I missed it when they sung it here in 2015, but I did
catch quite a bit of the subsequent internet chatter complaining about it. Of course, many Singaporeans would complain
about having to breathe air, provided they could do so under the cloak of
anonymity on the internet, but having now heard it, I can understand the
controversy it caused in some quarters, and I even have a certain sympathy with
those who complained.
I should have smelt a rat at Saturday’s concert when
Andrew Nethsingha spoke to the audience at the end of the St John’s College
Cambridge Chapel Choir concert. He pointed
out that on their last visit to Singapore in 2015 they had sung an arrangement
of the song “Home” and that they were going to sing it again as an encore. Alarm bells should have been set ringing when
this announcement was not immediately met by the kind of extreme ecstasy which is
more normally reserved to the home side’s winning goal in the match determining
who is going to play at the World Cup final.
After all, the mere mention of the song sends many Singaporeans into the
kind of rapture citizens of other nations experience only after taking illegal
substances.
It may be that the presence of the Prime Minister at
the concert induced a level of communal restraint, or it may have been that the
audience included a very large number of British expats and visitors whose
ideas on concert etiquette differ widely from those of Singaporean
concert-goers. But even the Singaporeans
sitting around me merely applauded politely, and as “Home” was sung I was not
conscious of anyone singing or even humming along with it. Certainly there was none of those awe-struck
noises which usually accompany a foreign group recognising a Singapore icon. My impression was that the audience simply felt
so dissociated from this performance of “Home” that its usual sentimental power
was lost.
For the benefit of non-Singaporeans, “Home” is a bland
tune to which sentimental lyrics have been added. It was composed in 1998 by Dick Lee, and
while the fact that neither the melody nor the lyrics resonate with me means
that it is not a song which I have any strong feelings for, I do appreciate and
understand that for many it is a direct reinforcement of their otherwise unarticulated
feelings towards Singapore. It is not a
national anthem nor a song rooted in the history of Singapore, and it certainly
does not express any sort of religious conviction. As such, it is open to anyone to sing or to
enjoy (or not) without the risk of causing national upset or undermining any
firmly held religious faith; it is simply not the kind of thing which might be
expected to spark controversy when foreigners sing it.
However, even though it does nothing for me, I would be
the first to argue that since there are many for whom it has a powerful emotional
resonance, it deserves respect by those who perform it in public. The Cambridge choir certainly showed great
respect in their performance of it, and sincerely believed that they were
paying due homage to a Singapore icon by singing it in a manner they genuinely
believed to be appropriate; but by doing that, they inadvertently stumbled into
a fertile field of possible offence.
The song had been arranged in such a manner as to suit
perfectly the sound of the choir – an archetypical English cathedral-style
choir of boys and men. With its gently
layered harmonies and richly textured choral writing, it suited the choir to a
tee. A beautifully light-toned and clear
voiced tenor soloist (the kind of voice any cathedral choir would snap up
without hesitation) stood at the front of the stage and sung the melodic line
with its Singaporean-centric words (was it my imagination, or were the words rather
less clearly enunciated than had been the case in the rest of the programme?). The whole thing simply oozed Englishness. This was an arrangement which transformed it
into the kind of thing you could happily slip into a weekday Evensong in any
English cathedral and provided nobody listened too closely to the words (which nobody
ever does at Evensong) would not occasion any comment, other than how nice it
was.
But while the anonymous arranger had done a fantastic
job in transforming “Home” into a piece of beautiful English cathedral music,
he or she had completely expunged those very qualities of the original which
have made it so hugely popular amongst Singaporeans. In a kind of musical equivalent of British colonialism,
this simple Singapore icon had been taken and transformed into something which
was much more akin to the English concept of elevated musical quality.
I loved the sound of the arrangement, but I have lived
in Singapore too long not to recognise that this is not what “Home” is all
about. “Home” is all about appealing
directly and in the simplest possible language to Singaporeans whose taste in
music is confined to something they can hear and sing along to without effort. This was an arrangement which expunged the simplicity
and replaced it with complexity. It was
sung beautifully, of course, but “Home” is not about beauty, it’s about Singapore
and a place where beauty, to resort to a famous old cliché, is very much in the
eye of the beholder.
There was another issue. A purely musical one.
Up to that point in the concert I had loved everything. The singing was wonderful, the music was glorious
and the supreme pleasure of hearing a superb choir performing a vast range of
delectable repertory had been a matchless aural experience. However, when they sang “Home” and made it
sound like everything else they had sung, it suddenly dawned on me that everything
in the programme, whether from the 15th or the 21st
century, whether by an English or a Russian composer, had sounded exactly the same. Gibbons, Parry, Britten, Poulenc,
Rachmaninov, Lee should all have their own unique sound; but they did not. The encore forced me to rethink my whole
impression of the concert, and revise downwards an opinion which had hitherto hovered
around the “Utterly Magnificent” mark.
Performers should think long and hard about the subliminal message they
are sending out in an encore – sometimes, it is better just to leave people wanting
more as they head for home.
Dear Dr Marc, I thought I knew where you were going in this post, but you surprised me. Perhaps the disadvantage of a choir putting so much effort into developing a sound that may be perfect for choral evensong, is that they lose the ability to create other sounds. I have heard a similar complaint of string players who may develop a gorgeous vibrato and rich, but ultimately monochromatic, tone which they apply like shiny varnish to everything from Bach to Bartok.
ReplyDeleteHaving diagnosed the problem, doctor, what’s the remedy ?
I do not think choirs whose performance focus is on providing music for cathedral services - and who do it supremely well - should try and turn it into concert repertory. Choirs like The Sixteen and Polyphony are more geared towards interpretation of repertory and can communicate it out of context in a way cathedral/collegiate chapel choirs cannot.
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