynamics is a challenge.
Charlie: How many years of study come
first?
Elizabeth: There are some easy Schubert
pieces you can start with but college level for these, sophomore or junior
year. Everybody starts with Schubert
songs like Heidenroeslein.
80%
of what Schubert wrote was for male voices.
I didn’t do much Schubert because of that. These four are for female singer. They have a higher tessitura which means where the general range
lies." At the time I wasn’t
absolutely fluent in German. I could
pronounce it well but when I listen to it now I realize it was still accented a
little bit. It wasn’t 100% correct in
1978.
Charlie: The audience seems to
appreciate it.
Elizabeth: It was correct enough for the
occasion. But if I’d been singing it in
Frankfurt they would have known perfectly well that I was an American singing
Schubert. That wasn’t true later. I went to Germany to live for a while. That makes a big difference.
Singing Donizetti
Play mp3
Score PDF
Elizabeth: These Donizetti pieces are a ton of fun, very florid. The L’amor Funesto is a tenor piece. What am I singing this for! It’s just perfect for a tenor. I felt drawn to it so I sang it, and I needed a slow piece between the other two fast ones.
They were written as chamber pieces. It is a good idea, as a student, to sing lesser-known pieces by famous composers before you tackle the standard repertoire. These were studies for singing Mary Stuart and Lucia.
I sing these pieces heavily decorated as Sills and Sutherland were doing in the 70’s. It’s a practice that has gone in and out of style more than once. A story goes that Rossini heard a young soprano audition his Una voce poco fa, from his opera Figaro, the Rosina aria, heavily decorated. He is supposed to have said, “very nice my dear, who wrote it?”
No matter, learn to write your own embellishments and cadenzas with pieces like these, to suit your voice, instead of relying on someone to write them for you.
Singing Chansons de Ronsard by Darius Mihaud
Score pdf Piano
mp3
Orchestra mp3 Home page
Charlie: When is a student ready to sing the Chanson de Ronsard?
Elizabeth: There’s no "when," only "if." They are specialty pieces.
Charlie: Have you heard others do them?
Elizabeth: I learned them cold. Since then I’ve heard the Sills recording. I’ve heard Natalie Dessay sing them too and quite well. The songs are charming and well known even if they aren’t performed often.
Charlie: When did you start working on them?
Elizabeth: I think senior year. They were part of my Masters work at the Conservatory. I’ve sung them once with Orchestra. I recorded it for the BBC. I sang it for Radio France in Paris. That was a little crazy, go to Paris and sing French for the French—what was I thinking? I got away with it though.
Charlie: Did they like it?
Elizabeth: They loved it. I recall there were relatives of Mihaud present at that concert.
Charlie: Did you get to meet them?
Elizabeth: Yes.
Singing Survival Fragment by Robert Selig
Elizabeth: Survival Fragments is
another specialty piece. You
should be able to sing intervalically as well as melodically.
These aren’t conventional scale-based keys that you are singing in.
They take a long time to learn, to find the notes.
The music isn’t intuitive.
I
worked with Robert Selig, the composer, on the creation of these songs.
He asked me how high a note could I sing and still get the words out.
At the time I was a Masters student and a fellowship student at
Tanglewood and he was a resident composer there.
He was also my theory teacher at New England Conservatory.
He wasn’t used to writing for singers so we’d sit together and he’d
ask me lots of questions about what could he compose for a singer.
I
always had a secret ambition to compose but no talent for it.
Other than cadenzas, I never wrote anything worthwhile.
It is fun to work with someone composing for a singer, especially if
the singer is me (laughs).
He
asked a lot about what my voice could do.
If he put that on the paper could I actually make it happen.
There are some high bits in it that were written for me but the piece
has been sung by another soprano or two.
I
felt his music was important enough to be worth my time and effort.
I débuted them in New York, I sang them again in Boston and on
National Public radio.
Charlie: Who should attempt these?
Elizabeth: If you don’t open the
score and slam it right shut when you see all those ledger lines, may be you
are crazy enough to try it.
Singing Strauss
Play
mp3
Charlie: What is there to say about these Strauss songs?
Elizabeth:
I put them in to resolve Survival Fragments.
Survival Fragments are so serious and dour that you need something
uplifting to send people home on a happier note.
Two of them would have been enough but I did 4.
Those are 4 of the 6 Brentanos. Clemens
Brentano was a German poet who was a good friend of Wolfgang Goethe. They raised many a glass together.
Charlie: How tough are they to sing?
Elizabeth: They are more challenging than the other things we just talked about. They take breath control and capacity. They have long phrases. I love the texture of the songs. The one that is really a coloratura song is Amor. That one is a good study if you are looking to sing Zerbinetta later on.
Charlie: Performing Zerbinetta’s aria created some memorable moments for you. Do you have a good voice for Strauss?
Elizabeth: My voice has a similar timbre to an Austrian coloratura. The Austrian coloratura has a warmer sound than the Italian one. Other singers have specialized in Mozart and Strauss. One of them being Elisabeth Schumann who sang under Strauss’ direction. She was one of his favorite sopranos at the Vienna opera where he was director for a while. The role of Sophie in Rosenkavalier was created for her.
Strauss wrote the opera Salome and asked Elisabeth Schumann to sing it and she told him finally, “Alright I’ll sing Salome in one production but I’ll never sing Mozart again.” And Strauss said, "The price is too high." So she didn’t do Salome. She recognized that it would probably spoil her voice. I identify strongly with her. I’ve listened to some nice recordings of her and read a book that she wrote.
Singing the 1974 Debut Recital
Play Debut Recital
mp3 Home page
Charlie: I’m
glad the Leonard Bernstein pieces are on the website. There needs to be light-hearted stuff like
that.
Charlie: Were
there any good comic roles that you liked?
When I performed
with someone like Hager it was always something serious. He didn’t know anything about my funny bone
and thought it was curious that I was playing comic roles in the opera and the
things I sang with him were all so serious and spiritual like the Mozart C Minor
Mass.
Charlie: The
Leonard Bernstein songs are adorable.
Summertime is an
encore piece. I wasn’t going to do the
role of Serina because Porgy and Bess is written as
an African American opera by George Gershwin, who stipulated that in America
only African Americans would perform it.
He lifted that ban for European opera houses but most of those houses
hire at least the solo ensemble with the correct singers. Then they black face their choruses, they
can’t hire an entire chorus.
Charlie: How
about some background on the Debut recital.
Wasn’t it your first public performance outside of a school setting?
Charlie:
Wasn’t that the first time most of them had heard you sing?
Charlie: Good
story. So the event was a recital with a
nice reception afterwards?
Singing complex emotions
Charlie: You once told me, a way to
tug on the audience a bit, is to sing something that is slightly sad, slightly
happy.
Elizabeth: Yes. I like to think that artists universally have this skill and
instinct to do that. It can be a
technique but it shouldn't be a mannerism, it should be sincere.
I like to take a lullaby, if it's a romantic lullaby, such as the
Sandman by Brahms and work with the metaphor between sleep and death.
There were problems in earlier times of infant mortality so that a
lullaby can become not just a soothing fall-asleep-my-child, it can also be a
song about grieving. If you are
looking at your child and you are thinking, this is my child, please stay
alive. It is an “if I should
die before I wake” sort of thing. To
sing a lullaby with poignancy, my lovely darling baby in whom I joy, and yet
I'm fearful and sleeping is like death and soon you have these mixed feelings.
It is sort of like the vibrato again.
You are modulating, you are varying the feeling, letting the emotion
tremble a bit to give it depth and more meaning.
A mixed emotion can often get to people more than a flat emotion that
seems contrived. The human soul
is complicated and something with more layers to it is going to seem more
sincere than if you play it straight or flat.
It's part of programming.
Singing Hodie Nactus Christus Est
Charlie:
What is there to say about Hodie
Elizabeth:
Canton audio speaker company commissioned that. They wanted a Christmas album, which we
didn’t have so we developed one. We
included German carols arranged by Bach.
The Benjamin Britton set was written for chorus and harp and I thought,
how about soprano and guitar? We
arranged them and adapted the harp part for guitar.
The Corale Variations by Praetorius is an
instrumental work based on the “In Dulci Jubilo”, which is the old hymn.
So I worked myself into it and made it into a kind of 4 tier cantata.
Charlie:
So “Corale Variations” is another arrangement made by you and Felix?
Elizabeth: Yes. The John Jacob Niles pieces are our arrangements. In fact, we should credit Peter Faust for some of that. The number 17, Lulle, lullay is my arrangement. The other two were arranged with help from Peter Faust. I’d like to see Felix make guitar scores for those.
Singing Songs of the Half-Light
Charlie:
What comments are there to make about the Half-Light songs. Where did you come across the Berkeley
songs?
Elizabeth:
That’s mainstream stuff. Lennox
Berkeley is a revered British composer.
The songs are right up my ally vocally.
They were perfect for me. They
were an interesting challenge for Felix and we performed them a lot, we loved
those.
Charlie:
What about Thea Musgrave?
Elizabeth:
She’s a prominent and respected composer here in America. She lives in California. The pieces were very worthwhile so we did them. We performed those a lot too.
Charlie:
They were written for guitar already?
Elizabeth:
Yes, Half-Light is an album of songs written for guitar and high voice
and not arrangements.
Charlie: How
did you come across the Daniel Pinkham pieces?
Elizabeth: I
worked with Danny all during school days in Boston. I asked him if he had any voice and guitar pieces and he
responded with Antiphons. He literally
handed them to me.
Charlie: How
did you learn about the Confiding songs?
Elizabeth: I was asking around for British or American pieces. Gunther Schuler recommended I look into those.