| | 
London, England. June 2001.
| Shamefully, it took me almost thirty years from the time I first listened to English sacred music to attend my first evensong. On our first day in London, my wife and I, feeling jet lagged and not much more than semiconscious, wended our way to St Paul's to hear the men of the choir. London appeared to be trying to provide its tourists with a complete weather experience in its most compressed form--alternating between cold and warm, cloudy and sunny, rainy and clear every few minutes. Perhaps this discouraged attendance or perhaps the absence of the choristers did that, but there were not a lot of us there that day. We congregated in seats in the nave until a verger led us to seats in the choir-though not the choir's back row; that is everywhere reserved for members of the institution or special guests. The intimacy of this arrangement, amidst the vastness of the cathedral, was startling and impossible to imagine in any virtual mode. The narrowest of aisles separated the choir members from the congregation. If they had put scores in our hands, we would have had no excuse not to sing. |
| 
Click on picture
At the same time, Evensong permits and encourages the most private reflection. I live in a part of the Midwest where churches demand more and more public expressions of faith in loud evangelistic services and in involvement in parish activities and highly visible good works. Evensong gives its congregation more personal space, and the service at St Paul's this day was the most private of all. No hymns for the congregation to sing, no responsive readings, no out-loud recitation of the creed or the Lord's Prayer. Our required participation was limited to the respectful standing at the appropriate times. Another fact I had not known: One stands for the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis! No wonder these are sometimes written with such economy and focus; indulgent composers would wear out their audience. |
The conductor this day was not John Scott, but a young left-handed (bravo!) assistant. His conducting encouraged expressiveness and he delivered a strong ensemble, but the musical forces were formidable and like the Englishman with his Great Dane on the Heath, one wonders if the man was walking the dog, or the dog the man. The very first track on my very first LP of English sacred music was Tallis's brief anthem, "If Ye Love Me." Those two minutes of Tallis have come to be my emblem of perfection. Our reason for fighting jet lag was that the vicars choral were to sing this anthem this day. Without trebles on the top line, the altos had some serious work, but it was beautifully performed, as was the Vann Rochester Service and the long psalm. We were provided with psalters so that we could follow the psalm. Psalm singing is a specialized art, and to those who know how to listen, a good way to hear how choirs individualize their evensong services. As we left the cathedral, my wife (the professional musician of the family) explained how the choir had followed strict rules of counting beats and patterns of intoning. We were to discover how much different choirs could vary these rules. |
Evensong with men only is a good way to start. The choristers inevitably become the center of attention, and one forgets how much of the musical strength comes from the hard work of the adults. And the brief glimpse of jeans under cassock didn't spoil things a bit. |
We were advised early on that the choirs published their music lists on the web. The Cambridge choirs were the most efficient in this (a good month ahead), but the London choirs had their lists up with a couple of weeks for us to plan. Our second night in London took us to Westminster Abbey, where, I had read, the cathedral choir would be singing the Tallis "If Ye Love Me" as the introit. We were late that day. Conversation to my wife (who was seeing London for the first time) as we came up out of the underground: "Look over there, Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, but hurry up; we're going to be late!" We did arrive just in time and were seated at the front of the north transept. |
While the St Paul's service had about 50 in attendance, there were two to three hundred at the abbey this Friday night. We could glimpse the choir but could not see the conductor. Again, a lump hung in my throat as I heard my favorite Tallis anthem, though there was either an extra measure awaiting a treble entry or (more likely) a too-early entrance by the basses-quickly and seamlessly fixed. We had no psalters to follow the psalm, sung much more melodically here. There was no organ in this service. The choir processed in silence and sang unaccompanied. The unaccompanied singing was a joy, but the absence of the organ at the beginning and the end made you realize how much that instrument contributes. I don't know if this is true throughout England, and the only explanation I found was that Friday's service was "not a festival." I vote for a change in policy; surely organists don't need a day off once in a while. |
I went to England with a couple of questions about Evensong that I knew could not be answered by books or CDs. The project of daily sung services makes the extraordinary into an ordinary routine. Although Evensong is not a concert, but a service, it is a performance. Some would declare that it is a performance whose audience is more than the mortals sitting in the church. To sing for others something different every day is a tall order. How could people accommodate their lives to what sounds like a massively oppressive routine? In particular, how could boys of this young age learn huge quantities of music and also survive daily services with long recitations of difficult passages from Isaiah and Deuteronomy? At the abbey, and at every other service we attended with choristers, I noticed when they weren't singing a kind of Brownian motion-a constant shifting and bumping in the choir stalls, hands to face, hands to hair, fingernails to mouth, tying of shoes, exchanged glances and knowing smiles-all things that have likely been forbidden by directors and would be considered major transgressions in concert, but were apparently being tolerated here. And for good reason. Such activity, never conspicuous, is well masked by the choir stalls, and I think it indicates good signs of life and comfort with and accommodation to the austere services. The choristers have discovered their survival techniques. When the choristers were singing, there was another kind of Brownian motion-with the heat turned up-constant movement of eyes to music and eyes to conductor and of the whole body with the music. However much attention might drift during the recited lessons, it was always dead on to the music when it needed to be. The intensity of the commitment to singing the service well was constant throughout our trip.
When we set out to London, we had several objectives, only one of which was to attend evensong. I had thought we might attend five or six times. But after these first two, we were addicted and went every night of our two-week stay. This, I fear, is a warning that there is more to come, but this installment has already gotten too long. |
NORFOLK
Norwich is a city that preserves its ancient heritage while at the same time assuring its citizens the amenities of a living and changing world. An entire modern shopping center sits at the center of town-out of site, underground. Every time one turns a corner, there's another beautiful church or pre-Tudor building, many sadly empty, and some put to other uses. | | 
The Norman cathedral is magnificent, and it rests in the largest cathedral close in England so that its glories are not hemmed in by civic and commercial enterprise.
Click on picture |
| Ron Sherlock was our gracious host and not only showed us the city as it is now, but also helped us to see how it changed over the years. The history is so obviously and exponentially older than what I am used to in the American midwest, I wanted to take it all in. Ron suffered my merciless cross-examination with patience and good humor.
The Saturday we were there, the regular cathedral choir was resting. In its place was a visiting choir, the choristers, likely top performers in their parish choirs, had attended a course, the culmination of which was the cathedral performance. They wore the cassocks of their local choir, so we had a rainbow under white surplices. Their musical program was formidable-Leighton's Magdalen Service and the Ireland Te Deum. Too formidable probably for a freshly formed group of voices to master in a short period. There was more struggling than there needed to be. If they had chosen simpler canticles, then I think they could have delivered the rest more forcefully. But everything that could be sung in the service was sung, including descants on the hymn-the only descants we heard in two weeks. The choir got a complete exposure to all the facets of singing Evensong. The choristers were, not surprisingly, more self-conscious than the established choirs, and perhaps a little nervous. One spent much of the performance fingering the elaborate carving on the choir stalls. | | 
Others did not know what to do with their eyes and settled on staring at the ceiling (stone, fan-vaulted, stunning).
Click on picture
|
| The congregation was small, but we recognized the looks on what were clearly parental faces around us. We had seen such looks before--after successful baseball and soccer tournaments--and we understood completely why we should find them here.
My wife Susan is a pianist, and we didn't consider any service over until the organ voluntary was complete. We would otherwise have missed some of the finest music. The Norwich Cathedral Organ is powerful and colorful, and the service ended this day with a jig-like piece that showed off all the colors in variations of a theme; it built to a fortissimo that was searing in its brilliance. Wish I knew what that piece was but only the most industrious of choir organizations include these details in their music lists. |
| | The late Sir John Betjeman said "Norfolk is one of the great architectural treasures of Europe because of its medieval churches. Their profusion is their greatness. There are 659 of them". |
| SUFFOLK
Sunday provided a chance to attend two services. Again under Ron's wise guidance, we visited Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk and saw the ghost of the second largest abbey in Europe. Only bits of wall and foundation remain (thanks to the Tudor rending of power from the monks), but as we stood in a sizable, lovingly kept, municipal park, we could reflect that had we been standing in that spot six centuries earlier, all this open space would have been enclosed by the abbey church--like imagining the mother ship descending from the skies |
| | | | 
| |
Click on picture above |
St Edmundsbury Cathedral is happily still under construction; nice to see a cathedral in its growing and expanding phase. We were late to mattins and sat towards the back of the nave. The choir was doing very well with the Collegium Regale by Howells, and Byrd's lovely "O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth," but in the nave the experience was quite different. The sound had much more time to bounce around before reaching our ears. If one knew the music, one could make good sense of the sound. Otherwise, the effect was one cherished in cathedrals-music coming from ethereal distance. Ron knows this venue well, and I first heard its efforts on a CD which I can recommend: the St Edmundsbury Choir Christmas CD, Advent to Candlemass, a Lammas recording with some fine solo work. After the service, we crossed to a coaching inn memorialized in Pickwick Papers, to have a real ale (Adnams) and thereby participate in a hallowed tradition of these choral services; Howells and Adnams are a perfect blend. CDs don't tell you that. | |
CAMBRIDGE
Our second service took us to Cambridge and King's. Observing my own children singing in the local children's choir, I knew that the single most important part of their musical experience was the rapport with their conductor. So when I finally had the chance to hear King's, I very much wanted to be able to watch this interaction between director and singer. The weather was brisk and a bit rainy, more March than June, and within a week of end of term, exams were on, as were a profusion of end-of-term concerts by a variety of musical organizations. Though one could expect attendance at Evensong to be down as a result, I, obeying all my Type A impulses, was ready to queue more than a hour ahead-much to the suppressed consternation of my traveling companions. The porters were very strict about early admission (the college being closed for exams), but managed the queue (not so long as it might be) with complete fairness and decorum. (I mention that here because I will report a quite different situation in London later .) | |
 |
Click on picture | | |
We were led into the most perfect building I have ever seen with seating in the choir that allows quite a number of people to feel intimately part of the service. I had waited many years for this opportunity, and I think my information processors were on overload this day. While the impressions are vivid, I have lost some of the details of the performance. The music was big-Day in B flat; Elgar's Great is the Lord. As a benchmark of rapport with one's choir, Stephen Cleobury did not disappoint. He conducts from the side. Virtually all his hand motions are within the outline of his torso, so that standing directly behind him, one might not know he was conducting. His economy of motion along with his connection to his choir was impressive. He would raise a finger and before it had finished moving a half-inch, one could hear a change in the sound.Dr Cleobury was in complete command of the famous acoustic of the chapel. He seemed to be conducting not just the original sound but its echo and decay, and No One Sat Down until the chapel had completely finished with the sound. One of the choristers, at the Cleobury's elbow, was perhaps new and was getting some covert special attention from the director, not stern, but encouraging. So this is how one breaks in one's new singers.
These masterful, professional choristers became just like every other group of choristers we saw when they were not singing. Considerable Brownian motion behind the music stands. Nothing overt. Fidgeting and occasional peeking out under the music stands, exchanged meaningful glances across the choir. Yes, of course, as adults and professionals, we might question such behavior, but gad it's nice to know there are human beings lurking behind those astonishingly adept voices. | |
| The next day my wife Susan and I had travelled to Ipswich , where another gracious host, Ted , chose to show us the roots of the cathedral tradition in some of the hundreds of ancient parish churches that define the landscape of Suffolk and Norfolk. Each offers up something uniquely its own--from pew carvings of mythical beasts, to castle-like hidden circular staircases to galleries and curates' rooms. These churches would likely have had choirs of men and boys at one time, but sadly none do now. | |
CAMBRIDGE
I got completely wrapped up in the parish churches, and it required an extraordinarily liberal interpretation of the speed limit for our host to return us to Cambridge. But return we did and in time to secure good places for Evensong in the choir at St. John's. This Victorian chapel does not quite have the resonance of King's, but it provides an extended arrangement of opposing pews that allows a goodly number to share the intimacy of the service. Evensong began with an introit (Stanford's Justorum animae) sung in the ante-chapel, the choir out of sight, but their sound clear and near. The service continued with less weighty pieces than those of the previous weekend-Sumsion in G, and Bullock's Give us the wings of faith. More transparent music and therefore a test of a different kind, one which the choir, of course, passed with sweet and clear singing and just enough jostling of interpretation to make one hear the music anew. The anthem was wonderfully fresh.
We were able to spend another day in Cambridge and had to make the difficult choice of which evensong to attend the next night. My wife, with a bit of a cold, was not willing to attempt the sprint necessary to do both, and timing made St John's a better choice for us. The music this second night was much bigger and allowed this very expressive choir to soar. At the end of their rendition of the Howells Magnificat from the New College Service, I felt like I was suspended twenty feet in the air. "This is a very dangerous choir," I thought as I fell back to earth with a thud.
In many ways, St John's seemed the most relaxed of all the choirs we saw-not in a casual or arrogant way, but in conveying a sense of comfort with the activity and confidence in their ability to perform their role well. This was in marked contrast to their director, who seemed to absorb all the angst of the performance into himself. At the beginning of the service, Mr Robinson appeared stern and downright dour. The worry disappeared, though the intensity remained, once the choir began singing. Like his counterpart down the lane, he conducted from the side with encouraging glances to soloists and minimal, but extremely efficient, hand motions, which though effective, seemed almost superfluous since I am convinced from the near-perfect ensemble that there was some sort of Vulcan mind meld-men, boys, and director--going on. By the end of the service, the director had been transformed into a new ebullient, smiling self. I can see how this choir can find so much satisfaction in its work.
And the heat seemed to be up, both with the intensity of movement-serious and vigorous-while singing and with an increased level of Brownian motion, knowing nods, occasional giggles, tying of shoes, and crossing of legs when kneeling at prayer (how do they do that?). I did not sense any disrespect in the behavior of the boys or the men, and when they were singing, there was rarely anything but complete concentration. If the choristers' attention flagged during the reading of an obscure, complex jeremiad, then they were not alone. I certainly would not want to have to pass a quiz afterwards, and I wonder how well the men in the choir would do if questioned minutely about the day's readings.
Now to the obligatory, odious comparison: When I was younger, recordings of St John's and King's were among the easiest to obtain. In those days, I collected both but had a distinct preference for the sound of St John's. St John's seemed then (as it does now) to permit its boys and men lots of freedom to express, and the result was the sense that the singers were enjoying themselves immensely. I find over time that I have come to appreciate the crystalline purity of King's more and more, and with recordings like their recent *Credo*, which for those of us with limited musical training, is really hard work to listen to, King's asserts powerfully the musical heights to which these choirs can rise. When I look over my haphazard collection of recordings, I find I have ended up with about the same number of recordings of the two choirs. If someone would like to fund the effort, I would be happy to spend six months alternating between the two chapels at evensong in order to make a definitive decision--but I need to warn that six months might not be enough . . .
Before leaving this part of England, I want to acknowledge once more the hospitality and kindnesses of our East Anglian hosts, their readiness to share their time, experience, and knowledge made our visit a great deal more than we ever expected it could be. Their enthusiasm for the musical tradition and for their region of the country was infectious. By the end of our stay, I was quietly checking housing prices in the estate agents' windows (ouch). | |
| OXFORD |
The Oxford choirs do not schedule their services so that one could attend two Evensongs in one night. To attend services by the minimum set of required choirs in Oxford would therefore have demanded three days. Most of the colleges were closed for exams, but we were able to explore the meticulously kept grounds of Magdalen. In Magdalen Chapel, we got a musical sampling of the evening service as the organist was working out stops; the chapel has a recent memorial to Bernard Rose, who directed the choir in the 60s and 70s and produced some very important recordings. Christ Church Cathedral was closed for a major concert. Oxford was littered with such major concerts at this end-of-term season; notice after notice just added to the pain of the shortness of our stay. | |
 |
Click on picture | | |
| Mainly because of the music it promised, we reserved our one Oxford evening for the New College Choir. This choir was probably the most serious in demeanor of all the choirs we heard. Self-discipline was intense. All the choirs pay attention to their procession into and out of the choir stalls-make eye contact with your partner, turn simultaneously, and don't cut corners. But most of the choirs-men and boys-tried to make these movements appear casual. New College Choir did precise, rigorously executed turns which included the kind of head spin one sees in the turns of ballet dancers or ice skaters. Even the Brownian motion was visibly reduced, though coughing and colds interfered with what seemed a collective perfectionist goal. | |
 |
Click on picture | | |
| This was a Friday night, and again the service was conducted without an organist. But in the small chapel, after a silent procession, the choir began with a burst of song. I was expecting a strong sound, but the suddenness and power practically threw us back in our seats. (Maybe there is something to these non-festival Fridays.) This was the beginning of an ambitious musical program that included Holst's Nunc dimittis, and Geoffrey Bush's O salutaris hostia. More Latin than we had encountered in other services, and more solos. Edward Higginbottom, focused and precise in his conducting, brought these solos in with a smile of encouragement and reassurance; the singers couldn't help but respond with their best. One important solo went to a chorister whose fine voice was nearing the end of its treble days. In this perfectionist atmosphere, the director could have given the solo to a more predictable voice, but clearly there were matters more important than the musical, and I was much happier being party to honoring the dedicated effort as well as the result. | |
 |
Click on picture | | |
| One piece this evening really stood out for us. Giles Swayne's Magnificat was commissioned for the choir of Christ Church, Oxford, in the mid-1980s. It is an eight-part exercise in fiendishly difficult contemporary polyphony and ends with a long Amen in 5/4. In this sort of piece, if one part gets off even a little bit, the whole thing could end up a complete mess. At this service, the choir nailed it. It bounced; it built; it became a thrilling celebration. 10 out of 10. They made it look easy. We later found the score in a London shop and are hoping to interest one of our local choirs (which usually prefer secular music) to undertake it. New College has recorded it, we discovered after returning home, and I have ordered it (one of the Mag/Nunc series, Priory #596). I am not convinced the recording could be better than what we heard. | |
LONDON
The major London choirs did not consult my wife and me before planning their half-term holidays, so for several days of our stay in London, there were no choristers singing. The major casualty for us was that we were not able to hear the full Westminster Cathedral choir. We did hear a subset of the men of the choir (about six of them) fill a side chapel with a very large sound, vespers all in Latin chant, mysterious and moving.
Westminster Cathedral is young as cathedrals go and unfinished. Inside at eye level, one sees gilt and marble decorations that remind of Italy more than England , but raise your eyes to see a vast unfinished brick vault that makes one think immediately of a trolley barn. There is a plan to finish the cathedral, but the diocese appears unwilling to do that at the expense of its other services.
St Paul's half-term holiday was over in time for three Sunday services with enough music to fill at least two CDs. (Does this stuff come back automatically, or does the choir spend an exhausting Saturday getting all this music into their heads again?) We chose to attend Mattins (two t's at St Paul's) and Evensong. These services were extraordinarily well attended-more than 500 at each, I would estimate. We sat under the dome, not in the choir, for both services. And although we were still quite close to the choir, we quickly found how easily the cherished cathedral acoustic could interfere with the choir sound. For Mattins, we sat almost dead center. The sound from this most powerful choir bounced and whirled around us so that, while the effect was wonderful, we couldn't understand a word. I am sure the choir sang well, but if it had sung badly, it would have been hard to tell. Unlike King's College Chapel, where the liveliness of the hall makes one feel inside the music, the liveliness of the vast cavern of St Paul's makes the sound feel far away. We sat more towards the side for Evensong, and that helped a lot.
Mattins included the Collegium Regale Service of Herbert Howells. Has Mattins faded from the cathedral scene because of the length of the Te Deum? Arrive early to rest your legs because you will stand for a long time for the morning song of praise. There were a psalm, two hymns, a sermon, and no anthem. The St. Paul's organ was clearly not intimidated by the acoustic of the place. We had extra music from the organ scholars before the service, and the service ended with a Howell's voluntary.
Evensong in the afternoon included the Rubbra in A flat, which I am told is a "big sing" and a favorite of choirs (and of my wife, as she concluded later), and the Stainer anthem, "I Saw the Lord." John Scott conducted his massive group (29 choristers and 18 adults) from a podium in the middle. He worked this big music for big effects, excellent dynamics, effective quiet sections, and from our different seats at the side, good control of the acoustic challenges, where the rich harmonies of this music work better, I suspect, than polyphony would. The service ended with the finale to Vierne's Symphony No. 3. This was something my wife particularly wanted to hear, and it was impossible to unrivet oneself from the seat until it was done.
The Brownian movement was subdued this service. Perhaps, the choristers were more conscious of the large crowds that the Sunday services draw. Perhaps the high choir stalls (with their electric candles with wonky shades) hid them better. Perhaps they were just exhausted in their third service of the day. To my mind, the biggest behavioral sin of any choir member in any service we attended occurred here when one of the ADULT members of the choir appeared to be very obviously asleep during the sermon by visiting Canon Jane Sinclair, precentor at Sheffield Cathedral. I'm sure that the exam week preceding this service exhausted the students in the choir, but I would have thought that by this age, the vicars choral would have learned how to sleep without its appearing so obvious. And Canon Sinclair was an excellent storyteller who slipped her moral into the story suddenly and cleverly at the very end. I was thinking earlier in the week that the absence of a sermon was a distinct virtue of Evensong, but this preacher I would be eager to hear again. | |
| The Westminster Abbey choristers didn't return from half-term holidays until Monday evening. Perhaps because this group included what appeared to be very new choristers, the program for Monday was not challenging. Mostly unison singing, the Lord's Prayer intoned on a single note. The service was Dyson in C minor, and the boys sang Handel's"Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness." (I wonder if the precentor knows something we don't about the antics of choristers on half-term holiday.) Six seats next to the choir were saved for what we assumed were probationers, who appeared in striped blazers, did not sing, and followed the choir out at the end. | |
|  |
Click on picture | | | |
The most memorable events of Evensong this night, however, had nothing to do with the service. The stewards of the abbey in what was now high tourist season have a formidable job of crowd control. When the outside gates were opened, those who had arrived early and joined the queue were swamped by others hovering around the gate at the last minute. When we were finally permitted into the choir, there was a free-for-all to get seats. Susan likened it to an early morning sale when the best stuff would be discounted for only a few minutes. There was much huffing among the losers, and Susan noticed some who had queued the longest were relegated to back rows. Not a good experience, but it is great to think that Evensong has become a popular tourist attraction. Certainly, the crowds will leave with a better sense of what a cathedral is for than they would if they had wandered around in the periods between services.
The other problem with crowd control came at the end of the service. Exit was through the North transept. At the end of the service, some had wandered into the South transept. Within thirty seconds of the end of the organ postlude, we watched stewards shoo-ing them away. I wondered at first if the abbey was trying to make sure folks paid the entrance fee before they were allowed into Poet's Corner, and second whether the stewards were worried that the taps would be dry at the public house if they didn't hurry. But I perished these uncharitable thoughts when I realized the problem was another activity that evening on the heels of this one. No matter, I think it quite wrong to shut the service down so quickly. Curiosity and other "contemptible" tourist motives may be been at work, but there may have been better motives as well. It can take a few minutes to come down from the effects of the service, and it seems to me perfectly appropriate to spend those moments in contemplation in the church. I do hope the abbey will consider that five or ten minutes could be spared for that.
I have saved for the end two London cathedrals that we might have skipped, but I’m very glad we didn't.
Southwark Cathedral, which combines early Gothic architecture with surprisingly convincing Victorian Gothic, is hemmed in on one side by the broad approach to London Bridge and on another by a commuter rail access to stations north of the Thames. The result is that Evensong there is accompanied by the constant screeching of trains around the bend in the tracks. While I would certainly vote for shutting down that rail access during Evensong, I suspect a few tens of thousands of rail commuters might take exception.
Our first visit was to hear the Girls Choir. Foiled by a closed Northern Line platform at King's Cross, we were a bit late and sat in the nave with exactly a dozen others. The Girls Choir is very new, begun only last summer. Aged nine to fifteen, the girls come from day schools throughout London. They practice twice a week and regularly sing Evensong on Thursday. It is instructive to hear new choirs if only to understand how difficult a task it is to deliver the music for a single Evensong service. The canticles were plainchant, and they sang a lovely, unison anthem of Peter Hurford. Their energetic conductor was working hard to keep the focus and good ensemble tone. I am as sure the choir has come a long way in its first year as I am that they will sound better in five years than they do now.
I realize that in mentioning girls choirs, I am on dangerous ground, but, foolhardy, I will proceed. Girls, when they are allowed to sing naturally, do sound different from boys, and I like variety; on that ground alone, I support the development of these new possibilities. Further, I fear that the attempt to stonewall access for girls to the cathedral tradition in the name of preserving a tradition of male singing will backfire because it gives opponents to the tradition a solid ground for confrontation. Southwark's web page noted last year that 18 of England's 42 cathedrals already have girls choirs, so the question is fast becoming moot.
There are obvious problems with competing claims for limited financial resources that must be resolved, and I feel as strongly as anyone that the resolution should not be allowed to compromise the men and boys tradition. What worries me also in the development of girls choirs is the putting of new wine into old skins, the thought that one can simply substitute girls for boys and do everything else the same with the same result. I will risk the claim of sexism by declaring that differences in age, temperament, and timbre should make directors want to rethink their traditional approaches. Most of the repertoire was written for boy trebles; it would not be surprising if many found that it did not sound as good with girls' voices. Composers and directors need to explore the potential of the girl's voice and develop a repertoire that allows it to shine in its own way. In this regard, the American children's choir tradition of the past two decades or so may have an edge. "Children's choir" is really a euphemism for "girls choir" since their membership is overwhelmingly female, and music for these choirs has blossomed and exploited their unique sound; sadly, most of that music is secular.
It is too soon to tell how well Southwark is dealing with this complex new venture, but they have begun it with the intention not to end up with a single mixed choir and with the hope of establishing the girls choir on its own separate endowment. I will be eager to hear this group again as they progress. The world is all before them.
Many might take exception to my calling the second cathedral in this missive a London cathedral. I have wanted to visit St Albans for a long time, initially because it is a key setting in the Dickens novel, Bleak House. Although Barry Rose has retired from St Albans, the Lammas recordings of his choir there are awesome. If one takes the express with the hot-rod engineer we had, St Albans is only fifteen minutes travel time from King's Cross Thameslink. So there were many good reasons to go, even on this wettest day of our visit. St Albans was a Roman settlement; it was considered desirable turf in the War of the Roses, and it retains bits of this history in the midst of a countryside of rolling hills. The cathedral is a pastiche of architectural styles. While other cathedrals that combine Norman and Gothic do so in layers, the lowest the Norman and increasingly Gothic as you rise to the ceiling, St. Albans is built as if someone sliced a Norman cathedral and a Gothic cathedral lengthwise and then glued a piece of each together. Definitely a place to visit if one wants to understand the felt differences in these different architectural styles. | 
Click on picture
|
The cathedral is a bit of a walk from the train station and strangely hard to find considering its size. (Look for the least assuming alleyway off the high street.) The cathedral shop had an interesting new CD of the choir, but did not have the St Albans Evensong CD I had sought (my last hope). It was manned by community volunteers, a signal of what would be the theme of this place. When we arrived, the boys were practicing in the choir stalls, oblivious to the crowds wandering around. They left just as the congregation began to fill the good, intimate seating. This Saturday service was well attended, and most looked like they had been there before. Although we sat quite close to the choir, we were in full view of the bookstall, which did not appear to cease operations during the service. Indeed, visitors would stop at the stall and wander over for a bit of the service. This was done quietly and discreetly, and I think represented no disrespect. Practice blended into performance; touring blended into service; it seemed that Evensong fitted in here as a completely natural activity in the cathedral's day.
The organist was generous and played three pieces before the service (and a beautiful postlude at the end). The boys entered from a second-story doorway in the south transept. As they sang the introit by Christopher Tye, I realized I was hearing something from the favorite, well-worn LP I mentioned earlier. It was a beautiful performance of a piece that has a permanent place in my head even when I don't recognize its name, and I was putty in their hands thereafter. It felt more like a community event, but the musical standards were uncompromising. The treble line was brilliant and brassy. There was a paucity of men this day, and I think, only one, heroic alto, but the result left no doubt in the rightness of our decision to go. They sang the Short Service by Ayleward, and Bach's O Jesu Christ, mein's Lebens Licht. Vigorous conducting, and lots of good organ work in the anthem. Very dramatic dynamics in the singing with wonderful decrescendos and pianissimos.
Participating in a service with a choir this apt must be intimidating for many priests. The priest here (and we noticed the same thing in several other places, including, I think, Westminster Abbey) was repeatedly hitting her tuning fork and putting it to her ear to assure she came in on the right pitch for the responses. She seemed extraordinarily worried about coming in wrong; the choir would know and not approve. When the service was over, I noticed that paper dominated coins in the discreetly placed collection plate. This choir is clearly (and rightly) well loved by its congregation.
In one other aspect of Evensong, St Albans found a uniquely right way to manage things. Before and after most of the services we attended, choristers would come out to make sure music was set up correctly or to collect music at the end. A number of them ducked under the choir stands to expedite the task. Usually the more experienced choristers did that, while the neophytes honored the approved pathways. I had noticed after the service elsewhere, stewards or vergers returning to the choir stalls to solemnly and soberly snuff the candles at each stand; I had thought that an opportunity was being missed. St Albans didn't miss it. Two of the older boys returned, in their cassocks but no surplice, and initiated a cantoris-decani competition. The slightly taller boy blew out his cantoris candles from the top of the globe. The shorter lifted the glass globes on his decani side and blew the candle out underneath. I won't declare the winner, but there was yet another stage to the competition, for the verger lowered a candelabra with 15 to 20 candles, teasing the boys in getting it low enough, so that they could blow these candles out as well. By this time, the boys had realized that they had an approving audience, finished their work with aplomb; then one gestured to the verger with a broad thumbs up to indicate to him, and the rest of us, successful completion of the task. "All right," thinks this visitor, "I'll be back."
Sometime, a very long time ago, I recall a former chorister at St Albans described the harrowing routine he had to follow to be part of the choir, which does not operate a choir school. To the cathedral before school for rehearsal, back again after school for more rehearsal and Evensong. Kind of messes up one's day (and let us not even consider the parents' car pooling duties). I am sure this is a less than ideal arrangement, but the persistence of the choir in the face of these logistics shows that the tradition does not lack for commitment. Southwark Cathedral has operated with a similar arrangement since 1968. Our Suffolk host Ted joined us on our last night to hear the choir of boys and men at this "inner city" cathedral. Ted, savvier about such things, made sure we had places in the choir this time, and in that inner sanctum, the rail noise was not so apparent. The congregation was more numerous than our previous visit, but still not large. When the choir entered, there were more boys than would fit into the regular choir stalls. I wondered if perhaps we should move aside to give them more room. Three stood out in front. Were they soloists or probationers?
I failed to make notes of this service and have completely spaced the music that was sung . There were many solos, confidently executed by the boys. And we think each of men had at least a brief chance to sing alone. That must be a good perk for them, and we enjoyed hearing the different voices that are usually lost in the well-crafted blend. The conductor was enthusiastic and obviously enjoyed this group a lot. The organist came down into the choir to play a console organ for the anthem. These British organists are a brave and accomplished group, usually making sure that we get to hear the organ put through its paces in every service. When the organist splashed a note on this console (the only such splash I heard), one of the choristers glowered at him as though the organist were deliberately sabotaging the choir's performance. Demanding lot, these singers.
Again, I felt privileged to hear a performance that deserved a much bigger congregation. The intimacy that is so important to Evensong was very strong here. Where else could we sit next to a woman with a superb voice (the service included a good and demanding hymn to test it) who kept a watchful eye on her equally gifted chorister son across the isle? (I guessed the relationship by familial resemblance, and assumed its correctness when mother and son left together after the service.) Many of the choristers, now back in their school blazers, hung about the back of the nave after the service chatting with the priests and each other, waiting for parents to pick them up. They did not seem in a particular hurry to leave.
For us the service ended across the way, under the busy rail tracks, with a pint of you know what, the usual and a most fitting sequel to the celebration of the end of the day.
Susan and I were very lucky in all we got to hear in our two weeks. But I think of all that we missed. It was a major omission not to hear the important Westminster Cathedral Choir. And I felt I had betrayed several years of listening by not attending the Christ Church or Magdalen choirs. Temple Church has a traditional choir, but it did not sing a traditional service while we were able to attend. If we had managed to hear a certain parish choir in Norbury in South London, we would have scored extra points with out kids back home. St Albans has had a girls choir for six years; it would be interesting to hear them as well. And then there are the side trips.St George's Windsor and Eton are just up river. Rochester and Canterbury could be done in a weekend. Salisbury and Winchester are not all that far way, and I am told one must see the cathedrals at Ely and Wells. It would be good to hear the Norwich cathedral choir after visiting that magnificent place. There's a parish choir in Ipswich that has had good luck recruiting choristers; would be nice to find out to what they owe that success. Then one could go a bit further to Sheffield and listen to the precentor preach again, or to York Minster where interesting things are happening. And the special concerts. King's and St John's are singing together in July; would love to be there to see if the chapel explodes with such a powerful mix. And in July London is going to have its own three choirs festival, Westminster Abbey, Southwark, and St Albans (see, I told you it was a London choir). Considering that it took thirty years of listening before I attended my first evensong, I think I need to start collecting additional lifetimes.
My point here is that choirs of men and boys, at least at this level, are not endangered; on the contrary, many are thriving. It would take considerable convincing for me to believe that choirs in the past could produce better music than the best of what we heard this month. And with at least 42 cathedrals, it would strain any visitor's BritRail pass to hear all that is out there to be heard. Still, these choirs may have to develop better recruiting techniques because traditional supply lines have been compromised. Indeed, the problem is not at the level of the great cathedral and collegiate choirs, but at the level of the parish and school choirs. Churches are struggling to find a valued place in their parishioners' lives. Social forces are pushing boys farther and farther from music. These forces do not arise from the boys, but from the adults who have charge of them. I can see this on my side of the pond in my own sons. When pushed to find a place in their busy schedules to sing in choral groups, they take to it with enthusiasm and satisfaction. But my older son has put his high school sports career at risk by having to skip half of one game in order to do a performance. Conflicts with other sports are tolerated, the varsity coach does not like to share his players with musical events. And my younger son may soon face a crossroads if his soccer practice schedule conflicts with the children's choir rehearsal schedule. (Fortunately, the coach has taken our pleas to heart, and is considering a different practice schedule.) If adults were a bit more flexible with the boys in their charge, if adults valued the involvement of boys in musical activity as well as in sports, scouts, and the like, the mission might not be so hard.
Of course, when boys are singing, they are not fighting. They are not doing drugs or learning how to shoot one another. They are learning how to be in harmony with other individuals, many of whom they may not even like. Their involvement in choir isn't just a benefit to the boys; it's a benefit to us all. |
Lynn Schoch, Bloomington, Indiana | |
| |  | | |
| |
© UK Cathedral Music Links.Org.UK 2002 - 2004 | | |
| |
