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We are seven weeks into the Fall term, and, in addition to the large choir, we now have a Chamber Choir of 22 students and a 'Girls Only' choir. This latter group is brand new - and it's proving popular. Girls always outnumber boys in choirs by a large margin, and so an all- female group could be said to be long overdue. I have also heard rumours of a male 'Barbershop' group that rehearses and meets in secret. I am very content to let them chart their own path. October has also been a big 'Bach' month, as we will be singing a movement from Cantata 147 at the November Mass. The industry and artistry within the cantatas is astonishing. He wrote over two hundred - one for every Sunday of the church year over a four-year cycle. The majority were written for St Thomas Church in Leipzig, where he spent the last twenty years of his life. What was it like to go to St Thomas's on a Sunday morning in 1742? First of all, the service started at 7 a.m. and went on for about four hours -with a very long homily and, of course, a newly composed cantata. For Bach there must have been constant frustration. His letters often mention having to discipline the choir boys; in addition, the town players often did not have the musical skill to pull a work together in two or three rehearsals - and the soloists were of a temperamental nature. No matter, Sunday morning was the performance, and then the cycle started all over again. Did the congregation in Leipzig realize what they were hearing, or did they value the name of J.S. Bach? Probably not. They had no idea that this man's music would become universal -that it would transcend its Lutheran origins, and that, across the planet, millions of children would be learning Bach at the piano, orchestras would be playing his Brandenburg Concertos, and students in a choir school in a city that didn't even exist when Bach was alive (i.e. Calgary), would be trying to get their heads around his music and the German language. Malcolm V. Edwards Senior Choir outreach to Manor Village, followed by refeshments and mingling.
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Malcolm EdwardsMalcolm Edwards was born in Halifax, England and emigrated to Canada in 1967. He is a graduate of Sheffield College of Education (UK), Trinity College of Music, London, the University of Lethbridge, the University of Montana and has done further graduate work at the University of Northern Colorado. He taught music in junior and senior high school for twelve years in southern Alberta before joining the University of Calgary as a Professor of Music Education in 1980. He retired from the university after thirty-one years of service in 2011. In the community he was affiliated with the Youth Singers of Calgary for 21 years directing the Act Three and Senior divisions. In his retirement, he is now employed as an Adjunct Professor of Music at St Mary’s University, as the Artistic Director of the Calgary Men’s Chorus and as the Senior Choir Director at St John’s Choir Schola. He has held leadership positions within the Alberta Choral Federation, the Association of Canadian Choral Communities, served on the Board of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and is active as a choral adjudicator and workshop leader in schools and churches. He is the recipient of two awards from the Provincial Federation – one in recognition of advocacy in arts education and the second in recognition of exemplary service to choral music within the Province of Alberta. In 2004 he received recognition from the national body (ACCC) for twenty-five years of service to the Canadian choral community. Archives
November 2024
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