Boston
Singers' Resource News BulletinJanuary 19, 2005
Exsultemus
is comprised of eight of Boston's leading young singers who rejoice in
performing early music's best-known favorites and rediscovered gems spanning
the Medieval, Renaissance, and early Baroque periods. Modeled after small
estate and chapel choirs, the ensemble performs without conductor, requiring
a close relationship between the singers who must rely upon each other
for musical cues and phrasing, resulting in vibrant and engaging performances.
Exsultemus is committed to historically informed performance, employing
just intonation and period pronunciation based on scholarship by experts
in the field*.
Joe
Stroup: What got you interested in early music, Shannon? How did you
become affiliated with the Boston Early Music Festival?
Shannon Canavin: I've been focusing on early music since college.
While I was still in high school (at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA)
it was suggested to me that, if I was going into music, I should try to
find a place that offered early music. I began my undergraduate studies
at Eastman and it was my good luck that Paul O‚Dette, who is probably
the world‚s greatest lutenist, happened to be there. You can't start
a path in early music any better way than working with him. I started
working with BEMF as an intern after transferring to New England Conservatory,
and after attending my first Festival in 1993 at Paul's suggestion (Paul
O‚Dette has served as Director of Early Music at the Eastman School
of Music since 1976 and is the Artistic Director of the Boston Early Music
Festival.)
JS: Considering that there was already such a strong early music
presence in the area, what made you decide to establish Exsultemus?
SC: Before attending graduate school at Case Western Reserve University
(Cleveland, OH) in 1999, I sang at the Church of the Advent which has
an all-professional church choir that specializes in Renaissance music.
At the time, there weren't any professional "Renaissance choirs"
in Boston, any that weren't associated with a church, anyways. At grad
school I was able to do intimate chamber vocal music and I enjoyed it.
It was something I decided I wanted to do all the time. So I came back
to Boston after graduate school and, after about a year, I decided to
go for it. I invited a few friends to be in the group and scheduled auditions
and just jumped right in. There's a real thirst in this city for this
music, and it's a great privilege to be able to be a part of people's
enjoyment of the repertoire.
JS: Several of your programs are listed on the Exsultemus web site
(www.exsultemus.org). How were
these programs developed?
SC: Usually, the theme comes from a piece of music that I'm particularly
fond of and want to sing and build a theme on it and go from there. There's
an amazing amount of music available, so it's pretty easy to find some
real gems to include on just about any program. More recently, one of
our tenors, Eric Rice (Visiting Assistant Professor and the Director of
Collegium Musicum at the University of Connecticut at Storrs), has taken
on a lot of the artistic planning. As a professional musicologist, he
has a great knowledge of the repertory and the history behind it. My goal
is to have the group be a very collaborative undertaking and have everyone
have a say in all aspects of the group. So we try to get input for music
from the other members of the group.
JS: How do you find and choose your repertoire? Is it difficult
to locate music?
SC: There's an immense amount of music out there that hasn't seen
the light of day in decades if not centuries. The composers were extremely
prolific. You hear a lot about how Bach wrote dozens of pieces a month
because he was constantly having to write for church services. The composers
of the Renaissance were no different. They had to write masses and motets
and anthems for use in church every week and for high holy days, and ceremonial
music for things that were going on at court. Most of the time they were
affiliated either with a specific church or court or both.
Most of my research is at the Harvard Music Library. Having looked through
a lot of music, you get a sense pretty quickly how the lines and the harmonies
will work, and the rhythmic interest, just from singing it in your head.
Then you have to take them to your own group and see how it fits. Sometimes
they work, sometimes they don't. Not every piece will work with every
group so you have to consider the voices you have to work with.
Finding music isn't hard at all despite the fact that a lot of the music
doesn't exist anymore. People were interested in 'the new‚' and once
a piece had been done it was 'old.' I imagine it could be compared with
the pop music of today. A song lasts a couple of weeks and then the song,
and possibly even the artist, is forgotten.
JS: Is there a difference between the way Exsultemus sings music
from these earlier periods and the way we sing today?
SC: Not in the vocal mechanism. Good singing is good singing. Just
what your natural voice is. Technically there shouldn't be anything different.
Some teachers are wary of the early music sound, the straight tone. There
are some groups who go for this 'white‚' sound, but it's not a sound
I'm interested in cultivating. I prefer to use vibrato as musicians of
the time thought of it, as an ornament, not to be used all the time, but
not to be left out entirely. I look for voices that are like this naturally,
that have a kind of roundness, a clearness.
For me there's not much of a difference, no. My voice just happens to
naturally be like that, straighter, though by no means without vibrato,
and suited to that sound. I left Eastman after 2 years after they tried
to mold me the other way, causing a few problems, and was fortunate to
have hooked up with D‚Anna Fortunato at the New England Conservatory,
a wonderful teacher. She is very much about the natural technique, singing
with the true voice, being completely relaxed and supportive.
To answer your question on a different level; making music with other
people is just a very special experience. Whether you're performing unison
chant, Renaissance polyphony, vocal chamber music from the Classical period,
it's all about the communication between the musicians and making that
connection with other people through the music. It's something that spans
every genre and every time period. There's differences in the details
but I think that the overall experience is very much the same.
What's crucial for Exsultemus is having the same group of people working
together for several years. A lot of having the Renaissance choir is the
tone and the blend that can only come with a lot of work together.
JS: Does Exsultemus always sing a capella?
SC: Exsultemus doesn't use instruments on a regular basis. However,
our concert this past fall did include pieces with organ and we have a
program planned two seasons from now with lute. We may also do a medieval
program as a special benefit type concert that will have some accompaniment
with vielle or rebec (two medieval types of drone and melodic instrument).
JS: Your web page says that Exsultemus is 'committed to 'employing
just intonation'. What does that mean?
SC: 'Just intonation‚' was a known quantity in early choral
singing. It's trying to use as many pure intervals as possible. Now, most
people these days perform in equal temperament where there's an equal
distance between each half step. Actual sound intervals that occur in
nature though are of a certain size. It's tricky because, if you're not
careful, you can kind of end up getting off track while you're singing.
We haven't perfected this but w'‚re always striving to get to that
point. Some of our singers are more involved than I am in newer music
and they're constantly having to go back and forth between one type of
temperament and the other. I'm lucky enough to just be living in one world
most of the time. It's something you have to tune your ear to and get
used to the feeling in your voice: what does a pure minor third feel like
when I'm singing it with other people? You have to be able to tune your
ear and your whole mind, I guess. I've found it's much more a sensation
you have to get used to, locking into those pure beatless intervals.
JS: You're Ensemble-in-Residence at The First Lutheran Church of
Boston and perform there regularly. Where else will you be performing
soon?
SC: The staff and congregation at First Lutheran are extremely
generous and supportive of us; just lovely, lovely people. I can't imagine
a better place to have ended up. They allow us to rehearse there, we perform
there, and we take part in a couple services during the year. It‚s
been a wonderful relationship. We also perform at Phillips Academy in
Andover, where two of us attended high school, and that's been a great
privilege as well.
We perform a free community outreach concert each year and we try to present
it in places that are part of that community. For instance, we have planned
a Portuguese & Brazilian program in May. First Lutheran has a Brazilian
ministry, and we'll perform it in a Brazilian church in East Cambridge
and again in New Bedford, where there's a large Portuguese community.
We also have a special project coming up in January 2006. We'll be traveling
to Aachen, Germany, to take part in an event that they‚re planning
at the cathedral there. Eric Rice did his doctoral work there and will
be preparing modern editions of the Regali natus 'the politically-charged
Rhymed Office inspired by Charlemagne's elevation to sainthood' based
on manuscripts housed at the cathedral. We'll present a concert of these
propers as well as 16th-century polyphonic arrangements of them as part
of a larger exhibition at the cathedral.
JS: It certainly sounds like there's a lot of interesting things
to keep you very busy.
SC: Oh, I have ideas for concerts that could take us ten years
into the future. It's fascinating and we're always finding new things.
There's so much to discover. We can never really know how people did things
and what things sounded like. It's more 'learn as much as you can and
use a lot of your instincts.' Early music is a really exciting place to
be.
*
"Early Music," or "historical performance," as defined
on the Boston Early Music Festival web site,
www.bemf.org, is music composed before our time, performed with historically
appropriate instruments and performance styles. From Gregorian chant to
the music of Bach and Beethoven, from the exotic shawm and vielle to the
more familiar baroque violin and harpsichord, the repertoire of this art
form spans a millennium.
-----------------------
Soprano, Shannon Canavin, grew up in Andover, MA and lives in Cambridge.
She holds a Bachelor's degree from New England Conservatory in voice and
theory and a Master's degree from Case Western Reserve University in early
music performance practices. She has studied privately with D'Anna Fortunato
(NEC) and Ellen Hargis (CWRU, Cleveland) and has taken master classes
with Julianne Baird (Rutgers, Camden, NJ) and Laurie Monahan (Longy, Cambridge)
among others. Shannon Canavin has worked on the staffs of Early Music
America and the Boston Early Music Festival, where she is currently the
General Manager.
Exsultemus members include BSR subscribers Theo Lobo, mezzo-soprano; and
Jason McStoots, tenor, as well as Shannon Canavin.
Listen to Exsultemus in concert by linking to: http://www.exsultemus.org/