I went to the conservatory singer’s rehearsal this week.

They were rehearsing Vaughan

William’s Dona nobis pacem (Grant us peace), a cantata scored for large orchestra and choir,
although in this rehearsal there was only a string section of around 15 people and a piano
covering the other parts, as well as the choir and two soloists. Vaughan Williams drew from a
plethora of texts for the cantata, including the latin mass, sections of the english bible, and
political speeches from contemporary politicians. This was their first time reading the piece I
believe, so they went straight through it. There wasn’t a given harmonic palette for the piece, it
varied between straight hollywood tonal to extended passages of parallel fifths in the choir. In
my personal opinion the piece falls into the same trap most composers writing outside of tonality
fall into, mainly choral writing that lacks a sense of pitch given the nature of the way singers are
trained, and the way certain harmonies resonate less. Schoenberg for example in Moses and
Aron solved this problem in a fairly straightforward way by having the choir doubled at all times
by 6 instruments. The choir, for tuning reasons and timbre reasons, without instruments
supporting it, often simply becomes too thick of a texture to have any sort of pitch recognition.
Other than that, the ensemble rehearsed as most ensembles rehearsed, stopping when people
missed entrances, or when there was a stylistic change that could easily be made. Having sung
amateurly in choirs too it was useful to see how real singers rehearsed, as they were much
more efficient, and put more energy into it too.