the choir, continued

So, this week was the second episode of The Choir on BBCAmerica.  There was some funny reality--the bass section all singing different pitches, a kid quitting and trying to act like he's cool, the astonished expression of a girl standing next to a professional soprano.  Cute.  Real.  I liked those moments.

I'd like to mention a couple of English Oddities.

First, Gareth clearly has almost no conducting training.  His gesture is atrocious.  Honestly, any one of my undergrads from last semester could stand up in front of a choir and look better than he does.  But he does have musical ideas, and I do heartily agree with his general philosophy; so I almost sort of forgive his incompetence as a conductor.  And he is described as a choirmaster, not a conductor; but, it's odd that a choirmaster isn't a good conductor, because good conducting can make quite a difference.  I mention this in the category of English Oddities because my experience with English conductors (I've never met a Scottish or Welsh conductor, and the only Irish conductor I've met was a quite good opera/orchestral conductor.  So maybe it is an English thing.  Or a choral English thing...) is that their musical ideas are generally in line with American colleagues but I've never met an English choral conductor whose actual conducting was anywhere close to as clean, free, easy, expressive, and generally legible as most American equivalents.  I'm sure they're out there (aren't they?!), but I've never met one.  What is up with that???

Another oddity of British choral stuff is their insistence on describing what happens to the voice at puberty as "breaking."  I don't know when or how this changed in America, but we now say "his voice changed" instead of saying, "it broke."   Maybe this seems picky or shallow, but honestly, if you tell a kid his voice is broken, even if he understands what it technically means, it can't be encouraging him to use his voice any more.  I've written before about the importance of language, and being careful about words.  The voice is directly attached to the imagination, which is not entirely under our conscious control.  The brain knows the word break means multiple things, so shouldn't we be careful not to pollute neutral and positive things like a voice changing with puberty with the negative connotations of the more common meanings of the word break?  If his voice is broken, why would he want to use it?  Changing the word won't change the world, but I think change is a more neutral term less likely to carry any inference of derision and therefore is a superior word for the purpose.

I haven't given up on The Choir yet, but I think my opinion may be settled on "enh."  Gareth's niceness and generosity of spirit almost make up for his mediocrity as a musician, but that doesn't make for enticing television entertainment.  I mean, I'd buy him a beer any day of the week, but I'm not particularly interested in watching him do what I do but not as well as I do it.

Ah, well.  Maybe next week will yield something more compelling.