All together, now!
It’s the simplest thing we can do as a musical community: to sing the same line together, as one, in unison, without the accoutrements of harmony or counterpoint. It serves to strip away our music to its most essential elements, single lines shared between a whole ensemble, chorus or orchestra. Yet unison singing and playing is one of the most powerful and paradoxical phenomena in our musical culture, whether in the context of church choirs or orchestras, footballs crowds and family gatherings, or children singing Christian rhyme, as Cliff Richard puts it at around this time of year. Why? Because when we sing the same melody together, we’re not just creating musical community and communication, we’re also simultaneously celebrating what binds us together and revealing our irreducible individuality.
Here’s how: try singing a verse of
Silent Night as a solo number now. Yes, go on, right now! Now, imagine singing the same carol with just one other person. And now a whole choir of voices. And now a sports stadium. They all make different noises, don’t they? They’re not the same experiences, and they’re not identical sounds, despite the fact it’s the same melody you’ve been virtually imagining.
And the reason they’re not is to do with what happens acoustically when we join our voices together. No one can exactly replicate the micro-variations of pitch in the way your voice vibrates, can mimic precisely the same inflections of rhythm and resonance of your voice - so
Unison singing isn’t an art of being the same, but of revelling in our differences
no one is truly singing precisely the same musical line that you do. And when we all sing together in larger groups, that extra richness and warmth of massed voices is created by an exponential amplification of those fundamental vocal differences.
You can hear that dance between the individual and the many especially clearly in the traditions of Gaelic psalm singing in the Highlands of Scotland, in which the congregation is led by a precentor, but the other voices follow fractions of a second behind. And while everyone is singing the same collections of notes and rhythms, they are doing so in their own slightly displaced time-frame, so the voices not only blend, but create, too, a joyously rich micropolyphony. It’s a unison singing, made from the simplest possible idea, which is fractally complex in its alchemy of individual voices and the collective power they bring about.
And what the Gaelic psalmists realise in their worship, we’re all doing whenever we sing together. Unison singing isn’t an art of being the same, but of revelling in our differences, creating something bigger than ourselves, yet making something we all share. So when you’re singing carols or any of the songs that mark your seasonal celebrations this year, rejoice in the paradoxically multi-dimensional power of the unison.
Raymond Leppard Born 1927 Conductor
Raymond Leppard enjoyed a colourful and varied career in music, not just as a conductor but also as a harpsichordist, editor and composer. He was a key figure in the revival of Italian Baroque opera in the 1960s, creating his own performing editions and winning acclaim on stages from Glyndebourne to Santa Fe. Following National Service, it was at Trinity College, Cambridge that he got a taste for conducting, though he continued performing as a keyboard player for the likes of the Philharmonia. It was on the podium where he made his mark, though, working closely with the English Chamber Orchestra and
BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra (BBC Philharmonic). In the US he enjoyed long tenures with orchestras in St Louis and Indianapolis, which he called home, and made many acclaimed recordings. Marta Kurtág Born 1927 Pianist
Marta Kurtág and her husband, composer György, enjoyed much more than just a marriage. She played the role of wife, muse, critic and performing partner for over 60 years. But that was just one part of her musical life. Born in northern Hungary, she studied piano with Leo Weiner and András Mihály in Budapest and it’s there that she met György in 1946. She taught the piano at both the city’s Béla Bartók Music High School and Franz Liszt Academy, though her talents at the keyboard were best known publicly thanks to her duo appearances with her husband. The pair appeared together around the world, with notable performances at Carnegie Hall, Washington DC’S Library of Congress, Zurich’s Tonhalle and the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Also remembered…
Mezzo-soprano Irina Bogacheva (born 1939), to whom Shostakovich dedicated his Six Poems by Marina Tsvetaeva, was a leading soloist at the Mariinsky Theatre. She also performed leading roles at La Scala, The Met and San Francisco Opera. Honoured by the Russian state, she was also a respected professor at St Petersburg Conservatory.
When he was 32, the Swiss violinist Hansheinz Schneeberger (born 1926) premiered Bartók’s Violin Concerto in Basel, some 50 years after it was written. Equally at home as a concerto soloist or as a chamber musician, Schneeberger’s recordings included solo works by composers ranging from JS Bach to Ives.
In his prime, Rolando Panerai (born 1924) was one of Italy’s most indemand baritones, with 150 roles in his repertoire. Firmly established on his home country’s great stages, Panerai was equally in demand across the globe. He performed several times with Maria Callas and, in more recent years, taught masterclasses and directed.