Music of the 20th Century

The voice is our first, and last, instrument. While not everyone will feel the need to paint a picture or write a poem, each in his or her own way has felt the need to sing - even if only in the shower or in the car or in karaoke rooms! Song, since the beginning of time, has been used to convey worldviews, ideas, and emotions.

Tonight, we present an exploration of the voice in all its "colours", using music written in the last 50 years. At one end of the vocal spectrum, we have the bright, "open" sounds of the Asian folksong (we start our concert with 3 of these), in which the voice is placed in an extremely forward position. This brightness is taken to an extreme in Setiap pagi rahmatmu, when the tenors sing the melody with a deliberately open, uncontrolled, sound.

Along the spectrum, we also have the rounded and perfectly blended tone of the English choral tradition (Shakespeare Songs) and the darker, deeper sounds of the African-American spirituals with which we close the concert.

In some 20th century choral works, the voice itself (rather than a 'melody'), together with the whole gamut of vocal sounds, is the focus. We end the first half of the concert with one such work, Miniwanka, which calls for the imitation of the sounds of water in all its various states. We start the second half with another such work, A Frog Song. This piece was written specially for us, inspired in part by the sounds of bullfrogs emerging after a tropical downpour. The Choir, in some ways, mimics this scenario with their voices while slowly revealing the melody, an old Chinese nursery rhyme about frogs.