The Leading Note – products

You may be interested to know that two different performances of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana will take place in Ottawa in the Spring of 2012. The National Arts Centre will present the work on March 8th and 9th with the combined choral forces of the Ottawa Choral Society, Cantata Singers of Ottawa, and Festival Chorus. Harmonia Choir of Ottawa will perform it April 28th joined by the Crosstown Youth Choir and the Ottawa Brahms Choir. O Fortuna, that’s a lot of Carmina!

Recognizing that over 300 singers in Ottawa will soon be learning Carmina Burana, we have ordered a set of study CDs to help singers learn their parts. Produced by Rehearsal Arts in Connecticut, these learning CDs are based on a recording by the Slovak Philharmonic Chorus and CSR Symphony Orchestra from Bratislava, under the direction of Stephen Gunzenhauser, recorded by Naxos. All choral movements in the work are included with a professional soloist superimposed over the recording to highlight the particular part you are trying to learn (there is a different CD for each voice part in the piece). The CD also includes a selection of “Study Spots” performed at reduced tempi to facilitate learning difficult passages.

Both soprano 1 and 2 are included on the same CD; likewise for alto 1 and 2. The tenor and bass parts are divided onto different discs since they have more material to sing. Each CD retails for $26.95. See the full collection in our online catalogue. We also have the vocal score for Carmina Burana in stock and choral scores can be ordered.

The Leading Note now has a copy of one of those long-neglected treasures of scholastic research, discarded as worthless by ignorant but pretentious academics only to fall into obscurity and forgotten by the collective memory of our culture, following the same fate as the slide rule, the rotary phone, BBS sites, and the definitive biography of the late-great P.D.Q. Bach (which we do, in fact, have on our shelf). Rejected by a dozen or two publishers before finally hitting the press and hailed subsequently as a work of genius (Andre Previn called it “amazing”), Denys Parsons’ The Directory of Classical Themes solved once-and-for-all the ailment that plagues all who suffer from the insidious earworm, allowing even the musical luddite the power to Name That Tune.

Parsons’ ingenious system allows any person, even one without any knowledge of musical theory, to assess and classify the tune she is humming by its most fundamental of features, namely its up and down motion. Got a tune stuck in your ear? The Directory of Classical Themes will identify it for you, immediately removing its mystery and allowing your mind to focus on some other irritating question instead of repeating the God-forsaken melody incessantly while you bathe, eat, sleep and work.

Denys Parsons’ The Directory of Classical Themes: available now without prescription at The Leading Note.