{"id":86817,"date":"2013-12-05T08:28:19","date_gmt":"2013-12-05T13:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=86817"},"modified":"2013-12-30T10:29:35","modified_gmt":"2013-12-30T15:29:35","slug":"setting-the-bar-high-with-beethovens-9th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2013\/12\/setting-the-bar-high-with-beethovens-9th\/","title":{"rendered":"Setting the Bar High with Beethoven\u2019s 9th"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Harvey<\/a>
Harvey Felder directs students from the UConn Concert Choir and UConn Festival Chorus, as well as singers from Farmington and E.O. Smith High Schools, as they rehearse Beethoven\u2019s 9th Symphony in the Music Building on Nov. 18. (Ariel Dowski ’14 (CLAS)\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Harvey Felder, director of orchestral studies, and Jamie Spillane \u201987 MM, director of choral studies, arrived simultaneously to join the School of Fine Arts faculty last year, they began to discuss collaborating on programs that periodically would bring the UConn orchestras and choral groups together.<\/p>\n

The orchestras and vocal ensembles had not performed together in Storrs in recent years, in part because of the complexity of preparing choral groups and orchestras that generally perform works written specifically for either vocal or instrumental presentations. There are many compositions for voice and instruments, usually for smaller groupings, but there are fewer major symphonic works in the classical repertoire for full orchestras and large choruses.<\/p>\n

An ambitious goal<\/strong><\/p>\n

The two associate professors of music decided to set the bar high for their first collaboration with a program centered on an epic work, Beethoven\u2019s 9th Symphony, which will combine not only the UConn Symphony Orchestra and Concert Choir, but the UConn Festival Chorus \u2013 a mixed choir comprised of UConn faculty, staff, and students, and members of the Greater Storrs Community \u2013 as well as the Chamber Singers from both Edwin O. Smith and Farmington High Schools. Featured soloists will include two faculty members, soprano Constance Rock \u201905 DMA and alto Meredith Ziegler \u201902 (SFA), \u201904 MM; bass Anthony Leathem, a doctoral candidate; and tenor Albert Lee \u201998 (SFA), who is director of the Nevada Chamber Opera at the University of Nevada-Reno. The performance will take place on Thursday, Dec. 5, at 8 p.m. in the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts.<\/p>\n

\"Students<\/a>
Students from the UConn Concert Choir and UConn Festival Chorus, as well as singers from Farmington and E.O. Smith High Schools, rehearse Beethoven\u2019s 9th Symphony in the Music Building on Nov. 18, 2013. (Ariel Dowski\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In addition to being the final major work by Beethoven, \u201cSymphony No. 9\u201d was the first symphonic composition to include a choral movement, according to Glenn Stanley, professor of music history in UConn\u2019s Department of Music who has published extensively in American, British, and German journals and books with special emphasis on Beethoven and 19th-century choral music.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot everyone thought that was such a good idea,\u201d Stanley says of the critical response to \u201cSymphony No. 9\u201d when it was first presented. \u201cSome critics felt it was a mistake because it corrupted the aesthetics of the genre. The idea was that a symphony was a piece of pure instrumental music that didn\u2019t need words. It\u2019s been much debated, and [Beethoven] never set forth why he did it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mastering the music<\/strong><\/p>\n

The symphony is an hour in duration, with about 20 minutes of choir participation, presenting challenges for Felder and Spillane during the preparation and rehearsal of the work. For several weeks leading up to the performance, Spillane worked independently with the choral groups, including travel to Farmington High School, to rehearse the vocalists and track their progress. There are 180 singers in the combined choral groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe create a master score with all the markings \u2013 the same breath marks, dynamics of loud and soft sections, and pronunciation \u2013 so each group is practicing the same things,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat\u2019s fascinating is that sometimes the adults learn things quicker in the Festival Chorus though they\u2019re not all music majors, and some have vast experience. Sometimes the college kids, who are predominantly music majors, are picking up things quickly. When you put those two [factors] together, you build on the strength of the four choirs.<\/p>\n

\"Students<\/a>
Students from the UConn Concert Choir and UConn Festival Chorus, as well as singers from Farmington and E.O. Smith High Schools, rehearse Beethoven\u2019s 9th Symphony in the Music Building on Nov. 18, 2013. (Ariel Dowski\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The best known vocal section of the work is \u201cOde to Joy,\u201d the 1785 poem by Friedrich Schiller that is part of the symphony\u2019s final movement, combining soloists, chorus, and orchestra. Spillane says the range and rhythm of the choral elements are challenging.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe music is hard,\u201d Spillane says. \u201cYou have to learn the language of Beethoven when you are first learning it. You think: That doesn\u2019t work. What was he thinking? The pitches, rhythms, and counterpoints, they just seem odd. After you work on them for a while they go together. They\u2019re smaller pieces of a puzzle and at first you can\u2019t conceptualize the whole. Once it comes together, it\u2019s better than any puzzle you\u2019ve ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Felder says he has a disciplined and systematic approach to mastering a score that he will conduct, a method he teaches to his students in Orchestral Studies. He goes through a work as many as a dozen times, with each study aimed at uncovering different information \u2013 such as instrumentation, harmonic analysis, and melodic analysis — that will help him master the work before presenting it to musicians.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time I\u2019m done, I know the piece very well and am ready to rehearse,\u201d Felder says. \u201cDepending on the piece, if it\u2019s a Haydn symphony for example, I can do those 12 trips in a couple of hours. If it\u2019s a monumental piece, like a Mahler or the Beethoven symphony, it may take two or three months to get through those steps and feel really comfortable with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Artistic interpretation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Felder encourages his student musicians to listen to different recordings of a piece such as Beethoven\u2019s 9th, so they can become familiar with a work they may not know very well. As part of their studies, UConn music students have access to the Naxos Music Library, which contains nearly 90,000 compact disc-length recordings of the classical repertoire.<\/p>\n

He may also listen to recordings after his initial study of a piece, but avoids doing so before he has a thorough understanding of what the composer has written.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a real danger of making ill-informed performance decisions if one listens to someone else\u2019s interpretation without truly knowing what the composer wrote,\u201d Felder says. \u201cThe gray areas are not written down, and this is where an artist needs to offer an interpretation. There is an Italian word stringendo<\/i>, which means go faster. It doesn\u2019t say how much faster; that\u2019s an interpretive thing I will have to decide. Do I want to run, trot, or walk quickly? If I listen to a recording I may hear that the conductor runs, or in another version he walks fast, but still a stroll. Without my initial study of the piece, I could think one of these interpretations may be what the composer wrote rather than a choice made by a particular conductor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jamie<\/a>
Jamie Spillane directs students from the UConn Concert Choir and UConn Festival Chorus, as well as singers from Farmington and E.O. Smith High Schools, as they rehearse Beethoven\u2019s 9th Symphony in the Music Building on Nov. 18, 2013. (Ariel Dowski\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In mid-November, when the two UConn choral groups and orchestra were brought together for the first time in a large rehearsal room in the Music Building, Felder and Spillane stopped and started sections of \u201cSymphony No. 9\u201d and the two other program works \u2013 Schubert\u2019s \u201cMagnificat\u201d and \u201cAntiphon\u201d by Vaughn Williams \u2013 to provide guidance for their musicians.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can come to this moment and present that in that sort of controlled, serious way, it\u2019s a wonderful dramatic moment in the piece,\u201d Felder told the vocalists, after they had completed a section of the Beethoven work he had corrected for timing. \u201cBut if it rushes and feels urgent or out of control, it loses that impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two professors say they look forward to collaborating in the future on other works that incorporate choral and orchestral ensembles, such as Carl Orff\u2019s \u201cCarmina Burana,\u201d Gabriel Faur\u00e9\u2019s \u201cRequiem in D Minor,\u201d or the Holocaust remembrance by Stephen Paulus, \u201cTo Be Certain of the Dawn.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to try to do something every year, some major work,\u201d Spillane says. \u201cThere is so much great music for large chorus and orchestra, and it\u2019s an experience both our chorus and audience should have.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information, go to the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Listen to Felder rehearsing ‘Ode to Joy<\/a>‘ from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.
\nListen to Jamie Spillane conducting Schubert’s ‘Magnificat<\/a>‘ in rehearsal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UConn’s new orchestral and choral directors picked an epic work for their first major collaboration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":86381,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[55],"class_list":["post-86817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-06 21:17:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86817"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86836,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86817\/revisions\/86836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/86381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86817"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=86817"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=86817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}