Reflection 2 of ‘Adiemus’ Winter Concert Practice

Reflection 2 of ‘Adiemus’ Winter Concert Practice

This week, we continued our practice of Adiemus by Karl Jenkins. Adiemus succeeds in creating the impression of an enchanted global youth or female choir. Our intentions this week were to progress further within the song and to work on incorporating the flute more smoothly into the piece. Additionally, we also wanted to ensure that our harmonies were correctly sung, because there were a few instances in which we went off-key or sang the wrong harmony. Since we’re a small group of 6 singers, we’re very quiet, the majority of the time our voices are in the piano dynamic. This may affect our overall performance in the winter concert, as our voices may not be accessible especially with the louder instruments. These few things are what we wanted to achieve this lesson because the above mentioned 3 aspects were what we were lacking in and needed improving on from the previous music lesson.  

We have successfully progressed from last week and tackled some of the problems. This time there was a major difference in Haeun’s flute concerto as it sounded well rehearsed and we easily incorporated it into the piece without any abrupt stops. But the vibrations that the flute has in the original piece, is not similarly resembled in ours, as it requires high technique for it to be achieved. However, the notes are still the same. These aspects were all achieved for the flute playing but it’s not that well represented in the recording since we only had one trial and were running out of time. In the process, we decided to change the dynamics of the piano to piano for a more muted and gentle feel to the piece. This actually makes our voices sound louder. Moving on, we also decided to vary the dynamics of our voices during the piece so that it’ll keep the audience interested and also work on our projection issue. It’s a crescendo as the volume of our voices increases gradually. The first verse is in piano, the pre-chorus is in mezzo forte and the chorus is then forte. The chorus is our strongest and loudest part. This variation in dynamics adds an intriguing touch and makes the piece sound more professional.

In regards to the elements of music, these 8 characteristics are vital for a good piece. Starting off with beats and meter. Beats give music its regular rhythmic pattern and are grouped together in a measure; the notes and rests correspond to a certain number of beats. Meter refers to rhythmic patterns produced by grouping together strong and weak beats. In the original piece it’s 76 beats per minute, we are similarly in the same tempo.

Second is dynamics. They’re used to signify the degree of loudness or softness and indicate whether there is a change in volume in a piece of music. This has already been referred to in the previous paragraph.

The third element of music is harmony.  Harmony refers to the combination of notes (or chords) played together and the relationship between a series of chords, it accompanies and supports the melody. We’ve used harmony in our piece to give it musical texture. There’s a 2 part harmony for the pre-chorus (melody + lower harmony) and there’s a variation to a 3 part harmony in the chorus for strength (lower harmony + melody + upper harmony).

The fourth element of music is key. It’s also known as tonality; a principle in music composition wherein at the end of the piece there is a feeling of completion by going back to the tonic. The key of ‘Adiemus’ is D minor.

The fifth element of music is melody.  It refers to the tune of a song or piece of music. it is the memorable tune created by playing a succession or series of pitches. We kept our melody the exact same compared to the original, because we liked the unique tune and wanted to maintain that same creativeness.

The sixth element of music is pitch. It is the relative lowness or highness that we hear in a sound. The pitch of a sound is based on the frequency of vibration and the size of the vibrating object. The pitch of the voice in the original piece is carefully stylized as to not distract the listener’s attention from the timbre of the voice.

The seventh element of music is rhythm. Rhythm is defined as the pattern or placement of sounds in time and beats in music and tempo indicates how slowly or fast the piece should be played. In the ‘Adiemus’ original piece the percussion section is prominently made up of an up-beat, tribal-like rhythm. We started to incorporate this by adding bongos. Elie will be performing the percussion, although he was added in recently so it’s not there in the recording.

Lastly, the seventh element of music is texture. Musical texture refers to the number of layers as well as the type of layers used in a composition and how these layers are related. This is present in the original piece as the textures are largely uplifting and has classically influenced musical frameworks. Musical texture is represented with the variations in harmony and instruments.

In conclusion, this week was quite productive as we positively tackled most of our difficulties and improved from last week’s session. However, our harmonies are still not completely perfect, we still need to work on the balance between them in the chorus. The chorus is the hardest part for harmonies as there are 3 harmonies that are required to be performed with 6 people. So that mean 2 people per harmony, so it kind of lacks in strength. Improving on this will definitely take this piece to another level. And another improvement for next week would be the incorporation of the bongos. We don’t have a clear understanding of the placement and beats that will be performed using the bongos so we will need to clarify that. But overall, I think we have successfully moved on from last week in a positive manner and have almost perfected the 8 elements of music within this piece.

This is a recording of our piece so far.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVFV6WPpUX8