Thursday, July 03, 2008  

The Minister Writes . . . .

The annual return of the GRAND SERIES OF SUMMER ORGAN CONCERTS 2008 (Tuesday Lunchtimes at 1.00pm) always makes the chapel a busier place, as we welcome old friends and greet newcomers to what is always a very much appreciated, and celebrated, event. This year, of course, immediately following the last concert on Tuesday August 26th, Priestley Hall is to be closed whilst renovation and restoration work takes place. This will mean that the chapel itself will be closed to the general public for approximately three months. During this time, the folk who presently use Priestley Hall on a daily basis will make the chapel their home. So January 2009 will hopefully see the grand reopening of a fully restored chapel, and no doubt there will be a special Organ Concert to celebrate this achievement too.

In the meantime, there is much to anticipate and celebrate in the months ahead at Mill Hill!

Paul

SUNDAY SERVICES DURING JULY and AUGUST 2008

July 6th Paul

July 13th Paul

July 20th Ernest baker

July 27th John Goodchild

August 3rd Paul

August 10th Paul

August 17th Paul

August 24th Kate Taylor

August 27th Paul

ANTHEMS FOR JULY 2008

6th: "Worship" - Geoffrey Shaw

13th: "Non nobis Domine" - Roger Quilter

20th: "The Lord is my shepherd" - Howard Goodall

27th: "We cannot measure" - Scots trad., arr, Malcolm Archer

MEDITATION ORGAN MUSIC FOR AUGUST 2008

3rd: Choral Prelude on "Liebster Jesu", S. 731 - Bach

10th: Quiet thoughts - C. Armstrong Gibbs

17th: Prelude - Louis Vierne

24th: Sarabande, from "Holberg" Suite - Edvard Grieg, arr. A.N.

31st: Interlude - Norman Cocker

2008 GRAND SERIES OF SUMMER ORGAN CONCERTS

(on weekly lunchtimes at 1.00pm)

We are delighted to be able, once again, to present another bumper series of Summer Organ Concerts on our beautiful chapel situated in the very heart of Leeds - in City Square. Our organ is a very fine three-manual Norman & Beard organ, whose pipe-work is divided in twin chambers in each side of the chancel, offering thereby an enhanced listening experience. Sixteen weekly concerts are arranged for this year’s season, eight to be performed by distinguished guests players and eight by our Director of Music. 2008 sees the centenary of the birth of Messiaen and the fiftieth anniversary of the demise of Vaughan Williams, both of whom will be commemorated in terms of some of this year’s programmes. Another comprehensively packed feast of music, performed by a finely distinguished array of players, awaits you. Admission is free, with a retiring collection taken at each concert, the proceeds from which go towards the cost of maintaining the instrument in tip-top condition. As always, we look forward to giving you a warm welcome on each occasion and hope, indeed, that you might make a regular Tuesday date with us throughout the 17 weeks of our season.

ANTHONY NORCLIFFE (Director of Music, Mill Hill Chapel) will play on:

JULY 1st; JULY 15th; JULY 29th; AUG. 12th; AUG. 26th

GUEST PERFORMERS

JULY 8th - JEFFREY MAKINSON (Assistant Organist, Manchester Cathedral)

JULY 22nd - PHILIP MOORE (Director of Music, York Minster)

AUG. 5th - ALEXANDER BINNS (Halifax)

AUG. 19th - CHARLES EDMONDSON (Windermere)

LET YOUR SILVER CHIME MOVE IN MELODIOUS TIME

"How sour sweet music is,

When time is broke and no proportion kept!

So it is in the music of man's lives"

(Shakespeare's "Richard III")

Yesterday I obtained a copy of a book I have been seeking for many years: "The Psychology of Music" by Carl Seashore. It was published in 1938 and is the first, as far as I am aware, to bear that particular title (though other writers did write earlier on this topic (notably "On the Sensations of Tone" by Helmholtz in 1862). He devoted much of his life to this work: he wrote nearly 50 relevant books and articles - and invented the Seashore Test of Musical Ability. I haven't held this book in my hand for 30 years (and never owned my very own copy before!) so it was very nostalgic for me: taking me back to the time when I lectured on hearing and I found this book then absolutely inspirational.

We all know that musical taste is a very personal thing; some people hear my beloved jazz music as simply noise and I respond in a similar way to much of modern pop music. However, we do all seem to agree on certain things. When two or more notes are sounded together (chords) many people find some combinations of notes to be harmonious (consonant) and other combinations discordant (dissonant) - hence the scenes sometimes at Mill Hill choir practice when someone (usually me!) sings a note not written by the composer and drives our venerable Director of Music to near apoplexy!

When almost all people tend to agree on what sounds discordant, this must be either:

(1) Because of the cultural upbringing we share - and certainly some Eastern cultures use musical scales which sound, at least, strange and sometimes produce discord to Western ears. Or:

(2) Show that our brains are "wired" in particular ways. These two things are not exclusive.

It might be thought that notes which lie close together on the scale would sound well together but this turns out not to be the case. The notes C and C sharp are adjacent on our scale but, sounded together, they are not harmonious; yet C and G which are four notes apart (and constitute 2 of the 3 notes that make up the chord of C major) go together very well. Indeed, middle C and the C eight notes above it sound in perfect unison. These facts captured the attention of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras (whose theorem on triangles is known to every schoolboy - or it used to be!).

The higher the pitch of a note the higher is its sound frequency -indeed, the sound frequency of a note is what is responsible for our perception of pitch. Now, Pythagoras had a mystical belief that small numbers are of fundamental importance in our world and so he examined the ratios of the frequencies of notes. Sure enough this proved promising. For example, middle C and the C an octave above have the frequencies of 265 and 512 vibrations per second respectively.

These Pythagoras realized were in the simple ratio of 1:2. C and G, which we have already said are also harmonious, have the ratio of 2:3.

Pythagoras had certainly discovered something but, unfortunately, it is not the whole story. Two simultaneous notes that are dissonant can, when played on a different instruments, sometimes produce varying degrees of acceptability. What is it about the same note that does not sound identical on two different instruments? How can we recognize that the note C, say, is being played on a violin and not on a clarinet? The answer is that a plucked string or a vibrating column of air can both vibrate in parts as well as the whole and so produce a variety of additional notes to the C called "partials" - also different instrument casings themselves resonate to the C and produce their own partials. I once briefly discussed partials in a previous "Record" article on music (March/April 2006) and there is not space to repeat this here. When two notes, and their partials, are sounded together they can produce pulsations or "beats" (particularly when the notes differ only slightly in pitch), which are unpleasant to our ears. These beats produce interference patterns on the basilar membrane of our inner ear and this is a major factor in dissonance.

At the end of the day, the line of acceptability between consonance and dissonance depends not just on musical scales but also on our own personal reaction. The division between consonance and dissonance is not absolute but merely one of degree: in fact, dissonance can sometimes be introduced deliberately by a composer to produce surprise or other emotional effect that enhance the music. This is, no doubt, why the composer Schoenberg, whose own music has sometimes proved controversial because of his disregard of established tonal considerations of scales, has written: "If I continue to use the expressions 'consonance1 and 'dissonance' even though they are unwarranted, I do so because there are signs that the evolution of harmony will, in a short time, prove the inadequacy of this classification". He wrote this in his book "Theory of Harmony" way back in 1911 (though my English translation was not published for the first time until 1978) -1 think his point is still just as valid today.

As Laurel Trainer in a recent article on "Neural Roots of Music" wrote in "Nature": "What has not changed recently is our evolutionary inheritance, the structure of our sensory organs, our basic encoding of information and our visceral response to features of sound that unleash the emotional power of music in our lives

Derrick Pritchatt

CONFLICT or UNITY?

There is no greater cause of conflict in our world today than the diversity of race, religion, culture and creed. Israel, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Russia, Spain, Africa, India, Indonesia and elsewhere : this is fundamentally the case. Yet whether we are Jew, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Bahai or a member of any other religious faith, we share the same universe; the same planet Earth; the same environment; the same human biology and the same evolutionary process of nature. Clearly then, without a movement toward greater unity as one world and one people, there will be no peace.

Leeds is a modern city, which incorporates people from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds. Their children sit alongside each other in schools, and lie alongside each other in hospitals. Yet the traditions of previous generations present obstacles and barriers to the natural and necessary integration of modern-day communities. It is now imperative that human beings everywhere embrace a vision of the "oneness?" of God and of Humankind. Peace and harmony for future generations depends directly upon the success of this challenge. Of course, such unity will not come easily or overnight, and there will be many objections along the way. Nevertheless an attempt must be made, and where better to begin by way of example to the world, than in our fine city of Leeds?

This matter will not go away, and it is of little use hiding in our Synagogues, Temples, Gurdwaras, Mosques and Churches, and thinking that we can continue safe in our exclusive, cultural and religious, traditions. As intelligent and responsible adults, we have a duty to our children and to our world to address the problem now. If you share our vision, or are in sympathy and agreement with our views, then perhaps you would like to make contact with us, and together - whatever our differences - we might begin to find and establish that vital path to greater unity.

Paul Travis

posted by Charles P Travis | 1:04 PM