Prominent conductor to direct Messiah this weekend; tutored local music students this fall

by Dan McClelland

A man who has made a significant mark on the musical scene of New York City and beyond as one of the most critically-acclaimed choral conductors of his time will direct the Messiah at St. Alphonsus Church this Saturday, December 21 at St. Alphonsus Church at 1p.m.

Dr. Harold Rosenbaum is founder and conductor of the New York Virtuoso Singers, an internationally known choir now based at St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Manhattan. He and his wife are also seasonal residents here.

Founded in 1988 Dr. Rosenbaum's singers regularly appear with leading orchestras in the nation at various prominent institutions. They commissioned over 100 works and premiered well over 500. Dr. Rosenbaum also leads the Canticum Novum Singers, an ensemble he founded in 1973.

Over the course of his nearly 50-year career in music he has taught at four universities, including the Juilliard School. He has conducted well over 1,600 concerts and has collaborated over 100 times with leading orchestras.

In addition to conducting Saturday's Messiah, Dr. Rosenbaum will also conduct a class on conducting that morning from 11a.m. to noon for those interested in improving their conducting techniques and future teachers.

In recent weeks he devoted some time to share his years of singing and performing expertise with local music students in music teacher Liz Cordes' classes at the high school.

He had stopped at Tupper Arts earlier this year and wondered how he might help advance the arts and music here. The volunteers there immediately pointed him to the high school music department.

The Free Press publisher was invited to sit in on a class in past weeks.

Mrs. Cordes began by taking her students through the pronunciation of the lyrics of a song in Hebrew the class was working on. The song was entitled Ma Navu which means How Beautiful.

She told the two dozen or so male and female students in the high school chorus to begin with a deep breath and hold it.

Their voices began to dance in the music room as the parts shifted in and out in volume and strength.

When Dr. Rosenbaum began to conduct them he asked the students if they were holding back? He wondered if they were singing in their concert voices.

“I would highly recommend you sing a lot louder than that.!”

“You will make a bigger impression on the audience if you are heard more!” he told them.

He showed them how to sing the first phrase in the song and to do it louder.

“Why would you not want to create that sound...that lovely sound?”

They sang it while seating and then again while standing, each time a little louder, while the conductor accompanied them on the piano.

“You did very well,” the conductor said of the later versions of the opening of the song.

He turned the students' attention to the pronunciation of the Hebrew words in the song.

Dr. Rosenbaum noted that this version of the song was arranged by Audrey Snyder. “I'm sure she's wonderful. I've never met her.” He said, however, different editors and arrangers use different treatments with pronunciations. “She is telling you to roll the r's.” He encouraged the students to try it which a few did aloud.

He said some singers can't roll their r's and admitted he was one.

Dr. Rosenbaum joked there were two major reasons he wasn't a famous opera singer. He said he couldn't roll his r's and his singing “sucked.”

For Hebrew pieces he said songs that end in the letter r can be pronounced the American way, which is er. “Or you can thicken the r which is the sound, uh.”

He noted that in the German language all the r's are rolled.

In singing, the “err” sound can be used, the conductor told them.

He asked the students if they knew what a golascal stop was?

He demonstrated by singing “messenger of.” In his first try the words were separate and in the second they flowed together. When the singer disconnects the words it's called a golascal stop.

“When you sing in English, and not all conductors agree, your vocal chords come together for a fraction of a second stopping the air. It's like a mini-cough.” He said it is much easier for the audience to understand the lyrics if there is a golascal stop.

“I like my singers to be understood when they perform.”

He asked the students to sing “peace to all” with and without the golascal stop. When the words were joined it sounded like “peace to wall.”

Dr. Rosenbaum encouraged the students to try to separate their words when singing.

He asked them to sing the word “messenger.”

They finished it with the “er” sound. In English, he reminded them, words to be sung shouldn't end with that sound.

“I'll tell you how to spell messenger: meh..sen...guh.” -And he sang it that way.

The teens in the room repeated after him.

He said it sounds funny when it is sung with an “er.”

Then he turned to phasing while singing.

He played the start of the Beatles song Yesterday two ways to make his point.

The first time he played the first word, “Yesterday” with each part the same loudness. The second time the second note was softer than the first and the third softer than the second. “That's called phrasing.”

“It's the same with every song you sing. You figure out how to pronounce the words and don't emphasize the wrong syllable.” He used the old trick by mispronouncing the word syllable to make his point.

He asked the male singers to sing How Beautiful two ways; the first correctly and the second time when the end of the word beautiful fell right off.

The conductor said many people think the higher a note is on the staff, the louder it should be sung. “That's the furthest from the truth.”

He asked the males to sing with the proper emphasis on the phrase.

He noted at one point that he once played the song Yesterday on the piano in a restaurant for Paul McCartney, who was also dining there.

“You have to sing out...you have beautiful voices and you need to let your parents and grandparents enjoy them.”

Dr. Rosenbaum told the students that he used to teach at Juilliard and he taught those same lessons to them to improve their singing as he did that day.

The students returned to Ma Navu with him conducting and Mrs. Cordez on piano.

It was louder and fuller.

“Much better,” the conductor told them all.

Again he encouraged them to sing the song and they did, doing it in richer fashion.

He told the teens to sing the song like they were singing to younger children in front of them, telling them the story with passion.

The veteran conductor continued with several more drills using that moving piece and the words in it.

The students also performed the song Sing Noel for the conductor.

He said because every performance has visual elements he wondered where had all the happy faces gone. “A performance is not just oral, it's visual too!” He encouraged the singers to smile when they can and to lift their eye brows in excitement.

“Look it even says smile here...look at page 4!” he told the students, looking at the sheet music.

After his instruction finished the obviously appreciative students collectively wished him a robust thank you.

After his session, Harold said his wife's parents bought their current summer home on Lake Simond in 1960 and her family, the Hilberts, have been summering here for decades. For years they lived here summers but since his wife's retirement about five years ago they have been coming to Tupper Lake more often. Their place is next to the long time home of the late Dick and Monica Parent.