Cathedral Music: Spring 2021

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ISSN 1363-6960 MAY 2021

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David Flood & Matthew Owens

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From the EDITOR

‘What is it you miss most?’ This question, if asked of those who have recently retired from the daily round of the Opus Dei, frequently gets a very straightforward answer: ‘The psalms’. Of course, many of us find the psalms a particularly appealing part of a church or cathedral’s offering – the simplicity, the wisdom, the glorious language (the smiting of cattle with hailstones, the cloudy pillars, the froward hearts, the rooting out of wicked doers…), their timeless quality – but apparently all the more so do departing DoMs and organists who have been steeped in this culture sometimes since boyhood. Girlhood, too, increasingly now. Try testing a regular singer or player of the psalms on the final word of ‘The sparrow hath found her an –––’ and the answer is more than likely to be accurate (Psalm 84, if you were unsure): for those who have sung more than 1000 psalms before they are 14, the evocative words are ingrained. And it’s not just the language. The accompaniment of psalms is a true art, one absorbed by years of listening and innumerable hours of practice in otherwise silent churches late at night, for the simplicity of the singing does not allow for any false notes. Colin Walsh and Katherine Dienes Williams in these pages have laid out their considerable thoughts behind this very desirable skill –not too much, not too little, a restrained use of the pedals – and how to teach young choristers the ‘code’ behind when to move to a different note, for example. But what pleasure it gives to the listener, even perhaps one who is not a regular attender at church, when everything is in its right place.

Some places are clearly very ‘right’ in the cathedral world, if David Flood’s extraordinary length of service at Canterbury is anything to go by – not just his 32 years in the top job but also his further eight spent as assistant to Allan Wicks (who served at Canterbury himself for nearly 30 years). And while long service can be a feature of organists and DoMs, 40 years and the overseeing of the music for four archiepiscopal enthronements is probably unparalleled. Certainly Allan Wicks was only responsible for three! David has also nobly served as an advisor to this magazine for more than 20 years, always providing invaluable support, guidance, advice – and

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articles too. Canterbury will surely miss him greatly, and to move on from such a position as his during a pandemic can only be a particular sadness.

A second ‘lifer’, or almost, who died in October and in whose memory Roger Judd has gathered many tributes, was Arthur Wills, who arrived in Ely as assistant in 1949 and didn’t retire (from his later position as DoM) until 1990. When asked once by the Duke of Edinburgh what his most important task as cathedral organist was, he replied, ‘Appointing a brilliant assistant!’ and this was clearly true: as several of his assistants remarked, Wills was frequently absent from the cathedral, either giving recitals or teaching in London, so a great deal fell to his assistant’s lot. At least two of them said, ‘Fortunately, neither he nor I were ever ill!’

And presumably Jonathan Rennert, at St Michael’s in Cornhill, is never ill either – once at St John’s in Cambridge, he has now been at St Michael’s for 42 years (only just beginning to approach Harold Darke, who clocked up 50 years there), curating the longest-running series of weekly organ recitals, many of which he has played himself. These have even continued through the pandemic, broadcast on YouTube, and with discussions afterwards on Zoom. Not one to let the world pass him by, Jonathan is also a great champion of new music, recently commissioning St Michael’s composer in residence, Rhiannon Randle, to write an anthem for choir and erhu. (It’s a Chinese stringed instrument; in my ignorance I had to look this up.) The choir’s CD, which includes this anthem, is reviewed later in the magazine.

Let it not be said either that we at Cathedral Music Trust are letting the world pass us by – we have held a virtual AGM (still available to watch on our shiny new website) – and there have been virtual gatherings, a virtual compline and of course Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor played by 54 cathedral organists, which raised considerable sums for the Cathedral Choirs’ Emergency Fund. The Church Commissioners matchfunded the £1m with another £1m of their own, the whole of which was distributed in grant form to 43 cathedrals across the UK in December.

Our way of communicating with readers is also evolving –the newsletter Cathedral Voice will be moving to an electronic version from 2022. There will be further information about this in the next newsletter itself, in August, but before then –ideally, now -- do remember to sign up to the mailing list on the CMT website if you have not already done so.

Sooty Asquith

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THE FLOODS HAVE LIFT UP THEIR VOICE Dr David Flood

When I think back, I was very lucky. From the age of about 18 my aim was to be a cathedral organist and my first job was as Assistant Organist at Canterbury Cathedral, straight from university. Allan Wicks appointed me, he said, because I was ‘green’ and someone he could shape into the colleague he wanted. If that was indeed the process, I enjoyed it very much!

And then to be appointed Organist at such a magnificent cathedral as Lincoln before I was 30 I also thought very fortunate. I had a wonderful two years there and still maintain great friendships. When I came back to Canterbury in 1988 it was a thrill to be back but definitely daunting to think of what lay ahead. But I did have some experience of what life at the Mother Church could be like, and I also had ideas about

HM The Queen talking to David Flood

how things might develop. I am very grateful to the dean at that time, John Simpson, along with Sir David Lumsden who advised him, for having the courage to appoint me.

It was a challenge in a lot of ways, especially to make sure that the journey would not be more of the same: I had to go in a different direction – but the bright light which always shines on Canterbury as the focus for the worldwide Anglican Communion was consistent. It was important that we ‘flew the flag’ all the time, and the team (most of whom I knew well, of course) were certainly committed and ready for a new energy. In particular, I am so grateful to Michael Harris, who had succeeded me as Assistant Organist two years earlier, because he then became an ideal colleague in every way. For the choristers, it was a happy thing for them to have a familiar face returning (so they said!). And in order to make things feel fresh and instantly and unmistakably different, I changed the direction of the desks and piano in the practice room through 90 degrees. When they came in for the first rehearsal it certainly made an impression!

Evensong at Canterbury is sung every day of the week and rehearsal is always short, owing to the demands on the building and the number of visitors. Choristers and lay clerks were always excellent sight-readers but the amount of time we had to prepare back then was just too tight, so it was agreed that we should expand the time allowed to give us some time as a full choir before every service, and a little longer at our one weekly opportunity after Evensong on a Monday (as it settled to be). The repertoire was wide and we regularly introduced new works and revived others which had not been sung for a while. Our former colleagues, Anthony Piccolo and Gabriel Jackson, have contributed much to the music library and, of course, in 1988 Alan Ridout lived just a few yards from the cathedral. When the BBC were looking to record some short morning services, I asked Alan for some suitable boysonly anthems and these arrived after just a few days, in his inimitable spidery handwriting. Alan’s music was always very appropriate and eminently singable.

Before long, a ‘major occasion’ was on the horizon as Archbishop Robert Runcie (for whose enthronement I had played in 1980) retired, and George Carey was enthroned on 19 April 1991. The coordination of the music for the service was exciting as, following the practice of so many previous enthronements, we were able to commission a new setting of the Te Deum. For this I turned to Grayston Ives, who responded with his Canterbury Te Deum, a wonderfully exciting piece including astonishing parts for brass – played on that occasion by the fanfare team from the Royal Marines. That was quite a sound, with the amazing trumpets in a gallery just above the choir. We welcomed Noel Tredinnick and some of his musicians from All Souls, Langham Place to bring a different colour to the programme. It was a joy to make new friends and share the occasion with them.

We had a fruitful relationship with the Royal Marines School of Music in Deal, especially after the dreadful attack in September 1989. I was delighted to be invited to join them as the organist for the Mountbatten Festival in the Royal Albert Hall the following year, an occasion which brought such poignant memories as they remembered lost colleagues. Playing the Widor Toccata with the massed bands joining in for the last few pages was one of the occasions I will never forget!

The enthronements of Archbishops Rowan Williams and Justin Welby were wonderful, unforgettable occasions, each with the opportunity to add different colours, whether it was new music commissions or the inclusion of an African dance group. With guests from around the world and the need to support the Archbishop in every way, the focus was always on the liturgy and the central part which the music played. We are lucky to have enjoyed the most rewarding relationships with the Archbishops and involvement with them has been a pleasure. It was Archbishop Justin who recently observed that few people had known as many of his predecessors as I had!

The awareness of Canterbury across the world was brought home whenever we had the chance to travel. We couldn’t ‘leave home’ very often as our responsibility towards the large numbers of pilgrims and visitors in the cathedral every day was very significant. When people make such a huge effort to visit the Mother Church, they expect to hear the choir in situ. But we did occasionally travel. Our first US tour in 1994 took us right across the continent, starting in the middle and moving west and then east, ending in Canada. It taught me so

much about planning a tour and looking after the singers, but what was particularly heartwarming was the reception for the people from Canterbury, which was always astonishing.

I took the choir across the Atlantic six times, and each visit was so memorable and great fun. Tours are a wonderfully cathartic event for a choir, not least because they bring the community closely together for a long time, but also because it is very satisfying to have the time to rehearse, polish the repertoire and share all the normal things – communal meals, airport lounges, coach journeys – which bring the team together in a very special way. To mention all the notable occasions would take a book, but moments such as participating in a concert in Washington National Cathedral with the National Cathedral choir and the choir of St Thomas, Fifth Avenue, is one of the highest points. The joint performance of the Allegri Miserere, when ‘my’ solo quartet was in the far west gallery watching me on a CCTV screen, was such a thrill. Singing for former President George H Bush and his wife Barbara, who were so generous, was an amazing occasion.

Rehearsing a young chorister for his first solo, seeing the beam on his face when it goes well and building on that for the next time: that’s one of the great treasures too. Helping young musicians achieve something which, a few years or even months before, they had no idea they could do, is very fulfilling.

Choosing repertoire for a daily programme is a fascinating thing but it can also be demanding; you need to weigh up the calendar, how much rehearsal time you have, and whether a piece is in the consciousness or not. It is helpful to look at a two-week span of music a bit like one might choose something from a restaurant menu: you select pieces with which other people can identify. I would endeavour not to overload the diet with any one type of repertoire, and when it came to a particular season I would look back to previous years to see – mainly – what to avoid and which changes it would be beneficial to bring. Of course, we would all then say, ‘… When will we have…?’ and the pieces which mean so much to people, those that carry the real essence of a season, had to be included; not least for me too!

I was and am so grateful for constant support from the Chapter and especially the Dean, Robert Willis, a gifted musician and prolific author. It was so good to be able to introduce the congregation to a new hymn that he had written for a particular occasion and to know that all our highs and lows were understood. I also had the joy of a sequence of very talented colleagues, both as assistants and as organ scholars. The success of a performance lies very firmly in the dedication of the performers, from the youngest chorister to a long-serving lay clerk and the first-rate accompanist. They all brought so much to what we did, and I will always be very thankful for them.

As Canterbury is just a few miles from the coast, it is of course easier to visit European destinations. We did concerts in France on day-trips and used to go to the Netherlands for just a few days. We were delighted to visit Rome to support the Archbishop when on an ecumenical visit to the Pope, and there is no doubt that the impact that can be brought by the full choir on occasions such as that is enormous. A trip to Norway in 2017 was accompanied by a BBC TV crew, when we visited the site of the most northern relic of St Thomas of Canterbury in a beautiful village on the side of a fjord. The crew became great friends and the programme has since been aired quite a few times, including the electrifying trip to that fjord-side venue by high-speed ‘RIB’ boats!

I have always thought, though, that the daily sequence of services, the Opus Dei, was the most important part of the job. To give an exhilarating performance on a Tuesday in February or a Friday in November for whoever might be present is the vital thing. You never know who might be there, and in Canterbury there are rarely fewer than 50, and someone could well be attending for the first or even the only time in their life. We always hope that people leave uplifted by the experience and that it lives with them for a long time. Then there are the regular members of the community who keep coming because it means so much to them and with whom we make good friendships, and the members of the cathedral foundation, the ‘core family’ which has reinforced the continuity over the centuries.

Canterbury lives in the spotlight and never more than at the time of a Lambeth Conference, when literally hundreds of bishops from around the world gather. To know that news of the cathedral and its liturgy would be delivered first-hand all over the world was very exciting. Visiting the Mother Church was an emotional occasion for many and they wanted to make as much of their time as possible. Planning took literally years, and while we welcomed our pilgrims and made them feel at home, we also wanted to show the world what we had been doing, with such care, on a daily basis for hundreds of years.

All this then, but Canterbury is not a large city and it stands at one end of the country. This is a really small catchment area from which to draw singers. Fifty years ago I knew that choristers had come from distant areas of the country (until 1972 Canterbury had 60 boys in the choir, 30 dayboys and 30 boarders) but increasingly the preference for families has been to stay more local. Yes, we have wonderful families who travelled many miles to bring their boys and who spent hours (and lots of fuel!) on the road and we are so grateful to them. It was vital, though, to enthuse families within the SE corner of the country with the great experience of choristership and encourage them to join the journey. For lay clerks too, I was always in admiration of the commitment which families would make, sometimes to start a new life in Kent when London seems so close but in fact is not, when it comes to being present in time for a 5pm rehearsal. The dedication of these people is amazing and so greatly valued. It was just the same, if not more intense, for my long-suffering wife and family who were so tolerant of the commitment we all made – “Where’s Daddy…? In the cathedral, of course!”.

When I think back, I was very lucky. From the age of about 18 my aim was to be a cathedral organist and my first job was as Assistant Organist in Canterbury Cathedral, straight from university.

In recent months attention was focused on the need to revisit both the role and the state of the cathedral organ. Since the building is now used more than ever (except during current problems) and the variety of occasions when music is required is much wider, the need to update and expand the organ became very urgent.

Based on quality Henry Willis work of 1886, and having undergone four rebuilds since then, the organ had much to offer but needed liberation. It was in 2005 that the Dean invited me ‘to dream about what we could do’. That could have been a risky invitation but it led to a deep exploration of what we needed and what we could actually achieve. Canterbury Cathedral is a tricky acoustical space since it is effectively two separate areas, so at first the dream led to the idea that we needed two substantial organs, one for the nave and one for the quire. Acoustic surveys and a lot of strong advice led to the realisation that, while this would be a wonderful thing to achieve, it was not actually feasible as one project. So we embarked on the plan to provide an instrument which would serve the quire (where 90% of the services take place) in the very best way, with colour and flexibility, to which, eventually, a sizable nave organ could be added.

The organ, after a stunning re-construction by Harrison & Harrison (completed last March), is now just what I had planned for and which I hope will serve the cathedral for a very long time to come. I must record deep gratitude to William McVicker for his level-headed advice and also to the Cathedral Trust and other donors, without whom it would never have happened.

Yes, I have been very lucky and I have had a wonderful time: a total of 42 years in cathedral music. I trust that Canterbury and all her sister cathedrals will continue in strength, long into the future, so that we can look forward as far as we can look back.

John Robinson writes:

I was not the only one of David’s organ scholars to return for a second innings! Having been at Canterbury and experienced various ‘baptisms of fire’ in my gap year, the pull of David’s music department proved again too strong to resist, and I was delighted to become his assistant.

Bubbling beneath the always cheerful surface there was something of the ‘boy in a sweet shop’ about David’s approach. A deeply humble man, David knew that Canterbury Cathedral is any church musician’s ‘heaven on earth’, and he revelled in that, every day, which meant that we all did too – singers and organists alike. I remember one occasion when I fell down some steps (probably not the

practice room steps, which were in any case legendary!) and David offered to play so that I could conduct with my working hand. While we were processing in, we heard what sounded like really good Bairstow emanating from the pipes high up in the south triforium. The then organ had never sounded convincing played in repertoire like that, and I was sufficiently curious afterwards to ask him what it was – “Oh, I was just improvising,” he said. “I rarely get the chance.”

David’s generosity is legendary, and he and Alayne always made the most of the splendid organist’s house in the Precincts. David created a unique world around the music at the Mother Church of the Anglican Communion, and his legacy will long remain, not least in the remarkable new organ he campaigned for, over so many years, and finally saw through to completion. David will also be remembered very fondly by generations of choirboys who found a humane and kindly champion of the world’s greatest church music as their mentor, in their most formative years. Thank you, David, for all you have done.

Tim Noon writes:

“And what does it mean to you?” asked the television journalist.

Solemn thoughts clearly filled David’s mind, for the normally genial smile left his face and his eyes took on a misty appearance. His voice, generally imbued with self-confidence, seemed to tremble slightly as he answered, “Well, … everything.”

That tiny moment from the BBC 2014 series Canterbury Cathedral stuck in my mind at the time, and whilst I was looking for it recently on YouTube I came across a multitude of documentaries about Canterbury, with David and his boys seeming to feature in them all.

Over the years charted by these glimpses into the Song School, David’s hair might have progressively become slightly greyer, but clearly his absolute commitment to, and enthusiasm for, the gloriously never-ending task of training up the choristers and delivering the ‘daily round’ has been utterly undiminished.

There is no wonder that the documentary makers have been so fascinated! In every moment, David holds the boys’ attention in the palm of his hand, and they hang on his every word. The rehearsals move at 90 miles an hour with not a second wasted: there is no fat to trim. Gently pushing, warmly encouraging, working hard by example, literally leading from the front, David instils in

his choristers a profound self-belief that they know will last them a lifetime, and for which they will be for ever grateful.

It would be no over-statement to say that David has given his life to Canterbury Cathedral. Having been appointed Assistant Organist there in his early twenties in 1978, he become Organist and Master of the Choristers just ten years later (immediately after a five-term sojourn at Lincoln Cathedral), and has spent the subsequent 32 years leading his very happy and successful team.

David is one of the most generous and loyal people I have ever met; he is definitely the first person I would call in a crisis. He is dependably cheerful and always full of energy, and somehow he manages to transmit this to everyone else when leading a group. He has great wisdom and a quick wit, but is also empathetic and unfailingly kind. It is no coincidence that so many of his lay clerks have sung for him for so long.

It is typical of David’s magnanimity that when Covid put paid to his plans for an ‘end of academic year’ celebration of his tenure last year he agreed to stay on for another –albeit, very uncertain – term. Though I can only imagine the frustration felt by not being able to begin one’s retirement as planned, or to finish one’s working life under ‘normal’ circumstances, nevertheless, David was there, being professional, ‘keeping the show on the road’, making wonderful music to the greater glory of God.

Because, well, it means everything.

Have a long and happy retirement, David – you deserve it! I am sure all readers of this magazine will want to join with me in expressing sincerest gratitude for all that you have given to cathedral music over the past 40-plus years.

Rehearsing the choristers in the Song School

Robert Willis writes:

When I was appointed Dean of Canterbury in 2001 David had already been Organist and Master of the Choristers for 15 years. Not only that, for one could add on the eight years that he had spent as Assistant Organist to Allan Wicks which gave him 23 years of experience not only of the music of Canterbury Cathedral but also of the large resident cathedral community and the people of Canterbury and Kent. I was to be his third Dean and, not knowing him then, I was slightly nervous when coming to his study in the Precincts to plan my installation. My first impression when the front door opened was that I was entering a family home of enormous warmth and hospitality and that reality was carried into the study itself with its windows looking out onto the busy Precincts where tourists, citizens, pilgrims and cathedral staff were happily mingling on that fine spring morning. David was completely relaxed in the lively atmosphere and anxious to make me feel equally at home. As we exchanged initial thoughts about the service, I began to appreciate for the first time the constant energy, the boundless enthusiasm, the broad experience and the willingness to create a service which I would enjoy and which he would feel worthy of Canterbury.

I soon perceived that for David this position of being Organist and Master of the Choristers was not simply a profession in which his skills were used to their utmost, it was a vocation and a way of life which involved not only him and Alayne but his family, all of whom musical, and the widest circle of friends and acquaintances worldwide.

I was to receive in the almost 22 years that we worked together so much hospitality and also musical advice from that home but also, always, the constant readiness to throw every ounce of energy, knowledge and skill at every task that we had to accomplish at however short notice. This energy and enthusiasm was evident as much on choir tours to the United States or to the Vatican, aside from the many other places toured, as it was for the huge services of the Lambeth Conference or the enthronement of archbishops. Even in the holidays his readiness to conduct the International Children’s Festival and to travel across the world to hold courses for choirs like the Tacoma Youth Chorus demonstrated the same deep love of music in general but choral music in particular.

At the heart of all this lay his loyalty to the daily rhythm of the cathedral and its worship. Day by day as I walked early to Matins our paths would usually cross as he left his house for morning practice, and his cheerful greeting would set the tone for the day. His love of the daily psalms and cathedral repertoire for Evensong and Sung Eucharist was everything to him and no one could doubt that.

It is sad that the restrictions of the pandemic caused so much to be paused or cancelled, and also prohibited a large gathering of friends and former choristers from coming together to give a huge musical farewell to David and Alayne. Christmas, though, still gave the full choir a chance to sing before the fierce lockdown began again, and there was a glorious new dimension to that Christmas music, for David’s longed-for project had been, thanks to his efforts, completed. The rebuilt and much enlarged Henry Willis organ was accompanying the choir in full glory for a last grateful ‘Hurrah’ for David’s long years of service, and I was aware that the boundless energy, enthusiasm and enjoyment was still the hallmark of his musicianship, and something that the Canterbury community and I personally will give such thanks for and miss over the years to come as his legacy lives on in so many ways in this place.

Focused on King’s College Chapel by Sara Rawlinson

A collection of annotated photographs and poems Available from www.sararawlinson.com

For the many who have listened to the pure sound of the choir of King’s College Cambridge at Christmas or other times throughout the year but only seen brief glimpses of the chapel on the television screen, here is the perfect gift. Taken over several years, the photographer Sara Rawlinson, resident now in Cambridge but something of a nomad, having lived in the USA, Australia and Scotland, has amassed a stunning selection of images concentrating on the interior of this famous chapel. The photographs are illuminated by the photographer’s own text, minimal in content, allowing the pictures to speak for themselves. Several are taken from a celestial cherry-picker (despite Rawlinson’s fear of heights!), allowing the reader to experience over-arching views of the space, and to appreciate the rainbow hues of the massive stained-glass windows. Most will surely be familiar with the quire, nave and organ; now is the chance to absorb the finer elements of stonework, carvings, ironwork, gargoyles and fan-vaulting displayed here in glorious detail. A labour of love, and much to be admired.

‘...AND SHEW OURSELVES

by the combination of the words and music. The Psalms of David, as translated by Coverdale, enrich our lives with some of the most beautiful religious writings of all time. The psalms are a fountain of hope and inspiration in an uncertain world.

For 32 years I have been blessed with the fine ‘Father’ Willis organ at Lincoln Cathedral. The quality of the voicing is second to none and the organ’s position on the central screen and in the triforium places the instrument at a certain distance from the choir, increasing the adaptability and subtleness of the whole. It is indeed possible to allow the organ to ‘float’ around the building, which can be magical.

The choir’s role is to sing in four-part harmony and tell the story. My job as organist is to inspire and enable them to give of their best, without too much interference or ‘taking over’. I have to adapt to the strength and confidence of the choir at a given moment; a rigid and set plan of registration is not really possible. Divisional pistons are used sparingly; I prefer hand registrations, and certainly avoid general pistons which can interrupt the flow with an audible ‘thud’ when activated.

Orchestrating the psalms is an art peculiar to the Anglican tradition. There are moments which call for reeds e.g. ‘The Lord thundered out of heaven... Hailstones and coals of fire’ (Ps 18 v13), and those where a more reflective approach is appropriate e.g. ‘He shall receive the blessing from the Lord’ (Ps 24 v5). For the louder moments it can be effective to use the reeds lower down the keyboard and tempered by the swell box; for the softer moments maybe the flutes at a higher register. A strategy I use a lot is to leave the choir to sing alone for the first three or four words and then to creep in discreetly – ‘He shall receive the (+org) blessing from the Lord’, or make one’s presence felt – ‘The Lord also (+org) thundered out of heaven’. Equally colourful is to start a verse with just one or two notes in the lower registers and add more as the verse proceeds, with you moving up the keyboard.

‘What do you miss most?’ is a question I have asked colleagues who have recently retired or moved away from cathedral music. The response is, more often than not, ‘The psalms, the beauty of the text and the chant’. Whether one is accompanying, conducting or singing, the psalms are, to me, the cornerstone of choral Matins and Evensong. We are at once guided and educated

Use of the pedals can be tedious if overdone. One or two unaccompanied verses can, again, produce a different texture (and make the choir listen to themselves!). The reappearance of the organ as the text becomes more affirmative –’Thou hast turned my heaviness into joy’ (Ps 30 v12) – can be very effective. An inspired descant has to be handled carefully; following the top line around seems pointless, unless the singers are in need of some help, but a well-shaped solo upper part on a flute – ‘Yea, the sparrow hath found her an house’ (Ps 84 v3) – is both colourful and

Colin Walsh

‘Therefore will I praise thee and thy faithfulness, O God, playing upon an instrument of musick’

GLAD IN HIM WITH PSALMS’

enhances the text. Equally pointless would be following the alto or tenor line around.

The use of mutation stops can be harmonically confusing, but maybe the sound you want to portray is the grasshopper – ‘And am driven away as the grasshopper’ (Ps 109 v22). Mixtures can be used for special effect e.g. ‘He cast forth lightnings and destroyed them’ (Ps 18 v14).

All of this sounds fine if you are an experienced accompanist, have a professional choir to work with and a versatile organ. When welcoming new young organists to the cathedral I have always advised a simple and safe approach to start with. Getting to know the text and the chant from memory is important, so it is best to play the four vocal parts as written, with a limited number of registration changes. Slowly and with confidence and experience the novice can build upon this strong foundation, perhaps beginning by providing contrast and a bit of colour by playing the upper parts an octave higher for a verse or two, and leaving the pedals out. The important

thing is to help and encourage the choir; an organist trying to embellish the psalms before he or she is ready does nothing to help the choir or worship.

I am immensely grateful to my mentors in my organ scholar days – Sidney Campbell at St George’s Windsor and Simon Preston at Christ Church Oxford. Both were brilliant accompanists who have been a constant source of inspiration and education throughout my career, and like most of their colleagues at that time, they would play the psalms. It was a rare event if the psalms were conducted; the choir would watch and listen to one another.

As I write this during lockdown, having not played a service for some time, I am reminded of what my colleagues have said to me. And it is indeed the psalms that I miss the most.

Colin Walsh is Organist Laureate of Lincoln Cathedral.

Lincoln Cathedral organ pipes

THE MUSIC OF THE PSALMS Katherine Dienes Williams

Each month, Anglican cathedral choirs adhering to the evening psalms as allocated by the Book of Common Prayer anticipate the approach of the 15th evening, when Psalm 78, the longest psalm appointed to be sung in an office of prayer, makes its monthly appearance with its ‘frogs’ and ‘lice’, its smiting of cattle with thunderbolts – hot thunderbolts, not just any old thunderbolts – its ‘smiting in the hinder parts’ etc. Here there are endless opportunities for the organist to go beyond the mere chordal harmonies, to describe the poetry of the psalm whilst playing the chant – using registrations to depict sheep, goats, rain, sea and so on. In an Anglican cathedral, one might also hear the beauty and simplicity of the plainsong tones of psalmody sung unaccompanied, or even with simple accompaniment, as they are in monastic foundations throughout the Christian world.

For all probationer choristers and apprentice organists, it is the psalms which are the most difficult to sing and to accompany. Singers must learn to decipher a code: a text grouped and held together by bar-lines, colons, syllables and dots is like a form of code. And there is much code to be found in the psalms themselves – for example, Psalm 119, the longest psalm, where each of its 22 sets of eight verse sections begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, thus forming an acrostic; or Psalm 46, where it is possible that the 46th word from the start of the psalm, and the 46th word from the end of the psalm indicate a code name for someone who may have been working with Miles Coverdale on his translation of the psalms in 1539 – it is asserted that this is how he left his signature – the 46th word from the start is ‘shake’ and the 46th word from the end is ‘spear’.

Coupled with language used in our familiar Coverdale translation, in which some words, people and places themselves need explanation to the modern reader (for example, Og, the King of Bashan), the psalms are where each of my chorister rehearsals begin – such is the importance that I place on their positioning within any service. Cathedral choirs are known for their ability to sing the psalms well, with sensitivity to the poetic language, clear diction, shaping and interest, and people buy and listen to recordings of the psalter. The words of the psalms are the beating heart of the prayer that is the daily office.

To learn to sing or play Anglican chant well, it is first necessary to memorise the chant appointed to that text. Each establishment has its own psalter with different types of pointing (that is to say, the division of words and syllables in the text based on their rhythmic stresses of speech). Some establishments have their own particular style of chanting the psalms, which has grown into a tradition. Other methods

generally use the stress of the spoken word to give rhythmic impetus to the text. By way of example, what you might see as a bar-line in between words indicates a change of notes, with a dot also indicating the same. Sometimes this can be in the middle of a syllable. Likewise, at a colon (at the end of a line of text), the note changes. Sounds and looks complicated? It is! But it’s quite quick to learn and understand once you get the pattern of it.

Playing the organ to accompany Anglican psalm chants is, however, a different story. When I first arrived at Winchester Cathedral, I would practise the psalms for up to four hours every day. First, there is the memorising of the chant. Then the colours, or the registrations that you must choose to use. Then there is the actual rehearsal – breathing, moving and balancing with the choir. Jumping from stop to stop, from manual to manual, re-harmonising, solo-ing out a melody and so on. Finally, the performance. All such practice was, in my career, made worthwhile when the late Dr George Guest, who attended an evensong at Winchester Cathedral at which I was accompanying the psalms, met me for the first time afterwards and announced: “Katherine, you play the psalms like an angel!” – before our discussions moved on to the merits of the Welsh rugby team and the All Blacks…

The music of the psalms speaks to us all, and continues to excite me to this day in whatever form it appears. It connects us, unlike any other way can, to the earliest members of the Church, and links us inextricably through the ages with an unbroken line of prayerful lament, praise and hope. The words of the psalter are those which have resonated with me the most through events that may have happened during the course of a day – events sometimes of great sadness, but likewise events of great joy, hope and encouragement. Music heightens the emotions, as Augustine rightly pointed out, but it also elevates our prayers and, often, when the music of Anglican chant is coupled with the whole human experience described in these 150 poetic masterpieces we know and reiterate every month of the year, we are transcended. It is the singing of psalmody which continues to be one of my great musical loves, well deserving of the utmost care and attention.

Singers must learn to decipher a code: a text grouped and held together by bar-lines, colons, syllables and dots is like a form of code. And there is much code to be found in the psalms themselves.

Katherine Dienes-Williams is Organist and Master of the Choristers at Guildford Cathedral. The above is an extract from a Lent talk.

And how did it all begin?

The tradition of metrical psalm singing arose from the aspiration of the Reformation movement to render the Bible and liturgy accessible to the congregation, achieved by translation into the vernacular, and, in the case of the psalms, into a rhyming and strophic form. Thomas Sternhold is remembered as the originator of the first metrical version of the Psalms. The Book of Common Prayer (1549) did not sanction the use of metrical psalms, ignoring the attempts of early publications such as Myles Coverdale’s Goostly Psalms and Spirituall Songs (London, c.1536) and John Hopkins’ Certayne Psalmes (London, 1547) to prompt liturgical reform and introduce congregational hymnody on the same lines as Lutheran practice. Hopkins’ Certayne Psalmes included 19 psalms. A second collection published in 1549 shortly after Sternhold’s death, Al Such Psalmes of Daivid (London, 1549), included 18 more psalms by Sternhold and seven by Hopkins. These 44 psalms were added to by Hopkins and other writers in several more publications, and culminated in The Whole Booke of Psalmes (London, 1562; a 1747 copy of this book is available on the internet).

However, while ‘it is true that [congregational] hymnody was not prescribed [in The Book of Common Prayer]... neither was it proscribed’ (Goostly Psalmes), and Elizabeth I’s Royal Injunctions of 1559 permitted ‘that in the beginning, or in the end of Common Prayers, either at morning or evening, there may be sung an hymn, or suchlike song, to the praise of Almighty God, in the best sort of melody and music that may be conveniently desired, having respect that the sentence of the hymn may be understanded and perceived’. The translation into metre of the whole psalter and canticles suggests that these versions were used as alternatives to the official prose versions. The psalm collections were also intended for domestic use, with books with four parts arranged so that singers could perform from a single copy, and some editions provided lute or cittern accompaniment.

The practice of congregational psalm singing was not officially recognised until 1644 in Parliament’s A Directory for the Publique Worship, where it is recommended that psalms be sung ‘before

And a final thought:

‘While dealing with the expression of the words in the psalms, a timely warning must be given against exaggeration in the direction of ‘word painting’. No doubt many in the congregation may have heard organists attempt to portray ‘birds singing among the branches’ (generally depicted by means of the shrillest flute in the organ). The author has a vivid recollection of attempts to

or after the reading’ and before the Dismissal. With the benefit of hindsight, and in the context of the Directory, these metrical psalm settings became associated with the Puritan reforms of Parliament; in reality, however, the Directory was reflecting a custom established in cathedrals (such as Worcester and York) and parish churches before the Civil War. Indeed, the suppression of congregational psalms in some cathedrals by High Church divines in the 1620s heightened worries that the Anglican Church was set on a course back to Rome. Peter Smart (author of A Sermon Preached in the Cathedrall Church of Durham 1628) spoke vehemently when John Cosin, canon at Durham and Chaplain to Charles I, abolished the practice of psalm singing at Durham Cathedral: Lastly, why forbid they singing of Psalmes, as all the people may sing with them, and praise God together, before and after Sermons, as by authority is allowed, and heretofore hath been practised both here and in all reformed churches. How dare they in stead of Psalmes, appoint Anthems, (little better than profane Ballads some of them) I say, so many Anthems to be sung, which none of the people understand, nor all the singers themselves, which the Preface to the Communion booke, and the Queenes Injunctions, will have cut off, because the people is not edified by them. Is it for spite they beare to Geneva, which all Papists hate, or for the love of Rome, which because they cannot imitate in having Latine service, yet they will come as neer it as they can, in having service in English so said and sung, that few or none can understand the same? I blame not the singers, most of which mislike these prophane innovations, though they be forced to follow them.

The language of Sternhold’s translations is governed but never constrained by the self-imposed structure of the metre and rhyme schemes. Sternhold developed the Common Metre (8686) from the so-called Ballad Metre and within this ‘repetition of sound, word and idea’ are important aspects of his style.

Taken from 12 Psalms ‘to comon tunes’ by William Lawes (1602-45), edited by Paul Gameson.

represent ‘the heavens dropping’ and ‘the word running very swiftly’, the former by a startling staccato chord on the lowest octave of the Great organ while the right hand sustained the harmony on the Swell, and the latter by a run up the keyboard of surprising rapidity. Ideas such as these would not, it is believed, occur to any organist of refined taste.’

The William Lawes pieces referred to above are available from www.resonusclassics.com on Music for Troubled Times: TheEnglishCivilWar&SiegeofYork, a CD sung by The Ebor Singers and conducted by Paul Gameson.

From Frank Bridge’s Organ Accompaniment of the Choral Service (1885)

THE ROAD TO THE PIETÀ

Richard Blackford

Following his Ivor Novello Award in 2020 for the choral work Pietà, Richard Blackford discusses the background to the composition in relation to his other major choral works.

Pietà is my third major choral commission from the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus, but our association goes back to 1996, when Sony Classical invited me to record Mirror of Perfection with them. If I were to try to identify threads that run through the four works, I would say that the themes of spirituality, loss, ecstasy and yearning are, to some extent, found in all four.

Mirror of Perfection sets little-known poems of St Francis of Assisi that describe the poet’s ardent love of his Creator. It was the universal appeal of the poems, Francis’s love of the natural world, his profound inner need to celebrate life through

despair, his capacity for joy, that attracted me. In the sixth movement, the astonishing poem features the word amore no less than 48 times. Though a secular cantata, Mirror has been performed frequently in churches and cathedrals, including both the Upper and Lower Basilicas of Assisi by different choirs. Of all my choral works it is the most widely performed, having achieved over 120 performances in nine countries.

The first of the Bournemouth commissions, Voices of Exile, was written for the choir’s 90th anniversary. In conversation with the secretary, Carolyn Date, and her late husband Sandrey, we found that we had in common a commitment to the

Michelangelo’s ‘Pietà’ in St Peter’s, Rome

Photo: Sandra Whiteway

work of Amnesty International. Carolyn and Sandrey were also aware of my music drama, King, which is based on the life of Martin Luther King, with lyrics by Maya Angelou. King was recorded by Decca, starring the legendary baritone Simon Estes, and performed at President Clinton’s Re-inauguration in Washington DC with an introduction by Angelou. One of my most treasured mementos from that project is an inscribed copy of Coretta Scott King’s biography My Life with Martin Luther King Jnr that reads, ‘To Richard Blackford, with appreciation for your efforts toward the fulfilment of the dream’.

After months of research and discussion with the Dates, I decided to set to music 17 poems on the subject of refugees and displacement. Voices of Exile (2001) is scored for mixed chorus, children’s chorus, three soloists and an ensemble of 17 players. It was premiered under the direction of Neville Creed at The Lighthouse, Poole. Like Mirror, the texts are high octane expressions of love, loss, grief and hope. Two further poems by the poet Tony Harrison, with whom I had collaborated on 12 film and theatre projects, frame the refugee texts, by way of Prologue and Epilogue. At 65 minutes it is almost twice the length of Mirror of Perfection. Shortly after the premiere, the eminent conductor of the Bach Choir, David Hill, urged me to re-orchestrate it for full symphony orchestra. It was in this format that he recorded it with the Bach Choir and the Philharmonia Orchestra. Voices of Exile broke new ground for me. It’s like a large solo and choral song-cycle that also incorporates tape playback of some of the poets’ actual voices declaiming and singing their texts. This lent a degree of authenticity to a work that was trying to bear witness to their experiences of displacement and their journeys to rebuild their lives. Indeed, Voices also has passages of tenderness and hope, such as the duet between tenor and mezzo-soprano

My Wish, by the Kurdistan poet Mohamed Khaki, and the aria Yemma by the Algerian poetess Samia Dahnaan.

Ten years later the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus premiered my next commission, Not in our Time, for its centenary Of all my works, the subject matter is the most challenging, and begins with a response to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre. In reading the ensuing Al Qaeda statements about how, in their opinion, the crusades against them had never ceased, I noticed the similarity of language between their words and those of both Christian and Muslim incitements to war during the First Crusade. Consequently, I chose words by Pope Urban II, AbulMuzzafar Al-Abyurdi, George Bush Jnr, Barack Obama, and the poem Not in our Time by the American poet Hilda Doolittle. Scored for mixed chorus, children’s chorus, tenor and baritone soloists and orchestra, its 13 sections last 55 minutes. My approach to the music is more symphonic, more organic than in Voices of Exile. Motifs permeate many of the movements, and the work is conceived much more like a dramatic cantata than the poem-cycle format of the earlier work. The two sections, ‘The First Crusade’ and ‘The Fall of Jerusalem’, are a sustained building of tension that are propelled at first by the crusader hymn Vexilla Regis prodeunt, then the sublime Lucis largitor splendide, which erupts after the victorious crusaders enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The juxtaposition of the horrors of war with the sublime expression of spirituality is a recurring feature. A year after the premiere, it was performed before an audience of 4000 in the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park. The ovation left me in no doubt that many Americans had connected with the subject of the work and especially with Obama’s plea for peaceful co-existence in its final section.

I had not expected a third commission from the BSC, but was delighted when I was once again approached by Carolyn and Sandrey Date. We knew each other well by now, and some years previously I had been invited to be president of the chorus. I knew that, as far as subject matter went, they expected another work that had strong contemporary resonance and was a further exploration of the themes of their previous two commissions. But things had changed. In 2016 I embarked on a PhD degree at Bristol University under the supervision of the composer John Pickard. My three-year course of research and study focused on poly-rhythm and multiple simultaneous tempi, as reflected in my second violin concerto Niobe. My rhythmic and harmonic language had advanced and I was fascinated by new possibilities of musical structure and form. I worried whether these stylistic developments could be compatible with writing another major work for amateur singers, even the superb BSC. Throughout my life I’ve kept in my head Benjamin Britten’s dictum that a composer, as well as expanding the range and technique of his musical style, should also be ‘useful’. In accepting the commission I determined to build on what I had learned and yet keep the technical standard of the choral and orchestral writing within the grasp of any good amateur chorus and orchestra.

In 2017 my wife Clare and I visited Rome, and I took her to see Michelangelo’s incomparable statue ‘Pietà’ in St Peter’s. What fascinated me was how something so sad could also be so beautiful. I recalled settings of the Stabat Mater that I had known for years (Pergolesi, Dvořák, Szymanowski) and went back to the Latin text that describes the grief of Mary, mother of Jesus, as she cradles her son after the crucifixion. The poem is largely bleak, though there are moments of light, especially the hope of attaining paradise towards the end. When I mentioned to a friend that I was considering setting the Stabat Mater, he remarked that one of the pitfalls is that of creating ‘six slow movements in succession’. Around that time I was also aware on news bulletins of the attacks against civilians in Syria and saw images of mothers cradling their dead or wounded children. But it was only when I re-read Anna Akhmatova’s poem cycle, Requiem, that I believed I had found the solution to the work’s structure. Akhmatova, whose husband had been ‘disappeared’ by Stalin’s KGB, saw her son taken away and believed she would never see him again. She pleaded with the authorities, and in her poem she wrote, ‘For 17 months I’ve pleaded, pleaded that you come home, flung myself at the hangman’s feet for you, my son –for you, my horror.’ This seemed less like the contemplation of the grieving mother but more of an expression of her rage, and it lent an entirely new dimension to the Stabat Mater theme.

As the composition progressed it became clear that my setting would be very far from ‘six slow movements’. Pietà contains much fast music that is dramatic, defiant and passionate, not merely a mediation on grief: the Pro peccatis suae gentis, the graphic description of Christ’s flagellation, is marked furioso; the first Akhmatova poem is marked Allegro assai; the Flammis ne urar succensus is marked Vivo, then Allegro molto. Even the Andante movements contain rapid accelerandi and huge choral climaxes, such as the unison cry of ‘Eia’ at the end of Eia mater, fons amoris

Scored for mixed chorus, children’s chorus, mezzo-soprano and baritone soloists, soprano saxophone and string

orchestra, Pietà lasts 45 minutes. I decided early on to write an obligato part for soprano saxophone, as the instrument feels to me halfway between the human voice and an instrument. At times it’s like a keening, ancient shawm, at others a third vocal soloist. It brings a warmth and tenderness to many of the key movements of the work, as well as concluding it.

I divided the combined Stabat Mater and Akhmatova texts into three main parts, preceded by an intense string prelude that sets the tone for what is to come. The predominantly dark tone of Part I is contrasted with the gentler children’s chorus that opens Part II and the four Akhmatova poems that follow. The turning point, at which light and hope begin to suffuse the work, occurs in Part III, in the middle of Mov. VIII Fac me tecum pie flere, where the saxophone introduces a soft melisma that is taken up contrapuntally by the choir with added solo violin and solo cello parts interweaving with the saxophone, strings and singers.

When I started composing the Stabat Mater text I realised how hard it is to set. The poem is tough, the images are raw, it

is unrelenting in its evocation of grief. Yet the poem offers moments of great tenderness and beauty. It is the delicate balance of emotional extremes, of crisis and the hope of salvation, that I tried to reconcile in the course of the composition. I was asked at the premiere how different the work would have been if I had not taken the PhD. Though its language is undeniably tonal and chromatic, the organic development of ideas is very far from Mirror of Perfection. Even in the opening muttered entry: ‘Stabat mater dolorosa’, as if the chorus is afraid to even pronounce those words, the musical attention is on the searing cello line that cuts through it, not on the chorus. This would not have occurred to me earlier in my career.

Pietà was premiered at The Lighthouse, Poole with the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus, Bournemouth Symphony Youth Chorus, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, soloists Jennifer Johnstone, Stephen Gadd, Amy Dickson and conductor Gavin Carr, to whom the work is dedicated. Its London premiere was given at Cadogan Hall. It was jointly commissioned by the St Albans Choral Society, and the

premiere by them in 2020 had to be postponed due to the COVID pandemic. This will now take place in St Albans Cathedral in 2022, and further performances are scheduled at Winchester Cathedral next year.

I will always be grateful to my friends at the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus for having the faith to commission not one, but three major choral works. When Pietà won the 2020 Ivor Novello Award in the Choral Category the BSC was in the middle of a Zoom rehearsal. When they heard the news of the award there was a whoop of joy, and I was delighted that our long association had been acknowledged with this honour.

Richard’s four CDs (Pietà, Not in our Time, Voices of Exile and Mirrors of Perfection) are available from www.wyastone.co.uk and Amazon.

CATHERINE ENNIS (1955-2020)

Canon David Parrott

Catherine Ennis

Photo: Simon Jacobs, RCO

It was with great sadness that I learnt of the death from breast cancer of our director of music and organist, Catherine Ennis, on Christmas Eve last year.

Catherine was the most amazing person and colleague. After college at Oxford, she was appointed assistant organist at Christ Church, the first woman to hold such a post at an English Anglican cathedral. She was also Director of Music at St Marylebone Parish Church for over a decade and for the last 35 years has been Director of Music and Organist at St Lawrence Jewry.

She was known throughout the organ world as a dynamic personality, both as an organist and as a mover and shaker. She was an energetic force in the creation of four organs here in London, at St Marylebone Parish Church in 1987, St Lawrence Jewry in 2001, at Trinity College of Music in 2003 and The Queen’s Organ in the Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey. She was also involved in other projects in the past year. She founded the London Organ Concerts Guide and was President of the Incorporated Association of Organists 2003-2005, the Royal College of Organists from 2013-15 and was a trustee of the Nicholas Danby Trust. In 2018 she was awarded the medal of the Royal College of Organists, its most prestigious award. Most recently she became a patron of The Society of Women Organists. She also had a highly successful international recital career which continued throughout her musical life.

also curated a series of concerts each year showcasing the emerging talent of those beginning their international careers as professional organists. I have seen many tributes to her from now well-established organists who say that she was a formative influence on them in their early years.

In 35 years at St Lawrence Jewry she played at civic services for 35 Lord Mayors of the City of London, and there is probably not a single past Master of the 110 livery companies who has not heard her play at major events. She was also ever-present at weddings, memorial services and special events for so many people over those three and a half decades.

One of her great passions was to nurture young organists. In recent years, St Lawrence hosted a series of sixth-form student recitals, allowing young performers to give a major London recital with support and encouragement from such an inspirational member of the organ world. Catherine

But such CV material does not tell the whole story. Catherine was a true giant of the organ world but was also a wife and daughter and mother who gave loving attention to her whole family while continuing her professional career.

She was also a supportive colleague to me. I came to St Lawrence Jewry with little musical knowledge and no professional music background. I was privileged to work with someone who understood the relationship that needs to exist between clergy and organists. She had an instinctive awareness of the dynamics of the Anglican choral tradition as director, conductor, organist or all three at the same time!

Catherine was never one to push herself forward. Her high-profile roles, such as President of the Royal College of Organists, were for her all about service, not self. Her commitment to young organists and to organ-building was about the future of the organ in the wider musical world. Her desire for nothing but the best was deep in her heart.

I was honoured to have her as a colleague, and I will miss her greatly.

Reverend Richard McLaren adds:

Catherine, as Director of Music at Marylebone Parish Church, was a female leader in a decidedly male milieu, and being also a Roman Catholic in an Anglican church she was distinctly exotic. But she understood the making of Christian worship to her fingertips. She was brilliant at interpreting the spirit of the liturgy with her particular combination of discipline and spontaneity which brings all good music-making to life. She understood perfectly how to frame sequences of words and music, silence and movement, the emphasis of minor and major keys, diminuendo and crescendo. She knew just what settings of the repertoire would work and for what occasion – for intimate private occasions, major public ones, ordinary Sundays, special Sundays. You can imagine what a rare professional gift this was to a priest or team preparing worship with her. A gift of heart, emotional intelligence, as well as learning – in fact nothing less than her soul. St Irenaeus, a Church Father in the 2nd century, wrote a perfect line for her: ‘The glory of God is a human being fully alive’. That is Catherine. I, and many others in the church’s life, thank God for her.

After college at Oxford, she was appointed assistant organist at Christ Church, the first woman to hold such a post at an English Anglican cathedral.

BEYOND THE ROSE YEARS

Simon Carpenter

Philip Moore, Barry Rose and Andrew Millington, all previous Guildford organists

“You’ve come all the way from Canterbury. You poor sods, a hell of a bloody way.” These warm words from the dean greeted Philip Moore on arriving for his interview to replace Barry Rose as Organist and Master of the Choristers of Guildford Cathedral.

It was 1974. Fifteen years earlier Barry had himself arrived and set up the choir in time for the cathedral’s consecration on 17 May 1961, quickly building it up to a level of sustained excellence before moving on to St Paul’s Cathedral: his successor would be facing a daunting task. As Philip later put it, ‘[Barry’s choir] sang everything exceedingly well’.

Philip was at that time assistant to Allan Wicks at Canterbury Cathedral, having earlier studied organ, piano, composition and conducting at the Royal College of Music before being

appointed Assistant Music Master and Organist at Eton College. He had been at Canterbury since 1968 but, keen to run his own show, he had for some while been applying for cathedral posts as they became vacant: Exeter, Wells and Winchester. But, ‘I wasn’t shortlisted for any of those. Then Hereford and Guildford came up at the same time. I had always admired Guildford and had been very impressed not only with the choir but also with Tony Bridge, the dean. He had come to Canterbury to conduct the Holy Week services, and he was unforgettable and riveting ... (Also) one of the canons, Frank Telfer, had been chaplain of the University of Kent at Canterbury, and I knew and liked him.’

The appointment was announced at the beginning of April 1974 and Philip moved into Cathedral Close in time for September. Barry had thoroughly briefed him before handing over, but it was, as Philip later recalled, ‘Daunting indeed … succeeding someone who had not only built a fine choir more or less into the very fabric of the building, but who had also sustained its excellence.’ Philip did, however, have a clear idea of how he wanted to develop the music at Guildford. ‘I wanted to broaden the repertoire, especially over the selection of communion and Mass settings. I may have gone over the top to begin with but eventually we came to a happy medium. … (but) generally the choir sang so well that I wasn’t out to change anything drastically. I think (overall) I just wanted to make the daily offering as good as it could possibly be.’

One thing Philip found difficult was the system by which the men operated. ‘There were those who came to every service, and those who attended on certain days of the week. All were paid. One man, for example, would appear on Mondays and Tuesdays. At the weekend, several others would appear –usually an alto, two basses and a tenor. It was a difficult system to operate because I would sometimes want to look ahead to weekend music, the setting of the Mass especially, and all sorts of balances would be thrown out by this influx of singers. Eventually we began a system of choral scholarships with the University of Surrey, which was close by. This worked well and produced some fine singers, who eventually made their names in the London singing world.’ Another burden ‘was having to drive some of the boys home after Evensong. Simon Deller drove some in the minibus in one direction and I went in another. With Evensong at 5.45pm, this made for a very late arrival home. It was not easy, especially as our three children were aged between ten months and four years old.’

Philip was helped to settle by being welcomed warmly into the cathedral community. ‘The precentor, Robert Gibbin, was a very caring man, a good musician and a good flautist. It was quite clear from the very beginning that the dean and chapter and the parents were completely behind me in everything. The sub-organist, Tony Froggatt, was also there to help and not to hinder. If things had not gone according to plan, he would give an honest and unbiased opinion about why.’

Inevitably, though, there were some who struggled with the new arrangements. Peter Wright, who took over from Tony Froggatt in 1977, later remembered that when he arrived, ‘The ghost of Barry Rose (was) still very much in evidence. There were some who simply refused to believe that anybody after Barry could run the choir. As one lay clerk put it, “Even if St Cecilia herself had taken over there would still be some who would moan.”’ However, Philip ‘brought his own experience

of working with Allan Wicks at Canterbury and his own strong musical personality to bear on the choir,’ says Peter.

Philip was to stay at Guildford for nine years, before succeeding Francis Jackson at York Minster in 1983. There were many highlights in that time. He is particularly proud of his first broadcasts. ‘Barry wrote and said how impressed he was – and that the first was better than any previous ones that had come from Guildford. I treasured that, having taken over his baby!’ Other highlights included, ‘Evensong, especially in the depths of winter. Starting Advent Procession services, and instituting a sung Requiem on All Souls’ Day, my last Duruflé Requiem being especially memorable.’ And the funniest moment? ‘Tony Bridge, the dean, saying, after the Magnificat, “I believe in one God…” I went over to him and whispered, “The second lesson comes next.” He replied: “Terribly sorry, everybody. Sit ye down.”’

St Paul’s, Gloucester and Winchester. I will never forget the combined choirs singing the Howells St Paul’s Magnificat under the dome. It was quite overwhelming. By contrast, some of the most satisfying moments were at Evensong in the gloom of winter with very few people in attendance. A simple piece of Tallis or a pianissimo ‘Gloria’ to a psalm might just touch a spot when building, organ and singers were in perfect sympathy with each other.’

Since 1983, three organists have been in post in Guildford with the present holder, Katherine Dienes-Williams, the first woman to hold the most senior musical post in a Church of England cathedral, arriving in 2007. Andrew Millington took over from Philip in 1983 and stayed until 1999 and Stephen Farr was in post between 1999 and 2007.

Before being appointed to Guildford, Andrew Millington was assistant organist at Gloucester Cathedral. He was well aware of what he was taking on. ‘Initially I was anxious that we could keep the ship afloat as I realised that the cathedral was going through a precarious time financially. We couldn’t afford to employ a precentor for the first three years of my time. Secondly, I was acutely aware of the reputation and high standard of the Guildford choir. My immediate ambition was to maintain the quality which had been a hallmark under Philip and Barry. It can be more of a challenge to maintain a level of excellence than to build things up from a lower level.’

There were many highlights: ‘I recall a very moving performance of Bach’s St John Passion which the choir gave one Good Friday, and a trip to St Paul’s in London for the Festival of the Sons of Clergy, where we joined the choirs of

After 16 years Andrew moved on to Exeter Cathedral, and was succeeded by Stephen Farr, who had been sub-organist of Winchester Cathedral, and before that at Clare and Christ Church. It was Stephen who oversaw the introduction of girl choristers into the choir in 2002.

Stephen arrived with plenty of ideas, as he later remembered: ‘I had some big ambitions, yes, being a green 30-something sub-organist – repertoire, projects, commissions etc. It’s true to say they were shelved pretty fast when I arrived, and I’ll leave it at that – my first two or three years were not at all easy.’ These years include what Stephen regards as his biggest challenge: ‘An Easter Day with only six choristers singing out of a full complement of nine. Two were ill, one was on a family holiday. And consequent to that, finally grasping the nettle of changing the routine to make some sort of normal family life possible for chorister parents. It was difficult, and caused upset and even hostility, but it was increasingly clear that the proposition we were offering to children and parents had become untenable. A seven-day week (Monday-Friday school and/or cathedral, then cathedral all weekend) for 8-13 year olds in a day-school infrastructure is not a healthy thing. I know that because every single family we offered a chorister place to that year turned us down, and I asked them to tell us why. I took some flak for it, but noticed that several other foundations followed suit not long afterwards. Our chorister numbers doubled within three years.’

There were some notable musical highlights for Stephen, though. ‘Probably my most memorable individual service was a Lady Chapel Tallis Lamentations with the gents on a proverbial foggy Monday in Lent – a non-clerical congregation of precisely no one, but exquisitely sung; it could have gone straight on to a CD. Advent carol services would be next on the list – something about the occasion always inspired the boys to raise their game several notches. Curiously, the big things like the Royal Maundy left less of a mark on me musically.’

Highlights for other reasons include, ‘The new sound system picking up the calls from a local takeaway driver’s radio. “The

Lord be with you; two chicken bhunas and a garlic naan to No. 5”!’ Also, ‘The sense of everyone pulling very hard to make it work, and the delight and satisfaction all round when it did. People are really invested in the place.’ And his lasting memory? ‘Being alone in the building on sunny evenings – just beautiful. When I left, a member of the clergy sent me a very kind letter saying that I had created a choir which punched way above its weight, so I’ll happily settle for that!’ Stephen moved on from Guildford to combine a freelance career with posts as Director of Music at St Paul’s Knightsbridge and Music Consultant of Worcester College Oxford.

Stephen was followed by Katherine Dienes-Williams in January 2008. Katherine was born and educated in Wellington, New Zealand, and studied for a BA in Modern Languages and a BMus at university there. She was organ scholar and then assistant organist at Wellington Cathedral. Prior to arriving at Guildford she had been Director of Music at St Mary’s Warwick for seven years. Her time at Guildford has not been without its challenges.

‘The profile of the cathedral sounded like a good fit. I knew of Stevie Farr’s excellent musicianship and his work with the choir and that there were both boy and girl choristers, which appealed.’ Katherine was the first female appointed to direct the music at an Anglican cathedral although, for her, her appointment to Warwick seven years previously had seemed the more pioneering moment. But, ‘the smashing of the glass ceiling did feel like a huge, vastly important moment at the time and utterly thrilling. It was always a case for me not of “Why” but rather of “Why not?”’

As with every Guildford Cathedral music director, a constant challenge has been the transportation of choristers. ‘We are heavily reliant on the goodwill of our chorister parents in collecting and dropping their children off here, whilst depending on a bus service to transport our boy choristers from Lanesborough School and the Royal Grammar School to the cathedral after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. There are days when the bus doesn’t turn up, the bus is late, there is snow mid-Evensong, a traffic jam on the A3 etc. and one has to make alternative arrangements, very often at the last minute.’ And of course Katherine also has had to negotiate the choir

through Covid, including the death of a deputy singer, Tim Pride, former countertenor lay clerk at Winchester, who last sang with the choir in one of the final fully choral services in March 2020.

Katherine is full of ambitions for the development of music at the cathedral. ‘I think we should have someone from the music and education departments to really harness musical outreach so that we become a centre of musical opportunity and learning for all generations. This needs to work right from toddler music groups to local primary schools to the cathedral choir to the Guildford Cathedral Singers (adult voluntary choir) to links with our ex-choristers to music for people in care homes / people with special needs – we need to just harness it all together. We should be a hub of excellence and be proud to be ‘elite’ – just as one would be proud of being an elite athlete.’

Barry Rose’s ‘baby’ is clearly in safe hands.

Simon Carpenter works part time in the NHS and has recently completed an MA on Herbert Brewer and his pupils at the University of Gloucestershire. This has led to him achieving his dream job of joining the Three Choirs Festival team as a voluntary archivist and historian.

Guildford Cathedral interior

Photo: Clive Dudley

INSTAGRAM/ CATHEDRALGRAM

Guy Tudor

The Chapter House ceiling, York Minster

Photo: Peter Li, York Minster

It was autumn 1995 and we had just moved to Southport. Within the first few weeks of starting at my new school there was an opportunity to audition to sing in a choir. At the end of an assembly, a man entered the room and proceeded to sit down at the school piano; he listened to us all sing a scale (although I didn’t know what that was at the time) and then, at the end, handed a letter out to those who had impressed, inviting us to a meeting at Holy Trinity Church.

And that was my introduction to a lifelong love of an interest in singing, music and the great buildings in which these are heard – supported (thankfully) by my parents, who still to this day are actively involved in the church, my mother as churchwarden, and my father as a member of the choir.

Holy Trinity Southport is and remains my home parish church. There has always been a rich musical heritage, one which was established by David Bowman in the early 1960s. Some readers might recognise his name from Ampleforth Abbey, where he formed the Schola Cantorum. The legacy was carried on by the appointment of David Williams in 1965 – he remained in post for almost 40 years, working alongside three different incumbents, most notably Revd Canon Dr Rod Garner, who retired in 2008. Ian Wells from Liverpool Anglican Cathedral took over the role on David’s departure, and John Hosking, formerly organist at St Asaph Cathedral, replaced Ian a few years ago.

There are too many memories to talk about as a chorister, from evensongs in the depth of winter where sometimes only your breath could be seen, the great patronal celebrations, concerts a-plenty – the opportunities were so many! The greatest was the annual ‘Choir Holiday’ where we packed our musical bags and travelled off to a cathedral and sang the services whilst the resident cathedral choir went on their summer holidays. This was, and still is, a valuable part of what goes on not only at Holy Trinity, but also across the country in other parish church choirs. My first holiday was in 1996 when we visited Llandaff Cathedral and in future years we visited Peterborough, St George’s Windsor, Bristol, Southwell Minster, Norwich, Exeter and Chichester. In all, I sang on 22 choir holidays, and they remain some of my foremost memories of my life as a chorister. The opportunity to sing in these great spaces filled me with a great sense of pride –a tradition unrivalled in the world. And I enjoyed the social elements as I got a bit older!

An undergraduate degree at the University of Huddersfield offered more opportunities – the course was a varied one that encompassed many different elements of music, and it opened my eyes to specific subjects such as small ensemble singing, and the Renaissance and Baroque periods in detail. I greatly appreciated the chance to sing in a small choir at St Peter’s Church, and I latterly filled the post of acting Director of Music in my final months in Huddersfield, working

Holy Trinity Southport

Photo: Rex Harris

alongside the Very Revd Catherine Ogle, currently Dean of Winchester. Another revelation in the final months was an introduction to the City of York by a good friend who had become involved in the renowned York Early Music Festival, an organisation I am still involved with to this day. Dr Delma Tomlin MBE, the director, is a constant inspiration to the arts world, especially in these trying times we currently are living in. I had never considered studying for a Master’s degree, but the more I thought about the prospect of living in York, the more the idea became attractive. I was very aware of the musical heritage the city had to offer.

York has now been my home since 2009, with time out for a brief spell in Surrey in the middle. I completed my Master’s degree under the supervision of Professors Peter Seymour and Jo Wainwright – looking specifically at the music of William Byrd, his composer friends, and the recusant music written whilst Byrd was in exile. The decision to complete this degree part-time was one of the best I made, as it meant I could immerse myself in the sheer wealth of performances available to me, within the practical focused department of Music. York is the musical home to many great performers, musicologists and teachers working across all fields.

Within the city, I became a member of the Yorkshire Bach Choir directed by Peter Seymour. This opened up the chance to sing the greatest choral works with the Yorkshire Baroque Soloists, record both the St John Passion and the B Minor Mass for Signum Records and fill the church of St Michael le Belfrey next door to York Minster with amazing music six times a year as part of our annual concert series. This offered the chance to hear some of the best international soloists as part of this, Matthew Brook, James Gilchrist, Peter Harvey and Dame Emma Kirkby, to name but a few – and not forgetting the legendary after-concert parties!

The other ensemble I joined was The Ebor Singers, directed by Paul Gameson, who has been a songman at York Minster for 25 years, quite an achievement! This is a much smaller group of singers, described as one of York’s premier vocal ensembles, which happens to also be an associate choir of York Minster. As part of our concert series we regularly sing in the glorious acoustics of the Chapter House, unforgettable experiences for audience and singers alike. We also contribute to the Minster music throughout Lent, singing Compline every Thursday in the run-up to Easter in the quire and lady chapel – I’m confident in saying that the thrill of singing repertoire such as Howells Salve Regina and Parsons Ave Maria into a darkened, empty Minster is something which every member of The Ebor Singers will admit to finding an incredibly moving and magical experience.

It has now been over a year since we all sang together in both ensembles and, whilst Zoom sessions have been initiated, they aren’t at all the same as the real deal. I still remember the last performance of Parsons’ exquisite Ave Maria in the Chapter House with The Ebor Singers last March, only a week before Lockdown 1 was announced. A video which has been viewed over 6.5k times can be seen on our Facebook page. It is hoped that when we can all be together again, we will begin by singing this timeless wonder.

One thing which tentatively links all the experiences that I’ve been fortunate to have partaken in, right from those early days as a chorister to those most recently before Lockdown, are the great buildings which are right at the heart of the great cities across this country. I have always been fascinated by cathedrals and their architecture. Whether it be the cavernous ‘Great Space’ at Liverpool Anglican, the glorious Chapter House at York Minster or the intimate quire at Chichester, they all evoke strong memories for hundreds of people, musicians and pilgrims alike.

Yorkshire Bach Choir singing at St Michael le Belfrey

Photo: Ian Martindale

On my first visit to Llandaff in 1996 I remember taking some photos with a disposable camera, only to find that the quality when they were developed was really poor. Thankfully, technology has advanced a long way, and all you need now is a mobile phone, which is such an easy option for most of us. I remember sitting with a friend four years ago, scrolling through my photos, and my friend took a real interest in the many photos of cathedrals I had amassed. The conversation came round to Instagram, which for the uninitiated is a hugely popular photo-sharing app with millions of users. You choose which people or sites to follow, and photos from these users are sent automatically to your phone. You can look at the photos at your leisure, and simply enjoy them. Some people post photos of their babies/children/animals – I post photos of our amazing cathedrals. And because the choice of what you look at is entirely yours, you are never overwhelmed by too many photos or contributions – you can simply unsubscribe from the ones you don’t want to see at any time.

Not long after that conversation with my friend, I created my new Instagram ID, @cathedralgram, although initially it didn’t have such a catchy name! It started as just a bit of fun, sharing some of the best photos I’d taken. I remember that in the early days the photos received a few ‘likes’ and the followers started to grow, albeit slowly. Recently, however, I celebrated the 20,000 followers mark, which is quite an achievement for something which was only meant to be a bit of fun. I now actively search out photographs from other Instagram users and, with their permission, share their work alongside my own, which I continually add to. The collection has become a veritable treasure trove of some absolutely wonderful photographs of these incredible buildings, which so many musicians call their place of work, clergy call their office and amateur musicians call their concert venues. If you don’t follow the page either on Instagram, or on Facebook, why not?!

Overall, I am so thankful for all the opportunities I had as a youngster, as these led to a lifelong interest in the cultural and musical heritage of this country. It is so important that these are preserved, especially in our current difficult times. And although sung services have been held on and off throughout

the various lockdowns at York Minster, one thing I greatly miss is the ability to walk into the city on a Sunday, sit in a packed quire and hear the Minster choir sing Evensong. It is something special and evokes so many memories for me. Normality can’t come soon enough.

I sincerely hope the Instagram account continues to provide inspiration to all the followers around the world, and who knows, there may even be a calendar available for next year!

www.instagram.com/cathedralgram

St Michael le Belfrey, York

Photo: Robin Denton

PROFILE MATTHEW JORYSZ

What advice would you give to someone applying for a position of organ scholar?

I think one of the best things about being a church musician is the necessity to be multifaceted. It’s a job that doesn’t just focus purely on being a soloist but requires a person to be an accompanist, an improviser, someone who can work with singers and possibly orchestras as a conductor/continuo player etc., and of course there’s the element of training boys’/girls’ voice choirs and being a part of their musical development. So I think besides developing the obvious technical facility as an organist it’s important to be outwardlooking and adaptable.

When you arrived at Clare, did you find you were well prepared for the duties you were about to undertake? Did you find the time commitment manageable?

My year at Salisbury was quite formative for me in terms of my playing. We were without an Assistant Director of Music for the majority of the year so I had a heavy workload and had to learn quite a lot of repertoire in that time, which meant I felt well prepared on arrival at Clare. The choir at Clare sings three evensongs a week which is obviously a lighter schedule than the colleges with daily choral services. So I had a nice balance with student life but it also meant I had time for an excellent programme of concerts, tours and recordings. Concerts with the Aurora Orchestra and tours with the European Union Baroque Orchestra stick in the memory, as does a recording of Duruflé’s Requiem which was an exciting project for me.

Education details:

Brentwood School

Clare College, Cambridge (Music)

Career details

Organ Scholar, Salisbury Cathedral 2011-12

Organ Scholar, Clare College 2012-2015

Organ Scholar, Westminster Abbey 2015-Jan 2016

Assistant Organist, Westminster Abbey 2016-now

Were you a chorister, and if so, where?

I wasn’t a cathedral chorister, but sang in the local parish choir where my father was the vicar, so I found myself immersed in church music from an early age. I started playing the organ there occasionally and then had lessons at school before being taught for a few years by Ann Elise Smoot, who was a great influence. When I left school, I spent a year as organ scholar at Salisbury Cathedral before going on to Clare, where I read music and held the organ scholarship for three years.

What pieces have you been inspired to take up recently and why?

I had several lockdown projects (that reached varying levels of completion!) such as the Goldberg Variations and the Swiss suite from Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage on the piano. My organ projects included Duruflé’s Prelude, Adagio and Variations on ‘Veni creator’ and a transcription of Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances. I was due to play them together in a concert in the summer and hope to be able to resurrect that idea this year.

What was the last recording you were working on?

I recorded an album of Russian song, as pianist, with countertenor Hamish McLaren shortly before the pandemic. It spans the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing on lesserknown works inspired by themes of travel and longing for distant lands. There are first recordings of music by Elena Firsova, Nikolai Myaskovsky (1881-1950) and two recently rediscovered Shostakovich songs, written for a 1950s film score but unused. It’s released in May on Orchid Classics for any interested Russophiles!

What has been the impact of the pandemic on you, your playing and your friends?

I feel very fortunate to have a salaried job and therefore not to have felt the full force of the financial pinch that many freelance musicians have experienced. There has of course been the frustration of lots of work being cancelled and the disappointment of a sudden and extended halt to the previously long unbroken tradition of daily choral singing, which is so intrinsic to the identity and rhythm of cathedral choirs and the cathedrals themselves. My hope is that the sudden grinding to a halt of music will bring audiences/ congregations back in force (when it is safe to do so) with a renewed appreciation of how precious high-quality live musicmaking is, including in our churches and cathedrals, and how important it is that it’s supported properly in the difficult times to come.

What is your...

a) favourite organ to play?

Westminster Abbey

b) favourite building?

Salisbury Cathedral

c) favourite psalm and accompanying chants?

No particular favourite, but I find that the more miserable ones give the best opportunity for expressive accompaniment!

How do you cope with nerves?

I don’t really have particular strategies. I don’t think nerves ever go away, but I think it gets easier with experience when you learn how you will respond in pressure situations and can be ready for that. Nerves can also be a positive to sharpen your concentration!

What are the drawbacks to life as an organist?

What else might you have been?

I suppose the occasionally unsociable hours of work/practice would be a drawback, but I am not sure I can imagine myself doing a job outside music!

d) favourite anthem

Victoria Versa est in luctum

e) favourite organ piece

Bach Fantasia and Fugue in G minor BWV 542

f) favourite composer

The composers I come back to the most are probably Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, Strauss and Schubert.

Do you know a child who loves to sing?

They could be a chorister at Salisbury Cathedral and become part of a 900-year-old tradition, receiving expert musical tuition and an outstanding education. Auditions for children in years 3 and 4 on Saturday 3 July 2021.

chorister.recruitment@salcath.co.uk

07979378926

www.salisburycathedral.org.uk

RICHARD SHEPHARD (1949-2021)

Dr Edward Higginbottom

Richard Shephard clad in robes as Governor of the Company of York Merchant Adventurers

Photo: Mark Woodward

Richard was a chorister at Gloucester, and a lay clerk there from the age of 16 before reading music at Cambridge. He became a lay vicar under Richard Seal at Salisbury and wrote several musicals in conjunction with Robert Willis (who writes elsewhere in these pages) and a great number of pieces for the RSCM. Acting on advice from John Sumsion – “Don’t ever stay in one place as long as I have”

after 15 years in Salisbury he transferred to York, and spent the rest of his life there.

Edward Higginbottom writes:

When Richard Shephard died in February this year, we lost a unique figure in the life of the Anglican Church. The impact of his work in the spheres of music, education and administration was immense. We may reasonably talk of a Renaissance man without fear of contradiction.

I met Richard first as an undergraduate in the late 1960s. We were both reading Music at Corpus Christi Cambridge, one of us a choral scholar, the other the organ scholar. Richard was from The King’s School Gloucester, where his musical education had begun as a chorister at the cathedral. As a raw grammar school lad, I was somewhat in awe of his background. But he made little of it. We were lucky to have him in the choir – as fine a countertenor as you could wish to find in Cambridge, we all thought. Between the two of us, we had arguments about who was the greater composer, Mozart or Beethoven, the sort of thing you do when young enough to imagine there is an answer. Already Richard’s infatuation with Richard Strauss was manifest (not simply a matter of sharing the same initials). He couldn’t be doing with the avant-garde. Indeed, I don’t think he ever wished to engage with the moderns. But he wished to compose. One of his undergraduate projects was a setting of The Beggars’ Opera which, rather grandly, we ‘toured’ to the Minack Theatre in North Cornwall.

Like the rest of us, Richard got a degree, and indeed a job. He went off to Salisbury to sing in the cathedral choir and teach at the choir school there. I visited him in his historic flat in The Close, next to the main gate. An unkind observer would say that he had returned to his former world without giving the real one a second glance. As things turned out, whether or not they were stirring in Richard’s imagination, he was to pursue a career that had everything to do with looking outwards, but from within sacred spaces.

Richard’s love of sacred spaces, first Gloucester and Salisbury Cathedrals and then York Minster, is the key to understanding him. His own fabric seemed to be built of those very stones. I can see on his bookshelf the great stories of cathedral life such as Elizabeth Goudge’s The Dean’s Watch. It would have been these novels rather than the social satires of Trollope that enthralled Richard: stories inhabiting the vast and mysterious places that are our ancient cathedrals. Their towering walls and buttresses exuded a thousand years of worship and ritual. He truly loved these buildings, and what they stood for. And what did they stand for? In a word, the daily office. This was his lodestar. His compass was set first as a singer, and then, with increasing importance, as a composer. Anthem by anthem, setting by setting, he started out on a composing career that has made his name familiar throughout the Anglican

Communion. It is the thread that connects every stage of his career. His musical style is elegant and accessible. As far as I know, he didn’t agonise about what he should put down on paper. He retained an enviable fluency. His professional life gave him status as a pedagogue (how he would have hated that word) and as an administrator (and that one too), so that he could afford to be carefree about his reputation as a composer. He knew that the modernists, the crafters of difficult and impenetrable sound-worlds, would look down upon his efforts. He also knew that he sold many more copies than they did, and enjoyed very many more performances. His singers were grateful not to be confounded by complexity. They came back for more. Performances ranged across the Anglican world, notably in the USA, where he had a large following. Pieces like his settings of Never weather-beaten sail and And when the builders are now classics. In all, his contribution to Church Music is remarkable, including the soundscape to the permanent historical exhibition in the crypt of York Minster. Not that it stopped at the church door, as those attending the York Mystery Plays in 2016 knew, or those fortunate enough to be involved in his brilliant musicals (The Wind in the Willows, The Selfish Dragon, The Musicians of Bremen, among others).

It is all well and good having plenty of new music: what about the resource to perform it? In 1985, Richard moved from his post as Deputy Head at Salisbury Cathedral School to take up the headmastership of the Minster Choir School in York. It was a strategic appointment: the Dean and Chapter needed to see change. Richard gave it them. I recall making a visit some years into his post. The sea-change had been delivered. Pupil numbers were buoyant, a plentiful supply of choristers assured, the debit and credit side of the accounts were locked in happy embrace, and the whole enterprise had been transformed into a mixed community, girls as well as boys now singing in the Minster. None of this was the work of an inward-looking traditionalist, but the achievement of an innovator. Through intelligence, vision, force of character and graft, Richard secured the means for the Minster to renew its musical mission. It was also Richard’s path out of the choir school into new pastures.

It is intriguing to see how a child of southern and West Country cathedrals had become passionate about a city on the very outskirts of the Roman Empire. There is no doubt that the Minster had got completely under Richard’s skin, to the extent that in 2004 he became a key figure in its restoration programme. On the occasion of another of my visits to York, he took me to see parts of the great East window then laid out in the glaziers’ workshop. The glass was there because Richard had raised ten million pounds. This matched a Heritage Lottery grant of the same amount: 20 million

pounds in all. Restoration work could proceed. Where an outsourced fundraiser had previously failed, Richard, the novice Director of Development, had succeeded. At the same time, he guaranteed the employment of the craftsmen – glaziers and stonemasons – on whom the repair of our great mediaeval buildings depends. The York stonemasons repaid the debt with a striking gargoyle: Richard is now part of the Minster fabric for centuries to come. The Archbishop of York was not slow in recognising his debt either: Richard was appointed a lay canon, and Chamberlain of the Minster. The City of York, for this and other reasons, made him an Honorary Freeman of the City.

great mimic. Telephone conversations with Sir Mark Elder (another Cambridge contemporary) always began with a gale of laughter, before ever a word was spoken. He was also immensely charming. Not an empty charm calculated to disarm, but a natural welling-up of intuitive understanding and concern. A very close friend observed that an initial shyness, even diffidence, masked an extremely caring and thoughtful man, someone who inspired confidence and trust. There could be a nervousness and high sensitivity in his mood, but he truly believed his role was to help people come together and achieve great things. The young loved working with him, and indeed loved him. He balanced to perfection Decorum and Mischief. He put himself out for them, by conducting the St William’s Singers, or supporting the work of the young artistic team running the Ryedale Festival. Accessible and amusing, authoritative and enabling. He knew when to step in and when to step back, though I’m not sure you would want to see him dancing.

All this speaks of an ethos of service. It was reflected in an increasing number of public roles. Richard had been a Deputy Lieutenant of North Yorkshire since 2012 (due to take on the office of High Sheriff in 2022). He chaired the York Glaziers Trust, the Archbishop of York Youth Trust, and the Minster’s Fabric Advisory Committee. His connection with York University was cemented in the chairmanship of the Heslington Foundation for Music and Associated Arts. In 20152016, he served as Governor of the Merchant Adventurers of the City of York. He advised the Hamish Ogston Foundation and the Ouseley Trust. He was interim Chair of the Leeds International Piano Competition during a delicate stage in its reconfiguration surrounding the retirement of Dame Fanny Waterman. He also served on the influential Archbishop’s Commission on Cathedrals. Latterly he chaired The Ryedale Festival. The qualities he brought to these tasks were his trademark quicksilver intelligence, tact and vision. He couldn’t stand dithering, or nonsense. He was a Yorkshireman by instinct. He might even have had Tetley teabags on his kitchen shelf. Two universities (York and the University of the South in Sewanee) conferred on him honorary doctorates, a much more elusive distinction than the real thing. They stand alongside his Lambeth doctorate. He was appointed MBE in 2012. Arguably greater honours were in the pipeline.

The ethos of service extended to his work with young people. He was always on their side. If he ever felt grand in his Chamberlain’s robes, it was all part of a spectacle to be debunked. He would sooner dissolve in laughter than go up in holy smoke. His wry humour was legendary. He was a

Since Cambridge days, our encounters were more sporadic than regular. But latterly I felt him to be the same down-toearth dreamer I had known 50 years ago. He was an avid and discriminating reader. His modest terraced house in York groaned under the weight of books, mainstream, popular, erudite, esoteric. The walls were hardly visible for prints and pictures, mostly of cathedrals and their evocative surroundings. He was also an avid collector of acquaintances and friends. Somehow it seemed entirely unsurprising that a copy I found in his guest bedroom of the biography of Dame Janet Baker had a personal dedication (including a letter) from Dame Janet herself. Or that the smallest room in the house displayed a seating plan for a private Buckingham Palace luncheon with HM The Queen. I noticed over breakfast that he took the Daily Telegraph (perhaps more to do with a decent crossword than its political commentary). Whether through choice or circumstance, he never found a partner. His twin brother, Jonathan, gave him impeccable and loving support during his final and very debilitating illness. Richard bore this with stoicism, but inevitably also with sadness, unable to continue doing all the things he so much cherished. His beloved cat, Arabella (Strauss, again), understood this, and when invited jumped affectionately into his lap.

It’s a sign of a life well lived when those most deeply affected by one’s death are the young. The media they now inhabit (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) tell a story of friendship and guidance, dry humour and wit, integrity and spirit, energy and determination. The Richard Shephard Music Foundation has been established as a registered charity to continue his mission to bring music into schools, with a special emphasis on helping children in disadvantaged areas.

May Richard rest in peace. His legacy will live on in his music, and in one of Europe’s iconic medieval buildings, fitter now, through his efforts, to weather a few more centuries. It will also reside in the hearts and minds of all those who have in so many ways been touched and enriched by his company, his works, and his deeds.

The Richard Shephard Foundation (registered charity No. 1189066) aims to bring music into primary schools in Yorkshire from the beginning of next year.

The East Window at York Minster

Photo: Craig Warner

SIR GEORGE’S PEW Jonathan Rennert

The interior at St Michael’s, Cornhill

Photo: David Iliff

St Michael’s has been a Christian site since before the Norman Conquest, although it was completely destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. The present church was rebuilt by Christopher Wren between 1669 and 1672.

Ralph Vaughan Williams and Herbert Howells often used to visit the church, and both wrote music for the choir. William Boyce was the organist for 32 years, Harold Darke for 50…

and as for other significant dates: Henry Purcell gave the opening recital on the organ in 1684, and the Royal College of Organists was founded here by Richard Limpus in 1864. Built above the remains of the massive Basilica of Roman Londinium, St Michael’s has had a reputation for fine music for many centuries. There are accounts of a choir (of boys, lay clerks and chantry priests) singing three daily choral services as early as 1375. In the early 1500s the choir was singing the latest complex polyphony.

Harold Darke’s reign as Director of Music (1916-66) was a rich period for the performance of new music written for the church choir and its sister group, St Michael’s Singers. Some of these commissioned works have been included on our recent CD, Cornhill Visions (reviewed on p55), and they are performed with the same fine organ and the magical acoustic that the composers originally envisaged. However, not all the tracks date from the first half of the 20th century.

In the past 40 years we have premièred new works by Francis Jackson, William Mathias, Michael Berkeley, Kenneth Leighton, Frederick Stocken, Stephen Cleobury, John Scott, Anna Meredith, Ruth Byrchmore, Cheryl FrancesHoad, Philip Moore, Iain Farrington and Gareth Treseder, amongst others. In addition, in the past few years, we have tried to nurture a younger generation of composers with the appointment of a Composer in Residence. The present holder of the title, Rhiannon Randle, has risen to every challenge which I have set her – even writing an anthem (included on the CD) for choir, soloists and the Chinese stringed instrument, the erhu. (This was a special present to welcome a new Chinese congregation which now occasionally worships in the church.) Rhiannon also wrote a heart-wrenching anthem for a special environmental ‘Choral Ecosong’, to a moving text by Malcolm Guite, as well as a carol with an obligato for two alpine horns.

When I succeeded Richard Popplewell as Director of Music in 1979, the choir was semi-professional. Now it consists of professional singers and choral scholars, all of whom are sensitive musicians with superb voices.

In services the organ is normally played by the Thalben-Ball Memorial Organ Scholar, who is usually (though not always) a recent postgraduate. These players serve part of their apprenticeship with us, and most have gone on to senior musical positions in churches and cathedrals in England, Scotland and as far away as Australia. They are supported, as

one of its primary purposes, by the Sir George Thalben-Ball Memorial Trust, which was launched at an ambitious concert featuring the Bach Choir, Huddersfield Choral Society and a large number of this country’s leading organists at the Royal Albert Hall in 1991. I should explain that Sir George was closely connected with St Michael’s for almost 70 years, and he was the Albert Hall organist for over 50! When he retired from Temple Church he often came to the Sunday morning service at St Michael’s, and always sat in the raised churchwardens’ pew at the west end on the north side. In fact, the wardens called it ‘Sir George’s pew’. (It is said that Vaughan Williams would sit in the churchwardens’ pew on the south side. In my time here, his widow Ursula frequently used to attend our St Michael’s Singers’ concerts.)

Built above the remains of the massive Basilica of Roman Londinium, St Michael’s has had a reputation for fine music for many centuries.

The Monday lunchtime organ recitals, which began in 1914, are said to form the world’s longest-running series of weekly recitals (nobody has successfully challenged the statement!). They were broadcast nationally on the wireless for several years in the 1920s. Nowadays they are performed by the resident organists (the Director of Music and the organ scholar) and

distinguished recitalists from the UK and overseas, as well as promising younger players.

Very few people live in the parish. St Michael’s serves a weekday congregation of thousands of office workers (for whom we provide lunchtime organ recitals, a weekly Choral Evensong and concerts). There used to be a Sunday morning Eucharist, but this was eventually terminated as the congregation diminished. There are services for 12 of the ancient City of London livery companies, whose demands can range from an introit, anthem, hymns and organ voluntaries to a full Choral Evensong. The Musicians’ Company, not surprisingly, gives us plenty of additional challenges! Formal memorial services for City figures are usually fairly traditional. Good congregations are guaranteed for carol services, the City New Year Service (at which the lessons are read by the Lord Mayor and the Governor of the Bank of England) and the annual Ascension Day Choral Eucharist, after which the clergy, choir and fitter members of the congregation climb the 200 steps of the tower for the rector’s Blessing of the City. In ordinary times, at least, there are good congregations.

Because St Michael’s lies at the heart of the City of London, it is often assumed that the church must be wealthy. Unfortunately, all our historic bequests and endowments were reallocated by the Diocese of London many years ago, and so our income comes from the people who walk through the west door. Every cathedral and parish church Director of Music knows from their own experience that good music costs money – and it is very often the Director of Music who has to find it. I have spent the past 42 years at St Michael’s as organist, choir director and fundraiser-in-chief!

Erhu and player

The latest challenge, for all of us, has of course been the pandemic. Fortunately, our recent CD recording was made by Regent Records before this hit, so we didn’t have to eschew sharing pencils or avoid crowding into the kitchen during breaks. Since the lockdowns, though, the singers have had to be thoroughly disinfected and spaced-out when recording the music for streamed services, and even the organist has had to be sanitised.

Organists have continued to give weekly recitals – videoed and broadcast on YouTube, with Zoom pre- and post-concert discussions. The audience now includes regular attenders from Japan, Australia, Israel and various European countries, and this presents us with a puzzle: when live audiences eventually return to St Michael’s, how do we retain these enthusiasts of goodwill and bonhomie, people with a common interest, even though they may be physically thousands of miles apart?

Jonathan Rennert has directed the music at St Michael’s Cornhill since 1979, having been a foundation scholar at the RCM, then organ scholar of St John’s College Cambridge (under George Guest). His teachers included Richard Popplewell, Gillian Weir and John Barstow. He has given many of the weekly organ recitals at St Michael’s, and performed in churches and concert halls on five continents. He has served sabbatical appointments in Ottawa and San Francisco, made many radio broadcasts, and appeared as conductor, accompanist or continuo player on various recordings. He is the author of books on the composer William Crotch and George Thalben-Ball; is an examiner for the RCO and ABRSM; and is a Past Master of The Musicians’ Company, a governor of the Royal Society of Musicians and Chairman of the Arabesque Trust (for blind organists).

TREASURE OUR TRADITIONAL CHOIRS!

We are pleased to announce the formation of a new charity to support all male choirs across our cathedrals, churches, colleges, schools and communities.

We are able to consider grants toward chorister places. TRADITIONAL CATHEDRAL CHOIR ASSOCIATION

Supporting choirs of men and boys: a gloriously unique heritage

Registered Charity 1190108

info@traditionalcathedralchoirassociation.org.uk

Jonathan Rennert at the launch of the CD ‘Cornhill Visions’

(1926-2020)

MEMORIES OF ARTHUR WILLS OBE

Organist and Master of the Choristers

at

Ely Cathedral 1958-90

Arthur

Wills was a towering figure in English cathedral music, and far beyond, for much of the 20th century and into this day. As well as his daily work in Ely, he held a professorship for many years at the Royal Academy of Music. In both posts he taught and inspired countless musicians, young and adult, who went on to enrich this country’s musical life. Arthur was also a virtuoso organist and a composer of distinction, with an instantly recognisable musical language and a talent for capturing the mystery and beauty of the written word in music.

I first encountered Arthur in 1963 when I was organ scholar at Pembroke. Duties were light, so one Sunday morning I paid my first visit to Ely, by train. I walked up the hill from the station and through the great West Door into a dimly-lit nave, into which the fog from outside had seeped. I stood under the West Tower and surveyed the scene: a nave devoid of any furniture stretching into the distance, and in that distance the timeless sound of plainsong, sung by the lay clerks. It was halfterm and the boys were away. I could have stepped back 500 years, and I was hooked. Later, I introduced myself to Arthur, and became a regular visitor to the cathedral and his home, and had a number of consultations with him on the organ, primarily learning of his love of French organ music of the recent past, Messiaen especially, in which he was something of a pioneer. Simon Preston always credits Arthur for sparking his interest in the great man.

Roger Judd, assistant organist 1968-1972. Roger went on to be Master of the Music at St Michael’s College, Tenbury (1973-85), and then Assistant Organist at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle (1985-2008).

Arthur Wills at Ely Cathedral

Photo: Keith Heppel

Eighteen months after I’d graduated, quite out of the blue, I had a phone call from Arthur telling me that he needed an assistant organist and was I interested? So, in September 1968 I began a four-year partnership with him. I was also Director of Music at the King’s School, the two posts having been joined for many years. Arthur had been brought to Ely by Sidney Campbell in 1949 as his assistant and also as tenor lay clerk, and continued in both roles until he assumed the top job in 1958. He trained the choir using a combination of approaches he’d learnt under Campbell and Michael Howard (who succeeded Campbell) and, as a result, the choir sang with a gutsy tone and great energy when required, but was also capable of a much gentler approach when necessary. Sometimes I felt that he was using the singers rather like he might use the stops of the organ, different sounds to be drawn on at will.

The repertoire was extraordinarily varied. I recall on my first Good Friday being bowled over by a searing performance of William Cornysh’s Woefully arrayed, of which I was previously unaware. Lots of Tudor and Elizabethan music was regular service fare, much of it unknown to me, and mostly in handwritten editions. I’m thinking especially of John Amner, an Ely musician of the early 17th century, edited by my predecessor, Anthony Greening. Arthur was at the beginning of a long creative life as a composer, and the choir and I had the excitement of freshly-minted music to grapple with, some of it not without technical challenges, not least of all his handwriting! Seeing that I had a neat hand, it wasn’t long before I was making fair copies for him.

As an organist, too, he was much sought after as a recitalist, not just in the UK but also abroad. This suited me very well, because for some quite lengthy periods he left me to run the show, and I gained valuable experience from those absences, even directing a BBC Choral Evensong. Back in those times, Ely just had the two organists, so if one was away there was no other back-up, which could be quite a challenge on occasion. Compositions for the organ appeared regularly too, and some were quite abrasive. The Ely organ then packed quite a punch, especially in the quire. On more than one occasion a canon (Peter Moore, later Dean of St Albans) would ostentatiously process out of Evensong with his fingers in his ears! One day Arthur premiered a prelude and fugue, one which was very exciting and demanding of the organ, not to mention the player. Talking to Arthur afterwards I learnt that he was playing one of the ‘cheese market’ concerts in Alkmaar in a few weeks’ time, and the P & F was on the menu. Somewhat diffidently I said that he would be hard pushed to play it on the Laurenskerk organ, as there were no aids to registration, nor were there enough notes on either the manuals or the pedals. Ever the practical musician, Arthur simply wrote another prelude and fugue to suit the instrument!

In remembering Arthur, one must not forget Mary his wife – she was an Ely lady through and through. She was a lovely person and a devoted partner, and I’m sure that Arthur drove her mad at times. She was also extremely helpful in a pastoral way with the boys. The Wills home was welcoming and warm, and their hospitality generous to a fault. I had four Christmases at Ely, and at the end of the last service on the 25th it was great to relax in their home in The Almonry, when bottles would be opened, good food served, and the house would echo to the sound of Arthur’s wonderful and inimitable laugh, he and Mary good friends to the end.

Arthur’s devotion to Ely Cathedral was all-embracing and wide ranging. Like most cathedral musicians he made the best of the situation, the good years and the less-than-good years. I wonder whether cathedral organists will come along in the future who will compose not only so much – not just for their choir and their instrument but also suites for concert bands, guitar and organ concertos, and even an opera (setting George Orwell’s 1984), song cycles – it is a quite extraordinary legacy. I wonder, too, when the next self-made musician will make it into the organ loft of a major establishment … could that happen now?

My four years at Ely were very happy and formative ones. I learnt so much from him, and I shall ever be grateful for the trust that he had in me at that early time in my career.

James Bowman, chorister 1951-56; James’s international career as one the leading countertenors in the second half of the 20th century, on the concert platform and the operatic stage, needs no introduction.

It is difficult to think of Ely now without Arthur Wills as, for me and many others of my generation, he was inextricably bound up with the place. Obviously the cathedral was central to his life, but he was also much respected in the City of Ely with his larger-than-life personality. I know that may sound like a bit of a cliché – most cathedral organists are described in the same way when they pass on – but Arthur had a better claim to it than many.

When I arrived at Ely as a chorister in 1951, AW was already present as Assistant Organist to Sidney Campbell. He was also, rather surprisingly, singing tenor in the choir. Apparently SSC had heard Arthur singing in Canterbury when he was a student at the School of Church Music, and offered him the post of tenor in the choir at Ely, in addition to being his assistant. So Sidney stayed upstairs in the organ loft, and played very loudly most of the time, while Arthur conducted and sang with us downstairs. We all enjoyed his singing, especially in solos such as Gibbons’ This is the record of John. In those days it was usually sung by a tenor, not, as now, by a countertenor or alto, and Arthur sang it with great authority.

In the 1950s the Ely choristers remained on duty well after Christmas, until the Feast of the Holy Innocents, so we were all put together in one of the King’s School boarding houses with Arthur in charge of 20 unruly boys. I don’t remember him being rattled by our out-of-term behaviour, which he took in good part. He was still a bachelor in those days, although he was courting Mary, his future wife. We sang at his subsequent wedding service, and I can recall it quite clearly.

Arthur was Director of Music at the King’s School for the whole of my time there, and looking back he wrought miracles with the school choral society, teaching a crowd of cynical boys such works as the Fauré Requiem, Kodály Missa Brevis, Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb, the Mozart Requiem, a couple of Bach cantatas and Purcell’s Te Deum and Jubilate. For our summer concert in 1956 he produced Purcell’s ode Welcome to

all the Pleasures. He had the foresight to engage a young choral scholar from Cambridge to sing the extended alto solo which forms the centrepiece of the work, knowing that it was a bit tricky for a young voice. The said choral scholar rang up the day before and confessed that he had double-booked himself, and would have to cancel. I think his other engagement was for CUMS with Boris Ord, so no contest. Arthur didn’t seem unduly put out by this and said to me, ‘Right, Bowman, you’d better sing it!’

From then on, Arthur took every opportunity to encourage me as a fledgling alto, with a view to getting a choral scholarship, hopefully at Cambridge. He invited me to come back and sing with the cathedral choir as a supernumerary alto whenever possible; this was an enormous help in building up my confidence and my sight-reading ability too. We also explored new repertoire away from church music, such as arias and songs by Handel and Purcell.

I have always been grateful to Arthur for his encouragement during these formative years. If someone is kind and helpful to you during your teenage years, you never forget it, and I always kept in touch with him, and with Mary, after I left Ely. I went to visit him in his very smart retirement home in Ely just before the first lockdown in March. Apart from the fact that his teeth kept getting dislodged, he was exactly the same as always, with that infectious laugh unimpaired.

Gareth Keene, chorister 1953-56; Gareth was the second of four Keene boys (his brother, and his two sons) to be choristers at Ely. Later he became a choral scholar at St John’s College Cambridge and a founding member of the Monteverdi Choir.

As small boys, we were impressed to learn that Arthur was writing a symphony, presumably as part of the portfolio for his Durham doctorate. I found piano lessons with him, a large presence both physically and mentally, somewhat intimidating. However, through the school, he was responsible for my first introductions to the English madrigal, pieces like Purcell’s Welcome to all the Pleasures and major choral works such as the Mozart Requiem (for which he and the male soloists turned out in formal morning dress – not bad for a school of then only some 200 boys aged 9-18!). He made a major contribution to the future careers of people like James Bowman, Paul and Bill Ives, and Nigel Perrin.

For me, Arthur was to become a good friend. I shall be ever grateful to him for letting me join the choir at Christmas during my time at Cambridge and for several years afterwards. The Christmas Eve service in those days remained in its longstanding form of a procession after Evensong, with no chairs in the nave and the congregation on foot following behind the choir – highly atmospheric, medieval – and I loved doing the other services (not least being privileged to act as cantor for the Propers of the Mass on at least one occasion), and enjoyed the fellowship of the lay clerks, mostly old friends.

Later, of course, Arthur welcomed both Tim and Jon [Gareth’s sons] as choristers. My wife Charlotte and I still had our flat

in Trieste when Arthur and Mary took the choir to Rome and so went down and stayed for the whole visit. The Bairstow Lamentations in the English Church are a special memory. Charlotte and I were in Ely for Arthur’s retirement recital with Bowman, and my brother David and I went to Sherborne for a special Evensong and dinner to mark Arthur’s 70th birthday. I perhaps last saw him at George Guest’s memorial service, when we went into the chapel together. Mary was becoming infirm then, but he was as upright and sprightly as ever.

Tim Keene, chorister 1983-86. After a false start studying Engineering, Tim changed tack and has been working in the film industry for the last 25 years as a Film Special Effects Producer. Credits include several James Bond films, Avatar and Star Wars:TheLastJedi.

There was an occasion sometime around 1985 that I will always recall with fondness. Arthur wasn’t best known for his tolerance of choristers’ misbehaviour, especially during services. He demanded the best and would enforce that often and woe betide anyone found ‘mucking around’.

It was a Sunday morning and the preacher was delivering his message in a theatrical manner bordering on comedy, if not absurdity, reminiscent of Rowan Atkinson playing such a part. After building up his voice to an ear-splitting boom, he would pause for dramatic effect and then go down to a whisper, only to repeat the whole process several times. A few of us began to get the giggles, and these quickly spread to the other boys. In fear of Arthur’s reaction, we tried desperately to stifle them by biting nails, closing eyes, scrunching toes, but to no avail: Arthur had gone red in the face and appeared to be shaking with rage. Yet, looking out towards the congregation, we realised we were not alone, for the amusement was spreading, which only made things worse.

The sermon came to an end and we rose to sing again – and Arthur could be seen wiping tears from his eyes and beaming, for plainly he too had been stifling giggles. This was the very human side of Arthur that, until that moment, some of us had yet to discover, but which we would come greatly to appreciate.

Jon Keene, chorister 1989-92. After studying Theatre in Edinburgh, Jon followed his brother into the film industry. He is currently working as a Project Manager delivering tools for Oscar-winning visual effects teams.

For me, the fourth Keene to become a chorister at Ely, Arthur was something of a legend by the time I joined. He had a formidable presence that commanded attention. If that attention waned, you’d swiftly find a large hand bashing the page in front of you to restore the mind to the order of

business. From day one, I was in no doubt that music was a very serious affair, but out of that came a true understanding of the results that can be achieved through effort and dedication. My first year was Arthur’s last at Ely. His retirement celebrations made clear not only his contributions to music, but also the impact he’d had on so many lives over the years.

Away from the solemn, focused atmosphere of the cathedral, the Wills’s home was warm, welcoming and relaxed. Everyone in the choir would look forward to an invitation to join Arthur and Mary for Sunday lunch. Here, we got to see another side to a figure who was such a feature in our young lives. Similarly, a treasured photo from my first year at Ely comes from our trip to Rome in 1990: Arthur, in a jolly mood, leading us through the streets of the Vatican after a job well done at the Papal Audience. It seems a fitting way to remember him.

Gerald Gifford, Assistant Organist from 1973-76; after Ely, Gerald was on the professorial staff of the RCM for 30 years, and a Fellow of Wolfson College in Cambridge. He is honorary Keeper of Music at the Fitzwilliam Museum.

My period as Assistant Organist at Ely was a productive time for Arthur as a composer, for during this threeyear period, with the absence of the cathedral organ for rebuilding for most of 1975, and Arthur himself frequently away on international recital tours and examining engagements, he became particularly creative. It could be argued that he was at the height of his powers as a composer then, for dating from this time are many of his most familiar works. Of these, at the top of my personal list would be the Fauxbourdon Service (as it was originally known).

Arthur’s Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis on Plainsong Tones (1975) was composed for, and first performed at, a BBC Radio 3 Choral Evensong broadcast on 17 December 1975. This was the first time that the then newly-restored cathedral organ was brought back into service.

Of the various organ compositions dating from this time, Tongues of Fire, a highly virtuosic work, was composed in 1974. Arthur had been learning the Guillou Toccata then (as much of the centre of Ely would unconsciously have realised), and the Whitsuntide inspiration of his own piece drew unmistakable Gallic influence. Ultimately, though, Arthur’s long-standing enthusiasm for the French organ and its repertoire was made manifest in the compelling tonal presence of the Ely organ itself after the Wills/Clutton-influenced 1975 rebuild. The very demanding Symphonia Eliensis was written for and premiered in the 1976 Festival celebrating the restored organ, and capitalised fully on the broad range of exciting sounds that were then available. I have always thought of this period as marking the zenith of Arthur’s compositional and performing virtuosity combined, for at last he had at his disposal a large and vividly colourful cathedral organ – to which his personal playing technique and artistic vision was intrinsically attuned – and he also possessed a mature and rigorous compositional palette of immense scope and facility

to match. The Carillon on Orientis Partibus, the Variations on ‘Amazing Grace’ and the Homage to John Stanley all date from this period together with much secular as well as sacred music too. A man of immense musicianship, Arthur Wills achieved international stature from quite humble beginnings through his sheer determination for hard work, largely self-directed study and disciplined application. I was indeed fortunate to have benefited from him as teacher, then colleague and personal friend. ‘O merry rang the hymn, across the fenlands dim…’ (timeless words from the Liber Eliensis) will always have very special significance for me.

John Pryer, chorister 1949-54. He became organ scholar at Keble and subsequently had teaching and organist posts in Birmingham, including at the two cathedrals.

My earliest memory of Arthur is from my very first full day at Ely, when Dr Campbell came into our form-room with Arthur, who stood with his back to a window, almost blocking out the light. I thought, ‘Who is this huge man?’

I remember piano lessons, organ lessons, choir practices, but above all his marvellous organ playing. During the so-called ‘choristers’ holidays’, when we had to remain at school, as often as not Arthur became our housemaster. The choristers were not always very kind to him, but after Dr Campbell went to Southwark Cathedral, we rallied to him 100%.

It was not until I was at Oxford that I met him again. In those days the railway to Cambridge from Oxford was still open, and so one day I found myself knocking at his door in The Almonry, saying “Do you remember me?” Thus a more or less regular pattern of visits was established, which became more frequent after Mary’s death. We used to have fabulous lunches at The Old Fire Engine House quite often.

To be able to attend his Requiem Mass, and the interment of his ashes, was a tremendous privilege for me, who had been in Ely at the very beginning, and was now present at the very end. ‘We shall not see his like again’ is a common enough expression, but in Arthur’s case it is so true. To have left school aged 14, and become a Doctor of Music by examination, and cathedral organist, college lecturer and international recitalist all by one’s own efforts is an astounding achievement, probably unique.

Arthur first appeared as an influence when at the age of 12 I purchased his Great Cathedral Organs record. However, the needle jumped on our inexpensive record player whenever the music reached a certain dynamic level, so I took it back to the shop in exchange for Schubert’s ‘Trout’ Quintet! I did not know that I was to become Arthur’s assistant ten years later

Stephen Le Prevost, Assistant Organist 1976-90. After Ely, Stephen was Assistant Organist at Westminster Abbey for ten years. He now lives on the island of Guernsey.

and have daily access to the wonderful Ely instrument and choir for the next 13 years.

Arthur had an impressive work ethic, and with no organ scholars at Ely in those days, absolutely everything was covered between us. Fortunately, neither of us was ever ill. I was on my own when he went down to the Royal Academy once a week without fail, and also for a week every term whilst he examined for the Associated Board. Life was busy for all of us. This contact with colleagues, concerts and culture in London was an essential part of Arthur’s musical and educational development and made him stretch himself continually. He gave the premiere performance of an organ work by Judith Weir way back in the late 1970s. The respect he gained in the wider musical world meant that he was on the shortlist for the post of Principal of Trinity College of Music when it became vacant. His was probably one of the last serious bids to lead a major conservatoire by an organist, but not many organists at the time had composed a guitar concerto and an opera, or been on the staff of the Royal Academy of Music for as long as he had. Quite a leap for a boy who had left school at 14.

Arthur wrote and spoke with style, and his Yehudi Menuhin Guide to the Organ is a passionate paean both to the instrument and to its liturgical and concert use. He travelled internationally as a recitalist far more than most of his generation in the Cathedral Organists’ Association, a body he felt was rather parochial at the time.

In rehearsal, there was never ever one wasted or unnecessary word. The choir practice he took immediately after those candidates who were on the shortlist to succeed him had tried their best to win over the choir was a model in this respect. Arthur was right in concluding that the choir had heard quite enough.

I remain extremely grateful for Arthur’s kind influence which extended well beyond my Ely days. We would meet up regularly every year in the ’90s when I was in London for a meal and to go to a concert.

The Very Revd Michael Tavinor, Precentor of Ely Cathedral 1985-90. Michael was later vicar of Tewkesbury and then Dean of Hereford Cathedral, from which he retires in 2021.

I met Arthur Wills for the first time in the mid-1970s when he was an examiner and I was taking the ARCO (for the third time). Little did I realise that ten years later I would be working alongside him in ‘the ship of the fens’. I was the last of six precentors during Arthur’s time as Director of Music. Being a Minor Canon Precentor meant one wasn’t ‘management’ (i.e. on Chapter) and so could be a real friend and pastor to those in one’s department. There was sometimes a feeling of us being contra mundum

What an all-rounder Arthur was – choir trainer, virtuoso organist, composer, liturgist, writer of pop cantatas (I loved his Caedmon, 1985), liberal thinker – and while it might be

said that the standard of choral music sometimes slipped (Arthur was always away for two days every week, teaching at the Royal Academy), this was more than balanced by the prestige brought to Ely through his compositions and organ tours. Grasp of liturgical music and his accompaniment of the daily office hymn was a model of elegance and simplicity. I think it’s true to say that choristers and lay clerks found some of his later works a great challenge – the traditional Missa Eliensis (1957) was one thing, but his later Etheldreda Mass and In Praise of Etheldreda (1985), quite another, and in those days before compositions were typeset at an early stage, singers had to contend with Arthur’s idiosyncratic manuscript hand.

My diary contains a particular memory, from September 1986: It’s Arthur’s 60th birthday. He gained his DMus at Durham in 1957 and now sports a DMus hood which is decidedly worse for wear so we have a whip-round and have bought him a full set of robes – gown, hood, hat with bobble – the lot! There’s a party in the Precentor’s kitchen to present it. I’ve done some homework and wanted to find a few themes from his DMus exercise – a symphony (à la Roussel…) –on which to test him. I’ve devised a quiz and tell him he has to identify the various tunes. The early ones are fine – excerpts of magnificats and anthems – but when we come to the DMus themes, he’s foxed, possibly because I’ve been very mean and selected things like ‘2nd double bass part, bars 32-3 of the scherzo’ which he hasn’t a hope of getting. Anyway, we all have a laugh, and present him with the robes in which he cuts a fine figure.

Jeremy Filsell, Assistant Organist 1989-91; after Ely, Jeremy had a number of London church appointments, lectured at the RAM, was organ tutor at the RNCM, and taught the piano at Eton College. After several church posts in Washington, including at the National Cathedral, Jeremy is now the Director of Music at St Thomas, 5th Avenue.

I was privileged to become Arthur’s last assistant organist at Ely in 1989 (following in some illustrious and daunting footsteps), returning to a cathedral which had inspired both awe and fascination in me since singing there as a treble in a visiting choir. Is there a more impressive or beautiful space on the planet? Arthur’s presence was well-assured by the time I was lucky enough to become his assistant, and I certainly found him a formidable being, both musically and indeed physically at that time. Some of his organ music I already played, having visited as a young teenager and purchased copies from the well-stocked cathedral shop – how often would one find such wonderfully obscure delights in a cathedral shop these days? I thus played his Elegy from an early age, and then later his Variations on ‘Amazing Grace’ – from a signed copy he gave me after page-turning for him in an Ely recital during a visiting choir visit aged 15. I still have that copy.

I recall my audition for the assistantship vividly, and tried (vainly, I suspect) to get the boys to sight-read parts of the Duruflé Requiem, which – incredulously to me at the time –they were due to sing four days’ hence. Ensconced in Ely, I soon learnt that Sunday was the Evensong at which Arthur always played the closing voluntary – usually something pithy, such as Liszt Ad Nos, the Reubke Sonata, Messiaen etc., but

often Wills. No matter that lights had been extinguished, choir members had departed and vergers were in key-rattling mode: Arthur was never interrupted, and neither was his pageturning assistant permitted to depart before the final fermata had been despatched to the nave’s echoing arches. In general, there was also a heavy price to be paid by an assistant who changed GENERAL 8 (in the pre-channel days when only 8 General pistons existed). GEN 8 brought out every stop on the organ (from Celeste to orchestral Trumpet), and in those days, with the old pneumatic capture system, the whole organ loft rocked as if in a thunderstorm when that stop was depressed.

An abiding memory is very much one of feeling like Arthur’s ‘articled pupil’, in a manner related by Malcolm Sargent, Howells and Sumsion et al. in those early 20th-century years at Gloucester. Nonetheless, I was always aware in Ely of being in the presence of a legend, and one who was of a very different ‘school’ from me – Arthur having been an institution in Ely since well before I was born. Curiously and coincidentally, we hailed from the same town – Coventry – and I knew all his old haunts, yet I recall no conversation between us regarding the city.

I always revered Arthur’s decisions about the organ at Ely, and it was a thrill for me to play daily on a – yes – quirky, yet unbelievably colourful – organ which reflected distinctly Arthur’s Gallic-inflected musical tastes. I loved the boldness, brilliance and the character with which he, in conjunction with Harrisons, had imbued it in the 1970s. Beyond Ely years and into his retirement, it was with particular pleasure that I proposed we mark his 75th birthday in 2001 with a recording of his music. He responded with alacrity, and fund-raised himself to see the project through. Thus we recorded his Variations on a theme of Purcell (the theme being ‘Wondrous Machine’) – A Young Person’s Guide to the Organ, in which he himself appeared as the voice of the narrator. It is poignant to hear it now, in light of his passing, yet it is so pleasing to hear his dulcet tones relating the organ’s glory, versatility and diversity of sound – an instrument to which he selflessly devoted his life.

roots, not to mention the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis for men’s voices (medieval) and the service on plainsong tones (much mellower). The Nunc Dimittis from the latter was sung at his funeral. I am struggling to think of anyone else who has achieved what he did at Ely. Sheer force of nature perhaps as well as a deep inner conviction, and a sense of what was the essence of Ely and the cathedral. His sense is imbued in his music. That force of nature is what we all now carry with us. Certainly it has propelled me into action. When Arthur gave his farewell speech, following on from James Bowman singing The Hound of Heaven, written especially for him, Arthur said two amusing things among many deep truths, one, that ‘he had never written a dull chord in his life’ and two, that ‘the hound of heaven had been biting his bottom the whole time’!

David Pickard, chorister 1968-73; after 14 years as Director of Opera at Glyndebourne, since 2015 he has been director of the BBC Proms.

Whilst only a small number of my contemporaries in the choir at Ely went on to follow a career in music, I am sure that all our lives have been shaped by that early experience. Arthur was a key figure in my early musical training – a terrifying figure to a shy 10-year-old, but one who provided the bedrock of musical skill and appreciation on which the rest of my career has been founded. I was never a particularly gifted singer or performer, but I think he saw in me (and others) the potential to become a good musician. The natural way of learning at that age – through a mixture of listening, instinct and repetition – set us all up for the sort of fluency in music that others have in languages they have learned at a young age. Many of the pieces that Arthur taught me at Ely I can still sing from memory 50 years later, and although he could be a hard taskmaster, you were aware that the training method he had evolved was one that worked.

During my time as a treble in Ely, I was so excited whenever ‘Arthur Wills’ was on the music list and sometimes, ecstatically, I witnessed the very first performances of great works. It strikes me quite forcibly that no one subsequently followed in his footsteps and wrote daring music that was unashamedly personal, clearly stemming from the English tradition fostered by his forebears, Parry, Elgar of course, Howells – yes (interesting the pieces we didn’t sing at Ely by him ... e.g. the Gloucester Service) but revelling in Continental inspiration, e.g. Ravel and Messiaen. There was also a direct connection to the ancient history of Ely that I could sense ... The Vikings, the Fenland Suite and of course The Carol of King Canute as well as the monks and Etheldreda. The mass settings, Eliensis and Passiones Christi, also have ancient

Having enjoyed a creative, producing role in music for most of my life, I have been reflecting on the extent to which Arthur’s own music was the start of that journey. As boys, we certainly loved the rhythm, energy and sheer jazziness of a lot of his music, and of all the contemporary music we sang in the choir his was certainly the most enjoyable to perform. I think we found it slightly hard to square the joy of this music with the serious, rather forbidding composer who was conducting it! For me, it led to more musical discoveries outside the choir – an early obsession with the music of Walton (not unrelated to Wills in some stylistic aspects) and then to a broader appreciation of classical music.

It has been fascinating to read obituaries of Arthur and to discover a bit more about the man we barely knew as young boys. It’s extraordinary to think of the thousands of choristers who will have started their musical training under his watchful eye. For me, it inspired and defined choices for the rest of my life – studying music at university, working for orchestras, opera companies and festivals, and continuing to enjoy my own music-making, albeit on an amateur scale. For all that, I owe a great debt of gratitude to Arthur.

Stephen Taylor, chorister 1968-73; presently a senior lay clerk at New College, and singing teacher at Radley and Eton College.

REVISITING WORCESTER Thoughts from FCM’s last gathering before lockdown Canon

Andrew Vessey

There has always been something arresting about the way Worcester Cathedral sits at the top of the city, glimpsed on the horizon as you rise and dip your way in from the M5. On the summit of a shallow bluff above the great wide River Severn, at the top end of the High Street which is joined by the gradual climb up from the river-crossing bridge, it is here, where all roads meet, that the massive eastern end of this cathedral towers above the houses and commercial properties to hit you in the face. If you know how to look and where, it amounts to a colossal slap of history. That such a building, on such a significant site, could sit so well above all manner of rooflines and city spires, old warehouses and factories, is part of her importance and national status. Worcester remains one of those indivisible examples of the way Church and state have co-existed in almost a marriage, across the centuries. The history of Worcester and its equivalents elsewhere is filled with the success stories of ancient trades and rich commercial enterprise wrought by people who held a sincere Christian belief and who, by their philanthropy and care, have left us two different kinds of memorials. The first consists of those structures that belong to faith and have been necessary in order for humanity to have a source of inspiration and guidance. The others are those necessary buildings that brought wealth and industry and profit and employment to many, lifting people out of misery and relentless uncertainty.

Coming into Worcester down the London Road past St Martins and Angel Hill meant approaching from the least familiar of those entrances used during the 16 years that we lived in Worcestershire and I served there as a parish priest. Then, we would generally come from the north, following the river southwards, watching its progress from being swollen and flooding the meadows to becoming the lazy, clearer water that lapped caravan sites and ran with the swans. We would swing down under the shadow of the Old Hospital before turning back up Deansway, past the mysterious rump of the glovemaker’s ‘needle’, before securing a parking space at the Old Palace that housed our diocesan offices. From a vantage point in the Great Hall of that rambling building, while one had to crane one’s neck to see the cathedral, one saw what many of the cathedral and diocesan staff would be looking out at: over the county cricket ground and King’s School playing

fields to distant trees and the blue smudge of the Malvern Hills. It’s a view that remains incomparable; quintessentially English.

In the following passage from his Guide to the Cathedrals, Abbeys and Priories of England and Wales and with his gift for deft and authoritative language, Henry Thorrold summarises the cathedral’s history as follows:

The see of Worcester was founded in 680. St Oswald, Bishop of Worcester, founded the Benedictine monastery in 981 and St Wulstan, bishop at the time of the conquest, rebuilt the cathedral in the late 11th century. Of this there are remains. In 1224 Bishop William de Blois began its rebuilding and continued until the end of the 14th century. This is the cathedral we see today.

I have had a complex relationship with this great cathedral down the years. Writing this, I’m recalling my first arrival at its doors as one of several ordinands who, in the summer of 1985, was bound for a spell at Corrymeela in Northern Ireland. Our college principle knew the Dean and, being directly en route for the ferry, we stopped off for Morning Prayer and breakfast, moving silently through still shadowy spaces. Thus I caught my first sight of that massive and austere Norman nave.

Andrew Vessey

During the time we lived in the Worcester diocese (from 1989 to 2005), this relationship ebbed and flowed. Firstly, as a clergyman I was inevitably drawn to the cathedral and sometimes summoned to it, whether for corporate nourishment and renewal or simply taking part in the great diocesan occasions such as Episcopal retirement and enthronement, numerous diocesan celebrations and so on. Secondly, I learnt to love it simply as a worshipper. Eager for some anonymity, I would come and hide within a classic style of liturgy and excellence that had already given much to my priestly formation in earlier years. It meant slipping into the cathedral and being as ‘least-clerical’ as I could manage, worshipping without baggage and just for my own needs; being fed rather than drained by giving.

Finally, I made use of it as an artist. I worked there on several occasions to produce illustrations for poems. I also remember three of my clerical colleagues, who had initially trained in Fine Art or who had taken it up seriously, joining me in exhibiting here. While I continued to paint and exhibit in some of my parishes, notably in Areley Kings and Kidderminster, that particular cathedral exhibition meant that as priests the sharing of our artistic vulnerability meant also displaying one’s beliefs and aspiration. It’s been a constant challenge, since

putting one’s paintings into the public arena is not merely to do with perceived skills, but must also be about exposing thoughts and prayers. All this – our coming back into its hypnotic glory today, walking in from the city under the Edgar Tower, passing the Guesten Hall and the Stone Yard, and then rounding a corner into the entrance passage from The Green – has meant dealing with the rising and falling-away of such memories. I am required to rapidly edit them, taking with me only the most relevant and precious. In the course of the last few hours, before attempting to write something, there has been a certain amount of ‘wiping the slate clean’, emptying myself so as to be ready for anything new and arresting. You might call it preparing for aesthetic shocks.

This is true of many of our great Christian churches, where the edifice is either so resonant with praise and prayer that one feels elevated with joy, or the architectural spaces so necessarily vast that one is dwarfed with humility. Today, Worcester is doing all this for those of us who have gathered here. We will have come with such expectations, ready to be pushed and pulled into joy and wonder, with members of the Friends of Cathedral Music at one of our national gatherings. So, we sit to be welcomed. We’re drawn into the extraordinary talents of those playing and directing the four choirs which

exist here to work across the life of the cathedral. The Director of Music and Canon Precentor share the challenges and sometimes harsh realities that are complemented by the stimulus and huge privilege of working here. We listen eagerly, many of our company having been choristers and lay clerks and music teachers. Some of our number are still organists, keeping worship going under challenges that are similarly real in many an ordinary parish church. We will be conscious of our own gifts and skills having been matured under similar guidance and encouragement; music that has shaped our faith and defined many of our relationships, inspiring particular friendships. Anna and I, for example, first met through singing in the college chapel choir, playing in an orchestra and finding ourselves thoroughly at home in Chichester Cathedral’s wider outreach to students and future teachers.

As if to cement that thought, we are being held spellbound. I have to stop writing. One of four young musicians from The King’s School plays us Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 27 No. 2 on the nave piano. I sense her hands have become the hands of a healer, fostering the renewal and cleansing we each yearn for and require. I am equally sure that I am not the only person sitting here to be overwhelmed by the way her skills have summoned in such beauty that I am in tears, tears from such a beautiful composition and such expressive playing, a joy so intense it is pain.

Nothing more need be said or done. Unwittingly she has arrested us all and brought us closer to heaven.

Sitting here right now, as I write, in the nave at Worcester, I cannot be the only one conscious of the view to the east being a series of liturgical frames, a gallery, perhaps, of fretwork. Through the wooden legs of a massive stripped altar, which really is a huge refectory table, if I keep low enough then I can see right up the nave steps and into the quire and chancel. The view is through the metallic and wondrously precious chancel screen, and if you keep on travelling further and further eastwards, you see right through to the high altar’s frieze of alabaster and marble. Even that far away, if one concentrates, there are pierced roundels on either side which grant yet another picture: of distant glass and sunlight bursting around the eastern windows. Fretworks of wood before decorated cast iron, sculpture of stone and finally glazing, out into the teeming city where the beliefs that built and rebuilt this place over many centuries are worked out in people’s lives. It’s as if these ‘fretworks’ are key transitions, moving the worshipper from the intense symbolism of bread and wine to the offering of song and sacred words, to the extravagance of the artistic endeavour which crowns the sanctuary, capturing views we cannot ever see here on earth, before unravelling onto the streets and at the tills of Worcester. Transitions are important as they offer us our recreation and realignment as opposed to relentless self-interest and equally ruthless demanding contemporary work schedules. But the sobering thought I’m having, about the power struggles and demanding visions that were partly responsible for this building, is that none of that will happen out there unless the Church herself gets that rebalance and restoration right.

Worcester east window and sanctuary vaulting

Photo: Andrew Vessey

DVD REVIEW

the whole of a large instrument could be shoehorned, with the very longest pipes laid on their side so as not to project above the woodwork. In such a layout there may well be no direct relationship between the instrument and any visible pipework. After the reconstructions by the fine old firm of Hill in 1859 and 1889, the cases and screen contained a sizeable instrument of four manuals and pedals.

In the 1930s the Durham firm of Harrison & Harrison was pre-eminent, and the natural choice to rebuild the chapel organ in 1934. Stylistically, the result appeared to look both forwards and backwards at once, for the Solo was remodelled according to the latest fashion, gaining a complete chorus of string-toned stops, a French Horn, and a Tuba nearly a match for the famous Tuba Mirabilis installed at York Minster by Harrisons three years previously. The Great’s Trombas were placed in the Solo organ’s swell-box, to enable their majestic tones to be controlled and balanced. A 32’ extension of the Ophicleide added majesty to the Pedal department, bottom G of this rank becoming inseparable from the final chord of Christmas hymns. Nor should one forget the famous ‘full swell’ which Arthur Harrison had promised would more than equal the Father Willis example which Boris Ord, the chapel organist, had so admired at St Bees Priory.

A LEGEND REBORN – The Voice of King’s

A documentary exploring the 2016 restoration of the King’s College organ, with a composite recital by eight former organ scholars.

Album of 2 DVDs & 2CDs. Fugue State Films FSFDVD 013

The 19th century’s quest for larger and more versatile organs met its match in the difficulty of fitting them into the beautiful and historic casework that survived in a number of places and had to be retained. 32’ pedal pipes might be parked somewhere separate, as at Exeter Cathedral where the south transept is still adorned by the enormous and beautifully made metal pipes of the Contra Violone. At Trinity College Cambridge, the lowest octave of the 32’ wooden rank was consigned to a far corner of the ante-chapel, with panelling and paint applied in a vain attempt at disguise. The enlargement of the organ at Christ Church Oxford was in a class of its own for sheer ugliness. Elsewhere, as at Gloucester, there might be a convenient triforium where such bulky items could be hidden away.

It was unthinkable that the ante-chapel of King’s College should be thus disfigured, and the chapel lacks a triforium; so the solution was to treat the organ’s 17th-century cases, and the wooden screen on which they stand, as boxes into which

How did the instrument look backwards? The Choir organ, placed behind the smaller case, lower down, further forward and thus nearer the singers, was given a specification unusual for the period, with a complete chorus from 16’ to 1’, with all the pitches between. Harrisons had never done anything remotely like it, so Boris Ord must have been responsible, possibly intending it to give the effect of an old English chamber organ, gently voiced and well suited to choral accompaniment. The recordings of Orlando Gibbons’ church music made in the late 1950s under the direction of Boris Ord and David Willcocks are a perfect illustration of how well this part of the organ suited this repertory. As a bonus, its bright tones could add a modest sparkle to other divisions of the organ.

The 1934 organ may be savoured on Ord’s recordings of Matins and Evensong, and on Willcocks’s recordings of Advent and Christmas Services and carol anthologies. Also, Simon Preston’s LP of Franck and Messiaen is a fine demonstration of its capabilities as a solo instrument. Then, in 1968 the east end of the chapel was drastically altered to accommodate the Rubens Adoration of the Magi, and so much dust was created that the organ required a clean and overhaul. Current fashions in organ-building at that time drew their inspiration from 18th-century Germany, so the opportunity was taken to add a very powerful quint mixture to the Great, a 4’ Schalmei to the Pedal (for the solo line in chorale preludes), and a Dulzian of bucolic tone to the Choir. Several ranks were removed to make room for these, unfortunately including the Great’s Large Open Diapason and the Pedal’s Large Open Wood.

This was the instrument which did duty until the latest reconstruction, with some modest tonal revisions including the toning down of the Great’s quint mixture and the replacement of the Dulzian by a more civilised Corno di Bassetto. In a refurbishment of the console many levels of memory were added to the piston system, plus a Stepper, that useful gadget which enables the player to move at the touch of a single button from one pre-selected registration to the next. However, there was no disguising the fact that by the early years of the 21st century the instrument was wearing out and becoming unreliable, having had only modest attention in 1968. What was to be done?

Of those instruments mentioned in the very first paragraph as having fine old cases, Exeter had been conservatively rebuilt and visually unaltered in the 1960s, but Christ Church, Gloucester and Trinity had all been dramatically altered, with

excrescences removed and a much smaller instrument (new or drastically rebuilt) contained entirely within the historic case. Surely the King’s organ would not undergo such a fate, for it looked magnificent, was greatly loved, and was ideally suited to choral accompaniment. So Harrisons were entrusted with a complete reconstruction and internal re-planning but only very modest tonal alteration. This is the point at which the first of the DVDs under review takes up the story.

David Briggs, organ scholar from 1981-4, acts as a very genial compère as we meet various members of the Harrison firm, not least the enthusiastic tuner who week by week had done such sterling work in keeping the ailing instrument going. Our visits to the Harrisons factory are especially enjoyable and illuminating, and several of those interviewed could boast of many years’ family connection with the firm. We are shown the manufacture and voicing of the two new ranks of

The chapel at King’s College, Photo: Sara Rawlinson (taken from her book Focused, available from sararawlinson.com)

pipes now to be added to the instrument; we can also admire the restoration and return to speech of the historic and long silent display pipes which were collapsing under their own weight, and we are initiated into the mysteries of applying gold leaf. Thanks to computer-assisted design we can see how various portions of the instrument have been re-disposed for ease of access and for the sound to emerge more clearly. On site in the chapel, the design of scaffolding, hoists and cranes for the organ’s safe dismantling and reconstruction is spectacular and fascinating, for various heavy and bulky items had to be lifted right over the precious casework for removal or insertion. Finally, the very tight timetable for the completion of such a major undertaking is explained in some detail.

Parts of this DVD may be overly technical for some readers, but everything is clearly and carefully explained, and the knowledge of it forms a valuable prelude to our enjoyment of the second DVD, wherein the tonal splendours of the restored instrument are displayed by an octet of former organ scholars. Their names and current employment now follow, and what they play.

Donal McCann

(Assistant, New College, Oxford)

Bingham Incarnation with Shepherds Dancing Dupré – Esquisse no. 2 in B flat minor

Henry Websdale

(Répétiteur, Mascarade Opera Studio, Florence)

Bridge – Adagio in E Vierne – Toccata from Pièces de Fantaisie

Richard Gowers

(Organist, Old Royal Naval Hospital Chapel, Greenwich and professorial staff at Trinity Laban Conservatoire)

Alain – Deuxième fantaisie Messiaen – Transports de joie

Tom Winpenny

(Assistant Organist, St Albans Cathedral) Dupré – Cortège et Litanie

Murrill – Carillon

Howells – Rhapsody no. 1 in D flat

Bach – Prelude & Fugue in G BWV530

Ashley Grote (Organist, Norwich Cathedral)

Vierne – Carillon de Westminster Vaughan Williams – Prelude on ‘Rhosymedre’

Robert Quinney

(Organist, New College, Oxford)

Mendelssohn (arr. Quinney) – Prelude & Fugue in B flat

Bach – Passacaglia & Fugue in C minor

BWV582

David Briggs (Artist-in Residence, Cathedral of St John the Divine, New York)

Reger – Toccata & Fugue in D minor & major Briggs – Improvised variations and toccata on the Advent Antiphon ‘O sapientia’

Naturally and properly the chief focus of this DVD is on the organ console and the players, so we are treated to a veritable feast of gents’ natty suiting and well-polished Organmaster shoes. Only the senior player lets the side down, for Mr Briggs has removed his jacket. One may note differences in pedal technique, some players using mainly their toes, but others freely employing their heels also. There are also obvious differences in these organists’ management of the console, most of them opting to play on the lowest three manuals only and coupling the stops of the Solo as necessary. By contrast, Messrs Grote and Winpenny use the topmost manual freely and comfortably, perhaps because they play large 4-manual instruments in their daily work. Everyone plays magnificently, and I especially enjoyed Mr Winpenny’s Murrill and Howells and Mr Briggs’s Reger. Mr Grote’s lively account of Vierne’s Carillon de Westminster brought back a happy memory, which I cannot resist sharing with you, of my days as Assistant at Birmingham Cathedral. I phoned my Sunday voluntary through to the office, and was delighted and amused that it appeared as ’Carry on to Westminster’, presumably requiring Hattie Jacques, Sid James and Kenneth Williams for its proper performance. Mr Quinney’s Bach was as great a pleasure to watch as to hear, his fingers leaping swiftly from one manual to another as the Passacaglia’s sections unfolded. Judith Bingham’s dancing shepherds were a delightful and effective novelty.

The sound of the organ, as revealed in all these fine performances, is very much the same as before, but balanced and blended anew, even if perhaps the Tuba is no longer quite so mighty. These two DVDs are a priceless tribute to the instrument, those who have so skilfully restored it, and those whose playing has so capably revealed its qualities. Their contributions are also contained in the two CDs supplied, but these will be of less use for, taken as a whole, the programme is unbalanced, one hour and 40 minutes of (mainly) short works, with a surfeit of toccatas and other showpieces, too much French music, just enough British and too little German. Do not let me put you off, however, for the DVDs are what really matter, and I warmly recommend them to you all, not just organists and organ enthusiasts.

Timothy Storey

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BOOK REVIEW

FAITHFUL WITNESS

The confidential diaries of Alan Don, Chaplain to the King, the Archbishop and the Speaker 1931-1946

Edited by Robert Beaken

Available from Amazon, Waterstones etc

Readers who watched television a generation ago may recall the delightfully inept Mervyn Noote in All Gas and Gaiters, and the oleaginous Obadiah Slope in The Barchester Chronicles. In both these cases fiction followed truth, for a bishop’s chaplain was often relatively young, a useful assistant in all manner of tasks both spiritual and practical, and even something of a surrogate son. If Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury, was no ordinary prelate, the mature and experienced Alan Campbell Don was no ordinary chaplain; he had been a youthful and highly successful provost of St Paul’s Cathedral in Dundee, the city where his family’s business was influential and well regarded.

He was just the man to bring order to the running of Lambeth Palace, and as a fellow Scot he was well placed to build a fruitful working relationship with an overworked and sometimes temperamental archbishop. Don’s diary of these years is such a fascinating record, sometimes indiscreet, frequently humorous, that I found it hard to put down. Don became, in his own words, a kind of universal chaplain, attending on the King and the Speaker of the House of Commons in addition to his duties at Lambeth Palace. Thus politics and the Royal Family receive frequent mention in these diaries, and the reader may well form a favourable and sympathetic picture of the famously aloof Queen Mary. Inevitably there is an insider’s view of the abdication crisis and the coronation of King George VI.

Of course there are purely ecclesiastical preoccupations, such as the appointment of diocesan bishops, the publicity aroused by the controversial Bishop of Birmingham and the scandal of the naughty Rector of Stiffkey, whose extraordinary antics were ended by his emulating the fictitious Albert Ramsbottom in being eaten by a lion. On a more serious note, one may follow the sometimes convoluted tale of relations with foreign churches, and be gratified to learn of the beginnings of ecumenism. The Archbishop’s efforts to support Christians in Nazi Germany are to be lauded.

Don had to accompany the Archbishop not only to all manner of special services but also on routine visits to his parishes, for Lang was an attentive pastor, assiduous in his attention to the clergy and congregations of the archdiocese of Canterbury. Don was a good musician, a cellist of some ability, and his comments on the music he encountered will interest and at times amuse any lover of church music. He praises the choirs of Magdalen College, Southwark Cathedral, York Minster and Westminster Abbey, and writes approvingly of the great improvements wrought at Canterbury Cathedral by Gerald Knight, the future Director of the Royal School of Church Music. George Thalben-Ball’s choristers at the Temple Church ‘gave the impression that they were really

enjoying what they were doing’. At a South Norwood church ‘the organist committed every conceivable vulgarity and was thoroughly pleased with the performance’. Best of all, one may savour the vision of a somewhat tetchy Archbishop lost amid the vast throng of singers assembled for the great festival of church music held at the Crystal Palace in 1933, someone having forgotten to have him met and conducted to his place.

Don’s account of the war years cannot fail to move and enthral the reader, for he narrowly escaped being killed when Lambeth Palace was bombed, and in 1941 he was appointed rector of a war-torn St Margaret’s Church and its associated canonry of Westminster Abbey, which in its turn suffered badly in the Blitz. In 1946 he was appointed Dean, an office he held with distinction until 1963. His diaries of the post-war years are held fast at Westminster Abbey, and it is a matter of regret that they are difficult to access and as yet unpublished. Meanwhile, we can only be grateful for what we already have.

Dr Beaken, the parish priest of the rural Essex parishes of Great and Little Bardfield, and the biographer of Archbishop Lang, has performed the task of editor with discernment and skill, not least in the prefatory material he has supplied to guide the reader into a fuller appreciation of the riches contained in these diaries. The 1930s were an era when the Established Church still held a secure and valued place in the nation’s life, and any historian of these years will be grateful for Dr Beaken’s mighty labour of love, which I recommend with very great enthusiasm. It is modestly priced and readily available from Amazon and elsewhere.

Timothy Storey

CD REVIEWS

ORGAN CDs

FROM THE GROUND UP

David Hill plays the organ of Peterborough Cathedral

Alcock Introduction and Passacaglia; Murrill Postlude on a Ground; Carillon for organ; John E West Passacaglia in B minor; Grace Reverie on the hymn tune ‘University’; Resurgam; Gibbons

Ground (Musica Britannica, No. 26); Willan Chorale Prelude on a melody by Orlando Gibbons; Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue; Richard Blackford Prelude and Passacaglia for organ.

REGENT REGCD 539 TT 67:48

David Hill’s exploration of the passacaglia on this disc is refreshing in at least two ways: firstly, there is no music here by Buxtehude, Bach, Karg-Elert or Reger, but instead a programme showcasing some of the best British examples of the genre; secondly, it is a programme which draws on substantial recital pieces but also more humble, though no less worthy, repertoire which we might hear in many a parish church.

Having spent 26 years of my teaching career in Peterborough, I know the cathedral organ well. Dating back to 1894, the original Hill instrument was rebuilt in 1930 and again in 1981. Repaired and reinstated in 2004 following the 2001 fire in the cathedral, the most recent changes took place in 2016 when the whole instrument was re-pitched to A440 (after many years of debate) and a new Tuba Mirabilis added. I am assuming that this new rank is the first to be heard on the disc, in the opening of Walter Alcock’s Introduction and Passacaglia, the first of ten pieces by seven English-born composers. This noble and majestic work shows the impact which the Peterborough organ has. Two pieces by Herbert Murrill follow. The Postlude on a Ground (published by OUP in A Book of Simple Organ Voluntaries) is a very effective piece, showing to a budding composer established compositional techniques, and Murrill’s Carillon bursts with energy and is an excellent postlude. I note that David Hill chooses to add a final pedal note beneath the ‘crescendo chord’ at the end, in line with Robert Gower’s suggestion for ‘in a dry acoustic’ in the OUP publication Ceremonial Music for Organ

Another excellent piece for studying compositional techniques is John E West’s Passacaglia in B minor. I suspect this is not heard very often as, like so much English music of this period, it is deemed not worthy by many an organist. Here, David Hill displays the tonal variety available on the organ, with delicate string sounds contrasting vividly with the powerful reeds, and he really does persuade the listener of the quality of this music. Two pieces by Harvey Grace (again, how often will these be heard?) lead to a sudden divergence to Orlando Gibbons, played on the Choir division (I suspect), in preparation for the first of two works by Healey Willan, the first based on a Gibbons melody, the second the highlight of the programme. I reviewed a performance of the Introduction,

Passacaglia and Fugue from Coventry Cathedral last year by Rachel Mahon and the work, composed in 1919, requires 17 minutes of complete technical control with mastery in the handling of the instrument. David Hill revels in his use of the 89-stop Peterborough instrument, bringing out the depth and fire, no doubt due to the engineering skills of Gary Cole as much as to the performer’s dedication to the music. The end reveals that Peterborough Cathedral does not have ‘a dry acoustic’!

The final work, composed 100 years after Willan’s mighty piece, is Richard Blackford’s Prelude and Passacaglia, which is dedicated to the performer and recorded here for the first time. The writing brings to mind the styles of Leighton and Mathias, with characteristic rhythmic work and clear textures. The work enables David Hill to explore the Peterborough organ’s more delicate ranks, and ‘upper work’ is very much to the fore here. Following the majesty of Willan’s music, the new piece is perhaps a little disappointing as the finale of this excellent disc. David Hill’s fine performances have given a new perspective to some perhaps neglected repertoire.

Nicholas Kerrison

100+: ORGAN MUSIC BY FRANCIS JACKSON

Mark Swinton plays the organ of St Mary’s, Warwick

The Archbishop’s Fanfare; Organ Sonatas Nos 5 & 6; Scherzetto pastorale; Intrada from Daniel in Babylon; Impromptu; Diversion for Mixtures; Fantasy on ‘Sine nomine’; Prelude on ‘East Acklam’

Willowhayne Records WHR 065

A most interesting release of, principally, two late organ sonatas by Francis Jackson, both composed when he was in his mid-80s. Jackson’s canon of six sonatas, each with a distinctive character, equates with that of Mendelssohn. Five of the six were composed with a specific instrument in mind. No. 6 (2004), written for the Schulze organ at St Bartholomew’s in Armley, opens with an imposing, Howellsian prelude, reminiscent of Howells’s own Organ Sonata from the 1930s. A graceful slow movement with a delightful pastoral melody gives way to a confident finale which recalls at times the opening movement of Percy Whitlock’s Plymouth Suite, especially the linking of phrases by semiquaver figurations.

Sonata No. 5 (2003) was written to mark the centenary of the birth of Percy Whitlock (1903-46), a composer who brought a fresh-sounding language to the organ world in the 1930s. After another powerful opening, the composer pays tribute to Whitlock in a Scherzetto of clarity and elegance with emphasis on the open fourth interval. The slow movement, Canzona, is pure Jackson, moulded and crafted into an archlike structure of increasing emotional power and intensity, as

is the finale in which all the mood contrasts are re-assembled and re-calibrated as the music builds to a triumphant conclusion.

The shorter pieces are all notable examples of Jackson’s style taken from earlier periods of his career, from the early Impromptu (Op. 6, 1944) to two of the five Preludes on English Hymn Tunes (1984). Of these, East Acklam is the tune he composed himself (often sung to ‘For the fruits of his creation’). Jackson excels in celebratory music and fanfares: the Intrada to his cantata Daniel in Babylon is a good example. The cascading octaves of Diversion for mixtures and the lilting Scherzetto pastorale bring further contrast. This is a robust, very English-sounding Nicholson organ and the fine music, immaculate performances and recording quality combine to justify a strong recommendation.

Bret Johnson

CHORAL CDs

AVE MARIA

Choir of Buckfast Abbey

Dir: Philip Arkwright

Organ: David Davies; Matthew Searles

Organ prelude: Improvisation sur le thème du ‘Memorare’; Guerrero Trahe me post te;

Gregorian Chant: Deus in adiutorium; Psalms 109, 112, 121; 126;

Scripture Reading: Benedixit te; Short Responsory: Ave Maria; Versicle Dignare me; Litany of supplication; Benedicamos Domino; Byrd Salve Regina; Trad. Hail, Queen of heaven; Arkwright Ave Maria; Guy Weitz Stella Maris (Symphony 1)

AD FONTES TT 75:32

In the 15th century Erasmus said of church music: “They chant nowadays in what is an unknown tongue and nothing else, while you will not hear a sermon once in six months telling people to amend their lives”. Well, in 1882 Benedictine monks returned to Buckfast, following the destruction of the monastery at the time of the Dissolution, and in 1907 the building of a new abbey church started, completed in 1938. Since then, a community of monks has continued the daily round of liturgies, chanting 365 days a year. As the excellent and detailed notes by Philip Arkwright, the Organist and Master of Music, confirm: ‘Gregorian Chant permeates both Mass and Office at Buckfast Abbey and is given pride of place amongst all other music’. The singers on this First Vespers however, are members of the Abbey Choir, in its present form founded in 2009, but part of me would have liked to have heard the community of monks doing what they do daily, singing the psalms, alongside the splendid music which adorns this celebratory Vespers. The Liturgy opens with an organ improvisation, one of several, based on melodies of the antiphons, played by David Davies on the new Ruffatti organ of 2017, the first of its kind in the UK. The organ is ideally suited to the French style improvisations which, as Mr Arkwright suggests, ‘add moments of unique drama to the steadfast and unchanging music of the chant’. There follows Trahe me post te (Guerrero) as the introit, and then the set pattern of antiphons and psalms (some with new fauxbourdon verses by Arkwright and Matthew Martin) accompanied by Matthew Searles, the Assistant Master of Music. Motets by Anerio and Byrd and a magnificat by Victoria complement the overall feel of this dignified and deeply spiritual experience sung well by the Abbey choir. Just occasionally I wanted greater contrasts

in the polyphonic music, but the arrangement of Hail, Queen of heaven brings a whole new dimension to the disc and would certainly shock the pilgrims who visit my current place of work, Walsingham! In a way, it seems completely out of place, but as PA says, it is ‘an appropriate and triumphal conclusion to the feast day office’. It leads, following PA’s own Ave Maria, to an exuberant rendition of Stella Maris, the final movement of Symphony I by the Belgian organist Guy Weitz. Gregorian chant is highly popular to many, including those who ‘have no faith’, or knowledge of Latin, with whole recordings devoted to the wonderful sounds of religious communities, but here, on this disc, we have the real thing, in the context of the daily office which takes place day after day, as it will surely continue to do.

Nicholas Kerrison

CORNHILL VISIONS

A century of musical innovation

The Choir of St Michael, Cornhill

Dir: Jonathan Rennert

Organ: Jeremiah Stephenson, Graham

Thorpe, Benjamin Newlove

Trumpet: William Morley; Erhu: Colin Huehns; Tenor: Gareth Treseder

Soprano: Nicola Corbishley; Countertenor: Patrick Craig Harold Darke The eyes of all wait upon thee, O Lord; Even such is time; Be strong and of a good courage; O gladsome light; Rhiannon Randle Da pacem, Domine; Memoria; Bax Magnificat; Jonathan Rennert Psalm 79; Philip Moore Here rests his head; Gareth Treseder Jesu, the very thought of thee; Ralph Vaughan Williams

Lord, thou hast been our refuge; A vision of aeroplanes; Valiant-for-truth REGENT REGCD550

Dr Harold Darke is represented by four works [13’34”] and his friend Ralph Vaughan Williams by three substantial pieces [23’10”] in this compelling and beautiful recital from St Michael’s Cornhill; their output comes alongside material from a further five living composers: Rhiannon Randle [Composer-in-residence at St Michael’s], Gareth Treseder, a member of this fine choir, and its long-serving director, Jonathan Rennert, in office since 1979. In all, there are eight premiere recordings in the repertoire list including Sir Arnold Bax’s boldly energised Magnificat for choir and organ, brilliantly accompanied by Benjamin Newlove on the legendary Cornhill instrument. The Bax piece, dating from 1906, presents a version of the text that is, unusually, not that from Evensong as found in the Book of Common Prayer.

From the very outset, and the gentle unfolding of Darke’s The eyes of all wait upon Thee, O Lord – a pre-dinner choir Grace from 1961 – it is abundantly clear that this is an ensemble these days at the top of its game – with outstanding blend, ensemble and unanimity of utterance, featuring abundantly clear diction, and a lovely sonority enhanced by true expressive flexibility of tone.

Philip Moore is represented by the expressive Here rests his head from 2016, a text selected by the composer from Gray’s Elegy written in a country churchyard commissioned for the 300th anniversary of poet Thomas Gray, baptised in St Michael’s and a Fellow of Pembroke College Cambridge. Graham Thorpe is the persuasive accompanist and the opening solo is beautifully given by Emily Owen at the outset of this deeply felt setting cast in ‘arch’ form.

Gareth Treseder’s glorious choral verses, selected from the lengthy Jesu dulcis memoria in their English translation Jesu, the very thought of Thee, unfold from the first verse – which is exquisitely sung by the composer himself. This is a work that will go far!

The first Vaughan Williams on the CD is fine hearing of Lord, thou hast been our refuge with well-balanced choralism and a super trumpet obligato from William Morley. Written for Darke’s St Michael’s Singers, and first sung by them in Darke’s Golden Jubilee concert in 1956 with John Birch at the keys, RVW’s demanding Vision of Aeroplanes is given a brilliant performance with its challenges thrown well and truly to the winds, encouraged by the fiendish organ part from the nimble hands and feet of Jeremiah Stephenson. As a further bonus, Valiant-for-Truth is given a fresh-toned account of persuasive conviction as the final item in this excellent recital.

The two spectacular works by Rhiannon Randle are each splendidly done. Da pacem, Domine and Memoria, with its text taken from a Responsory of Good Friday Tenebrae [the latter heralded by the bell of St Michael’s and enhanced by the playing of Colin Huehns on the Chinese stringed instrument, the erhu], linger long in the memory.

Gary Cole captures the warm ambience of St Michael’s and the brilliance of tone abounding in its famous and historic instrument to a T. This CD should quickly make its way into the collection of every serious-minded lover of the English choral tradition.

Warmest congratulations to Mr Rennert, his singers and players, for a great issue. The onward-going forward momentum, never rush, of these vivid scores comes wonderfully to life. The regular choral service at St Michael’s these days is the weekly Monday Choral Evensong during term-time – arrive a little earlier and you can take in an organ concert at lunchtime!

Simon Lindley

A CELTIC PRAYER

Paisley Abbey Choir

Dir: George McPhee

Organ: David Gerrard

Bass flute: Ewan Robertson

McPhee Benedictus es Domine; Prelude on ‘Bunessan’ for organ; A Celtic Prayer; Prelude on ‘Quem pastores’ for organ; Trumpet March on ‘Highland Cathedral’ for organ; Martin Dalby Mater salutaris; MacMillan Chosen; Thomas Wilson There is no rose; Stuart MacRae Adam lay ybounden; Robert Johnson Gaude Maria virgo; Cedric Thorpe Davie

The Lord is he whose strength; Come, Holy Ghost, the Maker; Edward McGuire Three Donne lyrics; Robert Johnson Benedicam Domino; Owen Swindale Trinity Sunday.

PRIORY PRCD 1234

Paisley Abbey choir under George McPhee has played a significant role within Scotland for a number of years. This disc pays tribute to the work of George McPhee and focuses on two periods of Scottish musical history with relatively short examples of Scottish Renaissance music against nonabrasive (!) contemporary liturgical works written by Scottish composers.

Although the liner notes are a touch sparse, in an interview on BBC Radio Scotland George McPhee mentioned that the disc was inspired by Ewan Robertson, a regular member of the Abbey’s congregation and an exponent of the bass flute, who felt that a mostly unaccompanied piece would work well in the building. Robertson commissioned from the Scottish composer Edward McGuire the Three Donne Lyrics, in which the bass flute plays a significant role against the simple melodic two-part vocal canon at the beginning of the work. The premiere should have been at the Orkney International Science Festival in 2020, the connection being the scientific references within Donne’s poetry.

McPhee’s three improvisatory organ miniatures weave through the disk, while his Benedictus es Domine serves as a stirring introduction to a diverse musical feast. His setting of A Celtic Prayer is sensitive, as is Martin Dalby’s Mater salutaris. James MacMillan’s compelling large-scale work, Chosen, captures the composer’s unique musical style – quasi-medieval melodic lines, ornamentation and dissonant writing. There is no rose by Thomas Wilson is a most beautiful and moving piece enhanced by thoughtful singing.

One of the more sizeable works is Stuart Macrae’s Adam lay ybounden, written for the Abbey Choir. The exciting crescendo towards the conclusion more than allows the choir to reveal its full potential!

The two pieces by Scottish composer Robert Johnson contrast effectively with much of the music on the disc. There is colourful, lively and stylish singing throughout, and in particular in the triple-time section towards the conclusion of Benedicam Domino. It is more than likely that they were written in England after 1570, in the light of the Presbyterian control.

Both the works by Swindale and the better known Thorpe Davies are well crafted anthems containing fine melodic lines against an appealing (though certainly in no way bland) harmonic language.

The final track, Trumpet March on ‘Highland Cathedral’, fully demonstrates the Abbey’s Cavaillé-Coll organ and serves not only as a fitting conclusion to a most enjoyable disc but as a tribute to George McPhee.

David Thorne

HOWELLS MISSA SABRINENSIS

The Bach Choir Dir: David Hill

Soli: Helena Dix, Christine Rice, Benjamin Hulett, Roderick Williams Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei; Fanfare on ‘Michael’ (hymn tune).

HYPERION CDA 68294 TT 71:32

Every reader of this magazine will know that Howells is revered for his anthems, service settings and organ music, much of which is firmly anchored in the repertoire. Important as these works are, though, there is so much more to this composer. His orchestral music includes the glorious Elegy for viola, string quartet and string orchestra, a wonderful concerto for string orchestra, the still neglected large-scale cello concerto, and important chamber works which include violin sonatas, string quartets and lovely oboe and clarinet sonatas.

And then there are the three large-scale masterpieces for soloists, chorus and orchestra, Hymnus Paradisi and this Missa Sabrinensis from the early 1950s, and the Stabat Mater from 1965. The Missa Sabrinensis was, indeed, a direct result of the success of Hymnus Paradisi, having been commissioned by David Willcocks for the 1954 Three Choirs Festival following performances of the earlier work at the Festivals of 1950, 1951 and 1952. After early performances, the work entered a period of neglect; it remained unrevived until a performance in 1982, conducted by David Willcocks in honour of the composer’s 90th birthday. Maybe this neglect was due to its unfashionable style, or maybe to its (not undeserved) reputation for extreme difficulty; this is only its second recording.

It certainly is a monumental work of exceptional power and complexity. It grabs the listener and demands attention. Sweeping choral and orchestral lines intertwine, soloists weave and soar around them, the whole texture a glittering, ever-changing panorama. Much is loud or very loud, but there are moments of exceptional beauty too, especially in the ‘Benedictus’ and ‘Agnus Dei’.

David Hill, his four soloists, the Bach Choir, and the BBC Concert Orchestra all know this style inside out, and are alive to every nuance. The performance achieves astonishing power, but not at the expense of clarity nor, where necessary, tenderness. It is a multi-faceted account in which the burning integrity of the composer’s vision is faithfully communicated, and it is hard to imagine that it could soon be superseded.

Christopher Barton

ALEX WOOLF REQUIEM

Vox Luna

Tenor: Nicky Spence

Dir: Alex Woolf

Piano: Iain Burnside; Cello: Philip Higham; Organ: Anthony Gray.

DELPHIAN DCD 34240 TT 55:46

The sustained organ notes and the passionate sounds of the cello which start this new requiem by the 25-year old composer draw you into this music, making you wonder what is going to happen next. What we get is a profound and deeply moving work, one which – minus the ‘Dies Irae’ –sets the traditional text but includes three poems by Gillian Clarke. The music is basically tonal but with much controlled dissonance. Immediate comparisons will likely be made with Britten’s War Requiem, for this reason, and it is interesting to note that Alex Woolf also differentiates the sacred and secular texts by instrumentation and use of voices, in a similar way to Britten. The choral (sacred) sections are supported by the organ and cello, while the intense solo vocal sections (secular), sung superbly by Nicky Spence (listeners will, without a doubt, hear strains of Robert Tear in his voice!), are accompanied by the piano and cello. Following the organ and cello introduction we hear the opening choral sounds of Vox Luna, a group of only 15 singers, and these are superb: beautifully sustained, shaped and controlled so very well, with an impressive dynamic range for such a small choir. The choir was started by Alex Woolf himself in 2018 and he is clearly a composer who understands choral writing. His works have found favour with the choir of St John’s Cambridge (where he was an undergraduate) as well as with the Bach Choir and the Tallis Scholars.

As the Requiem moves on we continue to hear excellent performances from all concerned. The ‘Sanctus’ brings the organ, played by Anthony Gray, to the fore, and although this music is more exuberant at the start there is still the intense writing heard earlier. In the ‘Benedictus’ there are some beautiful solo contributions from within the choir. Two choral movements are mainly unaccompanied, the ‘Agnus Dei’ and ‘Pie Jesu’. In the ‘Agnus Dei’ the later introduction of the cello adds a wonderful dimension to the otherwise slow-moving chords of the choral writing. The last of Gillian Clarke’s poems, The Year’s Midnight, brings very different, more angular, writing for the piano and cello alongside the ever intense melodic writing for the voice. ‘Pie Jesu’ begins with some of the quietest singing heard on the disc but subsequent repetitions of these build to a climax and eventually the writing ‘shatters into intense, rhythmically free declamation’ (AW), before subsiding once again. Woolf chooses to end his Requiem with the ‘In Paradisum’ as both Fauré and Duruflé did, and, perhaps inevitably, it is the soprano part which features first, including from time to time a solo line above the very sustained chords of the rest of the choir and organ part. A return to a melody heard in the introit brings to a comforting conclusion what has been a highly individual and expressive response to the texts involved.

This is an important recording; it brings to us a new and important work which I am sure will become a mainstay of the choral repertoire. The performance is first rate and needs to be heard.

Nicholas Kerrison

WHEN LOVE SPEAKS

Choral Music by Owain Park

The Epiphoni Consort

Dir: Tim Reader

Louisa; Sing to me, windchimes; Antiphon for the Angels; Shakespeare Love Songs; Holy is the true light; Shakespeare Songs of Night-Time.

DELPHIAN DCD 34239 TT 76:59

Owain Park is justly celebrated as a choral conductor, the director of the excellent Gesualdo Six, whose work I have lauded in these columns. This CD of his music also reveals him as a composer of no mean ability, with well-developed melodic gifts and a sure instinct for choral sonorities perhaps owed to his teacher, John Rutter. The slightest work in the programme is in many ways the most attractive, for Louisa exudes a cheery insouciance which must have delighted its eponymous dedicatee. Sing to me, windchimes, a group of settings of Housman and others, is united by a ‘drip’ figure in the piano accompaniment, somewhat reminiscent of Balulalow in A Ceremony of Carols, and indeed the whole work is more than a little indebted to Britten, who would not have been ashamed to put his name to it. Antiphon for the Angels (text in both English and Latin) is quite special, enhanced as it is by a violin obligato splendidly played by the admirable Rachel Podger; and I would also single out Holy is the true light, another mixed Latin and English setting, in which the words of Sir William Harris’s familiar anthem are prefaced by the introit from the Latin Requiem Mass. Sadly I fear that Mr Park has not followed the practice of the steward at Cana of Galilee in serving the best wine last, for the Shakespeare settings do not work well, becalmed as they are in a sea of words. Nonetheless there is much here to admire and enjoy, not least in the singing of a choir which is amateur in the original and true sense of the word but whose performances are of a truly professional standard.

Timothy Storey

SACRED TREASURES OF SPAIN

London Oratory Schola Cantorum

Dir: Charles Cole

Guerrero Regina caeli a 8; O Domine Jesu Christe; Ave virgo sanctissima; O sacrum convivium; Ribera Dimitte me ergo; Morales Peccantem me quotidie; Robledo Salve regina; Esquivel Ego sum panis vivus; Vivanco Dulcissima Maria; Victoria Ave Maria a 4; Ave Maria a 8; O quam gloriosum; Lobo Versa est in luctum; O quam suavis est, Domine.

HYPERION CDA 68359 TT 69:49

This recording includes several of the most familiar, and finest, motets of the Spanish Renaissance sung, as the director is justifiably keen to point out in his notes, by a choir which has this music in its bones. This repertory is sung extensively by the choir, and its stylistic familiarity is evident right from the start.

First come four motets by Guerrero, a wonderful composer who often seems to be in the shade of Palestrina, Byrd or,

from his own native land, Victoria. In Regina caeli laetare the eight parts positively fizz with energy, especially in so open, generous and dynamic a performance as this. The other three Guerrero motets are more reflective, but all are infinitely expressive, with gently unfolding lines creating an unhurried, devotional atmosphere. The slow tempi are handled with assurance, pitch does not waver, and breath control is secure.

Five composers are represented by a single work. All are quite slow (with a brief contrast at the ‘alleluias’ of the Esquivel), but such is the quality of the singing that there is no sense of boredom or repetitiveness. All are beautiful, and expressively sung, but Morales’ Peccantem me quotidie stands out for its extraordinary start, and the exceptional level of emotional involvement which it packs into a four-page, fourminute, four-voice motet. Sebastian de Vivanco’s extended Dulcissime Maria is another highlight – what a heartfelt offering of devotion to Our Lady it is, and sung with absolute sincerity.

Three motets by Victoria follow, although both the Ave Maria settings are split into two parts, so effectively we get five for the price of three. The two settings of Ave Maria are quite contrasting, one concise setting for four voices, and one considerably more extended setting in eight parts. These are followed by the evergreen O quam gloriosum est regnum which receives a radiant and lively performance.

The patronage of Philip II was responsible for the creation of much of this stunning Spanish repertoire, and it is fitting that one of its supreme masterpieces, Lobo’s Versa est in luctum, should have been composed on his death. This is highly charged music, and its passionate intensity finds full expression here. The disc ends with another Lobo motet, his six-part setting of O quam suavis est. Sitting listening to this sublime music in lockdown, one can almost believe that all is well in the world. Thank you to the singers, conductor, engineers and composers for providing some light in a dark world.

Christopher Barton

JOSQUIN MOTETS AND MASS MOVEMENTS

The Brabant Ensemble

Dir: Stephen Rice

Mittit ad virginem; Alma redemptoris mater/ Ave regina caelorum; Huc me sydereo a 6; Stabat mater a 6; O bone et dulcissime

Jesu a 6; Domine, ne in furore tuo … miserere; Usquequo, Domine, oblivisceris me? Homo quidam fecit coenam magnam; Gloria de beata virgine; Sanctus de Passione. HYPERION CDA 68321 TT 78:38

Famed as the finest musician of his age, Josquin (c.14501521) was born near the present-day border between Belgium and France, but was always regarded as French. Just about everything about him has provided a feast for biographers, from his musical education as a chorister in a royal chapel and early experience as a professional singer in France to his employment in ducal and ecclesiastical establishments at Milan, Rome, and Ferrara before his eventual return to his place of birth, where he enjoyed a serene old age happily occupied in composition. Musicologists are much exercised by the question of how much of his oeuvre is genuine Josquin, for so famous was he that other composers’ music came to be attributed to him, but you may be assured that the contents of this CD are 100% genuine, or so far as anyone knows. Such questions are discussed at length in Stephen Rice’s scholarly liner-notes, but their very length and the minuscule size of

the typeface nearly defeated your reviewer, who would have been more than happy with less information, presented so as to be visible to the naked eye. Record companies, please note! The music affords great delight, even if there is a bias towards the penitential, such works as Mittit ad virginem and Alma redemptoris mater/Ave regina caelorum offering light amid th’encircling gloom. I especially enjoyed Homo quidam fecit coenam magnam (a certain man made a great feast), a substantial motet for Corpus Christi, and the single movements from the Masses De beata virgine and De Passione made one wish to hear the other sections, though on the evidence of this ‘Gloria’ the whole Mass must be of prodigious length. The Brabant Ensemble’s performances are of excellent quality, even if the gentlemen are not quite in the same league as the ladies, and I recommend this CD as a most worthy celebration of the quincentenary of the composer’s death.

Timothy Storey

POTT: AT FIRST LIGHT

Commotio

Dir: Matthew Berry

Cello: Joseph Spooner

Organ: Christian Wilson

At First Light; Word.

NAXOS 8.573976 TT 79:26

Francis Pott is one of Britain’s leading contemporary composers, and his music is highly regarded throughout much of Europe as well as in the UK. Pott was a chorister at New College Oxford before gaining scholarships to Winchester College and Magdalene College Cambridge. He is also a gifted pianist and studied with the late Hamish Milne. For many years he combined composing whilst a lecturer at St Hilda’s College Oxford before becoming Head of London College of Music from 2001, and then in 2007 he became Chair of Composition. In recognition of his distinguished achievement as a choral and organ composer over the past four decades, he was awarded the coveted Medal of the Royal College of Organists in January 2021.

This is the first recording of At First Light, conducted by Matthew Berry, a great advocate of the composer since his organ scholar days at University College Oxford. Pott describes the piece as a ‘semi-secular’ requiem which combines texts from the Requiem Mass with biblical texts and poetry by Kahlil Gibran, Thomas Blackburn and Wendell Berry. It was commissioned by Eric Bruskin in memory of his mother, and you will find the mood and some of the texts are inspired by the family’s Jewish faith. Although this is a choral work, it also contains a virtuosic obligato cello part requested by Bruskin and played with great intensity and brilliance by Joseph Spooner. This enhances the work’s mostly melancholic style and highlights Commotio’s exquisite and well balanced singing. It also captures very effectively the emotions of the underlying sentiment of diverse texts. The virtuosity and musicality of the choir permeates the work, and this is particularly evident within the middle movement, a complex setting of Psalm 150 consisting of a wealth of ecstatic contrapuntal writing.

Word, composed for The Merton Choirbook, was commissioned in 2012 by the Revd Dr Nicholas Fisher. Scored for choir and organ, it intersperses parts of St John’s Prologue with five poems by the metaphysical poet R S Thomas. The work juxtaposes rhythmic writing often set against chorale-like material. The performance of the choir more than matches the quality of At First Light. The sopranos’ singing is much to be admired, as is the superb playing by Christian Wilson of the extremely demanding organ part. The work reflects Pott’s introspection

and a general ongoing soul-searching which seems to empathise most fittingly with Thomas’s poetry.

This disc is first rate in production and quality, but it should be noted that both the music and texts are of a quality that require the listener to devote time and space to fully appreciate their depth.

David Thorne

JOURNEYS TO THE NEW WORLD

16th and 17th-century Hispanic Sacred Music

The Queen’s Six

Morales Regina caeli laetare a 6; O sacrum convivium; Franco Salve regina a 5; (attrib. Franco) Christus factus est; Victoria Vidi speciosam; O quam gloriosum; Guerrero Trahe me post te; Beatus Achacius; Lobo Versa est in luctum; O quam suavis est; Gutierrez Circumdederunt me; Versa est in luctum; Francisco López Capillas In horrore visionis; Tantum ergo; Mateo de Dallo Laudate Dominum.

SIGNUM SIGCD 626 TT 66:23

It has long been your reviewer’s considered opinion that the full-blooded choralism in Renaissance polyphony which emanates from individuals from the Iberian peninsula has something of an expressive, even a dramatic, edge over a cooler Italian style. Certainly, younger singers have a tendency to revel more in the works of Victoria than, say, Palestrina.

The Queen’s Six comprise half of the corpus of lay clerks at St George’s Windsor. The varied and considered programme – well contrasted in the keys deployed as well as the changing moods of texts – includes two motets by Morales. A lengthy treatment inspired by the first mode festal chant of Salve regina for five voices follows; this, the Eastertide Antiphon to the Blessed Virgin Mary, is subjected to alternatim treatment between the plainsong stanzas, each succeeded by rich polyphony with the harmonised music catching the Latin text to a T.

Especially impressive is the deeply felt Trahe me post te to a text from the Song of Songs – one of two items by Francisco Guerrero, whose output was especially popular in South America during and since his lifetime.

Victoria provides two works. The first is his best-known motet, O quam gloriosum, the lines of which are winsomely drawn within the fine acoustic of Ascot Priory chapel used for the recording. Undoubtedly, though, the summit is a suitably mobile gorgeously liquid-sounding performance of the fabulous Assumption-tide Responsory in honour of Our Lady from the same creative spirit – Vidi speciosam, with its imagery of roses and lilies of the valley. The second section is hallmarked by a suitable interpretative urgency at its commencement.

Nor is the penitential excluded: there are particularly moving – as well as impressively and beautifully sustained – accounts of Versa est in luctum from the Book of Job and Circumdederunt me [The sorrows of death have compassed me] by the lesser-known composers, Lobo and de Padilla.

The recital concludes with a real find for choirs of all resources – a setting of Psalm 117 [Laudate Dominum] by Mateo de Dallo of real élan, similar to that found in Pitoni’s famous Cantate Domino and one of a comparatively small number of works in this vivid style that choirs of all resources could tackle with enthusiasm and energy.

Full marks to these excellent singers and to Dave Rowell and Adrian Peacock of Signum for capturing the richness of this essentially complex repertoire with such success.

Simon Lindley

ALL THINGS ARE QUITE SILENT Choirs of Pembroke College

Dir: Anna Lapwood

Trad. arr. Kerry Andrew

All things are quite silent; Poston Jesus Christ the apple tree; The water of Tyne; Lapwood O nata lux; Beamish In the stillness; Dove Into thy hands; Kerensa Briggs Media vita; Caroline Shaw And the swallow; Martin Justorum animae; Beach Peace I leave with you; Eleanor Daley Grandmother Moon; Upon your heart; Rebecca Clarke Ave Maria; Imogen Holst Agnus Dei; Tavener Mother of God; Rheinberger Abendlied; Laura Mvula Sing to the moon.

SIGNUM SIGCD 642 TT54:46

The dynamic young musician Anna Lapwood is committed to many things. The notes on the chapel choir refer to the outreach work that is undertaken both when on tour and in Cambridge. The CD itself is a testament to Ms Lapwood’s concern to bring the music of gifted women composers to a wider audience, with 11 of the composers represented on the disk being women, as against four men. While there is clearly some justifiable proselytising here, one feels nevertheless that the choice of repertoire has been governed first and foremost by the need to create a coherent and enjoyable programme.

Enjoyable it certainly is. A mixture of sacred and secular, it binds together remarkably well, combining a unity of character with varieties of expression. Highlights (and there are many) include Ms Lapwood’s own luminous setting of O nata lux and Elizabeth Poston’s arrangement for women’s voices of the Northumbrian folk song The water of Tyne in which a beautiful blend is produced, with fine legato lines. Matthew Martin’s Justorum animae is profound, and Amy Beach’s Peace I leave with you has an attractive simplicity of expression. Eleanor Daley’s Upon your heart is a worthy alternative to Walton’s setting of most of the same text in his Set me as a seal, while the spirit of Tippett’s spirituals from A Child of our Time hovers over the final work, Laura Mvula’s Sing to the Moon.

The choral singing is very accomplished, without quite reaching the highest levels of unanimity achieved by our very finest choirs. The tenors and basses sometimes sound rather less focused than they do in some other college choirs, and one senses occasionally (for example, in Poston’s well-loved Jesus Christ the apple tree) that the choir is relying on the fine acoustic of St George’s Church, Chesterton, to round off some of the edges. Sometimes, as in Sally Beamish’s sensitive and atmospheric carol In the stillness, the dynamic levels are somewhat uniform; here, a true pianissimo is not found. Nevertheless, these small reservations should not deter exploration of a fine debut disc (both for the choirs and for Anna Lapwood as conductor), imaginatively programmed, and sung with honesty and conviction.

Christopher Barton

JOHN SHEPPARD: Media Vita

Choir of New College, Oxford

Dir: Robert Quinney

A solis ortus cardine; Inclina Domine; Iudica me Deus; Deus misereatur; Confitebor tibi; Sacris solemniis; Media vita. LINN RECORDS CKD632 TT 71:58

Media vita in morte sumus (In the midst of life we are in death). When Robert Quinney chose John Sheppard’s monumental 25-minute anthem as the title track of this marvellous 2019 recording with the choir of New College Oxford, he can have had little idea how prescient the text would prove, given the

extraordinary events of the past year. Media vita is a late work, possibly written in memory of the composer Nicholas Ludford, who died in 1557, only a year before Sheppard himself, and the choir rises brilliantly to the challenge of its staggering span, gloriously rich choral textures and unbroken, seamless polyphony – it is almost eight minutes by my reckoning before the first proper cadence!

There is wonderful singing throughout the CD, though perhaps the first three items, despite their textural contrasts, cannot avoid a certain ‘sameness’, all inhabiting much the same Dorian tonality. The conciliatory major mode of the lovely Deus misereatur which follows is a welcome contrast, Quinney persuasively suggesting that with its touching antiphon Maria ergo unxit pedes Jesu (Mary then anointed the feet of Jesus) it might have been written to accompany the Maundy Thursday foot-washing ceremony which Queen Mary faithfully observed, as reported by the Venetian ambassador in 1556.

Commendably, no fewer than four of the seven pieces here are first recordings, one of which, the penitential Confitebor tibi, with its striking false relations and dramatic contrasts of high and low-voiced choirs, Quinney surmises might be a plea for divine forgiveness after the ‘error’ of the preceding Protestantism, dating as it does from the first year of Queen Mary’s reign. The choir’s sound is beautifully blended throughout, with sensitive phrasing of the complex polyphonic lines and exquisitely shaped tenor plainsong verses. The boys in particular are to be congratulated on negotiating their very high, sustained lines quite fearlessly and with great musicality – especially since the complexity of the part-writing demands that the 15 trebles often divide into as many as four parts!

The acoustic of St Michael’s Church, Summertown, Oxford is near ideal for this unaccompanied repertoire, and the recording producer and engineer, Philip Hobbs, successfully captures its resonant glow while ensuring absolute clarity of the polyphony. A joy throughout, and if musical solace is needed after the events of the past year, then look no further than this wonderful CD.

Mark Bellis

ST MATTHEW PASSION

Choir of King’s College, Cambridge Academy of Ancient Music

Dir: Stephen Cleobury

Evangelist: James Gilchrist; Jesus: Matthew Rose; Soprano: Sophie Bevan; Countertenor: David Allsopp; Tenor: Mark Le Brocq; Bass: William Gaunt.

KINGS KGS0037 TT 163:36 3CDs

Many of us will have grown up with the traditional British way of performing Bach’s St Matthew Passion, sung in English by a large mixed choir, and so slow-paced as to last over three hours. This was the tradition within which Eric Greene, Peter Pears and others became renowned for their interpretation of the role of Evangelist, as though Bach needed a helping hand, as it were. The Bach Choir’s annual performances and those in York Minster continue to follow this familiar British way of doing things The tradition was begun by Sir Joseph Barnby’s 1871 performance in Westminster Abbey, which was copied by Sir John Stainer two years later at St Paul’s. The St Matthew Passion was regarded as an adjunct to Anglican worship, and thus it was sung in translation; and so monumental was the work held to be that large forces were de rigueur, Stainer using 350 singers and 54 players. The performance at St Paul’s in the 1960s under Sir John Dykes Bower (‘DB’) was in the same

mould, as a chorister of those days relates:

The Matthew Passion was an annual canto belto staged under the dome and sung in English. The cathedral choir was joined by an assortment of parish choirs – I can’t remember which, except that Shoreditch always seemed to come in for some DB flak during preliminary rehearsals. Soprano arias were sung by the cathedral choristers (all thirty of us, I think). Vicars Choral took the other solo parts – Laurie Watts, the annual Evangelist, his narrative of the bitterly weeping Peter unsurpassed, depending on your taste. Andrew Pearmain was the lead alto. I can’t recall who was Christus (Michael Rippon?), and Geoffrey Shaw did a mellifluous burial aria. As far as we choristers were concerned, the highlight was always ‘The lightnings and thunders of hell loose are broken’ as we had bets on whether or when DB broke his baton while trying to keep it all together. No idea where the orchestra came from.

Be warned that the performance under review could not be more different from the ‘British way’, so be aware of what you might be buying. We are presented with light, trim, fast and rather matter-of-fact Bach, sung in the original German, with an emphasis on the work’s dramatic rather than contemplative qualities. The forces are arguably such as Bach might have known, and are, to say the least, modest, the boys’ ability to sustain such lengthy double-choir textures betokening skilled and patient instruction, the more so because one of the two senior trebles was ill and unable to take part. One is mightily impressed by the whole choir’s strong, confident and expressive singing, and the soloists are all that could be desired, especially the Evangelist and Jesus. Nor should one overlook the excellence of the playing by the wonderful Academy of Ancient Music. The late Sir Stephen Cleobury constantly developed and refined the interpretation here recorded, which is a kind of distillation of the Passion’s annual performances as part of Easter at King’s, and there is a certain poignancy in that this is the last recording he made before his retirement in July 2019 and his untimely death the following autumn. Some may wish to buy it for that reason alone, but purely on musical grounds I have no hesitation in giving it my warmest recommendation.

Timothy Storey

VALLS: Missa Regalis

Choir of Keble College, Oxford Academy of Ancient Music

Dir: Matthew Martin

Valls Missa Regalis (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei); Francisco Corrêa de Arouxo Tiento y discurso de segundo tono; Tiento de medio registro de tiple de séptimo tono; Juan Bautista José Cabinilles Tiento de falsas primer tono. AAM AAM008 TT 40:47

Francisco Valls (c.1671-1747) spent most of his career in Barcelona and composed some 40 masses and much other sacred music. His Missa Regalis is a late work, composed in 1740 with the dedication: Sic cecinit prope septuagenarius cygnus (Thus sang the almost 70-year-old swan!) This ‘Royal Mass’, written for King John V of Portugal, reverts to the more sober style favoured at the Portuguese court, of (only) 5-part chorus and organ, with none of the colourful orchestration, solo voices or multiple chorus parts found in Valls’s earlier works. Like his better known Missa Scala Aretina, it is based on Guido d’Arezzo’s six-note major scale D to B, which is cleverly woven into the texture throughout to delightful effect. The style is a curious but not unattractive mixture of older, contrapuntal elements and more modern, Italian-influenced ideas, frequently in very short sections, and the pleasant, not overlong ‘Gloria’, very short ‘Sanctus’ (there is no ‘Benedictus’)

and ‘Agnus Dei’ might make a welcome addition to cathedral music lists.

Keble College Choir, directed by Matthew Martin, is on first-rate form here, the sopranos clearly enjoying the generous acoustic of their college chapel, though there is sometimes a seeming reluctance to allow consonants to intrude into their – admittedly lovely – legato line. And some might feel the chapel’s warm resonance occasionally obscures the complex part-writing in the inner voices. However, this interesting work gets a very musical and really committed first recording from all concerned and is never less than winningly attractive.

Interspersed between the mass movements are three organ solos played by Matthew Martin on the splendid Aubertin organ (2008) of St John’s College Oxford. These are Tientos by Francisco Correa de Arouxo and Juan Bautista Jose Cabinilles dating from a century or so before Valls, sounding both highly authentic on the instrument and very stylistically played.

Two final comments. Firstly, the presentation is about as good as one could ever wish for – the accompanying 72page book includes fascinating scholarly essays and copious illustrations including reproductions of the original scores. Secondly, however, the CD comprises a total of 27 minutes of choral music and 13 minutes of organ solos –not much more than 40 minutes in all. Why is this, when many CDs are nearly twice that length? In short, it is fascinating music, very well performed and wonderfully packaged, but rather parsimonious in length.

Mark Bellis

LION OF NOBILITY

Guillaume

de Machaut

The Orlando Consort

Countertenor: Matthew Venner

Tenors: Mark Dobell, Angus Smith

Baritone: Donald Greig

S’il estoit nuls/S’Amours tous/Et gaudebit cor vestrum; On ne porroit penser; Dame, se vous m’estes lonteinne; Moult sui de bonne heure nee; Ne pensez pas, dame, que je recroie; En demantant et lamentant; Mes esperis se combat; J’aim sans penser laidure; Ma fin est mon commencement; C’est force, faire le vueil; Je puis trop bien ma dame comparer; Tant doucement m’ont attrait/Eins que ma dame/Ruina.

HYPERION CDA 68318 TT 61:01

Here we are plunged into the era of King Edward III of England, whose territorial interests and ambitions in France were a cause of the Hundred Years’ War, and who in 1356 despatched his eldest son the Prince of Wales (the ‘Black Prince’) to join battle with John II of France, the ‘Lion of Nobility’. John was defeated and captured at the Battle of Poitiers (1357), and it is Guillaume de Machaut’s heartfelt lament for this disaster, En demantant et lamentant, that is at the heart of this CD. Guillaume (c.1300-77), a loyal court musician personally devoted to his king, was renowned as both poet and composer, celebrated as much for his secular music as for his Messe de Nôtre Dame; and the four singers of the Orlando Consort present a varied exposition of his skill in such genres as Ballade, Rondeau and Virelai (a narrative poem of a dozen or so verses with refrains). For your full enjoyment of the Consort’s programme you will have to take up your trusty magnifying-glass and pay close attention to the historical commentary and to the medieval French to which the music is set. Such a long and varied assemblage of short-ish works makes heavy demands on the vocal and interpretative abilities of a small group of singers, and, admirable though their

blend and balance are, one is disturbed by the countertenor’s occasionally rather pinched tone and by a sense that at times the Consort’s attention is not fully engaged by the music. So, this is Early Music with a vengeance, an era of music by which some are entranced but which fails to excite others. I hope that this very fine CD will find a good home with those who will appreciate its many virtues.

Timothy Storey

BRITTEN SACRED CHORAL WORKS

Norwich Cathedral Choir

Dir: Ashley Grote

Organ: David Dunnett, George Inscoe

Harp: Elizabeth Green

Rejoice in God, O ye tongues; Let Nimrod, the mighty hunter; Hallelujah; For I will consider my cat Jeoffry; For the Mouse is a creature Of great personal valour; For the flowers are great blessings; For I am under the same accusation; For H is a spirit; For the instruments are by their rhimes; Jubilate in C; Te Deum in C; A Hymn of St Columba; Hymn to St Peter; A Hymn to the Virgin; Hymn to St Cecilia; Festival Te Deum; A Ceremony of Carols.

PRIORY PRCD 1233

In a review for this magazine (CM 2/19) of anthems by Harris, Bairstow and Stanford, performed by the choir of Westminster Abbey, I quoted Kenneth Long, who said: ‘These anthems are some of the last roses of a very long summer. Splendid though they are, they still show hardly any advance on Stanford – or even Wesley.’ He continued: ‘Since 1950 there has been an astonishing revolution in church music…’ but can we say that part of that revolution was the music of Benjamin Britten? Well, Long says of Britten that ‘whereas nearly all contemporary composers seem to have taken refuge in an idiom derived from Schoenberg and Webern, Britten has remained conservative and is one of the few who is still in touch with Everyman’. Michael Nicholas, Organist and Master of Music at Norwich Cathedral from 1971 to 1994, says, in his notes to this current disc: ‘From the lone middle C at the beginning of Rejoice in the Lamb to the fading “Alleluias” at the end of A Ceremony of Carols, there is little in this recital that springs directly from the traditions of English church and cathedral music as generally understood in the middle of the 20th century.’ How true that is! Michael Nicholas refers to Britten’s ‘startling originality’ and Long refers to his ‘astonishing variety and originality’. There’s a theme here! Who else would begin and end two settings of that great hymn of praise, the Te Deum, quietly, or a Kyrie eleison (in his Missa Brevis, not recorded here) on a piercing high F#? Who else would have the imagination for the organ part of Cat Jeoffry or the mouse in Rejoice in the Lamb?

Britten’s association with East Anglia is well known, and three of the works performed here have direct links with Norfolk. The first performance of A Ceremony of Carols took place in 1942 in Norwich Castle; A Hymn to the Virgin was written while Britten was a student at Gresham’s School, and the Hymn to St Peter was written for the church of St Peter Mancroft in Norwich. It is a real credit to the city of Norwich that the Anglican cathedral sustains such a good choir. The boys all attend Norwich School, the girls (aged 11-18) are from a variety of schools in the area, and the back row is a mix of choral scholars and lay clerks. The performances on the disc reveal a choir very much at home singing this music, bringing out the essential character of Britten’s music. From the start, in Rejoice in the Lamb, we have assured singing with a very wide dynamic range. Just occasionally the louder passages can be a little severe, and greater articulation would

be useful at times (‘Bind a leopard to the altar’ etc), but this is excellent singing which stands easily up there with other recordings. Throughout, the organ accompaniments, so very important in Britten’s music, are full of character. David Dunnett’s command of the accompaniment to A Hymn of St Columba is brilliant, incisive and menacing, and although I have singled out that one piece, both DD’s playing and that of George Inscoe contribute so much to the success of these recordings. The same can be said of Elizabeth Green’s accompaniment of A Ceremony of Carols. Her sensitive playing complements the strength of the singing from the choir. I might disagree with one or two speeds in this performance, but we have here assured singing by everyone including the excellent soloists. In all, a fine disc full of vitality and character under the inspired leadership of Ashley Grote.

Nicholas Kerrison

SACRED AYRES

Psalms, Hymns, Sacred Songs by Paul Ayres

Selwyn College Chapel Choir

Dir: Sarah MacDonald

Psalms: When I consider thy heavens; The Lord my shepherd is; Crimond; The Lord my pasture shall prepare; This is the day; Hymns: Be thou my vision; Grant, O God, thy protection; This joyful Eastertide; Let all mortal flesh keep silence; A new commandment; Spiritual Songs: Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel?; Go down, Moses; Motherless child; Deep river; Joshua fought the battle of Jericho; Anthems: On this mountain; God be in my head; Quanto sei bella; Carols: The angel Gabriel; Go tell it on the mountain; When the song of the angels is stilled; Encore: Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs.

REGENT REGCD 36 TT 76:57

Ayres, prolific both as a composer and an arranger, writes music for various genres including the theatre. This 2018 recording reveals originality, pastiche, fascination in the use of counterpoint and occasionally a sense of fun. Much of his writing requires a capable choir to cope with more demanding material such as at the conclusion of Let all mortal flesh or the spiritual, Motherless child. The Selwyn forces, under their director, Sarah MacDonald, perform his simpler pieces most effectively, highlighting especially the more lyrical moments in, for example, The Lord my pasture shall prepare

When I consider thy heavens illustrates Ayres’s work for the theatre in a mix of colour and varied dramatic effects. This is the day, composed for the City of Derby Girls’ Choir, is a catchy and appealing number, whilst his setting of Be thou my vision deliberately steers clear of the block writing found in most hymn books. The anthem Grant, O God, written for Llandaff Cathedral School choral scholars, is far more complex: the choral texture gradually expands into seven parts.

The five arrangements of spirituals on this disc, composed in the mid-90s, are not intended to match the stylistic features used by Tippett in his A Child of our Time. Ayres’s are emotional, colourful and stylistic, and fall within the bounds of late 20th-century English writing. His understanding of the profundity of the texts is apparent, and there is virtuosic writing and a general build-up in tempo in, for example, Let my people go, which ends with an exceedingly low and sombre bass note. The static harmonic of Motherless child reflects the forlorn nature of the text. Deep river is performed with great melancholy whilst Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, one of his earliest arrangements, is a highly charged and effective piece of writing.

One of the most attractive of the short pieces on the disk is Quanto sei bella, written in 2018 for the Venetian wedding of friends. Go tell it on the mountains is vivacious and appealing. Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs was written as a surprise for Neil Ferris at the end of his final concert with Concordia Voices in 2010, the writing being based around the topic of choral rehearsals.

This disc is definitely worth investigating. Much of the music is most approachable although some might find the setting of Crimond disrespectful despite Ayres’s comments, printed at length in the extended liner notes where justification relating to his pieces and comments can be found.

David Thorne

MESSE DA PACEM

Choir of Royal Holloway

Dir: Rupert Gough

Soprano: Sarah Fox

Organ: Andrew Dewar, Liam Condon

Ravel arr Gough Requiem aeternam; Villette Messe da pacem; Elévation; Hymne à la vierge; Salutation angélique;

Castagnet Messe brève; Veni sancte Spiritus.

AD FONTES TT 75:27

This splendid release from Royal Holloway contains three of Villette’s miniatures and his far less well-known large-scale Messe Da Pacem. Ravel’s Requiem aeternam, a subtle reworking by Rupert Gough of the composer’s Pavane pour une infante défunte, uses the text of the introit of the Requiem Mass and serves well as an opening track. It creates an atmosphere, enriched by superb performances throughout by both choir and organists, which permeates the whole disc.

Villette was a chorister in Rouen Cathedral, later studying the organ and the diverse aspects of composition evident in works written for the Catholic liturgy ranging from Gregorian chant to complex polyphonic writing. His Hymne a la vierge is relatively well known. The ‘Kyrie’ of the Messe da pacem, composed in 1970 and originally scored for choir, echo choir, soprano soloist and full symphony orchestra, could well be regarded as a version of the Hymne but on a large scale, combining a luscious harmonic language with an exquisite melodic line. The final organ chord is quite mouth-watering!

The vigorous organ introduction to the ‘Gloria’ contrasts markedly with the conclusion of the ‘Kyrie’. However, the writing becomes far more subdued once the choir enters, although there are a number of discordant peaks. The more meditative solo section, performed with passion by Sarah Fox, is followed by warm harmonic organ and choral writing enhanced by dynamic contrasts.

The ostinato figure in the organ part at the beginning of the ‘Sanctus’ is full of blues-like chords and contains melodic references to the ‘Kyrie’. Both the organ and virtuosic vocal writing is naturally akin to the late romantic French style, notably that of Maurice Duruflé. The ‘Benedictus’, scored for soprano soloist, is far more relaxed, with the choral writing frequently serving as a harmonic backcloth. The ‘Agnus’ cleverly combines melodic and harmonic elements featured in preceding movements.

The final large-scale work is the Messe brève by Yves Castagnet, a former student at the Paris Conservatoire who graduated in 1985 and is now teaching and accompanying at the Maîtrise de Notre-Dame. This setting is not only less romantic but far more concise than the Villette. Though less flamboyant, it is highly atmospheric but with some exceedingly hard vocal writing. Especially attractive is the chordal alternation between upper and lower voices at the beginning

of the ‘Sanctus’ and ‘Benedictus’ and the contrasting mix of counterpoint set against more homophonic writing. The meditative style of the ‘Agnus Dei’ is basically tonal and this is also reflected in the stylistic organ accompaniment by Liam Condon.

Castagnet’s effective Veni sancte spiritus completes the disc and reflects the radiance of the choral forces. The organ accompaniment of Andrew Dewar is most accomplished and illustrates the variety of stops on the Cavaillé-Coll organ of Église Notre-Dame d’Auteuil.

David Thorne

JAAKKO MÄNTYJÄRVI

Trinity College Choir

Dir: Stephen Layton

Ave Maria d’Aosta; Stuttgarter Psalmen; Benedic anima mea, Domino; Pulchra es; Trinity Service; O magnum mysterium.

HYPERION CDA 68266 TT 70:54

The choral heritage of Cambridge’s Trinity College is distinguished, especially so within the tenures of Richard Marlow and the present director, Stephen Layton, under each of whom has flourished an SATB choir of particular and acclaimed distinction. The stupendous recital on this CD unfolds with a glorious setting of Ave Maria, intensely prayerful and deeply felt – a wonderful by-product of its composer’s participation as a course tutor in Aosta in northern Italy. Sonorities are rich and textures focus on middle and lower vocal registers.

More athletic choralism emerges from the Stuttgart Psalms, written in 2009 to commemorate the birth of Mendelssohn 200 hundred years before. Mäntyjärvi creates compelling choral textures, and each and every syllable rings crystal-clear to even the most reluctant listener – who would have to be hard-hearted not to be deeply moved by these psalm-based motets with their stunningly delivered solo segments and vocal ‘standout’ features impressively delivered from within the choir.

While drawing, with great subtlety, on earlier traditions in these pieces, a yet stronger tradition from the medieval period, that of organum, pervades the ambience of Benedic anima mea, and is perhaps more impactful on account of its comparative brevity. Pulchra es, written for the wedding of the composer’s son, is shorter still with an effect wholly disproportionate to its length! This is music con amore, being – appropriately – a text drawn from the erotic heart of the Song of Songs that explores something of the tessitura of Duruflé’s Four Motets on Gregorian themes along the way of its gentle intensity, with especially warm multi-repeats of the first line as a coda.

At the centrepiece comes the composer’s 2019 Trinity Service for Choral Evensong, where Anglican influences are strong. Something of the shadow of the legendary Bernard Rose pervades Mäntyjärvi’s setting of the Responses, which are based in much the same tonality, though here in the key of A rather than Rose’s D.

A final bonus is a setting of O magnum mysterium, a Respond from the Christmas office of Matins that has been taken up eagerly by composers such as Gabrieli and Victoria and, frequently, today’s generation also. The Finnish take on the words has something unique to say, especially with respect to the ‘greatness’ wonderfully achieved in lengthy, sustained sonority.

A Rolls-Royce of a recording from Stephen Layton and his singers. It is a ‘must-have’ for all serious music lovers.

Simon Lindley

PELHAM HUMFREY

Choir of the Chapel Royal Dir: Joseph McHardy

O give thanks unto the Lord; Morning Service, Evening Service and Communion Service in E minor; By the waters of Babylon; O Lord my God.

DELPHIAN DCD34237 TT59:02

Humfrey was one of the first boys to be admitted to the reconstituted Chapel Royal choir at the time of the Restoration. When he left the choir in 1664, Charles II sent him to study in France and Italy, and provided him with a grant of £450. In 1672 Humfrey succeeded Henry Cooke as ‘Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal’ and thus he became one of Henry Purcell’s teachers. Eighteen anthems are known to survive, 13 of which are extended works with string symphonies, and there is also a Service in E minor, recorded here in its entirety for the first time. Kenneth Long considered it ‘a workaday setting of no great merit’ and I do wonder whether the Morning and Communion Services are used a great deal these days. The current Chapel Royal choir, consisting of 10 boys and six ‘Gentlemen-inOrdinary’, perform here with four professional soloists and six instrumentalists under the direction of Joseph McHardy. We hear the instrumentalists at the start of O give thanks unto the Lord and their playing is full of character and expertly performed. When the choir enters it sounds very close, in what would seem to be a very dry acoustic. A photograph in the accompanying booklet shows the performers to be singing and playing in quite cramped circumstances and that may be the reason for the overall sound on the disc. This first verse anthem gives the four soloists the opportunity to shine, and they rise to the task. A decision was made to perform both at the pitch which would have been used in Humfrey’s time, higher (A=465Hz) than concert pitch today, and using a tenor to sing many of the parts designated for an alto. The Service in E minor is performed quite well, particularly in the Evening Service. Unless my ears deceive me there are some strong solo parts for some of the boys here, but, unfortunately, the booklet does not name these young gentlemen. It is really the verse anthems that show Pelham Humfrey’s skill as a composer. By the waters of Babylon must rank as one of the finest anthems of the time – beautiful writing for the string instruments, sensitive word-painting, and dramatic recitative feature in abundance, drawing out the emotions of the wonderful poetry of Psalm 137. In this, and in the last anthem on the disc, O Lord my God, the solo singers excel; they are accompanied sympathetically by the instrumentalists who have contributed so much to be admired on this recording.

Nicholas Kerrison

FRANCISCO GUERRERO

El León de Oro

Dir: Peter Phillips

Magnificat quarti toni; Ave virgo sanctissima; Hei mihi, Domine; Lamentations; Beatus Achacius oravit; Sancta et immaculata; Regina caeli a 8; Laudate Dominum de caelis; 5 songs from Canciones y villanescas espirituales.

HYPERION CDA 68347 TT 60:53

The reputation of Francisco Guerrero (1528-99) is somewhat in the ascendant at the moment. While not perhaps on a par with Victoria, 20 years his junior, his output is now becoming more familiar to us, thanks to fine CDs like this. A pupil of

Morales, he was based at Seville Cathedral for many years and had a colourful life: he survived encounters with pirates on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, only to be committed to debtors’ prison on his return, the cathedral chapter securing his release by paying off his creditors.

The choir here is the 40 mixed voices of El Leon de Oro, founded in 1997, and they sound glorious in the generous acoustic of the Iglesia del Real Monasterio de San Salvador de Cornellana at Salas in Asturias. Peter Phillips directs the Latin sacred works and Marco Antonio Garcia de Paz those in Spanish.

The most substantial pieces are the relatively early (1563) Magnificat quarti toni – delightfully atmospheric, with its alternating plainsong verses – and a beautiful but suitably sombre setting of the Lamentations, recently discovered in Guatemala Cathedral library, both starting out for four voices, but increasing in complexity to become six parts by their conclusions.

The shorter items provide welcome contrasts of texture and scoring in this carefully designed programme: the lower voices shine in Beatus Achacius oravit – an early (1555) motet for five-part men’s voices for the feast of St Achacius, and this is immediately followed by the heavenly Sancta et immaculata – not Guerrero’s familiar mass of that name, but a marvellous motet for SSSA, quite exquisitely sung: a real highlight. The choir also rises to the challenge of two double-choir motets, Laudate Dominum de caelis and Regina caeli – the latter a highly complex, continuous 8-part web of polyphony surrounding the plainsong melody, wonderfully sung.

The CD concludes with five of the Canciones y villanescas espirituales. Published in Venice in 1589, these are strophic, hymn-like pieces, originally composed by Guerrero as secular songs, but which he later adapted, fitting the music to alternative Spanish sacred texts – interesting, and performed with great authenticity by this splendid Spanish choir. Strongly recommended.

Mark Bellis

THE SWEETEST SONGS

The Baldwin Partbooks III

Contrapunctus

Dir: Owen Rees

White Domine, non est exaltatum; Portio mea; Byrd Tristitia et anxietas; Peccavi super numerum; Ne perdas cum impiis; Mundy In te, Domine, speravi; William Mundy Memor esto verbi tui; Anon Confitebor tibi, Domine; Parsons Domine, quis habitabit; Sheppard Confitebor tibi, Domine; William Daman Confitebor tibi, Domine.

SIGNUM SIGCD 633 TT 67:23

This splendid journey back in time to the greatest age in English music represents the third and final compilation from what are known as the Baldwin Partbooks committed to posterity by William of that ilk, a lay clerk in the choir of St George’s Windsor. Much work has been sustained to bring this enthralling repertoire to life. By a strange irony, since Baldwin sang tenor, the tenor book is missing, which necessitated some work of re-construction.

So, the listener’s debt is as great to the editorial endeavours of Dr Rees and his contemporaries as it is for their finesse in choral direction and the ensemble singing of the very highest order. This third and final product of the Baldwin Partbooks shows a continuing quest for consummate beauty of tone at the topmost treble register. And yet many would argue that the quintessence of the Renaissance choralism in the English tradition is to be found in the limpid liquidity brought us by the

central parts provided within the alto or countertenor register.

The glorious initial line of Robert White’s Domine, non est exaltatum – the wistful opening track on the recording, performed by superbly blended middle-ranged singers –reminds us of the importance of the alto part in achieving musical blend and balance within the ensemble. This same beauty of expression is applied by Dr Rees and his highest vocal lines here and throughout the recording.

This is the deep expression of a Catholic composer steeped in the spiritual and musical traditions of the old faith who produces music of profundity as well as pathos. Dead, of the plague, with all his family in 1574, he was at 36 only in his fourth year as Organist of Westminster Abbey, with major singing and other musical posts already under his belt at Trinity College Cambridge – where he had begun as a chorister – followed by cathedral appointments at nearby Ely and thence Chester, where his fine reputation as a choirmaster had preceded him to Westminster. The two remarkable works found here fully justify assessments of him as ‘the English Lassus’, and Rees and his ensemble do them fine and proper honour.

It is thought that over half the repertoire presented on this disk is receiving its first recorded performance. Initial playing of the music encouraged your reviewer to pause for some considerable time after the opening track before preceding further and, thereafter, successively to allow the depth and expression of each work to sit within a period of silence betwixt such noble fare. This is a procedure I would strongly advocate to hear these riches to the best of their advantage.

Simon Lindley

DUARTE LOBO MASSES

Cupertinos

Dir: Luís Toscano

Audivi vocem de caelo; Missa Sancta Maria; Christmas responsories a 4: Hodie nobis caelorum rex; Hodie nobis de caelo; Quem vidistis, pastores?; O magnum mysterium; Beata dei genitrix; Sancta et immaculata; Beata viscera; Verbum caro; Missa Elisabeth Zachariae; Alma redemptoris mater.

HYPERION CDA 68306 TT 70:16

In their second release on the Hyperion label, the Portuguese vocal consort Cupertinos under their director Luís Toscano achieves the aim of promoting music from Portugal to a wide audience both in quality of performance and choice of composer.

Duarte Lobo was one of the most significant choral composers of the Renaissance, becoming Chapel Master at Lisbon Cathedral whilst enjoying the patronage of King John IV of Portugal. His popularity was not only due to his fine writing but by the publication of many volumes of his works enabled partly by the development of music-printing, which allowed his works to receive more widespread performances throughout Western Europe. While heavily influenced by many 17th-century Portuguese composers, he is nevertheless one the most frequently performed of his time.

The sustained writing in Audivi vocem de caelo highlights Lobo’s compositional skill and also the quality of singing, which permeates the whole disc.

The two parody mass settings use passages of both the melody and harmony from the original motets. They are remarkably concise and receive superbly blended stylistic performances. The small ensemble with a bright soprano line is most welcome and the intricacies of the counterpoint and

the dynamic range are well controlled. Especially effective within both settings is the subtle manner in which cadence points are so well controlled.

The recording was made in the Basilica de Bom Jesus in Braga. Its superb reverberation is extremely well captured in the balance by the excellent Hyperion production team.

David Thorne

EMBRACE OF FIRE

Naji Hakim

Simon Leach

Violin: Benedict Holland

Recorder: John Turner

Tenor: Ranald McCusker

Salve Regina (plainsong); Salve Regina; Capriccio; The Embrace of Fire (5 movements); Toccata on the Introit for the Feast of the Epiphany; Diptych; Hommage à Igor Stravinsky.

METIER MSV 28583 TT 70:43

The beautifully canted plainchant from Ranald McCusker, one of the finest of the younger generation of British singers, gets this imaginative recording off to a good start. Ranald gives place to that experienced violinist, Benedict Holland, who gloriously supplies an upwardly mobile meditation on the traditional chant theme.

More lively virtuosity succeeds this in the form of Hakim’s infectious Capriccio of 2005 for violin and organ, which finds in Holland an entirely committed advocate of surefingered technical accomplishment combined with depth of expression.

Hakim’s immense experience as improviser and composer is well to the fore in the cycle of movements authoritatively delivered by Simon Leach on the superb Hill instrument at the Church of the Holy Name in Manchester. Leach steers a compelling course through Hakim’s intense score with brilliance of articulation and, importantly, clarity of utterance. Each of this trilogy’s three movements is headed by a passage drawn from the New Testament.

Hakim’s Toccata follows. This has always been a close personal favourite of mine among introits in the Roman Graduale – it was the first Capitular Mass I ever played at London’s Westminster Cathedral. It is emphatically in the [post] Tournemire tradition, a glorious utterance following the sung chant, with its full ‘Gloria’ and its internal repeat from the opening and closing of the introit as an entity. This is Ranald McCusker’s final excellent contribution, notable for security of pitch and expressive tone.

Hakim’s Diptych [Cantilène and Humoresque] follows, featuring the brilliance of John Turner’s recorder in the spirit of Vierne’s Pièces de Fantaisie – a further solo enhancement in this memorable recital. So perfect is the intonation that the recorder sounds ‘from’ the organ rather merely ‘with’ it. Remarkable.

To close comes Hommage à Igor Stravinsky, the premiere of which was given at the Royal Festival Hall. At the heart is a lively dance, and the work – and this high-octane recording –concludes with a brilliant Final. Part of the motivic structure of the suite is influenced by, and based upon, the rich heritage of Gregorian chant.

Warm congratulations to organ-builder David Wells for the excellence of his tuning and regulation, and to recording engineer Richard Scott, who gets the best of one of England’s very finest West Gallery instruments. A minute quibble is the perhaps too brief continuum between the tonality of the first two tracks – just a little more space between the closing of the

singing and the onset of the organ and violin Salve would have been welcome.

Simon Lindley

ROSNER CHORAL MASSES

Blossom Street

Dir: Hilary Campbell

Missa ‘L’homme armé’; Missa ‘In nomine’ CONVIVIUM CR053

The choral music of Arnold Rosner (1945-2013) will likely be entirely unfamiliar to most audiences, although for some years his orchestral and chamber music has been appearing on a series of CDs. Rosner was a Jewish New Yorker who had the misfortune to grow up during the serialist obsession which dominated music departments of US academies in the 1960s. Or it might have been good fortune, because it was around that time that he developed a deep love of early music, especially the timeless beauty of Renaissance polyphony. Nearly all his music has adopted the ethos of those times, and these two (of three) Roman Catholic a cappella Masses, dating from the 1970s, explore the modal and textural transparencies of choral writing built on a ‘cantus firmus’ (a traditional melody).

The Missa ‘L’homme armé’ quotes the medieval French song The Armed Man, the cantus firmus being used for longnote internal parts. It is also used for the more contemporary techniques of shifting and irregular time signatures and cross rhythms, ostinati, charismatic gestures and modality: you hear the music through a distinctive 20th-century prism. Rosner himself observed that the Masses of both Vaughan Williams and Frank Martin (written in the early 1920s) adumbrated a second choral Renaissance, bringing Lassus, Perotin and Josquin des Prez into a contemporary context.

Each of Rosner’s Masses has a unique personality. Missa ‘In nomine’, so named for its use of the plainchant ‘Gloria tibi trinitas’, is notable for its ecstatic Gloria, complex rhythmic patterns and ever-growing intensity, similar, perhaps, to the little motet Peace, my heart, one of several poems by the early 20th-century Bengali mystic Rabindranath Tagore, which Rosner set to music.

These performances are immaculate, and serve a dual purpose: not only are we introduced to a new choral composer but we find one of sufficient quality and interest to appeal (as I have no doubt he will) to a wide range of choral directors, choirs and audiences.

A superb, fascinating release by a most accomplished choir.

Bret Johnson

L’homme armé

“Everywhere it has been proclaimed that each man shall arm himself with a coat of iron mail. The armed man should be feared.”

It is impossible to say who the original composer of L’homme armé was, but after the melody’s first appearance in the 1450s or ’60s it remained popular for two and a half centuries. By the end of this time a remarkable 40 Mass cycles using the tune had been composed by nearly as many composers – some composed more than one.

GIVING FOR TOMORROW

Leaving a gift in your Will helps us to sustain our living heritage of cathedral music so that we can share our passion with future generations.

We are extremely grateful for each gift we receive, and the generosity of our Friends ensures that future generations can share your enjoyment of sacred choral and organ music.

Pledging a legacy to Cathedral Music Trust will cost you nothing today, but will create far-reaching opportunities for cathedral choirs in the future.

After you have provided for loved ones, please consider leaving a gift to Cathedral Music Trust. All gifts left to charities in a Will are exempt from tax and could reduce your inheritance tax rate by 10%.

CONTACT US

If you would like to discuss leaving the Trust a legacy in your Will, please contact our Development Director, Natasha Morris, by emailing development@cathedralmusictrust.org.uk

We promise to respect your wishes, and all correspondence and discussions will be treated in the strictest confidence. Any information you give does not involve you in any binding agreement.

Please remember Cathedral Music Trust in your Will and help us to secure our priceless heritage for future generations.

HOW TO CREATE A LASTING LEGACY

A Will ensures that your estate passes to whom you wish. It allows you to leave an enduring legacy for people and causes that are meaningful to you.

Arranging or updating a Will does not need to be complicated. We recommend using a qualified solicitor to ensure that your Will is valid.

An unrestricted bequest gives the Trust flexibility to invest wisely for the future. However, if you have specific wishes, we are very happy to discuss them with you to ensure that your legacy remains relevant and can be put to the best possible use.

All legacies, of any size, are warmly appreciated. Every gift counts, whether it be a fixed sum or a share of your estate.

Simply make your gift to ‘Cathedral Music Trust (registered charity number 1187769) for its general charitable purposes’.

It would be very helpful if you could notify us of your legacy by emailing our Development Director, Natasha Morris, on development@cathedralmusictrust.org.uk

THE SIBTHORP CIRCLE

If you choose to make a gift in your Will, we would like to thank you personally by inviting you to join The Sibthorp Circle. In recognition of the gift you have pledged, you will benefit from a close lifelong association with the Trust, with an annual reception to thank you for your lasting gift.