Claudia Snowden at The Good Musician gives us this brief synopsis of some of Margaret Hillis' thoughts about conducting.
My dear friend and choral conductor of Princeton Pro Musica, Frances Slade, studied with Hillis at Northwestern U music school, and sang soprano with the CSC. Slade admitted that Hillis expected the utmost from her singers, and as a result of her tutoring, Slade learned to be a better choral conductor. I certainly had a fabulous time singing with her.See the whole post here.
The Volume 21, Number 3 issue of "The Voice of Chorus America" lists eight phrases that gives us a peek at Hillis' thinking about music.
1. Voices are not made for music, music is made for voices. Serve the music!
2. The music is not on the page--only the notes.
3. Enjoy the phrase, don't just be obedient.
4. Listen more.
2 comments:
Ah! You have hit on one of my favorite topics. Thanks for some great memories!
I sang with her in the CSC from 1975-77 (recordings of Verdi Requiem, Beethoven Missa Solemnis, Verdi Four Sacred Pieces, etc.). The phrase I always remembered was, “Sing that phrase like a Frenchman chopping a head of crisp lettuce.” Also, Dr. Hillis’ mantra was “balance to the lowest voice part, see how that warms up the sound?”
She once told me that her family from Ft. Wayne, Indiana, made their family fortune producing barbed wire! Amazing musician and remarkable person!
Oh, and I believe that the concert she filled in for Georg Solti was the Mahler 8th! Solti had tripped getting out of an elevator in the Four Seasons Hotel where he was living in Chicago and hurt himself badly. I was sitting in on the chorus warm up rehearsal when she informed the chorus. She also filled in for him at Carnegie Hall conducting Mahler 8. I believe it was the winter of 1977.
NOBODY knew their scores better than Margaret, except perhaps Julius Herford who taught Margaret the fine art of score analysis.
Thanks for the post!
Very cool. Thanks for refreshing my memory, dave, and for the delightful stories. I would love to have done the Missa Solemnis with her. And it is an especially great memory for me of my mom--the facts about that quick phone conversation we had some thirty years ago long since faded away. Now I will feel especially close to her when I hear the Mahler 8th--thank you so much! I'll forward this gift to my sisters.
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