The lovely church music in Rev. S2E6

tl;dr the episode features some lovely church music including Allegri's Miserere, Bach's Jesu, meine Freude, Palestrina's Jubilate Deo and another one I couldn't get on Shazam ;)

Last week I attended the magnificent Polyphony Down The Pub which is an amateur choir that enjoys singing remaissance motet type music, lots of it church music (some secular music too) while enjoying a pint. I can't sightread so I just listen rather than sing. We (they) did it as a two-choir, 8 parts thing with the room split into choir 1 and choir 2, then swapped. Much fun.

I have also been thinking a bit about some of the music used in Rev. (Series 2, episode 6, script PDF) when Adam Smallbone is trying to find something suitable to play on a small CD player in the church for the Dedication Festival, the church organ having largely given up. Quite a few bits of church music (and other stuff) crop up and while I'd recognise Allegri's Miserere anywhere the other pieces I had to Shazam as I wasn't familiar with them, despite having heard quite a lot of church music in my life (see background below).

6m10s - while Adam and Colin share a pizza there's some music that I can't get on Shazam - anyone know?

11m10s - Adam considers his fridge while listening to the ending of Palestrina's Jubilate Deo ("et in saecula saeculorum amen" from ~3m12 in vid below) on his headphones, Shazam tells me it's the 1991 Remastered version, Choir of King's College & Cambridge & St Philip Ledger.

 

15m - as Adam cycles to church he's listening to another Jubilate Deo (Shazam gives it as James Lancelot & Choir of King's College & Cambridge & Sir Philip Ledger - seems to be a different one from the last)

18.00 - Allegri’s Miserere, Armonica Consort
19.31 - Allegri’s Miserere again



Couldn't find the Armonica version of Allegri's Miserere but there are plenty of examples on YouTube including this one above from The Sixteen.

23.48 - Bach's Jesu Meine Freude, BWV 277: I, The Sixteen (I saw them live at Spitalfields Music Festival last year, fantastic).



Different version from the one used in the show but all fairly similar.

There's also a lovely piece that Rev. Adam Smallbone sings at the end of S3E6 (the final episode overall) which, despite nine years of church schooling, I'd never heard of. Because he sings it it's unShazamable so I had to pay attention to the Latin to discover that it's the Praeconium Paschale or 'Exsultet'.



Background
I spent the second nine years of my life at an Anglican boarding school and our days revolved more around the Christian calendar than mere 'start of term' and 'end of term'. Although every four weeks we had permitted weekends away, called exeats, the word being a cousin of exit and exeunt, and there was a half-term in the middle. Hardly any event could pass without a religious ceremony and we had bonus ones including Leavers' Day and something like Founders' Day but I'm not sure we called it that. I remember Ascension Day and Harvest Festival (involved polishing apples on our jumpers for some reason). Every so often (quite possibly every three years) we had a Triennial service which the bishop attended. We had to wear our school ties for that, not our house ties so it was a big deal. These larger events took place at an external church too, sometimes their choir would be combined with ours.

As an avowed atheist (from about the age of four, I was very troubled at church seeing my parents bowing their heads and muttering to no-one) I tried to make these interminable services (assembly every day, chapel on Sunday) go more quickly by speed reading multiple times whichever bit of liturgical prose our chaplain was currently on. It was always a relief whenever the organist piped us out with something nice and chirpy at the end.

Except Ash Wednesday which had the best cheerless music ever, a particular favourite was Attende Domine which we sang in English ('Hear us O Lord'). I think it was just the choir that sang it (possibly during the communion bit) but it wasn't that long before I was in the choir myself. They signed us up to choir using a sort of exception reporting - everyone was in the choir until proven otherwise. The least pleasant teacher in the school took us one by one into one of the practice rooms with a piano and she made us sing a hymn of our choice, then played us a chord and we had to sing the middle note. Somehow I passed.

Anyway, while I did not love boarding school I left with a fondness for church music. We had quite a lot of church music at home too (though for most of the year I was at school!) as my parents met through a church choir in Glasgow (Wellington Church). A few years after leaving school I voluntarily attended sat through an Ash Wednesday service at St Paul's Cathedral because they were doing a proper two-choir version of Allegri's Miserere. As a big fan of Tom Hollander (who plays Rev Adam Smallbone in Rev.) I was quite pleased to read in an interview that his own schooling (he was head chorister) had left him with an 'abiding love of church music' too.

Wondering if birds have perfect pitch

On my way to Jury Service (fun!) a couple of weeks ago I wondered if birds have perfect pitch. They certainly seem to repeat their songs at the exact same pitch and I wondered if they can easily transpose a song as most humans can*.

I asked my friend, colleague and fellow DorkbotLondon-goer Dan Stowell who works at the Centre for Digital Music (C4DM) at QMUL. He's an ideal person to ask because he co-created an app (Warblr) which 'listens' to birdsong and suggests what species it might be and he also convened the Listening in the Wild 2015 conference on "Animal and machine audition in multisource environments" which I attended and enjoyed.

Dan's replies to my emailed questions are in black italic text, mine in a sort of pinkish russet.

Do birds generally sing their tunes on the same starting note, or can they / do they occasionally transpose?

Same note. Birds are MUCH less interested in "relative pitch" and transposition as are humans. The evidence suggests that in many cases, we hear things as being identical-but-transposed, but birds hear them as different. (The evidence is a bit patchy though)

Do you know if lyrebirds' mimicry also includes the same pitch of whatever they're mimicking?

I don't know! I believe it's the same.

He also pointed me to a recent paper "Animal Pitch Perception: Melodies and Harmonies" by Marisa Hoeschele.

Lyrebirds have an incredible ability to mimic all sorts of everyday sounds and there are amazing clips on YouTube of them doing this. I first came across these birds thanks to one of David Attenborough's BBC programmes. The bird was doing an impression of chainsaws, the sound of which rather poignantly heralds the diminution of its habitat! At the time it didn't occur to me to wonder if the lyrebird was singing the chainsaw tune at the same pitch as the actual chainsaw, but now I'm curious. I'd have to assume it was the same pitch but would be happy to hear from anyone who might know. Possibly I'll come across a recording of what the lyrebird hears and its impression of it.

Wolves, however, I'm marking down as not having perfect pitch, thanks to this^ YouTube video in which they join in with an air raid / flood warning siren by having a bit of an off-pitch howl.



A while ago I came across this video of a two year old Chinese boy who can easily recognise which digit in a telephone number is dialled from just its sound. Each digit, when pressed, emits two different tones (basically a chord) because of the dual tone multi frequency signalling system in use - I don't know if these two-tones / inherent-intervals are easier to recognise (would I, as a person without perfect pitch, ever be able to do this?). Also Chinese speakers might find this sort of thing easier anyway (I understand that perfect pitch or pitch memory tends to be more common among native speakers of that language than compared with native English speakers) because Chinese is a tonal language in which pitch matters to the meaning.



Hopefully the thought that perfect-pitch-eared people might listen in and know which number you're dialling might encourage people from switching off annoying key tones on their phone.

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I suspect this train of thought (pondering birdsong's pitchness) probably emerged after having heard Far Side of the Moore on Radio 4 which was a sweet and amusing radio play about the launch of Patrick Moore's career as a television presenter on Sky at Night.

One of my favourite people, Tom Hollander, played Moore and he 'got' his voice and mannerisms perfectly. Quite uncanny. Tom also did an amazing portrayal of Dylan Thomas, and seems to be really rather good at that sort of thing.

At the time of writing there are about two weeks left to hear the whole programme on iPlayer / catch up though I think this 3min clip is permanently available.

I'd previously wondered if Tom has perfect pitch, based on my friend sending me a Vine video of him whistling the Hanna tune and finding it was exactly the same pitch as the one used in Hanna. I'd struggle to whistle the theme at the best of times (Tom has whistling form, I do not) but I'd certainly not get the exact pitch even if I did hit some of the notes. If someone has perfect pitch are they in a better position to hear, and 'get', the sound of someone else's voice? Presumably there are actors who don't have perfect pitch (and I've no idea if Tom does!) who've done a fantastic job of getting someone just right, but I wondered if it was a useful thing to be able to have / do.

Things I want to do now
1. Teach lyrebirds to whistle this Hanna tune
2. Teach lyrebirds all sorts of other stuff, but recorded at slow speeds so their playback is a bit spooky




*According to a YouTube video I watched people with perfect pitch might actually find it harder to transpose a song because they have such a strong sense of absolute pitch and struggle a bit with relative pitch, whereas the rest of us find that mostly quite easy once we have a starting note. ^Feel free to judge me for getting evidence from YouTube videos :)

Lovely documentary - Revolution: New Art for a New World

At the end of this post there's more information on how to see the documentary in cinemas in London and around the world, and a 'save the date' for a Russian art exhibition at the RA in 2017.

In 2011 a friend dragged me willingly along to the RA for an art exhibition called "Building the Revolution: Soviet art and architecture". I'd have to confess that I'm not naturally very cultured and probably wouldn't go near any art exhibition unless someone pushed me, but I enjoyed most of the art very much and was hopelessly smitten with photographs of Shuklov's Shabolovka Tower which is a bit like a massive pylon.

Dibs.

On Thursday 10 November I went to see Margy Kinmonth's new documentary film Revolution: New Art for a New World at its gala premiere (and Q&A) at the Curzon Mayfair. Tom Hollander (big fan, don't miss him in Travesties at the Apollo in early 2017) voiced the artist Kazimir Malevich.

I thought it was great - beautifully shot and in ways I'd not really seen before. The ending was gorgeous, the camera zooming in to what I think was a Malevich piece and wheeling round so that the last thing zoomed into was a black line which got bigger until it entirely took up the screen and so... fade to black. There was also a nicely unsettling use of a kind of split-screen with mirror images that was very effective when people were walking up or down stairs that I rather liked. One shot that particularly intrigued me made it look as if they were using an underwater camera but something in the Q&A made me realise that they might have just been pointing the camera into a very reflective puddle! Anyway I thought it was lovely.

One other comment that came up in the Q&A (with Kate Muir) was how lovely it was to see the art on such a massive 'canvas' of the big screen, it was certainly very immersive.

Edmund Jollife's music was great and the invigorating end credits music accompanies a nice list of all the artists discussed in the documentary and what happened to them - for a lot of them it was fairly horrendous and not at all a happy ending.

As well as paintings and sculptures we saw some fantastic footage of old films. Trams and trains featured quite a bit and we learned that trains would travel around Russia sharing art, books, ideas and screening films for everyone which is something I'd love to bring back! Imagine a cinema carriage on your commute home.

There were quite a few artists I'd never heard of who have produced gorgeous art which I've missed out on - I'd probably need to look up a list of who was mentioned in the film to get their names though.

I'd certainly never knowingly heard of Kazimir Malevich before my interest was piqued knowing that Tom Hollander was involved in the production, though I recognised some of his art as having been on display at the Royal Academy. My favourite piece of his, which wasn't on display in 2011, was his black square which is literally a black square on a white background (coincidentally there's a very similar emoji 🔳). You might think why on earth bother painting one of those (I think he painted several versions) and it's definitely one of those pieces of art that prompts those "I could paint that" comments, but I don't think anyone had done it before and it's now apparently worth about $20 million. It's quite arresting though, in any gallery setting, but in one of its displays it was boldly positioned in the room in the same place that would normally be reserved for a religious icon. 

The documentary is being screened all over the place now and presumably at some point it will be on television - but I'd definitely recommend getting to see it on a bigger screen if you can. More details below.

See the documentary...
Watch this documentary in London: Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th November at the Curzon Mayfair, Tuesday 22nd November at Curzon Bloomsbury, Thursday 24 November at Curzon Soho, Saturday 26 November at the ICA (with a pre-film talk from the director Margy Kinmonth) and on Friday 2nd December 2016 at the Courtauld (Somerset House). 

For all screenings in other UK cities and other countries see http://revolution.film/releasedates

...and some of the art itself
See the art next year: Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 (11 Feb to 17 April 2017) at the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) in London.

Everyone loves Tom Hollander - I've only just realised quite how talented he is

Edit 16 May 2016: Things he has coming up include a role in the film Tulip Fever and he's doing a BBC Radio 4 play from Wed 18 to Thur 21 May at 2.15pm, called School Drama which gets a nice write-up in The Guardian. He's also appearing at Letters Live at the Hay Festival on Sat 28th (sold out) and Sun 29th (tickets).

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http://fuckyeaholiviacolman.tumblr.com/post/116079899162/olivia-colman-tom-hollander

I've always liked Tom Hollander. I remember really noticing him in 'The Lost Prince' (in which he was brilliant as King George V). Loved him in Rev. and In The Loop too, among others.

Enjoying BBC2's Ambassadors, also the theme music. Tom Hollander is in it, and Mitchell & Webb :)

— Jo Brodie (@JoBrodie) December 29, 2013

Last week I discovered that he's also a very good writer and has had a column in The Spectator for years. I'd completely failed to hear about this until he recently wrote about meeting Prince and the tweet below found its way into my timeline, piquing my curiosity. His back catalogue is funny, thoughtful and honest and I wondered what everyone else thought of his writing... so I had a look on Twitter and realised that liking Tom Hollander (as an actor or writer, or just people having met him) appears to be everyone's default position. Quite right.

I think this tweet's how I discovered that he'd written something.

@holland_tom @empiremagazine someone tweeted Tom Hollander's meeting Prince article and I read the whole thing thinking it was by you.

— Pete Deveson (@PeteDeveson) May 2, 2016

Assuming this is real he's also rather good at whistling...



...and he was absolutely incredible as Patrick Moore in 'Far Side of the Moore'. My amazed face looked a bit like this :-O on hearing his 'impersonation' of him (I'm not sure that's quite the right word) though. He's bonkersly talented.

I collected a bunch of tweets in this Storify and have embedded it below. There are quite a few tweets so wait for it to fully load (or just view it at Storify).