Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Many thanks
for being our audience tonight. We're going to start the show with three
pieces from the English Renaissance. The first two are by William Byrd. The first one is his setting of words
from Psalm 118 - ''Haec dies quam fecit Dominus''. ''This ls The Day Which The Lord Has
Made, Let Us Rejoice And Be Glad ln lt''. The Catholic William Byrd was probably
able to remain in favour with the Protestant Queen Elizabeth by presenting her
with the occasional musical gift. This next piece may well be
an example of that - ''O Lord, Make Thy Servant Elizabeth,
Our Queen, To Rejoice ln Thy Strength''. ln 1601, the composer, Thomas Morley,
compiled a set of madrigals called ''The Triumphs of Oriana'', which was presented as a gift
to Queen Elizabeth I. Oriana was one
of the queen's nicknames. All the madrigals end
with the same chorus - <i>Then sang the nymphs</i>
<i>and shepherds of Diana</i> <i>Long live fair Oriana</i> We have chosen to sing what we feel
is the best madrigal from the set, containing some very fine examples
of musical word painting. ln Thomas Weelkes' ''As Vesta
Was From Latmos Hill Descending'' the goddess Vesta is on top of a hill
with her entourage of nymphs. They see the goddess Diana
coming up the hill with her shepherds. The nymphs decide they would rather be
with the shepherds than with their queen
and so they leave poor Vesta all alone and bring Weelkes neatly
to the obligatory refrain - <i>Then sang the nymphs</i>
<i>and shepherds of Diana</i> <i>Long live fair Oriana</i> The group began as six students
of approximately the same age. lf they weren't friends outside the choir
of the King's College Chapel they probably wouldn't
have got together. The group was founded there in 1968. At that time there weren't really
any other groups, certainly in England, who did this sort of music
to that sort of level. lt's important for us to believe
that when a person joins the group, that person will be easy to get on with. This is going to turn into
a unique recording. Very, very unique. Very unique. We spend more time as a group
than with our wives and girlfriends. A hundred concerts is half the year
away from home, half the year out of the UK, half a year living with five other guys. Hello, Nicole. Very nice to meet you! - Smile.
- lt's nice to meet you. ''News At Ten'',
that was Robin Tyson. We certainly get on well together and have a good laugh together. l think that's reflected
in the music making. lf you're not good friends,
it's easy to see that, in a concert or indeed
in a recording scenario. lf you're not getting on, then everything
is at least ten times harder. Madrigals form a very important part
of the King's Singers' repertoire. You just heard an English madrigal. Here now are four European madrigals. The first by Lassus
is ''Dessus le marché d'Arras''. And in this, a woman at market
is approached by a Spanish soldier as he wanders his way through France.
''How much?'' he enquires of her. She gives him a price, they seem
to agree and they go off together. Now, the madrigal doesn't tell us
exactly what it is she's selling. We think we know but because we're
British we'd rather not say. We are a touring group. We perform about
a hundred concerts a year. So that takes us
to a lot of interesting places. We tour six months of the year. We're very popular in Germany,
particularly. We now do
thirty to forty shows there a year. And they are nearly always sold out,
so that's great. And ltaly as well. We're popular in France,
and in America as well. We've just been in Taiwan and Japan. We haven't visited those countries
for about five years. So there was some rebuilding to do
in terms of the audience, and in that respect it was a very
successful tour with good audiences. People remembered us,
which is great. And it's always good to take
your own brand of music to another part of the world. When l think about the people
we perform to in those territories, they're incredibly enthusiastic. Particularly in Taiwan where,
for some reason, we're like pop stars. We're not used to being screamed at
by young ladies and that happens to us in Taiwan. lt all gets a bit too much sometimes. When you get to the last show on tour when people are doing funny faces
behind the camera itself... ...it just gets too much and you decide
to do an impression of a dog instead. The only way to stay sane, if you're in a foreign country
doing concerts night after night and you've got a bit of jetlag,
is by mucking about a bit. lf you get six blokes together
anywhere in the world l think you get a bit of laddish behaviour
here and there. lt helps to make the job
incredibly enjoyable and a lot of fun. lt's a good bunch of people at the
moment. We have a really good time. The second European madrigal
is also from France. lt's by Pierre Passereau
and it's called ''ll est bel et bon''. We find a group of women
discussing their husbands. One says, ''My husband is great.
He does all the housework, ''he never beats me,
he feeds the chickens, ''and leaves me
to do whatever l want.'' ln the background to this madrigal we hear some chickens
clucking around their feet. Or is that the women themselves? Two madrigals from ltaly now. The first is by Carlo Gesualdo, a prince of Venoza who is famous
for murdering his wife and her lover and then regretting it forever. Because he was a prince he wasn't
beholden to any master to write music. He could write exactly what he wanted -
music that came from the heart. We're about to sing
''Luci serene e chiare'' which is his tribute to a woman's beauty. Our second ltalian madrigal is by
the master himself, Claudio Monteverdi. lt's called ''Si ch'io vorrei morire''. And the text says, ''Yes, l want to die. ''When l see your face,
your lips, your mouth, ''yes, l want to die.'' lt's just choir one,
we're just going to go to... Twenty five - exactly.... We're recording ''Spem ln Alium''
by Thomas Tallis. A piece with eight choirs and forty parts. lt's a very special piece because it's the largest scale
choral work that came out of England, certainly in the Renaissance period. Very few works have emulated
this sort of scale, even nowadays. lt's just bizarre, basically.
lt really is. Forty parts! <i>Spem in alium</i> means
l've never put my hope or my trust in anyone else than you. lt's a clear reference to...
a cry to God, really. Tallis lived from 1505 to 1585, so the piece dates from
the middle of the 16th century. As to why it was written nobody knows. Probably the most
successful suggestion is that it was inspired by
a visit to the UK, well, England at the time,
by the ltalian composer Striggio. Striggio wrote a piece called
''Ecce Beatam Lucem''. And l think a bit of English pride said, ''OK, if the ltalians can do this
we should do it as well.'' And l think just given the pure fact that people often sing or record
''Spem ln Alium'', and no one really knows much about
''Ecce Beatam Lucem'', you could say
that Tallis won the battle. lt's Thomas Tallis' 500th birth year
anniversary in 2005, and what better a way to celebrate than by doing his masterpiece
in a new way. The six of us sing together the whole
time. We know each other very well. When we're on tour we live and breathe
our music together. Why not take that home,
go to a recording studio, see what we can do with a fantastic
piece of music - do something new? We continue now with four works
from the early 20th century. Our first is a setting of a folksong by
the Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodaly. ln ''Esti Dal'', a soldier prays
for protection through the night. We sing now ''Onnis on inimene'' by the obscure Estonian composer,
Cyrillus Kreek. For this work, Kreek has mixed words
from the Psalms with wonderful folk melodies
from his homeland. ln any competitive, commercial market, you've got to push
the boundaries all the time. You've got to be trying stuff that's new. You've got to be doing things
that no one else is doing. For that reason l think we're doing the
right thing, attempting ''Spem ln Alium''. lt's a big thing for us, because the King's
Singers only have six members. lnstead of getting people in to make up
the other parts, we're doing it all. With forty parts
and only six King's Singers we have a fundamental problem. Six into forty doesn't go, terribly well. So that was part of the challenge for us. lt was a case of sitting down
and deciding who should sing what part and when. This is my way of, in the studio, using all the technology available
to create basically a template where we can sing on top of ourselves
if you like, over dub to create all
of the extra 34 parts. The voice parts will be distributed
in such a way that no one person will be singing
the top part all the time or the bottom part all the time. The last thing we want
is to draw attention to the fact that there are only six of us singing
by having the same melody, the same tune sung by the same guy,
only a couple of beats apart. We had to go through
with a fine tooth comb and work out that if l was singing a tune in one bar Philip, the other baritone,
would sing the same melody when it reappeared
a couple of bars later to give the illusion that there were
more than six of us singing the piece. To be honest with you, when we get
to the end it might be dreadful. lt might sound horrible. l'm hoping not, because it's going to take
a long time to do this. Next, Max Reger's setting
of the Agnus Dei, ''Das Agnus Dei''. We finish this group of songs
with another piece by Cyrillus Kreek. Psalm 121 - ''l Will Lift Up Mine Eyes Unto The Hills
From Whence Cometh My Help''. You're singing completely different parts
and they are interweaving. You might come in on a lead, and then
hear yourself again a few bars later. That's a completely unique experience. l don't think it's been done before. We had to work out a map going
from beginning to end of the piece, so that we had a template
to which we could work in terms of tempo and pitch. And then the recording team could use it to piece together all the different takes
like a jigsaw puzzle. Ultimately, we hope, all the layers
will build up one on top of another. l don't know if you can see this list,
it's part of the score. lt's just enormous. You've got all eight
choirs, forty voices singing at once. And obviously there's going to be five or six of each of us - in some cases,
eight - coming through. As soon as we've recorded
a certain number of bars the next group of singers as it were,
that come onto the recording need to be exactly in time with them. So one of the tracks on the board ticks in your headphones. So you know exactly
where you are in the piece and you're able to sing with the voices
already recorded. Seven... Eight... Nine... There's no way we could sing
in the same tempo for eight different choirs
without that guide. We've come to understand the piece,
we look at the lines properly and this click helps us. Rather than being a slave to it,
it's just helping us along. And when it's all stuck together, it will all come together properly. When we started to record it, the music immediately
came shining through. lt's fantastic music,
we're all having a great time. Just luxuriating
in the slow-moving harmony and just loving the arpeggio lines. We're having a great time. We move further into the lighter side
of the group's repertoire with arrangements of spirituals
and pop songs from the 20th century. First, we sing
''Down To The River To Pray'', a traditional spiritual
made more famous recently by its inclusion in the soundtrack
for the film ''O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' No King's Singers concert
would be complete without at least one Beatles song
and we have two for you now. The first, ''Honey Pie'',
tells of a young girl who travels from her home city
of Liverpool to Hollywood to become a movie star. This is the song
that her boyfriend sings to her. We think we have got a way
where we can record it and slightly...
almost put a slightly different hat on when we're in a different choir. So almost singing slightly differently. With the human voice you can go
from a very soft whisper. To a very harsh sound. And then you can create
a complete contrast by singing... There's much more breath in that sound
and much less edge to the sound. lf l'm going to speak like this... or whether l'm going to speak like this... it's the same as how an actor
would use his vocal colours. lt's not just loud and soft. We might use a very breathy quality
rather like pop singers would do as if we're close to a microphone. At other times we'd go flat out
as if we were singing ''Messiah''. And in between those extremes
there are all sorts of other colours, lt can almost sound like
two people singing. Performances of this piece normally
have mistakes in them. Because it's impossible
to coordinate 40 singers. lnevitably you'll be able to say, ''Look, you can hear seven Phils
and five Chris','' and, ''Oh, look, there's another
eleven Steves going along.'' And that is going to be weird
in some ways. But in other ways
perhaps the performance will sound more coordinated
than some of them do. But obviously some purists
will not like the concept of it. The second of our Beatles' songs
is the beautiful ''Blackbird''. We're singing a piece
that was written for boys, but today it's sung by women
and it's pretty high set. There's a soprano part,
so it's a little bit too high even for David - our top countertenor
who can sing phenomenally high. We solved that by putting
the whole piece down one tone. On occasions
l'm singing the top soprano part. The danger is that it might sound
a little bit like a multi-tracking piece. So, by introducing my voice
up to the top, it spreads the load and it relaxes the ear a bit to have
some other kind of sound going on. lf we all sang at the same volume, inevitably the higher voices
would predominate in an acoustic. And so you have to try
and find a foundation that gives an equal balance
between the voices. The sound is like a pyramid. lf the bottom block is in place,
the next one fits on top and David's is on the top.
We sometimes refer to it as a Christmas tree with the fairy
on the top. But he doesn't like it! The unfortunate part
of the Christmas tree analogy is that when my colleagues talk about it, speaking as the person
who sings the top part, they then say, ''Of course, you have the
fairy on the top of the Christmas tree.'' And l like to point out that l have a star
on the top of mine! We now turn ourselves
into a jazz combo band as we play for you Duke Ellington's
''Creole Love Call''. Our next song was originally
by the British rock group, Queen. lt's called ''Seaside Rendezvous''. The King's Singers recorded it
in the same studio where Queen themselves put down
the original ''Bohemian Rhapsody''. So, sit back, relax. lmagine yourselves
on a hot summer's night by the Mediterranean
with a glass of wine in your hand as we sing for you
''Seaside Rendezvous''. The music of Billy Joel has provided
the King's Singers with a number of arrangements
over the years. Our next song was arranged
by our baritone, Philip Lawson. lt's taken from Billy Joel's album,
''River Of Dreams'', and it's called
''Lullabye (Goodnight My Angel)''. This is a creative process
that's happening here and now. For instance, there was one point
where we hadn't really thought about it, it was the word<i>crea-tor,</i> We are, in England, very lazy about
the way we use our consonants. But obviously for the ltalians
it would be much more<i>creatorrr,</i> with a nice rolled 'R' at the end. And in a way you don't want
to ignore the 'R', but you don't want to make it sound
weird and too ltalianate. The other thing l am hearing is a really
quite ugly 'R' on the end of<i>creator,</i> - That's what l heard.
- Can it not be quite so vocalised? Without actually sounding anything
on the 'R'. That's more of a philosophical point. So they agree on that.
They all should do the same whatever. lt's a good example
of how we listen to each other and we hear these things and there's
then a long-winded discussion as we decide
what we're actually going to do. lf you all do different things,
that would be great. Sounding completely inconsistent,
with forty singers, it should be perfect. Then it won't sound like
you're doing it to a 'click'. lf it's going to be a little 'R',
it just needs to be a single<i>'',,,tor'',</i> When everybody's tired
it can take a longer time to decide. We don't have a musical director,
so it's six musical directors. Now it's the turn of Mr Rossini
to revolve slowly in his grave as we play for you his overture
to ''The Barber Of Seville''. And so to one of lreland's best known
and best loved folk songs. The beautiful ''Danny Boy''. The strange thing about this piece
is because it's written in eight choirs it's not meant to be sung
as individual choirs. lt's supposed to be performed
all together. lt feels very disjointed,
just singing choir one for ten bars. Then just singing choir two for ten bars because you might not have
any form of melody in any of those parts that you're singing
and it sounds ridiculous. lt sounds as though
lots of bits are missing. Every now and again the producer
puts all these choirs together for us and plays them through the loudspeakers
and it really sounds quite magnificent. So this is where
we're into the right tonality. We just heard a special bit,
just one little phrase. And it was magic. But having said that,
the rest of it might be dreadful! We're coming towards the end of it now.
lt is a bit tiring on the voices. After all,
we're being asked to record eight choirs so it's about eighty minutes
worth of music. So it is tiring but as we've come on
through the work it's really getting under our skin. lt's fantastic to see
how Tallis put everything together. At the beginning which was probably
some thirty hours ago now, l felt slightly lacking in confidence
in our ability to pull this off and to make it sound really impressive. Now that l've heard eight choirs
singing together and our voices majestically sweeping
through the piece, l'm very excited. The ending was perfect.
