If you follow my Twitter timeline you may know that on each day of Advent I posted a video of a piece of choral music, in a series of blog posts tagged Choral Christmas.
I had an idea that this time of year was a perfect opportunity to share some of the music I enjoy – Christmas music and non-Christmas, sacred and secular. It also became an opportunity to find some new music. All told, about three days worth of effort went in to the series – watching, researching, writing blog posts, and occasionally recording an Audioboo or two. Each selected video was put in to a blog post, and scheduled to be posted each day. As it went up, an automated tweet was posted to Twitter, which was the main means of promoting the posts.
So was it worth it? Measured in terms of conventional web analytics, that has to be a big fat no. If I’d spent three solid days throwing eggs at passers-by I would have made greater impact (!), reaching many more people.
All told the posts averaged between five and fifteen views each, predominantly from clicks on the auto Twitter posts. Moving the posting time back an hour from 9am GMT to 10AM GMT had no noticeable effect. Unsurprisingly, the posts which did slightly better were those where I was a emotive in the subject line – The spine-tingling return of I Fagiolini performed best with 44 clicks over nine days, though I later chose to remove the much overused “spine-tingling” from the headline.
As the post titles were deliberately kept under 140 characters, they are not very well set up for ongoing search engine optimisation, so now the series has concluded I may go back and rewrite more titles with a view to Google rather than Twitter.
So was it a total waste of time then?
No. Not at all. In terms of conventional analytics it wasn’t a roaring success, but it was very satisfying to do, for a number of reasons:
The tweet advertising the Perotin post Rewind 800 yearswas favourited on Twitter by a couple of people, an understated gesture that they have enjoyed, or will enjoy later, your writing. Other posts also received favourites.
The return of I Fagiolini post attracted the attention of the ensemble leader, who wrote a full, informative comment enriching my understanding of a performance which I had loved, even if I had not entirely understood it.
Several people replied on Twitter to individual posts saying how much they had enjoyed them. Twitter comments lead me to change the final days selections.
As well as posting up favourites of mine, I discovered new music, and new performers, through clicking on related videos in YouTube. For example, though I knew the piece well, Voces8′s performance (and Voces8 themselves) of O Clap Your Hands was so enjoyable I played it on a loop for hours. I’ll very likely go and see Voces8 in concert as a result.
Next time, and I think there will be a next time, I will think through the promotion of the posts a bit more to see if the average number of views can be raised a bit. But on balance, I’m happy. As a series of posts it didn’t set the world alight, but it was a learning experience, it appealed to a few people and started a satisfying number of conversations, and it was an opportunity to listen to hours of great music.
At 10am GMT on each day of Advent I have been posting a video of a piece which, in my opinion, celebrates the best of music made by the human voice – with the occasional quirky video thrown in for good measure! You can catch up with the full Choral Christmas here.
Introducing Spem in Alium:
Thomas Tallis: Spem in Alium, performed by the King’s Singers
For this final day of my choral advent calendar, I wanted you to be able to see the performers singing, rather than a still abstract image or album cover. So, we see this piece intended for 40 voices performed by just six, using multi-tracking to stitch together several different performances.
I hope you’ll take a few minutes to listen to the Audioboo above before enjoying the piece, and that you might feel that Reprieve is a worthy cause to donate to at this time of year.
In all it’s taken about three days – three consecutive Saturdays – to produce this series of blogposts. It’s been something of a labour of love. The overall traffic to the posts hasn’t been huge, but within the visits that there have been there have been a lot of tweets favourited, and recurring web visits. It’s been wonderful to know that people out there have appreciated some or all of the tracks, and I hope given the breadth of music covered there has been something for everyone. I heard many of the pieces for the first time when researching this series.
And, of course, there were the videos I would have liked to include but couldn’t. If you aren’t all sung out by now, I send you on your way with links to three bonus performances from the Tallis Scholars of Allegri, Byrd, and Palestrina.
Whether you came along for one day, or all twenty-four, thank you. Have a restful, peaceful, and very happy Christmas.
At 10am GMT on each day of Advent I have been posting a video of a piece which, in my opinion, celebrates the best of music made by the human voice – with the occasional quirky video thrown in for good measure! You can catch up with the full Choral Christmas here.
It wouldn’t be Christmas without hundreds of concerts of Handel’s greatest hit, The Messiah being conducted across Britain, and very probably thousands more around the world.
Which video to choose from this iconic oratorio? It’s impossible to select just one. So three highlights, then:
Handel: And the Glory of the Lord, performed by the Cantillation Choir
You see And the Glory performed at all manner of tempi depending on the conductor’s preference. I like it best when it is taken at a brisk canter, so here’s a version which is a full minute shorter than many.
Handel: Lift Up Your Heads O Ye Gates, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra & Choir
By special request of Twitter’s glitterati @saturngirl, the best recording of this movement I could find unfortunately doesn’t allow embedding, so you will find that by following this link.
Handel: Hallelujah Chorus, performed by the The English Concert & Choir
It seems performances of the Hallelujah Chorus just get bigger, more bombastic, and dare I say it… a little shrill?… each time I see them. Catch me in the right mood and the racing tempo and screaming brass of Andre Rieu’s interpretation can impress – in the same way that being overwhelmed by the force of being hit by a bus is, on some technical level, impressive. Just as impressive, as @jaydubblah noted on Twitter earlier in the series, are the frocks.
My choice is a little steadier of pace, and is a nicely balanced recording featuring some of the baroque instrumental ‘voices’ which would have been prominent at the time of its first performance.
That’s it. Our own mini-Messiah. With Christmas fast approaching, tomorrow is the final installment of this musical advent calendar. Can you guess which piece can possibly be coming up tomorrow?
At 10am GMT on each day of Advent I am posting a video of a piece which, in my opinion, celebrates the best of music made by the human voice – with the occasional quirky video thrown in for good measure! You can catch up with the full Choral Christmas here.
John Tavener: The Lamb, performed by the choir of King’s College, Cambridge
This is the second appearance from the choir of King’s College, the first appearance was back on day eight, but the composer is not to be confused with John Taverner’s entry from two days ago. John Tavener (one ‘r’ in the surname) is still very much alive, and today we hear perhaps his most popular composition – an arrangement of William Blake’s poem The Lamb.
The four part piece was composed for Tavener’s nephew Simon as a third birthday gift. In 2004, Tavener said:
The Lamb was written twenty-two years ago for my then 3-year old nephew, Simon. It was composed from seven notes in an afternoon. Blake’s child-like vision perhaps explains The Lamb’s great popularity in a world that is starved of this precious and sacred dimension in almost every aspect of life.
Little wonder, then, that the piece is most commonly performed these days as a Christmas carol.
For me, its hauntingly simplistic nature strikes through our tendency towards ever increasingly complexity, processing and refinement of music. It is a paean of praise for child-like innocence.
At 10am GMT on each day of Advent I am posting a video of a piece which, in my opinion, celebrates the best of music made by the human voice – with the occasional quirky video thrown in for good measure! You can catch up with the full Choral Christmas here.
Bernard de La Monnoye: Pat-a-pan, performed by the Dale Warland Singers
To end week three and really get us in the mood for Christmas, here’s a carol that isn’t performed often enough. This was originally a French carol, and it dates back to the early eighteenth century. Many, even most of the popular carols you will hear sung out of churches across the land over the next four days were composed in the nineteenth century. I would love to be around in a hundred years to see if our descendants will in turn have abandoned the Victorian carols we love, in favour of the Christmas music of the 20th century. Village Halls the length of the land belting out secular christmas number ones from the 90′s and 2000′s? Don’t rule it out.
I’ve copied the full English lyrics from the brief but informative Wikipedia entry on this carol, though this recording is a reduced version. If there were an online score I’d urge you to print it off and put it under the nose of your local choirmaster!
Willie, bring your little drum;
Robin, bring your flute and come;
And be merry while you play,
Tu-re-lu-re-lu,
Pat-a-pat-a-pan,
Come be merry while you play,
On this joyous Holiday!
When the men of olden days
To the King of Kings gave praise,
On the fife and drum did play,
Tu-re-lu-re-lu,
Pat-a-pat-a-pan,
On the fife and drum did play,
So their hearts were glad and gay!
God and man today become
More in tune than fife and drum,
So be merry while you play,
Tu-re-lu-re-lu,
Pat-a-pat-a-pan,
So be merry while you play,
Sing and dance this Christmas Day!
