Although written some 29 years ago, this BBC Radio Times article gives a fascinating insight into the daily lives of the Choristers of St.Paul's Cathedral during the late 1970's 

Paul's Children was first broadcast on BBC 1 TV on 17th December 1978

Not for Cathedral choristers the tender indulgences of a family Christmas, for this - the season of special services, anthems and oratorios - is a demanding peak of a busy year. At St.Paul's Cathedral, as BBC1's programme shows, musical and ordinary education must be compounded; even the smallest boy is a seasoned performer. Madeleine Kingsley discovered the school routine behind the ethereal voices.

Christmas is the season when choirboys break out like canaries across our christmas cards. Take your choice between innocence, incarnate, and the cartoon chorister, with frog concealed up one sleeve and quavers flowing from his mouth like rhythmic ectoplasm. But bear in mind that neither image quite reflects reality; a kaleidoscope is what you need to deal with a chorister's existence, at least if he happens to sing in St Paul's Cathedral: Gilbert and Sullivan solos sung before the Queen Mother, Christmas music recorded with musical stars of the day, sports trophies wrested from the Westminster Abbey boys and Common Entrance Latin to absorb.

One evening, long after the average schoolboy must have given up on vulgar fractions for the day, I joined a grey flannelled cohort filing into London's Kingsway Hall. The Choristers of St Paul's Cathedral Choir School had been ferried from the City to record the ripieno treble hymn imposed above the opening chorus of Bach's St Matthew Passion. For just a handful of them, the fragile looking Bell, Walker Mi and tousled-headed Auty, this was to be their first recording engagement, But they, no less then Jones Ma, Head Chorister and off to public school next term, were up to the occasion. With remarkable self-possession they took their places alongside the adult members of the illustrious Bach Choir. The presence of assorted sound technicians intrigued but never flustered them. They responded allegro to an unfamiliar and awe inspiring conductor, Sir David Willcocks; professionals, it struck me, though some still wore short trousers. 'Boys like these,' agreed their choirmaster, Barry Rose, 'are unique in the demands made upon them. We can't treat them like junior cricketers graduating slowly from the Fourth X1 up. At the age of nine, musically speaking, they're already fielding for the First X1.'

When three takes later, Sir David pronounced himself well pleased -- 'Their tone, quality, blend and enunciation were all excellent,' he later told
Rose -- the boys had worked a 15-hour day, earned a pound or two to swell their school bank accounts and were still producing the characteristic pure treble that brings a lump to any but the most insensitive throat

'Back to prison,' the boys groaned -- as all boarding school boys will - on
the coach ride homewards. You might well overlook the low grey, modern
building in the Cathedral's shadow, set back behind barred gates. Here the choristers with eight even smaller probationers, are housed almost as unobtrusively as the cats, caretakers and other residents of the City.
Detractors have described their so-called place of incarceration as a row of water tanks supported by cement pillars, but the building did in fact receive an RIBA design award when it first opened in 1967. It contains its own chapel, an indoor swimming pool. woodwork room, and no less than 13 pianos, one for every three boys. 'As school buildings go,' says Michael Powers, the architect responsible,' it is almost certainly the most expensive, per head of population, in the county.

Up at 7.0 am, half the school in practice rooms by 7.15 am, choir practice at 8.45, nine services a week to sing, as the front line of the Cathedral Choir.....singing in the Cathedral is after all their raison d'etre. ' I tell the boys that every day is a special day in the Cathedral,' says Barry Rose, 'not just Sundays or when the Queen comes.Untill something happens in the Cathedral it is an empty shell, a mausoleum, their job is to bring the place alive with sound,' It is their aptitude--or potential aptitude -- to do this that brings the boys together, from assorted homes in Weybridge, Bournemouth, Norfolk, even from afar away as Cheshire, for a musically based education that is, as ex chorister Sir Charles Groves, now Director of the English National Opera, observes,' beyond compare .' It is no coincidence that, from such a tiny school, two boys left this year with top music scholarships; Nick Carpenter to Charterhouse School and Adrian Butterfield to St Paul's School, Hammersmith.' There's no doubt,' observes
William Llewellyn, the Musical Director at Charterhouse,' that one prick's up ones ears at an application received on behalf of a chorister. Its not just that they've had this marvellous musical training. It is that they also prove to be among the best organised boys in the school. They've led such a busy life that they know exactly how to use time. They seem to have acquired a sense of purpose that sticks,'

Derek Sutton, the choir school's headmaster, himself an ex chorister from York, likes to speak of 'job satisfaction' They're very lively, very fulfilled, little boys. I wouldn't say they were temperamentally different but that the tempo of their lives was different. They don't have as much time as other boys to kick a football around, or, indeed, the green fields to do so; they have shorter holidays than is normal, of course. We're always here over Christmas and Easter.'

By ten o'clock each day the school is well settled into academic work for the day. One of the special attractions for parents is that St Paul's choir boys are educated up to Common Entrance standard for a fraction of normal prep school fees. Until two years ago (1976) the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral were funding a completely free boarding school, and even now (1978) parents contribute only slightly more than £300 a year. just to cover the cost of the boy's food and laundry.' Its definitely changed my life, coming here,' says Paul Phoenix , known to the school as' Flash' for his quicksilver speed on the football field.' I wouldn't have learned much French, and certainly no Latin. I'd be going up to the comprehensive now that I'm 11.'Instead he is found reading French under the sardonic tutelage, of M du Vivier.Meanwhile down the corridor, the estimable Mr Salmon, wielding a broad compass and Brobdingnagian ruler is attempting to teach the eldest boys the rudiments of logic----or was it the factorisation of binomial and trinomial expression? It is also Mr Salmon's lot to take the boys through the three-year Common Entrance science course in two years: 'What with their singing commitments,' he sighs, we just don't have the hours in the day for lessons that other prep schools have. But we do, with the odd exception, get our boys through.Breaktime erupts. 'Will you just listen to them?, cries Matron, Sheila Dare, as the boys spill out.' One thing they are not supposed to do, for the sake of their voices is to scream. But, of course, you cant stop them.' Matron--' I'm the old dragon here, you know'- is SRN is Sheila Dare. She came here responding to an urgent prayer for help, a couple of years ago. Tony Dare, her husband of four years, who has taught the smallest boys for years and is shortly due to retire (as at 1978), brought her out of her own retirement. She is one of those reassuring, no-nonsense Yorkshirewoman that school domestic bursars pray whole-heartedly for when they advertise in the columns of the 'Lady' But generally fail to find, for Matron belongs to a rare breed. 'Well, its a 24-hour job really,' she explains. ' I do everything from darning the boys' socks to cutting up their birthday cakes into 38 slices. I'm nanny and mother -- well I suppose you'd say grandmother now -- to the boys.'

Matron also knows she is bound to keep them on their feet, come what may, even flue. 'Choirboys cant afford to be ill,' she says. 'They have a flue inoculation every year; and I've a patent remedy for sore throats and
fevers. Dissolve an aspirin in water, gargle, and swallow it down, I tell them, Its sounds revolting but it works.'If she is the lady who administers the occasional smack -- 'Well if they're being silly and you've warned them to stop talking after lights out (which most are too tired to do anyway), or splashing water out of the bath, I'll tell them that I do not make the rules but we both have to keep them. If you've threaten, you have to carry out the smack and you know the boys don't hold it against you as long as you're just. They're not like girls in that respect,' not withstanding smacks and soluble aspirin, Matron in her own plainspoken way is the choristers' champion. Each christmas she organises a 'real party' lunch with the vicars' choral (adult members of the choir)---turkey, crackers, nuts. In the past centuries the school could well have done with a Florence Nightingale of the dispensary and dorm. A school for 'Paul's Children' was established in the early 12th century. By the 16th century the boys were being exploited by their choirmaster, who held a royal licence to train them up as boy actors.

A 16th century lay vicar was appalled to discover that 'at the time of
divine service either they use themselves very unreverently in their seats
talking, playing, or else they be running about the choir to gentlemen ...
for money.' In 1833 it was remarked that for the choirboys to go to St Paul's in the winter cold was 'certain death.' It was not until a devout Victorian lady philanthropist, one Maria Hackett. drew attention to 'a subject of general animadversion' that proper provision was made for the boys 'care and education under one roof. Miss Hackett was even moved to write to the newspapers concerning the plight of a certain 16 -- year old boy' whose conduct in the choir had been unexceptionable' - Yet' he cannot play a bar, nor has he been taught to read his notes and has now an education and a business to seek.' In the late 1880's Walter de la Mare was among the boys promptly ejected from the school 'upon the failure of the voice,' It is fortunate that such callous rules no longer apply, for medical research suggests that voices are breaking earlier than ever, and that the average age has dropped over the past century from 17 to 13. Any Monday morning or Thursday afternoon the boys may be observed weaving at full tilt towards Holborn Viaduct en route for a game of football a train ride away at Bellingham.Passers by scatter indulgently as Mehta, Vine and Co charge down the street, sports bags flailing wildly at strange legs. 'Come on Parky'll do his nut if we don't catch this train.' Mr Parker, a heavily-accented Liverpuddlian fresh from Cambridge appears paradoxically the most sympathetic of teachers; its with him that 12-year old Arnatt can most easily discuss the finer merits of heavy rock bands.

Paul Phoenix, Flash of Form Two, Manchester City fan. He misses his bicycle and singing to his sister Nicola's guitar. He is one of those small boy boarders that any mother would long to take home and stuff with sticky buns and pop. But he is the Choirboy with what Barry Rose calls a 'Golden Voice': He's not especially gifted musically; in fact he has given up piano. He came to us without having any instrument at all, which in the old days would have disqualified him at the start. But when I heard him sing, his bit from the hymn "I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say" I made a note in my book," Lovely Voice." Usually my comment will be something like "could be trained," But Pheonix, he has this very rare gift of speaking through the music, an extraordinary gift of communication. He's coming with me to sing in Jersey -- oh you know "gems from his repertoire" -- there is a twinkle in Rose's eye -- like Faure's Agnus Dei. But I want his feet firmly on the ground; I wont have him spoiled or turned into a second Ernest Lough.' Ernest Lough you recall was the 14-year old who sold a million records for his his rendering of 'Oh for the Wings of a Dove' I wont have any of these boys' heads turned. They have to realise that one minute they may be Phoenix or Carpenter or Holden, singing solo's in St Paul's Cathedral, but the next they are going to be very junior boys at a secondary school, who may very well, but there's never any certainty, develop into fine baritones,'Most boys at choir schools today are no longer what they once were, the children of clergy, being pointed to follow in paternal footsteps. Many are the children of professional musicians; Raymond Carpenter and his wife Cynthia, both orchestral musicians in Bournemouth, saw Nick through St Paul's Cathedral Choir School and now have their younger sons there. Jeremy (a clarinettist like his father and Paul (who has started cello). Both their teenage daughters are studying music and they found it an 'ideal solution' when their boys were accepted at St Paul's. Travelling away with the orchestra's meant that we often entrusted the boys to a series of au pairs, which wasn't the happiest of situations. To put five children through private schools -- well, one simply could not do it. And we also felt that the musical education in ordinary schools remains a bit of a Cinderella. How did we know that they were suited to a choir school? Well, if you know what to look for, if they can sing back to you an interval on the piano or tell you the number of notes in a cord, then you can pretty well see when they're quite small if they have a musical ear.Phoenix, however perhaps more than most boys, arrived at the school more by accident than design. True, his father David was once a small Manchester chorister, though of the Sunday Matins-for-half-a-crown variety, but, 'we are' insists his mother Rhoda 'just an ordinary, very happy family. If you'd told me five years ago that we'd be sending him away to school I'd have shaken my head. Not my son. Infact, if Paul wasn't so terribly happy at the school I don't think we could bear the separation 'From the time he was tiny, always singing nursery rhymes and singing above every other infant in playgroup Nativity plays, his parents agreed that he had' quite a nice voice '. When he was seven he was selected to sing in the choir at Manchester Cathedral, an honour which automatically carried with it a place at Cheetam's, the celebrated Manchester Music School. But the Phoenix family could not manage the fees, and, by some quirk of their local Cheshire authority's policy, were not entitled to the grant they could have claimed if they'd lived in the city itself. So Paul carried on happily at his primary school, until his sisters piano teacher drew their family's attention to the Choir Schools Association.' If once he'd been accepted. we had turned his place down, he might always have looked back and said "You didn't give me my chance," Among the cognoscenti St Paul's is becoming known as the cream of English church choirs (which in turn are the envy of the world's) And it does seem likely that the opportunity to have sung under the leadership of Barry Rose may well go down in church music history. Nothing could be farther from the uninitiated's concept of a choirmaster (portly, pious and perhaps a trifle humourless) than Rose's keen, boyish person seen striding out of his grace-and-favour house in Amen Court. Rose spent the early part of his career with his musical talent largely buried inside the ledgers of a Cheapside insurance firm.

As a child, in Chingford, he had been taught to play hymns on the piano, by a little local lady, and he also collected free cinema tickets by playing the organ at the Regal, Highams Park. In his insurance days he took on the leadership of his local church choir and continued to give organ recitals, though now in churches. It was a late return to the office after a midday concert that caused his boss to rap out 'You'll have to decide on your career, you know, Is it to be insurance or music?' 'Music' retorted Rose in a fit of pique, and left. Hard times followed. Finally he was accepted to study at the Royal Academy, but after 18 months when he'd failed all his exams, 'they were about to throw me out, when I was offered the job of organist at the then new Guilford Cathedral, so they gave me a prize instead.'

Some of the boys' voices can now be heard backing pop records; Harry
Nilsson,Rick Wakeman's 'White Rock' and even 'Dont cry for me Argentina,'' I think its terrific for them to have that experience,' says Rose.' I class them as "educational outings "with fish and chips on the way home. They're not allowed to spend the money they earn from the pop world individually though; I think their parents agree with me that to give them £10 for an hour long session is not advisable. So what we've done is buy a colour television -- its definitely the boys', nothing to do with the Dean and Chaptor.'Rose teaches the boys everything from basic notation to advanced musicianship.' They're born mimics, these boys, I don't like cluttering them up with technique and, in fact, all you have to do is place a small boy next to one who can sing top A or C and the young one will pretty soon develop that ability.' Rose describes his handling as a combination of humour with a bit of terror thrown in.

'For us,' says Rose,' Christmas is really the gilt on the gingerbread, the live performance of the Messiah each December finds the Cathedral packed to the hilt. It is hard after such excitement to sing an ordinary service. Remember that adults, let alone children, don't naturally give of their best every day, yet we are asking for a finished performance six days a week, 40 weeks a year.'

Hear the St Paul's Cathedral Choristers sing and one cannot easily forget them. They are perfect professionals, every one.

Madeleine Kingsley
BBC Radio Times. 16-22 December 1978

Article copyright ©  BBC Radio Times

Reproduced with permission.

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