Cathedral Music: Autumn 2010

Cathedral MUSIC

Cathedral Music

CATHEDRAL MUSIC is published twice a year, in May and November

ISSN 1363-6960 NOVEMBER 2010

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Back Cover

Mgr Richard Moth, former Vicar-General of the Archdiocese of Southwark is Ordained Catholic Bishop of the Forces at Westminster Cathedral. 29 September 2009.

© Catholic Church (England & Wales)

Cathedral MUSIC Cathedral MUSIC

The Magazine of the Friends of Cathedral Music

CM Comment Andrew Palmer’ ‘

music in England, particularly by Tallis, Byrd and Taverner and Mass at the Cathedral was soon attended by inquisitive musicians as well as the faithful. The performance of great Renaissance Masses and motets in their proper liturgical context remains the cornerstone of the choir’s activity and formed the focus of the music for the Pope’s visit to Westminster. Terry also commissioned works by great Anglican musicians such as Howells, Stanford and Vaughan Williams.

This edition celebrates the music of the Catholic Church, especially at Westminster, on the occasion of the state visit to the UK by Pope Benedict XVI.

We know that the Pope was impressed and delighted by the quality of the singing he heard from both the Choir of Westminster Cathedral under Martin Baker and the Choir of Westminster Abbey under James O'Donnell, who is the first Catholic Organist and Master of the Choristers at the Abbey since the Church of England broke with Rome in 1536. The Pope heard for himself that the quality of cathedral singing is surely the highest it has been in 475 years. It has survived suppression during the Commonwealth, which attempted to destroy the high musical traditions of the Church and stringency during two world wars.

The work of the Friends of Cathedral Music since its foundation in 1956 has played a part in this quest for everhigher standards.

Cardinal Vaughan (1892-1903), the founder of Westminster Cathedral, recruited the outstanding cathedral music director of the time, Richard Runciman Terry from Downside Abbey, to be the first Master of Music for his new cathedral thereby setting the very high standard which has been maintained ever since. Richard Terry built up Westminster Cathedral Choir and was instrumental in reviving the music of the Golden Age of Renaissance

The Pope also heard a new commission composed for the occasion by FCM Vice-President James MacMillan, titled Tu es Petrus, which attracted huge praise and attention. This is highly significant: MacMillan is in my opinion currently the most important Catholic composer in the UK. His faith has inspired him to compose many sacred works. In a recent interview MacMillan told CATHEDRAL MUSIC that he was getting ‘more and more interested in what liturgy is, and exploring what might work best for Mass, either in the music that I write or the music that I use’.

It was interesting, too, that Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices was sung at Westminster Cathedral. Byrd never really abandoned his Catholic faith and lived through a time of religious persecution and his music was the fruit of deeply-held belief expressed against a back-drop of danger, but due to the tolerance of Elizabeth I he survived this turbulent period in our religious history.

In the same interview James MacMillan was also asked if these intense levels of persecution which may be a thing of the past, could still be significant obstacles put in the path of a Roman Catholic composer today. His reply was that: “It’s not just an issue for Roman Catholic artists, but we live in a time of renewed secular aggression about religion and a lack of understanding of the nuances of religion born out of perceived fundamentalism in a number of different religions. We live in a time of religious fanaticism as well, and the mainstream churches: Roman Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian etc, are taking

the brunt of this, not just in the world of the arts but also in the wider world, and there is a kind of secular fundamentalism, almost as a counterpart to the religious fundamentalism, which has taken root in the public debate. This is very worrying and it doesn’t make for a complex and nuanced understanding or even discussion about religious matters.” This was a theme that Pope Benedict expanded on during his insightful and thoughtful address to the politicians in Westminster Hall.

MacMillan’s voice is an important one for us and should be listened to as his messages are so obviously relevant to today’s secular society.

Cathedral music had an important role in the Pope’s visit, not least because of its congruence between the Roman and Anglican Churches.

We can rejoice in the fact, unlike in France where first the Revolution and then two world wars disrupted the cathedral music tradition, in these Isles it has survived.

The millions who watched the services on television and listened on radio will have been struck by the indications of our growing ecumenical rapprochement being so well served by two of our leading choirs.

We at the FCM have continued to foster strong ecumenical links. We invited the Archbishop of Westminster to join the Archbishop of Canterbury as Joint Patron and James MacMillan and the Bishop of Brentwood to become Vice-Presidents.

Monsignor Philip Whitmore, who shared his bird’s-eye view of the Westminster Abbey service on Vatican Radio said: “...the beautiful liturgy that is so characteristic of English cathedrals goes back to the days when so many of them were monastic foundations and certainly Westminster Abbey was a Benedictine monastic foundation.”

Millions will have heard and seen James O’Donnell and Martin Baker conduct their choirs and we really should give plaudits to them and to the BBC for its excellent television broadcast coverage of the visit.

We know that the Pope was impressed and delighted by the quality of the choral singing he heard...

GEORGE MALCOLM

& the Westminster Cathedral Sound

Patrick Russill

It was only in 1981 that I first met George. This was more than 20 years after he had relinquished his post as Master of the Music at Westminster Cathedral, and though it was the autumn of his career he was still fairly active as a harpsichordist, pianist (often as a chamber music partner), conductor and even as an organist (including recordings of the Poulenc Concerto and the complete Handel Organ Concertos).

Ihad been drafted in as a replacement for Nicholas Kynaston to accompany a performance of Mendelssohn’s Lauda Sion at the Spode House Music Week, near Rugby, an annual post-Easter course for Catholic families, which George had been instrumental in founding. With some trepidation I introduced myself to this legendary figure. Then in his mid-sixties, Gauloise in hand as was his invariable custom, looking very thin and gaunt, but with a strikingly penetrating gaze, George was charmingly self-deprecating, courteous, keenly alert and intelligent, and flatteringly interested in who I was and what I did. Almost immediately, he sat me down at a piano and insisted we played some Mozart. Clearly this was intended to find out straightaway what sort of a musician I was. We started with the duet Variations in G major (K.501). He made me play primo, but it was impossible not to respond to the grace and finesse of George’s influence from the secondo part. At the end he said: “I’m so glad you don’t play like an organist!” – so all was well! Working with him on the Mendelssohn was wonderful. He was appreciative, encouraging, insightful and inspiring – he was in fact a great

natural teacher. Happily the performance went well and from then we became good friends.

He asked me to play continuo for him in concerts he conducted with the English Chamber Orchestra and the Philharmonia Chorus and to assist him as pageturner/registrant for a couple of remarkable organ recitals he gave in the Royal Festival Hall three or four years later (wonderful musicianship allied to minimal regard for ‘authenticity’). On these and other occasions we talked a lot about music and music-making in general, about his early musical formation and his time at Westminster Cathedral. For the last 15 years of his life he would always come to the London Oratory for Mass on Christmas and Easter mornings, a tell-tale whiff of Gauloise betraying that he had just come into the organ gallery and was just behind my shoulder as I played Messiaen’s Dieu parmi nous or the organ solo from Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass. And I was privileged to play the organ for his funeral in the Sacred Heart Church, Wimbledon.

There are very distinguished musicians who could describe (as I cannot) the first-hand experience of working under George at

Westminster Cathedral: Michael Berkeley, John Elwes, Colin Mawby and Nicholas Kynaston amongst his choristers, and Ian Partridge amongst his lay clerks. Yet, like everyone who made music with George I imagine, I retain the strongest impressions of one of the great musicians, whose character was entirely subsumed in the process of communication through music.

That introductory experience of playing Mozart with George made it clear his music-making was driven by scrupulous attention to imaginative gradation of tone colour and dynamic – not just what it said on the score, but lots, lots more. Phrasing was lifeblood. For all the brilliance of his passagework and rhythmic energy, the bedrock of his approach was lyrical, generously romantic but extremely elegant too. He gave a revealing response to Sir Hugh Allen at the Royal College of Music when he was auditioned there as a seven year old: on being asked who his favourite composers were, he replied “Mendelssohn and Gounod”. ‘I think that’s almost true now’ he added when he told me the story.

In my experience, the word he used in rehearsals more than any other was (in a rather high nasal intonation and decisively drawn-out) ‘...slight-ly...’. Whether the request was for louder/softer, faster/slower, higher/lower you knew that that ‘...slight-ly...’ was absolutely vital. Like all great musicians there was a compulsion in his music-making that was completely part of his character. It galvanized his singers, alternately captivated and terrorized his choristers and certainly bemused and terrified many of the clergy. That compulsion draws its power from different sources in different musicians: in George it was significantly fuelled by colourful Celtic aspects of his temperament, but also by religious devotion, discipline and courage. He had been a heavy drinker, to the extent that it threatened his career and even his life – in 1949 he fell through a second-floor window and suffered appalling facial injuries which required reconstructive surgery. He eventually became an absolute teetotaller with the assistance of the well-known radio voice of Catholicism in the 1950s and 1960s, Fr Agnellus Andrew. Nicholas Kynaston, who was a Westminster Cathedral chorister from 1949 to 1955 (and of course Organist there 1961-71), recalls that that however did nothing to alter George’s essential musical volatility.

George’s approach to choral sound, especially the sound of boys, was profoundly influenced by the work of a charismatic Jesuit priest, Fr John Driscoll, who from 1904 was choirmaster at the Sacred Heart Church, Wimbledon, right next door to the Jesuit Wimbledon College where George was a pupil. Driscoll’s Wimbledon Choir collaborated with Terry’s Westminster Cathedral Choir for the liturgical premiere of

Vaughan Williams’s Mass in G minor in 1923. Then from 1928 until his death in 1940 Driscoll was choirmaster at the Jesuit Church, Farm Street. According to George, who observed Driscoll’s rehearsals at first hand, the Farm Street boys were taught bel canto technique by a tenor from one of the London theatres, and combined with Driscoll’s iron discipline and musical drive, the resulting sound, as George heard it in the 1930s, was the inspiration for his own ‘Westminster Cathedral sound’. It was not an attempt to import a preconceived Continental style, but rather to exploit and control the natural open quality of a boy’s voice and character (‘just like you hear in the playground’ George said) within a Latinate vowel spectrum, a sound that he regarded as being entirely characteristic of Irish and Scottish traditions as well as Mediterranean traditions – an inherently Catholic mix. ‘The Farm Street choir’s entry in the first chorus of Mendelssohn’s Lauda Sion was terrific – they were the most exciting boys’ choir in London’: his emphasis used the same intonation as ‘...slightly...’. Driscoll was undoubtedly one of George’s heroes.

The Westminster Cathedral sound in 1947, when George arrived as Master of the Music there, was entirely at the other end of the spectrum from the Farm Street sound. Exactly what the sound of Terry’s choir was like, up to his resignation in 1924, is difficult to tell from the crude acoustical recordings that survive, but in the 1930s when the choir was run for a time by Fr Lancelot Long and by William Hyde (who in the 1930s, and on into the Malcolm regime, was a faithful, unsung assistant and more at the Cathedral) the boys’ sound was notably covered and hooty. Ralph Downes (who heard them after he returned to London as Organist of the Oratory in 1936 after a period in the USA) assured me that the boys were exercised to ‘lu – lu- lu’, and a 1931 recording (HMV C2256) of Howells’s Salve Regina and Philips’s Regina caeli bears this out. All the vowels are unbelievably ironed-out, the tone heavily covered: all is dull, unnatural and inexpressive.

George himself had a reedy baritone voice, with (as so many choirmasters do) an element of exaggeration added for teaching effect, in George’s case an over-bright production of vowels and relish of consonants. Ralph Downes attended a Christmas concert by the choristers in the Cathedral Hall in 1947, only months after George had taken over. According to Ralph every boy sang a solo ‘and they all sounded like little Georges’ – testament to George’s force of vocal and musical personality and his investment of trust in each chorister.

The development of the Westminster sound during George’s time can be glimpsed in tantalisingly short snippets on British Pathé newsreels. A collection of out-takes from a Mass in 1950 celebrating the centenary of the re-establishment of the English Catholic hierarchy is at www.britishpathe.com/ record.php?id=82916. Already one can dimly make out the passion and atmosphere typical of George, though perhaps not the full measure of tonal zest to be heard later in his tenure. Nonetheless, the decidedly mixed bunch of men whom George (for various reasons) had to make do with, and to whom he was characteristically loyal, are unmistakeable. On a later newsreel of the 1957 enthronement of Archbishop Godfrey at www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=32655 we can hear the choir briefly and in full flight (I can’t identify the piece). The sound and delivery is instantly familiar: as on the famous recordings of Victoria’s Tenebrae Responsories and Britten’s Missa Brevis everyone is singing as if their lives depended on it.

George insisted that his sound was inherently healthy and was produced by a basis in good technique. During my first encounter with him at Spode House he explained some of his coaching techniques to a group of us. How was he able to get his boys to produce ‘that sound’ while singing high and piano,

and how was he able to cover the passaggio between chest and head voice? He said he encouraged his boys to imagine their singing to be like two counter-balanced lifts, as one (pitch) goes down, the other (resonance) rises. So high notes are produced with low, rich resonance and support, while low notes are produced with high, bright resonance. Nicholas Kynaston remembers George using this image and adds that correct breathing was also fundamental, together with absolute insistence on pure Latinate vowels (as is patently obvious from his recordings). He also remembers that once George’s essentials were absorbed, singing felt natural with no sense of forcing. Ian Partridge recalls he certainly was the first choirmaster he had come across who taught proper breath support. George himself said that he couldn’t remember any case of vocal health problems (nodules or the like). An amusing side effect was the boys singing of English (only at Christmas) when vernacular vowels had to be reintroduced to avoid ‘I saw three sheeps’ and the like!

Part and parcel of George’s Westminster Cathedral sound –and of course it has changed somewhat over the years, reflecting the musical character of successive Masters of the Music – was the intensity of expression that derived from his direction and exhortation. Nicholas Kynaston (again) remembers the boys being lined up after a performance of Victoria’s Requiem and George berating them for sounding like ‘a class of convent girls complaining about their rice pudding’: the next performance had rather more passion. When displeased, George could be witheringly and personally critical; when pleased, his praise was uplifting, the ultimate accolade being taken out for a cream tea in Victoria nearby.

Were it not for the survival of just a handful of recordings (both of the choir and also of some solo boys, especially John

The Choir of Westminster Abbey

The only specialist Choir School in the UK

James O’Donnell Organist and Master of the Choristers

Jonathan Milton Headmaster

All boys receive a substantial Choral Scholarship

Why not come for an informal audition?

(Boys aged 7 or 8)

Details from: Westminster Abbey Choir School

Dean’s Yard, London SW1P 3NY

Telephone: 020 7222 6151

Email: headmaster@westminster-abbey.org

www.westminster-abbey.org

Hahessy, now known as the tenor John Elwes) the remarkable instrument he created at Westminster Cathedral would be a matter of hearsay only, but thankfully the recorded legacy is uniquely vivid. The Victoria Responsories for Tenebrae recorded by Argo were put down in Holy Week 1959, at exactly the time the choir was performing them liturgically. In the ancient liturgy the responsories alternate with dry-as-dust patristic readings. The effect is like switching from black and white to vivid colour: academic meditation is contrasted with raw emotion and drama. George’s approach is unashamedly romantic, with huge interpretative interventions in tempo, rubato, agogics, dynamics and articulation, many of them, including re-touched scorings, inherited from Fr Driscoll’s edition. (The fine Bruno Turner edition for Chester was to appear a few years later.) The tonal and textual colouration is searing – it is not just that the pronunciation is ultra-Latinate, but that the meaning of the texts seem to completely possess the singers emotionally. If the boys occasionally tend to sharpness that is understandable given that the traditional Catholic Holy Week is gruelling enough musically without adding an LP recording to the schedule. The men, with the exception of a very young Ian Partridge (then, as ever, perfectly cultured and poised) and the counter-tenor Jonathan Steele, are wayward in intonation and vocal quality, though they are heroic in intent. But despite the variability of the men, the whole choir is forged into a single expressive unit by the heat of George’s inspiration, the communicative intensity making caveats seem trivial, even endearing. Ian Partridge recalls that, subsequently, George wished that his direction had been less excitable and more calm. Wildly dramatic it may be, but every gesture is justified by the words and their religious significance, projected by a blazing corporate response, which no subsequent recording has dared to approach.

Even by his own standards of lucidity and economy, Victoria’s directness of utterance in the Responsories is unique in his output, his motivic simplicity and formal clarity making possible a very detailed and varied interpretative approach – just as in the Italian madrigal repertoire of the same period. As I have found in my own annual experience of conducting the Responsories, variations of tempo and dynamic (even extreme ones), underlining the text and drama, are extraordinarily easy to negotiate with a choir. The texts are actually very curious, none more so than Animam meam dilectam which is an emotional switchback ride, with at least three different narrators (the Victim, the Oppressors and Onlookers as it were). Every aspect of George’s interpretation makes this clear, as a more objective approach would not. Other highlights are the extraordinary rage of Tamquam ad latronem (complete with Driscoll’s rescoring of the opening for tenors and basses rather than altos and tenors) and the exquisite grief of Caligaverunt oculi mei with its sublime setting of ‘si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus’ (‘if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow’), where the boys’ breathcontrol superbly supports the aching melodic line.

By the time the Victoria Responsories were recorded George had already decided that he would leave the Cathedral to pursue a freelance career. He told me that following sessions in Abbey Road studios sometime after Easter (he thought it was early May), he bumped into Benjamin Britten near Lord’s Cricket Ground, and told him he had resigned. ‘But what about my Mass?’ was Britten’s response, who had been bowled over by a performance of the Ceremony of Carols by George and his boys the previous Christmas. A fortnight later the score of the Missa Brevis arrived (it is dated ‘Trinity Sunday, 1959’, that is 24 May 1959). George said the boys learnt it in one rehearsal. The Decca recording (currently sadly unavailable), was made live at Mass on 22 July, with the boys singing from the organ gallery, necessarily stretched out in one long line in

the cramped space along the organ front and unconducted. In the heat of the moment, George makes a pedal slip at the start of the Gloria, and not surprisingly, ensemble is not always immaculate, but the corporate and individual confidence of the boys, the flair of the sound and the sweep of the performance are exhilarating. The solo boys were the same as on the Victoria recording: Michael Ronayne, John Hahessy and Kenneth Willes. About five years ago I heard the same qualities from the Cathedral choristers when they improvised (yes, improvised) a Missa Brevis, standing in the same layout along the organ front, unconducted yet brilliantly masterminded by Martin Baker at the console. The sense of mutual trust, confidence and liturgical understanding was just the same – deeply impressive and moving.

In case it may be thought that all George’s choral work was similarly red in tooth and claw, it is fascinating to hear his work from around the same time outside the Cathedral. In early 1961 he recorded Britten’s Cantata Academica and some smaller unaccompanied choral works, including an outstanding performance of the Hymn to St Cecilia for Decca. The choral group, though called the London Symphony Chorus, is clearly a hand-picked team of professionals. The Hymn is given a fabulously poised performance within the ensemble style of the time: scrupulous in intonation, blend and balance, totally clear in enunciation, written dynamics minutely observed. The opening section is leisurely, cool and witty; the scherzo is lightening fast and as clean as a whistle; the twists and turns of the final sections are flawlessly negotiated.

Professional adult choral sound has moved on in the past half-century, but for me, this is interpretatively still the benchmark recording of the Hymn to St Cecilia. Its knowing elegance and technical finesse is a world away from the risky passion of the Victoria and Britten recordings. Why then was this fan of Mendelssohn and Gounod – and consummate Mozartean – such an incendiary liturgical musician? For George, the mysteries enshrined in the Catholic liturgy, because elemental truth, had to be articulated in music with convinced passion, or not at all. A 17th century Oratorian, Blessed Juvenal Ancina, described Victoria as ‘servus Christi ardens’ – ‘an ardent servant of Christ’: George was no saint, yet he burned with the same zeal and is fully worthy of the same epithet.

A footnote about George’s liturgical compositions: he never claimed any originality as a composer, but nevertheless wrote fluently and suitably to order. The very first time I heard the Cathedral Choir live was Wednesday of Holy Week in 1969 – the boys only, under Colin Mawby, singing George’s turba choruses for the Luke Passion, beautifully tailored to the famous sound (which Mawby skilfully maintained), to the acoustic and the liturgical context. Kevin Mayhew has published a few other short high voice motets, as well as two more substantial works for Christmas: the Responsories for Matins of Christmas, which preceded Midnight Mass, their sense of joy and expectation wistfully recalled by those that heard and sang them in the 1950s, and the Missa ad praesepe which adopts a folkloric style with great charm. It is very appropriate that the current Cathedral Choir has recorded movements from this Mass on its recent Hyperion CD From the Vaults of Westminster Cathedral.

Patrick Russill is Director of Music of the London Oratory, Head of Choral Conducting at the Royal Academy of Music and Chief Examiner of the Royal College of Organists.

THREE GREAT PROCESSIONAL SERVICES MARK ADVENT, CHRISTMAS & EPIPHANY IN SALISBURY CATHEDRAL

Salisbury Cathedral is the setting for three great processional services which celebrate the special time of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. This year for the first time The Advent Procession ‘From Darkness to Light’ takes place on three consecutive evenings, Friday 26, Saturday 27 and Sunday 28 November. The Christmas Procession is on Saturday 18 and Sunday 19 December and The Epiphany Procession on Sunday 23 January 2011. All these services begin at 7.00pm and finish at 8.15pm.

The Advent Procession – From Darkness to Light is one of the most popular services of the liturgical year. It begins with the Cathedral in total darkness and silence before the Advent Candle is lit at the West End. The service is a mix of beautiful music and readings during which two great processions move around the different spaces in the building which is, by the end, illuminated by almost 1300 candles.

The Christmas Procession is the Cathedral’s carol service with readings interspersed between carols. Here the focus of the procession is the Christmas Crib and the story of the birth of Jesus.

The Epiphany Procession commemorates the journey of the Magi travelling from the East to worship the baby Jesus, and follows Him through His early life and into manhood.

Many hundreds of people from throughout the diocese and beyond are expected to attend one or more of these imaginative and spectacular services, devised by the Canon Precentor Jeremy Davies. “I see Advent, Christmas and the Epiphany as the ideal time of year for using the Cathedral as it was originally envisaged, as an arena for processions and the great tradition of ‘worship on the move’. However these processions also invite us on an interior spiritual journey as we try to find the meaning and purpose of life.”

Those who wish to arrive early will be able to queue under cover in the Cloisters where seasonal refreshments are available before the Advent and

Christmas services. Doors open at 6.00pm when access to the Cathedral will be via the Cathedral Cloisters. Admission is free and no tickets are required for any of these services except for the Advent Procession on Friday 26th November for which entry is by ticket only. Tickets may be obtained from the Cathedral Shop after 18 October or by postal application to the Department of Liturgy and Music, 33 The Close, Salisbury SP1 2EJ enclosing an sae (maximum of 6). All tickets will be for a designated area of seating, not for individual reserved seats. On Saturday 27 and Sunday 28 November the services will be open to all on a first-come, first-served basis.

Please note there can be no admission once all seats are taken. There is no public parking in The Close, however parking is available for Disabled Blue Badge holders. For further information visit the Cathedral’s website: www.salisburycathedral.org.uk

A WONDERFUL DAY OF CELEBRATION AT SALISBURY CATHEDRAL FOR THE BISHOP OF SALISBURY

Salisbury Cathedral hosted a day of joyful celebration in July marking the immense contribution of the Bishop of Salisbury, Dr David Stancliffe. Hundreds of well-wishers from all over the diocese and beyond came to show their affection and respect for the Right Reverend Dr Stancliffe at his farewell events in the Diocese.

The Dean of Salisbury, the Very Revd June Osborne, said: “Blue skies and all-day sunshine set the seal on a day of joy and heartfelt thanks to Bishop David for seventeen years of inspiring and devoted service to the diocese. In the morning he ordained 23 men and women, the largest number ordained in a single service here since his first ordination in 1994 when he ordained the first women in the diocese and a truly fitting culmination of his work here. For David, there is no greater gift to leave the diocese than ensuring the continuity of the Church’s life through these new priests and their future ministry.”

After a gathering and presentation at 4.30pm to the Bishop and his wife Sarah, he then preached at his final Evensong as Bishop. In his address he thanked everyone in the Salisbury Diocese for “allowing me to enjoy the privilege [of being Bishop of Salisbury] these seventeen years, your partnership in the gospel, and your care and friendship.”

The Right Reverend Dr David Stancliffe gave up his full duties after attending the summer session of the Church of England’s legislative body, the General Synod, from 9-13 July. Rather than retiring, he intends to concentrate on teaching, writing, music and the arts.

KEEPING WOLVES FROM THE DOOR

St Peter’s Wolverhampton had a very successful launch concert for the £300 000 needed to restore the 1860 Willis organ. The process of giving the first performance of a short football chant written by Elgar in support of the Wolves brought together the church choirs, Wolverhampton Symphony Orchestra, the Wolverhampton Wanderers Vice-Presidents Rachael Heyhoe-Flint and rock legend Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, and the Elgar Society, and choristers were involved in local TV and 26 radio interviews (including the BBC World Service).

The all-Elgar concert, included the Enigma Variations Dorabella (Variation 10) was the daughter of the Rector of St Peter’s –hence the Wolves connection and the composition of the football chant ‘He banged the leather for goal’) The attractive photo shows some of the choir members in full Wolves regalia reproduced with acknowledgement to Tim Thursfield (Express & Star).

Some Reflections on my association with WESTMINSTER CATHEDRAL

One of the most moving of the special (as distinct from statutory) services that I played for as Sub-Organist of Westminster Abbey (1974-1978) was the celebration of Vespers on the evening of 9 February 1976. Earlier that day, at the other end of Victoria Street, George Basil Hume, hitherto Abbot of Ampleforth, had been consecrated and enthroned as Archbishop of Westminster. It was a striking, and typical, act of ecumenical friendship by the then Dean of Westminster, Dr Edward Carpenter, to invite the monks of Ampleforth to celebrate Vespers in the Abbey which had been inhabited by their Benedictine forebears. Whether it was on this occasion, or another, that Basil Hume, surveying the Abbey from the pulpit, is said to have observed, ‘this used to be ours’, I do not recall. (He would have said this half jokingly, half seriously, with a characteristic twinkle in his eye). My task was to play before and after the service, while one of the monks was entrusted with the accompaniment of the Gregorian chant. At that time I would have had little ability in the art of harmonizing plainsong melodies, and no inkling that I was soon to have to acquire competence in this art very rapidly. I still remember seeing, through the mirror in the organ loft (no CCTV in those days), the procession, from the West Door through the Nave into the Quire, of the monks in their black habits, and realising that such a procession would last have taken place before the Reformation. It was a moving sight, indeed.

Perhaps this experience sowed a seed in my mind, for when, in 1978, I was encouraged by George Guest (under whom, as Organ Student at St John’s College, Cambridge, I had been privileged to learn, and come to love, a certain amount of plainsong) to apply for the position of Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral, George seemed to be pushing at an open door. He had been strongly influenced by the style of choral singing which George Malcolm had cultivated at the Cathedral, as well as by visits to Spain, where he heard monastic plainsong, and, incidentally, was excited by the Trompeta Real, a notable feature of many Spanish organs (he later commissioned such a stop for the St John’s organ) and had passed on his passion for these things to me.

To Archbishop (later Cardinal) Hume we owe the continued existence of the magnificent choral tradition of Westminster Cathedral. He inherited a situation in which financial and other pressures were threatening the Choir School and the choral liturgies. One of his first decisions was

to set about raising money for the School, with the aim of making it independent of diocesan funding. He appointed a fine Headmaster, the first layman to fulfil this role, Peter Hannigan, and I was appointed Master of Music. I was the first Anglican to hold this position, the Archbishop having apparently told the Administrator, who officially made the appointment, that he would rather have as Master of Music, ‘a practising Anglican than a lapsed Catholic’.

So it was that on the eve of the Epiphany, 5 January 1979, I found myself seated at the chamber organ to accompany First, and my first, Vespers in the Lady Chapel. The next day, a Saturday morning, two lay clerks, a tenor and a bass, appeared to sing at the Mass of Epiphany, for which I had, cautiously, I thought, programmed Byrd Mass for Three Voices. Not to be defeated, I decided to sing alto myself. This was not something that I did again, as someone said at the end of the service that, although tenor and bass were fine, ‘who was that alto?’. The tenor and bass were Clive Wearing and Trevor Ling, stalwarts of the choir, who showed me the redundancy notices they had been served by Hume’s predecessor, Cardinal Heenan. (These had been rescinded.) Once Clive and Trevor had satisfied themselves that I had prepared myself for my new job, they gave me the greatest support, and became good friends. Clive opened the bowling at my first rehearsal, asking a question about the interpretation of an obscure marking in the plainsong. Fortunately, I had taken the precaution of studying with the late Dr Mary Berry in the period between my appointment and taking up the post. Mary taught me the history of chant interpretation, how to transcribe it, how to conduct it, and, importantly, alerted me to newly emerging ideas about performance practice. Thus, I was well prepared for Clive’s yorker. I was pressed by Canon Oliver Kelly, the Administrator, to acquaint myself fully with the Roman liturgy, and especially to read the relevant documents of the recent Second Vatican Council. This enabled me better to understand and serve the Cathedral liturgies, and to be ready for the opposition or indifference to the choral tradition which I inevitably encountered in some circles. The fact that Basil Hume was known to be totally committed to the choir was an ultimate safeguard in this regard. This study also gave me an understanding of liturgy, of realising what was done in 1549, 1552 and 1662, and in more recent times, which was to

Director of Music King’s

be invaluable to me when I returned to work in the Anglican Church. (The prediction of some friends whose advice I sought at the time that I would, by going to Westminster Cathedral, ‘burn my boats’ in terms of obtaining an Anglican appointment in the future and/or be subject to attempts to ‘convert me to Rome’, proved unfounded.)

One of the difficulties, in my experience, of working for the two great foundations of the Abbey and the Cathedral, which I was thrilled to do in the 1970s, is that people can become obsessed with the grand occasions. There were plenty of these at the Abbey, of course, but also at the Cathedral, notably, in my time, the visit of Pope John Paul II to the UK. (An interesting, though worrying, feature of the planning of the music for this was the degree of ignorance displayed by many involved of the rich inheritance of Catholic liturgical music from pre-Reformation England: it would be tragic if this music were to cease to be heard in its proper liturgical context.) But the essence and raison d’être of a choral foundation is the daily singing of the liturgy, the Opus Dei. Basil Hume often reminded us of Augustine’s dictum – ‘qui cantat, bis orat’, and it is the inspiration of this idea which drives and should be the true motivation of those of us who work in these great institutions.

It would be fair to say that not all was well when I began work at the Cathedral. I have referred to financial pressures, and, indirectly, to tensions surrounding the continuing existence of traditional choral liturgies in which much of the music used Latin texts. These things could be dealt with: money was raised for the School, and Peter Hannigan’s outstanding work was supported by a fine set of governors, under the inspired chairmanship of the late Sir Paul Wright, and the choral liturgies survived. I was particularly pleased to be successful in resisting moves for the abolition of Vespers in Latin. The impoverished level of English and much of the new music written for contemporary vernacular liturgy (the Second Vatican Council did not, of course, abolish the use of Latin, as is popularly supposed) is depressing in the extreme. But there were three other areas which I set out to tackle, and these seemed fundamental to me.

First, I tried to encourage, and in some cases restore, good relations between clergy, school and lay clerks. People can only give of their best in a comfortable environment, where the contribution of each person is valued. Next, the organ.

This was flat in pitch, and badly in need of restoration. I did not see how the choir could achieve consistently good intonation in these circumstances. Fortunately, I was able to concentrate the institutional mind in respect of the need for restoration by presenting a (not too) hypothetical scenario of the organ’s breaking down as the Pope proceeded up the central aisle on his forthcoming visit. I remember Basil Hume’s coming to my office one day (that in itself tells something of the man he was – my not being summoned to see him) waving a cheque for £50,000 which a well-wisher had sent, saying ‘shall we start an organ fund with this?’.

Finally, and most important of all, was my attempt to achieve as consistent a standard of performance on a daily basis as possible. The daily liturgies, as distinct from the special services, are the lifeblood of a cathedral choir. There is no short cut to success here. Just as in any professional or academic sphere, constant attendance, hard work, and leadership by example, are required. The value of successful integration of music, sensitively chosen and well executed, with fine liturgy, properly celebrated, is enormous, and I was so excited and moved by the new experiences I was having. I hope this helped me to achieve something of what I set out to do. I was very lucky in having the assistance of Andrew Wright, who has since done excellent work at Brentwood Cathedral, and the benefit of some very fine singers, men and boys. The experiences and what I learned during my short time at the Cathedral have informed my work ever since, and it is wonderful that the Cathedral has been so immensely well served by my three successors, David Hill, James O’Donnell, and now, Martin Baker.

Stephen Cleobury CBE

College Cambridge

Stephen Cleobury CBE.

Timothy Hone interviews

JONATHAN DOVE

Last year, the Cathedral Organists’ Association commissioned a setting of the Missa Brevis from Jonathan Dove. The work received its first performance at their spring conference at Wells Cathedral in May 2009 and the work is included on a new disc dedicated to Jonathan Dove’s church music, performed by the Choir of Wells Cathedral, directed by Matthew Owens. The composer was recently interviewed by Timothy Hone, Head of Liturgy and Music at Salisbury Cathedral.

TH: I wondered about your first musical influences and the point at which you knew music was something you wanted to explore.

JD: The piano was my first love. I started playing the piano about four or five. I started to play by ear anything I heard my mother playing. Often it was the last thing I would hear when I was drifting off to sleep.

TH: So there was music in the home?

JD: My mother was a good pianist, although by profession she was an architect, as was my father. Once the children were in bed she would sit down and play Clair de lune or Handel’s Largo or bits of Oklahoma, and the next day I would then go and try and play those.

TH: And that was a perfectly natural thing for you to do?

JD: Yes, I think children often try and imitate their parents and this was just a way of doing that. I guess quite early on, I got into the way of making stuff up at the piano, sort of thinking

aloud at the piano. Also at the age of eight or nine I think, I was singing in the church choir. My mother was Catholic, although my father wasn’t really a churchgoer, so I started singing in church and around the age of twelve I started playing the organ.

TH: So had you had any formal instruction at this point?

JD: Oh, I certainly had piano lessons. In fact from the age of eleven, I went on Saturdays to the ILEA Centre for Young Musicians, in Pimlico, where I had weekly piano and violin lessons, though these had started while I was at primary school. Organ lessons came later when I went to secondary school. I got up to Grade 8 by the time I left school. The school also had a choir and there was a reasonable amount of music-making. There wasn’t an awful lot of instrumental music-making but I remember singing the Pie Jesu from the Fauré Requiem as a solo treble and I think I sang in the Vivaldi Gloria and Messiah

Photo © Dylan Collard

TH: So was music always the direction in which you were going to go? Or did you ever think perhaps of following your parents into architecture?

JD: No, it never occurred to me that I was going to do anything else. Though I didn’t know what form this was going to take. Composing always seemed to me the only thing that was really worth doing but it never occurred to me that I would be able to make a living out of that.

TH: So when did you start to write pieces down, as opposed to making them up?

JD: Pretty late. I only really wrote a handful of pieces in my teens. I remember writing something for two friends who were both violinists. But for the church I wrote at least one Mass, which probably would have technically been a Missa Brevis since I can’t remember setting a Credo. While none of these attempts was published, I’ve actually had several trial goes at the text, and this was probably significant in terms of the piece that was the recent result of the commission from the Cathedral Organists’ Association.

TH: So, pre-university, there seems to be a lot of different kinds of music-making going on. What sort of music made a big impact on you at that time?

JD: Well, I was always a sucker for piano concertos and would attempt to play them. The Beethoven Emperor Concerto was one of my first loves, and I would crash through the Rachmaninov Second Piano Concerto without ever actually practising it and getting it right, but giving an impression of it, which is all the fun! I can remember amusing myself with the Shostakovich Concerto and then lots of orchestral music. What I would tend to do is listen to the same piece over and over again every day for about three months – it was like having an affair with Mahler’s Ninth Symphony or Elgar’s Second. I didn’t absorb that much contemporary music, although at the Centre for Young Musicians there was an enterprising chap called Howard Rees, who would play us Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony or bits of Stockhausen as part of our general musicianship classes. I think on one occasion he got a whole room full of us to play In C, the minimalist piece by Terry Riley. So actually already I was introduced to quite a lot of what was actually going on at the time.

TH: Do you still recognize your own pieces at that time as being in the style that you’re now writing in? Or were you exploring lots of different styles?

JD: They’re certainly not what I am writing now and I think I would say that as a composer I really found my voice very late. I think I was nearly thirty before I wrote something that I thought was definitely me.

TH: The late 1970s and early 1980s were interesting years to start developing as a composer because the received wisdom was still that you had to write discordant, challenging music – the idea that you could write in a more accessible, tonally-influenced way, was not as respectable then as it is now.

JD: No, completely not. It was a ludicrous idea – to write even an octave, let alone a triad, was extremely suspect behaviour. And it certainly was when I was at university!

TH: When you were at Cambridge you studied with Robin Holloway?

JD: Yes, in my last year I had a few lessons with him and I think

probably the most important lesson was the first, in which I brought along a 20-page serial organ piece and on page two he said “I’m bored already”. And I realised that he was right and it was not an exciting piece. But I suppose I was trying to behave well, in a way that would be considered respectable.

TH: What was the influence of Robin Holloway’s teaching?

JD: The nature of Robin’s teaching, and the reason I think he was a great teacher, is that he was able to see the possibilities in the material you were already producing or attracted to. He didn’t try and make you write in any particular idiom, he just tried to make you write better.

TH: So you learned to respect the structure, how to develop your material, and how to maintain some consistency of intention?

JD: Yes, just seeing how many more possibilities there are in an idea than you might have thought. I still hadn’t really got into my stride. I think there was still a distance between the music that I could imagine, but perhaps a little vaguely, or music that I could improvise, and the music that I knew how to write. So I was continually impelled to produce great stretches of music, and did so every day, but I could never see a way of turning it into something more formed. And I suppose the big influences that really made that possible were from American minimalism, in particular, the music of Steve Reich. What was very attractive there was that he was writing white-note harmony that was rather like my hero Stravinsky, with diatonic clusters and chords, while the music had pulse, also like Stravinsky, but unlike most of what was then acceptable.

TH: You were talking a few minutes ago about the world of imagination, the world of improvisation compared with the world of written music. I’ve always found that one of the challenges of composition is holding the idea in the mind for long enough to write it down. In the attempt to grasp that idea it’s easy to lose the magic of where it might lead. On paper, there’s a different kind of process where you start to develop what you’ve already written rather than trying to capture the sounds you can hear in your imagination.

JD: I think that exactly captures the dilemma I faced through most of my twenties. Eventually what I would do is record myself playing, so I would simply keep a tape recorder on the piano and if I had an idea that felt it had a future, then I would record it so that it could be notated later. Actually what I still tend to do is get the piece as finished as I can in my mind before I write any of it down.

TH: So you can keep a lot of it in your head?

JD: I suppose I try and only work with material I can remember. So if it’s not catchy enough to remember, then I can’t work with it. If I can remember it, I should be able to feel my way through a whole movement before writing it down, so I can map out the journey. I guess later on it dawned on me that singing and dancing were the essential purposes of music and if you’re going to dance you’ve got to know where the next beat’s going to land. I had something of a breakthrough with a dance piece that I wrote when I was nearly thirty. I found great freedom in knowing that the audience was coming to watch the dancers and wasn’t primarily interested in the music. So I felt free to do whatever I liked – that was liberating. But also the idea that there was going to be movement was exciting and made me feel able to write pulsed music.

TH: So when you came down from Cambridge you then had a freelance career including some piano accompaniment and répétiteur work and this led you to working at Glyndebourne.

JD: That’s right. I worked as assistant chorus master to Ivor Bolton, for a year. Then, just around that time there was enough work suddenly to keep me busy composing. In the summer of 1989, I was musician-in-residence for the Salisbury Festival and wrote several pieces for that.

TH: So we have music with voices, music with movement and now music involving the community. All of those seem to be strands which resonate quite deeply. Writing church music seems to fit alongside them quite naturally.

JD: Actually there was a return to church music because, although I continued to play the organ at my local church during the holidays from Cambridge, I was no longer really a church goer. In my Cambridge years I was a bit of a night owl so I tended not to be up in time for any services, and have to admit that I didn’t actually attend any choral services while I was in Cambridge. So I missed out on an incredible repertoire and an extraordinary opportunity. I was therefore never properly exposed to the Anglican choral tradition and when I was in my twenties I had utterly lapsed as a Catholic.

A significant moment came in 1993, when Jeremy Davies, Precentor of Salisbury asked if I would write an extended setting of the Benedicite for the Creation Festival. This would involve dancers, as well as choir, steel pans and organ. At the beginning were words from Genesis. When these arrived I immediately went to the piano and music just came pouring out – which was a surprise, to be honest. I now realize that religious imagery still had a great hold on my imagination. Of course some of these were words that I had first heard as a young child so they were almost part of my DNA. ‘And the spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters’ – you know it’s an amazing idea, an amazing image, and I found these kind of giant cosmic

images with which the text was packed irresistible. Here was a story I wanted to tell. Another text was ‘In the beginning was the Word’ – again, this is powerful, resonant language. But I also realized that there was something both emotionally and musically important to me, even though to this day I have great difficulty with any organised religion. Awe and wonder and mystery are incredibly important human experiences and I suppose alongside that there was a sense of communion. These are experiences which music could enhance and they are also experiences which are not so easily accessed in other contexts. I suppose those are really the experiences which have drawn me back to writing church music, which I have continued to do since 1993, including at least one more piece for Salisbury – Into Thy Hands

TH: All the texts you have set seem incredibly strong, very poetic. Were the texts suggested to you or did you find them yourself?

JD: It was a mixture of the two. I think I was actually in a bookshop reading through a collection of metaphysical poets, and came across Welcome all wondersin one sight! I remember being immediately struck by it getting a tingly feeling. On the other hand, Ecce beatam lucem was suggested to me as a text by Ralph Allwood. Sometimes I’ve tried to find texts that have particular images, which was how I came to find the text Seek him that maketh the seven stars

TH: With the texts you have just mentioned, the strong images about light or transcendence almost suggests a particular kind of musical world. When you come to the words of the Missa Brevis, there is a different kind of challenge because the text has been set many hundreds of times before.

JD: To some extent I was shielded by my ignorance because I didn’t get up in time to go to all those services in Cambridge, so I simply hadn’t heard lots of those settings. The setting I knew as a child was the Britten Missa Brevis. I suppose that and the Stravinsky Mass served as models. The Stravinsky setting, although it has a Credo, is terse, making it perfectly useable in a liturgical context. My teenage attempts to set the text helped me to realise what the journey through the different Mass sections might involve. I think we must have played or sung Masses that I found unsatisfactory, though I can’t remember what they were. I remember that the settings used in the parish were quite popular and lightweight. I expect my own teenage pieces were in this idiom because they were written for choirs whose reading skills were modest, so the music was certainly pretty diatonic. However, it was something of a breakthrough for me to realise in about 1991 that really I had diatonic ears and that I was much happier not trying to write music which was chromatic or serial.

TH: Most of the people who listen to it have diatonic ears as well, so, if you are writing music with tonal references, you perhaps can be more expressive.

JD: In fact, I would say that my choral music is not tonal but modal. Around 1991, I realised I was writing pieces in which there were no accidentals. This modal language combined with a danceable rhythm was important for me.

TH: How did you determine the moods of the movements of the Mass? You seem to suggest that you wanted the piece to fit together while being aware of the different moods of the individual parts of the Mass.

JD: I didn’t have any scheme and I wasn’t trying to do anything

Photo © Hugo Glendinning

clever. While all the movements have the same key signature, I use different groups of notes in each movement to create a feeling of different modes out of the same scale.

TH: The terms of the commission were quite tight because we wanted a piece that could be used in the liturgy and that people would actually keep in the repertoire. We were delighted with the result because it also has a freshness and immediacy about it, which I think struck everyone. From other things you have said, it seems that you find some restrictions actually quite helpful.

JD: Yes, always, I find. The main thing is that you have the text and with it the drama that it implies. Alongside that, the particular thing about the nature of the Mass is that you are speaking for the people – the choir is singing on behalf of the congregation. It seems to me that the nature of the Mass is that it has to speak for everyone because these are the sentiments that everyone is endorsing at that moment. So I suppose that means that it does need to connect, and for that reason it’s helpful to have some kind of shared musical language. It’s got to be more than intelligible, the congregation needs to be able to relate to it and say, yes, that’s what I was feeling, and that’s what I wanted to say.

TH: Are there major non-musical influences on what you do – from your parents’ architectural background, for instance?

JD: I think that probably is only expressed in terms of sensitivity to the acoustics of different kinds of buildings and thinking what will sound well in a church as opposed to what will sound well in a concert hall. Really the lion’s share of my output now is operatic, so I would say that mostly I’m behaving as a musical storyteller. I’m certainly animated by voices and I’m animated by drama. And fortunately church music does involve some pretty dramatic stories, so there’s plenty for me to do.

TH: Presumably your operatic experience makes you very realistic, if you’re going to write pieces that go into production quite quickly. JD: Also, I’ve done a lot of work with community groups, where pieces are written collectively, with perhaps a group of people around the piano making something together. So you get a sense of what kind of musical vocabulary everyone shares and when you’re going beyond that. So you have a bit of a sense of what’s easy to pick up straight away and what is going to take that bit of extra rehearsal but will be worth the extra effort involved. Simplicity for me also means clarity, it means you are communicating clearly and avoiding doing something that’s simply clever. So it helps to think about what is really essential. But in the end there will always be moments where you feel the music is developing in a particular way and if it’s going to be a little bit tricky, I know it’s going to be worth it. So I think most of what I write would be a little bit of a stretch for choirs but a stretch that they’re happy to make.

Jonathan Dove, Julian Millard, Hyperion Sound Engineer and Matthew Owens listening back to a recording session with Wells Cathedral. Choir for their new CD see page 56.

WINNERS OF INSPIRED PHOTOGRAPHY COMPETITION AT SALISBURY CATHEDRAL ANNOUNCED

Over 250 inspired photographers from across the world submitted images to Salisbury Cathedral’s first photography competition. There was a huge originality of entries as people interpreted the theme ‘My Salisbury Cathedral’ using a wide range of cameras from the simple to sophisticated in the hope of winning one of the six great prizes. The judges were Edward Probert (Canon Chancellor Salisbury Cathedral), Ash Mills (Salisbury Cathedral’s official photographer), Roger Elliott (Chief Photographer, Salisbury Journal) and Ceri Hurford-Jones (Managing Director, Spire FM). David Coulthard, Director of Marketing and Communications at the Cathedral, said:

“We were delighted by the number of entries, interested to see the cathedral from new angles and amazed at the extraordinarily high quality of so many images. About half the entries were submitted by people living locally and the remainder from addresses all over the UK, Northern European countries, the USA, South Africa, and Russia. We are extremely grateful to our judges for their time and expertise and to all those who donated the superb prizes. The judges had a wonderful morning adjudicating and are pleased to announce the overall winner was Peter Nunn. His photograph Rejuvenation will be printed onto a large canvas and displayed in the Cathedral Refectory where it will be seen and enjoyed by many thousands of visitors to Salisbury Cathedral.

ROYAL MASONIC TRUST FOR GIRLS AND BOYS CHORAL BURSARY SCHEME

As money gets tighter in this age of austerity, and many cathedrals feel the double pinch of a drop in charitable donations and lower returns on their endowments, it is heartening to know that support for cathedrals throughout England and Wales is growing from one, perhaps surprising, quarter.

In 1995, the Royal Masonic Trust for Girls and Boys (RMTGB) launched their Choral Bursary Scheme to help children from low income families who would not otherwise be able to join the choir for financial reasons. The choristers and their families usually have no other connection with Freemasonry, and candidates are identified by the cathedral during voice trials.

At first, funding was only available to those cathedrals that had a designated choir school. Although cathedrals usually offer bursaries towards the fees of their partner schools to help talented children from less well off families to cope with the cost of fee-paying education, parents are often left with a portion of fees to pay themselves. This, along with the cost of incidental extras, can soon add up and create a significant barrier to the child taking up his or her place. The Choral Bursary Scheme provides support to one youngster at each cathedral involved and it covers the cathedral’s portion of the fees in full, freeing-up funds to be allocated to another chorister.

The scheme also assists parents with their portion of the fees, according to a financial test; this means that the highest level of support goes to those who need it most. The parents complete a form, giving details of their financial situation/household income and the family is visited by a member of the RMTGB’s Welfare Team. All grants are agreed by the RMTGB grants committee which meets four times a year. When the existing choral bursary recipient leaves the school, the cathedral starts the search for a suitable replacement at voice trials.

More recently however, the scheme has begun to open up to cathedrals that draw their choir from a number of surrounding schools. This recognises that even when school fees are not involved, costs like extra music lessons and the additional trips between home and the cathedral can still make joining the choir very difficult. In these instances a Choral Bursary of between £1,500 and £3,000 pa is given to the cathedral to use to help young choristers who would not otherwise be able to join the choir.

The Choral Bursary Scheme is now in its sixteenth year and at a recent grants committee meeting the number of cathedrals involved was expanded to a record 28. To date the scheme has made grants worth in excess of £2.3 million.

The benefits of the scheme are summed up by Linda Lawrence, the head teacher from the Chorister School, Durham, who states: “There is no doubt that support from the Royal Masonic Trust has meant a great deal to the school, the chorister involved and his family. It has meant that he has been able to access the academic teaching and support he needed, while allowing him to develop his musical talents as a cathedral chorister. The award has also meant that we, as a school, have had the benefit of having such a special young man as a pupil. In addition, his incredibly supportive parents are a very positive and valuable addition to our community.”

The scheme currently has vacancies at Guildford, Ripon, Windsor, Peterborough and Grimsby, so if you know of a family whose child is considering applying to become a chorister and who may benefit from the RMTGB Choral Bursary Scheme, please do advise them to talk to cathedral staff about the possibility of applying for this support.

The Choral Bursary Scheme is administered by Sarah Hale at the RMTGB and if you would like more information please contact: shale@rmtgb.org

THREE CHOIRS CHORISTERS PERFORM IN CARDIFF

The choristers of Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester cathedrals joined the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and former winner of BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, Katarina Karnéus, for a performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony at the start of October in St David’s Hall, Cardiff, recorded for later broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

The choristers, all of whom last sang together at this year’s Three Choirs Festival, which is believed to be the oldest music festival in Europe, will be joining the massed voices of the BBC National Chorus of Wales for this epic work.

“This will be a wonderful opportunity for all the boys,” said Geraint Bowen, Director of Music at Hereford Cathedral, during a break from rehearsals for the performance. “The experience of being on stage amongst the vast orchestral forces assembled for this epic work will be unforgettable.”

The distinguished Japanese conductor Tadaaki Otaka, the orchestra’s Conductor Laureate, conducted the concert and his exceptional insight into Mahler’s music created a remarkable and memorable occasion.

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60Seconds in Music Profile

PHILIP RUSHFORTH

Age: 37

Education details: Chorister and Organ Scholar, Chester Cathedral 1981 – 1991 and a pupil of Abbey Gate College, Chester 1984-1991. Trinity College, Cambridge 1991-1994.

Career details to date: Assistant Organist, Southwell Minster and Director of the Southwell Minster Chorale 19942002. Assistant Director of Music, Chester Cathedral 2002-2007. Director of Music, Chester Cathedral 2007 to the present.

Photo © Alice Capper

You started as a chorister at Chester Cathedral and now you are Director of Music. What do you enjoy most about working in a cathedral like Chester?

Working on a daily basis with the choristers and maintaining the Opus Dei. I never tire of walking into Chester’s beautiful Quire stalls on a daily basis.

What was it like as a chorister at Chester Cathedral?

It was life-changing. The best experience a young boy can have. I had no idea what would be involved and sang Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as my audition piece!

What or who made you take up the organ?

I first heard Chester’s organ as a probationer at the age of eight. Something clicked with me, even at that age. Roger Fisher, who was my choirmaster, was an inspiration on the organ. He eventually became my teacher – exacting but very generous and a brilliant organist and pianist.

At which cathedral would you most like to be the Director of Music?

I’m quite happy for the moment, thank you.

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

Widor’s Eighth Symphony. I heard Alexander Ffinch play some of it in St David’s last year and thought what fine music it contains. Also, David Sanger persuaded me to learn Oskar Lindberg’s Sonata in G minor, which is like Rachmaninov for the organ!

Have you been listening to recordings of them and if so is it just one interpretation or many and which players?

I remember hearing Jane Parker-Smith playing the Final to Widor’s Eighth Symphony on a tape of wedding music which was one of the first organ recordings I owned.

Which organists do you admire the most?

The late David Sanger, whose encyclopaedic knowledge of the organ repertoire was seemingly endless; David Briggs, who introduced me to Cochereau and also the historic recordings of Louis Vierne and Edwin H Lemare, which are electrifying.

What was the last CD you bought?

Choral Music by Paweł Łukasweski from Trinity, Cambridge.

What was the last recording you were working on?

I recently recorded Whitlock’s immense Sonata in C minor and his Six Hymn Tune Preludes, together with former Chester organist Charles Hylton Stewart’s organ music. They were colleagues in Rochester and Whitlock played in Chester in 1931.

Has any particular recording inspired you?

Roger Fisher’s 1971 The Organ at Chester Cathedral recording, Vladimir Horowitz’s return to Moscow in 1986 and Simon Rattle’s recording of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius

What is your favourite organ to play? Chester’s.

What is your favourite building?

Spiritually, Chester. Architecturally, Southwell.

What is your favourite anthem?

So much glorious music from each century... When David Heard by Thomas Weelkes or Crucem tuam by Paweł Łukasweski.

What is your favourite set of canticles?

Perhaps the St Paul’s Service by Herbert Howells.

What is your favourite psalm and accompanying chants? Psalms 42 and 43 to Edward Bairstow.

What is your favourite organ piece?

Impossible to choose, but Healey Willan’s Introduction , Passacaglia and Fugue in E flat minor is a masterpiece.

Who is your favourite composer?

Again, impossible to say, but I do love Edward Elgar’s music.

What pieces are you including in an organ recital you are performing?

Dupré’s Second Symphony; Alcock, Introduction and Passacaglia; Karg-Elert’s Valse Mignonne and Lindberg’s Organ Sonata in G minor.

Any forthcoming appearances of note?

All Saints, Northampton and Hull City Hall.

Have you played for an event or recital that stands out as a great moment?

Playing in Cantu, Italy, the evening after Pope John Paul II died.

How do you cope with nerves?

Sufficient preparation. Slow and deep breathing, thinking about a calm place.

What are your hobbies?

The Titanic and her sister ships. I love intricate watches and own a few timepieces. Walking the coast of Anglesey. I find the life and work of Tony Hancock fascinating. Stanley Kubrick and the way he uses music in his films.

Do you play any other instruments?

I have a hundred-year-old Steinway at home and I habitually work through Bach, Haydn and Mozart on it. I also enjoy accompanying English and German Song.

What was the last book you read?

How to bring up your parents by Emma Kennedy.

What are your favourite radio and television programmes?

Hancock’s Half Hour; Breakfast on 3; Coast; Top Gear.

What Newspapers and magazines do you read?

The Sunday Telegraph; Radio Times.

What makes you laugh?

My sons! Tony Hancock. Dudley Moore playing Variations on Colonel Bogey in the style of Beethoven makes me laugh out loud!

If you could have dinner with two people, one from the 21st century and the other from the past, who would you include?

My wife, Louise, and Tony Hancock.

What do you think should be the role of the FCM in the 21st century?

George Dyson said: “If a man would live again in the musical history of 1000 years, let him sit in the choir of a cathedral and listen.” FCM undoubtedly endorses this, and should continue to do so in the exemplary way it already does.

From the vaults of WESTMINSTER CATHEDRAL

‘The strikingly Byzantine Westminster Cathedral has stood for barely 100 years and yet its musical tradition is rooted several centuries before, in plainchant and Renaissance polyphony, sung in spectacular style by its superb choir.’

(The Observer)

Sooty Asquith talks to Martin Baker about musical life at Westminster Cathedral.

Not content with one centenary, or even two, Westminster Cathedral, in a style all its own, has this June celebrated its third centenary. The first, in 1995 (under the then Master of Music, James O’Donnell) commemorated the laying of the foundation stone; the second, eight years later, acknowledged 100 years of services at the Cathedral, and the third, in June 2010, celebrated the consecration of the Cathedral in 1910. Although the cathedral had by then been fully operational for seven years, under the laws of the Catholic Church at the time, no place of worship could be consecrated unless free from debt with its fabric complete, so the consecration ceremony did not take place until 28 June, 1910. The second centenary, perhaps the most elaborately planned, harked back to the opening service at the cathedral, a Requiem Mass for Cardinal Vaughan, the driving force behind the building of the cathedral.

Martin Baker, Master of Music at the cathedral since 2000 (and its organ scholar from 1988-90) was in charge for the latter two events. An early thought had been to replicate the music sung a hundred years ago, but the music for the consecration was perhaps a little too simple for such an important event: an everyday Gregorian chant, and a mass by Lassus, Missa quinti toni There were also two motets, Elegiabiectus esse (Philips) and Palestrina’s Tu es Petrus. The choir did sing the Philips as a communion motet in June this year, and one other, Bruckner’s Locus iste – which translates as “this place was made by God” – but Martin chose to bring in an orchestra for Haydn’s Missa Sancti Nicolai, and Parry’s I was glad There were some small doubts about the latter but it was also sung at the 1995 centenary, and, like the Bruckner, the text was appropriate. Also, Bruckner, a devout Roman Catholic, used the modal chords and long, Gregorian chant-like lines of the Renaissance masters, making him a particularly suitable choice for this cathedral.

A unique event of 2010, however, was the visit from the Pope for a Votive Mass of the Precious Blood, which took place in September. The choir sang Byrd’s 5-part Mass (used at the original consecration and with a strong connection to the Reformation – Byrd was and remained a Roman Catholic despite writing music for the Anglican church) and another Bruckner motet, Christus factus est. There was also some music for brass, organ and percussion – and some James MacMillan to provide contrast.

It was James MacMillan who provided the impetus to Martin’s recording career at Westminster Cathedral in 2000, the year that he took over from James O’Donnell. The choir was already rehearsing a new commission from MacMillan, a mass written in the vernacular, his third such piece but the only one written for a professional choir. The programme of recordings of the Mass by Hyperion had been started by David Hill in 1985, and Martin, on a visit to the late Ted Perry, in charge at Hyperion at the time, asked if

Ted wanted to continue the series. Ted sat Martin down and said: “You do realise that we have very high standards, don’t you?” But despite this somewhat inauspicious start they agreed to one recording that summer, Palestrina’s Missa dum complerentur, although Martin had unsuccessfully tried to interest Hyperion in the new MacMillan commission. About two weeks before the recording was due to start the choir premiered the MacMillan Mass at the cathedral and Ted was present. He was totally spellbound by the performance, buttonholed Martin afterwards and immediately said that the MacMillan had to be the next recording. So the Palestrina was put on the back burner, the choir quickly learnt some more MacMillan pieces to make up enough music for the CD, and it went on to win Gramophone Editor’s Choice, and was included in BBC Music Magazine Best CDs of the Year round-up. It was also very well reviewed – TheGuardian said: “It is hard to think of any recent music that conveys religious ecstasy as intensely as James MacMillan’s Mass… music of high voltage from first to last… the singing of Westminster Cathedral Choir is electrifying” – and made Martin’s mark as the new Master of Music.

Martin, who regularly commissions new masses, is a firm believer in not standing still. “Without new commissions to sing we would be like a museum,” he remarks, “although it is impossible to guarantee the shelf-life of any commission. Some become part of the repertoire everywhere, others –sometimes because of their difficulty – don’t work so well because we often only have twenty minutes to rehearse a whole mass. We use the modern ones as much as possible, though something like the MacMillan you can only do on a Sunday morning because of the forces required – on weekdays we have half the number of men singing.” More recently, funding for commissions has been difficult. The cathedral doesn’t have a huge pot of money, though of course the price varies enormously depending on the profile of the composer, the length of the mass, and how anxious the composer is to see his work performed. There is a large pile of new music on Martin’s desk which he looks through when he’s planning future services. Sometimes he will find a mass by someone that the cathedral does not already have a relationship with, and he and the composer will then discuss the possibilities of performance. He has programmed quite a few masses that way, and likes to keep the repertoire changing. He also thinks that most of the music the choir sings centred on the counter-Reformation period (Palestrina, Victoria) and Gregorian chant is brilliant for the boys’ voices, but it doesn’t challenge them as much mentally as the more modern works do. “None of the early music has dynamics or expression marks, so when we do the more modern or contemporary works the boys focus in a different way, which is very good for them and for their development as musicians,” he says. The list of composers who have written works

Westminster Cathedral Choir in the Apse.

Photo © Tim Mercer

for Westminster Cathedral Choir is impressive, and includes John Tavener, Peter Maxwell Davies, Judith Bingham, Matthew Martin, Stephen Hough and others (apart of course from MacMillan, whose mass was commissioned by James O’Donnell). The former organ scholar, Edward Tambling, whose musical career began as a chorister at Wells Cathedral under Malcolm Archer is also a keen composer and has written pieces for the choir.

In terms of recordings, where does the inspiration come from? Martin feels it’s a two-way process with Hyperion, now in the hands of Ted Perry’s son, Simon. Martin produces ideas which are geared towards what would suit not just the choir but also his own enthusiasms, and Simon checks these out from a sales point of view. Some get shot down, others warmly embraced, so it is, in the end, a collaboration. Forthcoming recordings include a CD (for the 400th anniversary of Victoria’s death in 2011) based on the Song of Songs, Missa surge propera and its motet, which was itself based on a Palestrina motet, the only time that Victoria is known to have paid homage to his teacher. There is no evidence that Victoria actually met Palestrina, incidentally, but it would be strange, given their geographical proximity at certain times in their lives, if they did not.

There are some more recording sessions scheduled for October to complete the Victoria CD, and this year the choir has already released a Palestrina CD (Missa Tu es Petrus and Missa Te Deum laudamus; Hyperion CDA 67353) – ‘A truly absorbing experience, given the complete ease and naturalness with which this outstanding London choir performs this elevated music. It is, indeed, a rare listening pleasure’ (International Record Review). At the end of 2009 Hyperion produced a new venture, a CD entitled From the Vaults at Westminster Cathedral. It is a collection of works that are performed throughout the liturgical year, including some masses, but mainly other works that just ‘sound good’, and will hopefully be followed by further volumes in due course, and perhaps other themed volumes centred on Lent, Easter and Pentecost. Volume I meanwhile includes a composition by Matthew Martin, currently the Assistant Master of Music at the cathedral, and a magnificent improvisation by Martin Baker on the French carol Marche des Rois mages. (Martin’s skill in improvisation is well known – he won the first prize at the St Albans International Organ Festival in 1997).

Composing pieces for the choir and organ improvisation are both traditional occupations for Masters of Music. In other respects too, cathedral life has not changed hugely. The boys and men sing six services a week, with the men singing a

further four, with no half term break. Sundays are busy, with Solemn Mass at 10.30am and Vespers at 3.30pm.

There is no alternative choir to take some of the pressure off, so it is a big commitment for not just the boys but for their families too. During the week the day is more fragmented, of course, because of academic work, but also because Vespers at 5.00pm is mens’ voices only, so that the boys have a break in their rehearsal time, which means it is not easy for them to maintain the momentum from rehearsal into singing Mass at 5.30pm. The boys sing Mass on their own on Tuesdays (the mens’ day off); on Wednesday it is the other way round. All choristers are boarders at the attached choir school and there are about 100 day boys. Recruitment of choristers is currently reasonably steady but inevitably the ‘pool’ is smaller for Catholic cathedrals. Martin is much heartened to see that there are more Catholic choral foundations springing up, both in the UK and abroad –at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, for example, where they offer an excellent training for young singers, aged from 8 to the late twenties and in the north of England there is Leeds Cathedral, which has three dedicated choirs singing in rotation at a total of ten services each week, Liverpool Metropolitan has four choirs and Cardiff Metropolitan has three.

Martin thinks that the ‘continental’ sound that the choristers produce stems from their use of Italian vowels. Singing so many masses, it is important for both vowels and consonants to be as clear as possible and to have a consistent sound, and the younger choristers tend to copy their elders in this respect. Trouble occasionally rears its head when the more mature choristers’ voices deepen and their tone changes; sometimes the younger ones will copy this too, resulting in more of a head tone, much desired in days gone by but less popular now. It sits well with Leighton, Howells, or similar, but for Palestrina or Victoria, the music is generally lower in pitch so the quality of the line is all important – it’s not just the notes. And because the boys are not used to singing twentieth-century Anglican music, when they do sing it they can sound rather unexpectedly foreign, with very Italian vowels. This very distinctive sound was introduced by George Malcolm (Master of Music 1947-1959). He disliked the hooty sound so prevalent in choirboys at that time, and was to achieve great success in producing the bright ‘continental’ sound, which contrasts with that of Anglican choirs. This so impressed Benjamin Britten, that he wrote his Missa Brevis especially for the Westminster Cathedral Choir.

Martin Baker is also impressed. When asked what enduring legacy he would like to leave from his time at the cathedral, he

Westminster Cathedral Choir –Photo © Simon Tottman

says: “I’ve always really liked the sound of the choir under George Malcolm – there’s something about his real sense of performance and expression. If I could get near to that, even on one or two occasions, then I’d be happy. With boys, you can harness an energy that gives something to the sound, and to draw that out is really quite thrilling.” Perhaps this quotation –from Gramophone about From the Vaults at Westminster Cathedral –

will go some way to making him feel he has achieved this aim: “Splendid singing illuminates these works from the vaults of Westminster… The Monteverdi Missa a 4 is especially virile and mellifluous… Throughout, the choral singing under Martin Baker’s direction glows resplendently.”

Sooty Asquith is CATHEDRAL MUSIC Editor-Designate

Westminster Cathedral Choir during a concert.

Photo © David Sandford

WESTMINSTER MEMORIES

It was 31 October 1982, and my final Evensong at Durham Cathedral where I had been Sub-Organist for two years with the wonderful Richard Lloyd. I knew I was going to miss Durham, the Cathedral, its fine Harrison organ and the regular visits to the pub with Richard. Last voluntary played, final moments to check we had everything in the car (the removal van had already left) and then set off South. The next day, 1 November, All Saints, a solemnity in the Roman Catholic Church and my first day as Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral – straight in with no time to meet the choir or sense the magnitude of the task ahead. It was both scary and exciting.

I had at least managed to put together a music list and, not unsurprisingly, the Mass was worked around the chant for the day and Victoria’s Missa O quam gloriosum. Vespers preceded this, sung by the lay clerks, and included five psalms in Latin, a polyphonic Magnificat and a motet. Two months prior to my arrival, James O’Donnell had begun his illustrious career as Assistant Master of Music having just left Jesus College Cambridge with a First Class degree. Frankly, without him, I am not sure how I would have coped during those first few weeks. I knew I had entered a very exciting environment with wonderful musicians as my daily colleagues. It was up to me to show I was worthy of the position to which I had been appointed.

When climbing the marble staircase (at 5.25pm) to enter the

Apse for the first time, as if I wasn’t completely consumed by nerves already, I encountered the Archbishop, Cardinal Basil Hume. He had been seeking me out in order to welcome me to the Cathedral. Of all the clergy I have encountered and worked with, he was the most charismatic person to be with. And yet he gave the impression of being uncomfortable with having to be the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster whilst being completely clear in his role as head of the Roman Catholic community. He smiled and said: “Welcome David; I am in charge of things down there (the Sanctuary) and you are in charge of things up there (the Apse)! Please come and see me when you need to let off steam about the clergy!” What a prophetic statement – he knew things would not be easy – and he was right. These were difficult times for the cathedral, still in disarray about its future and the liturgy. Back to the Mass and its first impressions. Whilst I was used to cathedral liturgy, this took my breath away with its ceremony, vestments, the enormous congregation (full on a Monday evening – c.1000 people) and the sound of the choir –confident, full-throated and committed. Immediately I knew I had come to a very special place. But why is it so special?

It is clear that Bentley designed the building without any real thought for the acoustic, whether for speech or music. The Apse was thought to have been a space that might have been occupied by monks had a monastery been established. It became the place for the choir to sing the Capitular Liturgy.

David Hill recollects his time at Westminster Cathedral.

Photo © Edward Webb

To anyone who doesn’t know what the Apse is, it is the space behind the High Altar – slightly elevated. Its semi-circular design is ideal for projecting the sound of singers. The bricks are faced with marble and it is this reflective surface along with the semi-circular shape of the Apse, which all combine in assisting the ‘Westminster Cathedral sound’. But what is that?

During Richard Terry’s time as Master of Music, the sound of the choir was very precise if lacking colour: English ‘hooty’ might be the best description. It was the great George Malcolm who viewed boys’ singing as ‘a controlled form of shouting’ and who took the opportunity to create a unique sound in the UK. Benjamin Britten had written his Missa Brevis for the boys of Westminster Cathedral. He was a close friend of George Malcolm and adored the sound the boys made. Resonant, naturally visceral, vibrant, earthy, exciting… I could go on but these are some thoughts that come to mind about George Malcolm’s sound. His position as a highly regarded choirtrainer, harpsichordist and organist enabled him to think differently about how he wanted to make music. It is a style that has attracted controversy, not least in challenging those who thought only ‘head voice’ or a ‘white sound’ was acceptable in church. Malcolm knew that it hadn’t worked in Westminster Cathedral anymore than it would work in, an opera house. And so here is the basic analogy: Westminster Cathedral is the ‘Opera House’ of cathedrals, requiring those on the stage (Sanctuary and Aspe) to communicate what it is they must convey to those in the Nave. But unlike an opera house, the interaction between the Sanctuary, Aspe and Nave is the sharing of the complete space by sight, sound and involvement for all those present. Add to that the Willis III at the West End (one of the finest organs anywhere) and you have an incredible combination of elements. It is the perfect liturgical space. And so it was a chance meeting with Ted Perry of Hyperion in 1983 (still driving taxis by night) that began a relationship that continues to flourish. I showed him round the Music Library and he was intrigued by the different choral repertoire we could record. Both he and I were steeped in the Anglican tradition and Ted was largely unfamiliar with the Roman Catholic treasures of Victoria, Palestrina and others. I had enjoyed four years at St John’s College, Cambridge where George Guest (also massively influenced by George Malcolm) was instrumental in bringing 16th century European music to the College Choir. I was very keen on this period of music and suggested to Ted there could be a rich source of recordings for both Hyperion and Westminster Cathedral Choir. I remember him saying ‘if you can produce a wonderful record David, let’s get on and do it’. So the very first sounds I had encountered in 1982 on 1 November we put on disc in 1984. Victoria’s Missa O quam gloriosum and Missa Ave Maris Stella. It took three sessions; the budget was very small. I remember just how thrilled the choir was to record music that was, and continues to be, at the heart of what they represent.

The patience for proper recognition was so well rewarded with a GramophoneAward in 1985 (for Early Music). I was privileged to receive the award from Peter Pears and it is his immortal words to me when receiving the accolade on the Choir’s behalf which I shall never forget: “Ben (Britten) would have been so happy about this.” It is as if a circle had been squared at that moment – the recognition that Britten had felt that the Malcolm legacy deserved.

As for Westminster Cathedral, its music, its tradition, there is no question its place in the music world is a special one and I feel honoured to have been a small part of its history.

CELEBRATION & REFRESHMENT

The Chorister Outreach Programme and its effect on Cathedral singing

David Lowe Master of the Music, Norwich Cathedral

Most readers of this publication, as Friends of Cathedral Music, will be familiar with William Byrd’s much-quoted preface to his Psalms, Sonnets, and Songs of Sadnessand Pietie, of 1588. In it he lists the benefits –physical, mental and spiritual – of singing and exhorts us to try it. ‘Since singing is so good a thing, I wish all men would learn to sing’.

We lovers of the cathedral tradition of singing instinctively feel these therapeutic benefits keenly either as members of choirs or congregation. The Government is a more recent convert to singing’s charms and its initiative, known as the National Singing Programme or ‘Sing Up’ has enabled many thousands of young singers to find their voice over the last four years. The Chorister Outreach Programme began in Truro in 2000 and has blossomed all over the country in 41 centres (mainly cathedrals).

The spur to this activity was a perception that, through the eighties, nineties and before, class singing had all but disappeared from our primary schools. The time demands of

the core curricular subjects, the lack of trained musicians in schools and the absence of any hard evidence of the stimulating effect of musical activity on a child’s educational receptiveness all contributed to the side-lining of music in the classroom. That evidence in support of music’s effect is now flooding in from around the world although it has, of course, been legendary for hundreds of years.

The idea that evolved in Truro was to use the 36 centres of singing excellence (cathedrals) around the United Kingdom to spread a net to surrounding schools. The proven teaching abilities of the cathedral choirmasters were to help teach the teachers to become more confident to lead singing in schools

while the choristers were to provide the singing role models for the children in primary schools. It is, perhaps, the greatest success story of the ‘Sing-Up’ experience and the hunt is on to provide a sustainable future for this bright initiative beyond 2011 when the Government funding is planned to cease.

The experiences of the many fine musicians involved around the country provoke some inspiring reactions. Most are of amazement at the positive response of teachers, parents and pupils in the schools. The cathedral musicians have also felt the benefits in surprising ways.

How we draw children into the mysteries of singing is based less on educational strategy than the maintenance of a tradition and of choirmaster’s folklore. Most modern educationalists find our ways perplexing to put it mildly. We seek to teach musical confidence first followed by vocal confidence. We hope to achieve accuracy and unanimity before we add ‘expression’. We always sing from the copy and almost never from memory.

We cover a huge repertoire of music performed after minimal rehearsal. We ask for a concentration level and professional commitment, far beyond what should be expected

from a child so young. Most educationalists would favour the ear over the eye. They put high value on expression and communication using movement to help establish the muscle memory of performance. Choristers never move, they only proceed in procession!

I certainly approached taking choristers into schools with a certain trepidation. I was worried that the schoolchildren would not relate easily to what we were to sing. I was concerned that the choristers would feel embarrassed at their lack of stagecraft; that is their inexperience in putting a piece across to an audience. I need not have worried. Our choristers quite enjoyed ‘showing off’ their talents and talking about them to children of their own age. The children were impressively vocal in their reactions to the performances.

They showed real amazement at the choristers’ level of vocal achievement. They wanted to know how so few choristers could sing at such volume. They were perceptive also: one remarked that ‘they did not smile much’. One chorister (not a leading light in the choir!) having sung a short solo was told that he had a ‘really wicked voice’ but that ‘he should be prouder of it’.

It is harder to see how some of the chorister skills are readily

Picture above: Local Bradford children outside the cathedral about to perform in a termly concert.

Picture opposite: Outreach at the London Oratory.

Outreach in Durham Cathedral.

transferable to the schoolchildren. Most of the schoolchildren learn quickly by rote but are not encouraged to make the leap to reading music. Indeed some expert school singing teachers think that even seeing the music written down ‘takes the shine off’ the children’s performances.

Conversely, choristers often do not know what they are singing about in Latin, German, French or English so their imagination cannot be fully involved.

It is a common thread throughout the history of cathedral music that there is a dearth of available, suitable choristers, either girls or boys. I am sure that the English composer John Sheppard who, it is alleged, used to ‘steal’ choristers for Magdalen College, Oxford was inspired by such a predicament. Certainly, boys and now girls present themselves for audition in smaller numbers than thirty or forty years ago. The decimation of church attendance, the weakening of quality music-making in our parish churches and the changing nature of family life does threaten the health of cathedral choirs. One cannot simply point to a glorious tradition and ask that it be supported for purely religious or cultural reasons. One major factor in attracting more singers should be the evidence of the educational value of our training.

Our tradition of teaching is based on ‘learning on the job’. Choristers receive very little direct theoretical instruction. They learn to read music largely from each other, making connections from older choristers between what they hear and what they see. Good directors continually feed questions into the rehearsals, reinforcing basic information until each chorister is generating the pitches and rhythms themselves. Some children quickly learn the music from hearing it played on the piano but this should be only ever a short-term expedient. The musical demands of the daily liturgy leaves very little time for systematic teaching and most ‘theory’, beyond the basic ‘starter kit’, established during probationary training, is learned in instrumental lessons outside of choir time. The nature of the repertoire, especially the daily repetition of the psalm chants together with responses and hymns slowly becomes habit and builds transferable skills.

Musical confidence should enable good vocal habit to be built alongside but continual vocal advice is needed throughout rehearsal so that choristers maintain a healthy production. Good warm-up exercises are important but need to inform the singing for the whole rehearsal. More and more cathedrals are involving singing teachers to work alongside their directors, offering individual vocal coaching to each chorister.

This special brand of learning is very little understood and possibly a little unfashionable. It is not perfect and could be improved but it is has evolved to meet the needs of the daily worship.

The choir is often the making of a child. The creation of a musical team, corporate expression, the taking of professional responsibility and the development of confident personal communication are skills for life that are hugely valuable and not readily available to children outside the world of music, drama and sport. If we are to communicate their worth and thereby attract parents to offer their children these opportunities then we must first understand the process of making a chorister. Thorough research would help us do our job even better and give us the information to tell abroad the importance of our work.

I believe that the involvement of cathedrals in the Chorister Outreach Programme has made, and will continue to make us look at the strengths and weaknesses of our training of singers. Putting the cathedral choir face-to-face with a live audience encourages them to communicate beyond the notes. In return, there is nothing like the sunshine of applause on our backs to help us to share our enjoyment in our music-making. The children who come into the cathedral to sing are always inspired by the architecture, acoustics and the thrill of making music with the cathedral choir. Cathedral choirs must become places of training in the widest sense, if our worshipping tradition is to thrive.

This educational activity in cathedrals is of immense benefit to the community but the musicians, organists, choristers and choral scholars also benefit and many of them will become the singing ambassadors of the future.

The author has been Master of the Music of Norwich Cathedral since 2007. He is also Vocal Consultant to the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge and Director of the Cambridge University Chamber Choir. He was, for fourteen years, a professor of singing at the Royal Academy of Music and works with singers in Holland, Germany and Denmark as well as teaching on the Eton Choral Course.

David Lowe © Paul Hurst

Outreach at Blackburn.

OBITUARY Geoffrey Burgon

14. From there he had this urge to write music, so taught himself notation and then went on to study trumpet and composition with Peter Wishart (a former pupil of Nadia Boulanger)at the Guildhall. When he left music college he composed film and TV music (two series of Dr Who, Brideshead Revisited and, of course, the Nunc Dimittis from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy), because he vowed he did not want to be a teacher.

churchgoer, having been uncomfortable with the institution.

Geoffrey Burgon, who died in September wrote for CATHEDRAL MUSIC in 1994 detailing how words had always been important to him. His very first composition was a song setting of a poem by a friend at school (the same friend who introduced him to jazz). He was playing the jazz trumpet at

He told me that the director of Tinker Tailor, an ex-chorister at Durham Cathedral, was going to use a setting of the Nunc dimmitis that he knew from his chorister days. So Geoffrey asked if he could write a version. The Director agreed, so Geoffrey wrote a setting very quickly, hastily putting together a ‘demo’ with a countertenor friend and luckily the Director loved it. He was not a

He wrote that: ‘If I were to try and define one thing that all writers have in common, it would be the quality of magic, whatever that is. But it is something that the best music has also, the ability to arrest your attention with the first few notes and hold you, and it is this that I need in a poem, quite apart from any technical or practical considerations, before I can begin to put music to it’. He loved the poet Emily Dickinson and in particular this verse:

Musicians wrestle everywhere

All day-among the crowded air

I hear the silver strifeAnd – waking-long before the morn Such transport breaks upon the town I think it that ‘New Life’.

Andrew Palmer

NEWS BITES

News from Choirs and Places where they sing

HEREFORD CHORISTER FLIES WITH THE WELSH NATIONAL OPERA

Former senior chorister of Hereford Cathedral, Rory Turnbull, has found that leaving the cathedral choir does not come without its new opportunities when he was snatched by the Welsh National Opera to perform in their current touring production of Mozart’s Magic Flute

“All our boys leave the choir at the end of Year Nine, in order to concentrate on their GCSEs,” said Geraint Bowen, Director of Music at Hereford Cathedral, “even if their voices have not changed. The WNO contacted us at the end of the summer term to see if we had any suitable boys and, as Rory was still singing magnificently, we thought he would relish the opportunity.

“Rory was fortunate to have been selected to be a member of one of the two teams of boys who sing the role of the ‘Three Boys’. As part of the performance he and his colleagues get to fly across the stage on bicycles –surely every boy's dream, even if it is a little different to what he has been used to during Evensong!”

Rory was first spotted as a potential chorister when he joined Hereford Cathedral’s junior singing club, which is part of its outreach programme, and it was suggested to his parents that he had the potential to audition. Six years later Rory retired from the choir having sung well over a thousand services, toured the USA with the choir three times, and performed in Her Majesty’s Chapel Royal in front of HRH The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall, who also heard him singing a second time when HRH visited the cathedral in January 2009. Rory also took part in several Three Choirs Festivals and in 2009 sang the role of 'The Youth’ in Mendelssohn’s Elijah on the final night of the Hereford Three Choirs Festival, which also happened to coincide with his fourteenth birthday.

“Rory had some remarkable experiences whilst a chorister at Hereford,” said Geraint Bowen, “and we're delighted that this opportunity for him to perform with WNO came along when it did. We know that during his time with the WNO he will not only be a wonderful ambassador for us, but also for all that life as a cathedral chorister has to offer.”

MOVES

The excellent, highly accomplished organist, John Scott Whiteley who featured in the brilliant BBC television series, 21st Century Bach, has after 35 years left York Minster to pursue a freelance career. We wish him well.

Lichfield Cathedral’s Dean & Chapter has appointed a husband and wife as joint directors of music. Cathy and Ben Lamb have taken over from Philip Scriven who has moved to Cranleigh School as Director of Music. It will be interesting to see how well this arrangement works.

HEREFORD CATHEDRAL WELCOMES CHORAL SCHOLARS

Hereford Cathedral welcomed at the start of the autumn term its first two gap-year choral scholars. Michael Ash, from the Yorkshire Dales, and Charlie Wild, from Wimbledon, will join Tim Parsons, who is the cathedral's new organ scholar.

“We are tremendously excited about the opportunities that the choral scholars bring,” said Geraint Bowen, Director of Music at Hereford Cathedral. “Although we have had an organ scholar for the past two years, Tim being our third appointment, having these two young singers as part of the choir will bring a new dynamic for us all.

“All the scholars join us in a particularly exciting year and before they get to Christmas they will have had the opportunity to tour with the choir in South Africa, broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and sing at a special concert in the Guards’ Chapel in London before an audience which will include the Speaker of the House of Commons.

“Later in the year they will also sing in our Holy Week performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, our May orchestral Eucharist, with music from Haydn’s Harmoniemesse, and perform with Hereford Choral Society and the Hereford Three Choirs Festival Chorus.”

The organ and choral scholarships have been made available by the generous support of Friends of Cathedral Music, the Elmley Foundation, the Rowlands Trust and a number of private donors. If you would like to support the scholarships or the choir further please contact Glyn Morgan, Hereford Cathedral Perpetual Trust (01432 374261: perpetual.trust@herefordcathedral.org).

An opportunity still exists for a tenor choral scholar in the current academic year and recruitment has started for the 2011/12 choral and organ scholarships. Details of the opportunities available can be obtained from Geraint Bowen (01432 374238: organist@herefordcathedral.org) or downloaded from www.herefordcathedral.org (see music section).

HEREFORD CATHEDRAL CHOIR TO SING IN LONDON

Advent in London will be the theme of a special service the choir of Hereford Cathedral will be singing in London in the Royal Military Chapel, Wellington Barracks, London, which is better known to many as The Guards’ Chapel, on the evening of Tuesday 30 November. The service will be followed by a reception in the Officers’ Mess of the Grenadier Guards. The service will be attended by, among others, The Speaker of the House of Commons, along with many of the Cathedral’s Londonbased friends.

“We are delighted to have received the support and encouragement of so many in staging this event,” said Glyn Morgan, Chief Executive of Hereford Cathedral Perpetual Trust.

“Among our Advent in London patrons, who are helping us to promote the event, are Dame Janet Baker and Julian Lloyd-Webber, actress Miranda Richardson, human rights barrister Lord Carlile, and Robert Rogers (Clerk Assistant of the House of Commons) who also happens to be a Herefordshire parish organist. It should be a wonderful event and a great opportunity to showcase the music of Hereford Cathedral to this broader group of supporters.”

The service will feature music and readings which the choir will have sung the previous Sunday for the Hereford-based Advent Carol Service (Sunday 28 November, 3.30 pm), although the readings will be given by a number of guests including actor Larry Lamb.

“The Chapel has many links with the county, not least as our local regiment which originated out of the various Guards’ regiments. During the evening, a wreath will be placed at a memorial to the SAS as our own tribute,” said Glyn. “Our prayers will also be with those soldiers in Afghanistan over Advent and Christmas, who include at least one of our former choristers.”

Tickets for the service and reception, which can either be purchased individually or as a combined ticket, can be obtained from Hereford Cathedral Perpetual Trust (01432 374261: perpetual.trust@herefordcathedral.org; www.herefordcathedral.org). The evening is being sponsored by developers Stanhope plc.

From left – right Charlie Wild, Michael Ash & Tim Parsons.

Rory Turnbull during his time as a chorister © Matt Grace.

Photo © Graham Hermon

Organs and choirs in the ENGLISH CATHEDRAL

Talk given to the Friends of Cathedral Music in Guildford Cathedral on 6 February 2010 by the Precentor, Canon Nicholas Thistlethwaite.

In this talk I am going to attempt to do two things: first, to say something about how the organ came to be a church instrument, and secondly, to describe how its role in choral worship evolved, particularly in relation to the cathedral choir.

We don’t know when the organ was first used in Christian worship. Organs were used by the Greeks and Romans for secular entertainment, to provide what we might describe as ‘background music’ during banquets, carnivals and processions; as a result, early Christian writers associated organs almost exclusively with licentious revelry and accordingly disapproved of them. When the Roman Empire in the West collapsed during the fifth century, organs continued in use in the succeeding Byzantine Empire of the East. They seem to have been increasingly used in court ceremonial so it is significant that the Byzantine emperors sent organs to the Frankish kings in the West. It is said that

organs were sent as gifts to Pippin, King of the Franks in 757, to his son Charlemagne in 812, and to his son Louis the Pious in 826. These stories are suspiciously repetitive, and we may reasonably wonder whether a single historical episode has been multiplied by three, but there is no good reason to doubt that at least one of these kings received a delegation from Byzantium bearing an organ. The symbolism would have been clear to contemporaries. In Byzantium, the sacred person of the emperor was announced with bursts of sound from the organ. By sending one of these devices to the Frankish kings, the emperor was acknowledging their status as Christian rulers, ordained by God.

Canterbury Cathedral

Nave.

Photo © Andy McGowan.

What Pippin or Charlemagne or Louis made of the gift is unknown. They must have been rather puzzled. But perhaps the emperor had thoughtfully sent a technician to set up the instrument for them. At the time, it would not have occurred to either the Byzantines or the Franks to have placed the organ in a church. It was a piece of equipment for court ceremonial. However, at some unknown date between its delivery to the Frankish court in the eighth or ninth century, and the end of the tenth century, when we find the first evidence for the use of organs in western liturgy, the transition from the court to the church took place.

One theory is that the organ sent from Byzantium was set up in the royal chapel at Aachen where it announced the king’s arrival or departure, and that although its original purpose was thus imperial ceremonial, with the passage of time it came to be used liturgically as well. We can speculate that the same bursts of jubilation that were deemed appropriate to welcoming the monarch might come to be used to mark high points in the liturgy, such as the reading of the Gospel, the elevation of the Host at mass, or the singing of the Te Deum at festivals. But even if this established the precedent, we need to discover the means of transmission. How was the technology of the organ adopted in the West? Who was behind the introduction of organs to churches?

It is unlikely to be a coincidence that nearly all the early references to organs in churches are found in connection with monasteries, and specifically Benedictine foundations. We know that Benedictine communities (often supported by royal patronage) employed literacy, art and technology as tools of evangelism, building stone churches and embellishing forms of worship as the means of attaching recent converts to the new faith. It may be serendipity (the random survival of documentation) or it may provide an important clue, but Anglo-Saxon England offers several early examples of Benedictine organs.

The earliest surviving account of a church organ in the West concerns the instrument provided (or perhaps enlarged) by Bishop Alphege II of Winchester, in around 990. It was placed in the Old Minster at Winchester, significantly within the royal enclave of what was then the capital of Wessex, and it was celebrated in a poem by the cantor, Wulfstan. His poem brims over with hyperbole. Were there twenty-six bellows? Did the organ really require seventy blowers? His claim that there were four hundred pipes is more plausible. Credible, too, is Wulfstan’s statement that two players were required to draw in and out the sliders that caused the pipes to sound; there was, of course, no keyboard at this date, and a simple melody, in the manner of plainsong, would have been all that the players could have managed. Limited it may have been, but Wulfstan leaves us in no doubt about the sensation created by this piece of cutting-edge Anglo-Saxon technology:

‘The sound [he writes] so clamours, echoing here and there, that everyone closes the opening of his ears with his hand, totally unable to bear the noise when drawing near… And the melody of the pipes is heard everywhere in the city, and flying fame goes through the whole country.’

How this organ was used liturgically, we have no idea. Early organs, like bells and clocks, were mechanical wonders, which served a purpose simply by being there. Probably they were used as signalling devices to mark significant moments in the liturgy. They may also have played when jubilant noises were required – at Easter, for example – and may perhaps have sounded while the chant went on around them. But we can be confident that they were not used at this time (or for another four centuries at least) for anything remotely resembling choral accompaniment.

That development had to await two vital technological innovations which occurred in the years around 1400. In the meantime, the Benedictine communities continued to make and use organs, and they became increasingly common in cathedrals and greater churches. Not everyone approved. In the mid-1100s, Aelred of Rievaulx, enquired testily: ‘Why are there in the church so many organs, so many bells? For what, I ask, is this fearful bellows-blast, more able to express the crash of thunder than the sweetness of the voice? Meanwhile the people stand, trembling and thunderstruck, wondering at the noise of the bellows, the clashing of bells, and the harmony of pipes.’

He also complains about singing in church.

By this time, we can find occasional references in accounts to the making or repair of organs, though we still have very little idea about their construction or use. We know that there was an organ at Canterbury Cathedral in c1174; it stood in the south transept and so cannot have had a significant role in the choir office or mass. Almost a century later (1264) Durham bought a ‘greater organ’, implying that there was already a smaller instrument there, but again, we do not know how they were used. From 1396, we have an itemised account for the building or reconstruction of an organ at Ely Cathedral; yet despite the meticulous recording of expenditure on lead, leather, hoops of ash, glue, wire, hinges, tin, quicksilver and timber, we are none the wiser, and have no idea whether this instrument had keys or retained the old sliders like the Winchester organ four hundred years earlier.

The first of the innovations that transformed the latemediaeval organ was the invention of the keyboard. Precise dates are elusive, but it is likely that by around 1400, finger keys had replaced the hand-sliders or levers of earlier instruments. This was of absolutely fundamental importance. It meant that the organ could reproduce the choral polyphony that was beginning to come into fashion, and also develop its own repertoire.

The other significant innovation was the introduction of mechanisms to silence sets of pipes. Before the fifteenth century, it was usual for all the pipes associated with a particular slide or groove – whatever their pitch – to sound at once. Now, by means of controls called (appropriately enough) ‘stops’, it became possible for the organist to select which pipes he wished to sound. This in turn led to the introduction of new tonalities (different constructions of pipes) which the skilful organist could contrast with one another. Sounds which imitated other instruments –gemshorns, trumpets, regals, krumhorns, cymbals and cornets, for example – were particularly popular.

It is likely that the older type of organ – with its cruder mechanisms and multi-ranked choruses of pipes – continued in use for particular liturgical purposes: sounds of jubilation, signalling, and the sounding out of monody. But the newer instrument, with its sophisticated keyboard and tonal flexibility, became an essential adjunct to the new polyphonic choirs associated with collegiate chantries and Lady Chapels in cathedrals and monasteries. These choirs of boy choristers and professional lay singers sang music of great complexity at the daily Lady mass and also from the rood loft of the main choir at festivals, embellishing the sequences preceding the Gospel, singing motets, and gradually contributing more and more to the principal mass. Organs were provided in both the Lady Chapel and the rood loft. They did not accompany the singers in the modern sense, but played alternatim with them. The choir would sing a verse of a canticle or hymn to plainsong or polyphony, and the organ would then perform the chant for the next verse, treating it as a cantus firmus and ornamenting it

in a similar style to the voices. The texts of the propers, and sometimes the texts of the ordinary of the mass, were performed in the same way at the daily Lady mass, and also when the whole community assembled to celebrate the greater festivals in choir. It was partly a practical expedient for giving hard-worked singers a rest in a long and demanding liturgy; it also reflected the late-mediaeval love of embellishment. Extant movements from alternatim organ masses by the Tudor composers Philip ap Rhys and John Redford (St Paul’s Cathedral) and Thomas Preston (Oxford and Windsor), confirm the musical sophistication of this repertoire.

By the early sixteenth century, most cathedrals had several organs to serve different liturgical spaces. The Lady Chapel organ accompanied the daily Lady mass, as we have said. Another served the mass at the Jesus altar, usually in the nave. The choir, where the offices were sung and High Mass was celebrated, might have more than one organ, and some were clearly ambitious instruments. Chichester spent £26 16s 11d on a new organ in 1513-14, and Exeter the enormous sum of £164 15s 7¼d the same year. Durham is an example of how generous the provision of organs might be in the wealthiest cathedrals. There were three organs in the monastic choir. One stood over the choir door, on the pulpitum, and was only played at principal feasts: probably, it was the successor to an earlier instrument used for jubilation and signalling. A second organ, in a loft on the north side of the choir, was used on Sundays and at lesser festivals: it was called ‘the cryers’ – perhaps a clue to its musical effect. The third organ, known as ‘the White Organ’, stood on the south side of the choir, and was played on ordinary occasions. It was the only Durham organ to survive the Reformation, and it was used to accompany the choral service during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.

For choirs and organs, the Reformation meant upheaval on an unparalleled scale. Singers who had depended on monastic and collegiate foundations lost their jobs, organ-builders went out of business, and most of the organs were destroyed. Both singers and organs were tainted, in the eyes of reforming Protestants, by their association with the old Catholic rituals. Protestants did not worship by surrogate – that is how they would have seen it – and the singers who mouthed the words and the organs that piped the tunes were offensive to a truly reformed Church. In 1563, Protestants in Convocation almost succeeded in having organs banned from churches, and eighty years later, in the 1640s, their successors finally achieved this cherished aim when Parliament passed an ordinance ‘for the speedy demolishing of all organs, images and all matters of superstitious monuments in all Cathedrals, and Collegiate or

Parish-Churches… throughout the kingdom’ (1644).

But this is to leap ahead, because, although the church reformations of the sixteenth century led to huge destruction, and brought about the end of a musical and liturgical culture in which choirs and organs played a central part, they also prepared the ground for the English cathedral choir as we now know it.

Far from abolishing cathedrals, Henry VIII augmented their number by converting certain former monastic churches (like Gloucester, Bristol and Peterborough) into cathedrals, and refounding the old monastic cathedrals (Winchester, Ely and Durham, for example) as secular cathedrals. And although he confiscated many of their assets, and drastically reduced the personnel of the wealthiest ‘old foundation’ cathedrals (such as Lincoln, York and St Paul’s) Henry intended cathedrals to continue to educate youngsters, perform the daily office, and offer prayers for the monarch. None of his successors – with the exception of Cromwell – attempted to change this, and cathedrals, with their choirs and clergy, became a distinctive feature of the reformed Church of England.

But what were the choirs to sing? The former Lady Chapel choirs, with their boy choristers and lay clerks, now joined the remaining clergy to sing the offices in the choir, but the reformers’ insistence on a simplification of the liturgy, followed by the imposition in 1549 of a new English service book, meant that the old polyphonic repertoire – musically complex and in Latin – was useless. Cranmer’s instruction that the text must be audible with one note to a syllable implied a very different approach.

Yet it was in the course of the next fifty years or so that the foundations of the English choral tradition were laid as a distinguished group of composers (several of whom, ironically, were Catholics) created from scratch a repertoire of anthems and canticles to meet the requirements of the new English service book. A critical element in the development of this model was the partnership of choir and organ. Before the Reformation, the singers and the organ had performed independently, as it were answering one another in alternatim passages. Now, they were to partner one another, with the organ supporting the singers in accompaniments.

This outcome was by no means assured. The organ’s questionable reputation, acquired through its association with the mass, did it no favours, and some reformers tried to suppress it. John Marbeck was ordered not to use the organ at Windsor in 1550. At both York Minster and St Paul’s Cathedral in 1552 the use of the organ was forbidden, and at King’s College, Cambridge in 1570 the Queen’s commissioners

Lincoln Cathedral Organ © Ken Hawley.

Chichester Cathedral Organ © Rex Harris.

ordered the removal of the chapel organ as part of a campaign to root out recalcitrant popish ritual. Most parish churches had lost their organs by the middle of the reign. But although some cathedrals struggled on with no organ or an instrument in poor repair, most kept one, and in accordance with their statutes appointed someone to play it.

Often, the organ would simply support the voices in homophonic passages, especially when attendance was poor and the ensemble consequently fragile. Psalms were probably still sung unaccompanied to plainsong, but in English. In some places, the organist may have been allowed to play interludes or short introductions to anthems, though the Chapter’s pointed instruction to William Byrd at Lincoln in 1570 to sound the note for the anthem on the organ, and then join the choir to sing is not very encouraging.

But as time went by the organ acquired a more independent role. Particularly significant was the development of the verse anthem and verse settings of the canticles. Like many innovations of the period, this may have originated in the Chapel Royal where the Queen maintained ceremonial and music of which her more Protestant subjects deeply disapproved. Composers such as William Mundy, Edmund Hooper and William Byrd seem to have been inspired by consort songs – sung by a soloist with keyboard or lute accompaniment – and metrical psalms – with their homophonic textures – to write settings of sacred texts for soloist and chorus. Instrumental accompaniment to the verses was sometimes provided by viols but was more usually played on the organ, which may also have accompanied the chorus sections. In the next generation, at the hands of composers such as Thomas Tomkins, Thomas Weelkes, and above all Orlando Gibbons, the verse anthem and verse service, with their often masterly polyphonic textures incorporating solo voices and accompaniment, become vehicles for some of the finest church music of the period.

We know very little of the organs on which these accompaniments were played. Organ-building went into the doldrums during the long winter of Elizabethan Calvinism. With the exception of a group of craftsmen in the West Country, native organ-builders largely disappear. There is some evidence of Flemish organ-builders being brought in to work at court and one of them, Jasper Blankard, did major work at Canterbury Cathedral in the 1570s. So we must conclude that most of the surviving cathedral organs were just that: old preReformation instruments that were patched up and kept going.

The climate begins to change in the 1590s. With the decisive defeat of Catholic Spain in 1588, Elizabeth and her ministers could afford to stand up to the radical Protestants who we know as Puritans. At the same time, conservative elements in the Church (many of them associated with the cathedrals), and others at court who appreciated music and the arts began to look for a revival of a more catholic temper in the Church of England. Encouraged by the patronage of Robert Cecil, and taking its cue from bishops such as Lancelot Andrewes and John Overall, a movement began with the object of rekindling that ‘beauty of holiness’ which had been lost in the fires of the Reformation. Known as Arminians, anti-Calvinists, or Laudians (after Archbishop Laud, under whose regime in the 1630s the movement attained its apogee) they believed that music, choirs and organs were vital ingredients of worship, and did all they could to promote them.

One of the results was a resurgence of organ-building. The principal beneficiaries were the Dallam family. Thomas Dallam was a recusant from Lancashire, who may have learned his craft abroad. He appears out of nowhere in 1599, charged with the construction and delivery of a complicated machine

organ for the Sultan of Turkey (a gift from the Queen). Six years later (1605-6), through the patronage of Robert Cecil, he was commissioned to build a large new organ for King’s College, Cambridge. The accounts survive, from which we learn that Dallam set up his workshop in the chapel and was there for a whole year with his two assistants building an organ not on the screen, as is frequently assumed, but on the site of the mediaeval altar at the east end of the chapel; only later did he move it to the screen, but not in the present organ case (another common misconception).

There’s a lot we do not know about this landmark instrument. But we do know that it had two keyboards –possibly one of the first instruments in England to do so. The Great Organ, in the main case, and the Chair Organ, in the small case behind the player’s back, are characteristic of cathedral and collegiate organs of this period; we might think of them as mirroring the relationship between the full and verse passages in the verse anthems. The Chair Organ provides light accompaniment for the solo voice; the more robust Great Organ accompanies the full choir. Regrettably, we do not have the specification of Thomas Dallam’s organ for King’s, but we do have the stop list of the similar organ he built for Worcester Cathedral in 1613. It is noticeably different from organs being made elsewhere in Europe at the same date. This is because Dallam’s cathedral organs were designed primarily to accompany voices. Mixtures, mutations and reeds were not required (unlike, say, the organs of France), nor were pedals (unlike the organs of Lutheran Germany). Instead, the specification consisted largely of unison registers of 8’, 4’, 2’ and 1’ pitch, probably voiced quite lightly so as not to overpower the small cathedral choirs of those days (seldom more than ten boys, and often only six or eight).

Thomas Dallam and his son Robert provided new organs for many cathedrals and collegiate churches in the years leading up to the Civil War; Norwich and Windsor, Bristol, York and Gloucester among them. Usually the organ stood in a loft on the north side of the choir so that the organist could communicate comfortably with the singers, though sometimes it was located on the choir screen. All were housed in handsome wooden cases in the mannerist style – like the one that survives at Tewkesbury – and decorated with applied gilding and colour. Frequently, the case cost half as much as the organ itself. On the eve of the Civil War, a party of soldiers visited York Minster. They attended divine service and heard Dallam’s organ of 1634, describing it as ‘a faire, large, high organ, newly built, richly gilt, carv’d and painted’; they also admired the singing of a ‘deep and snowy row of quiristers’. Shortly afterwards, England descended into anarchy. Organs were dismantled or destroyed, the cathedral service was abolished, and Robert Dallam packed his tools and took ship for Brittany. For the next twenty years he built French organs.

The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 brought with it the restoration of the Church of England, cathedral foundations and the Book of Common Prayer. Records reveal the chaotic way in which most cathedrals went about reassembling what was left of the choral foundation, recruiting new singers, redeeming part books, borrowing or installing organs, and acquiring service books. A few organs seem to have survived, dismantled and hidden away discreetly, and were reinstated. Elsewhere, chapters borrowed domestic consort organs until an organmaker could be found to supply a new instrument. The Dallams returned from exile in France, and other native builders exploited the burgeoning market. The first post-Restoration instruments were conceived in a deeply conservative style: a new organ for Worcester, commissioned in 1666, had virtually the same stop list as its predecessor of fifty years earlier. But just as

musical composition for cathedral choirs began to absorb stylistic influences from France and later Italy, and to employ more ambitious musical structures, so the organs which accompanied them developed in new directions.

Two London workshops dominated the organ-building scene between the 1660s and 1710s. Bernard Smith (often known as ‘Father’ Smith) was a German who had worked in Holland. He was a Protestant, and this no doubt helped him to become the King’s organ-maker and to secure the contract for an organ in the new St Paul’s Cathedral. His chief rival was Renatus Harris, grandson of Robert Dallam, and (like him) a Catholic. Between them, they evolved a style of English organ which was designed to meet the needs of the choral service whilst also reflecting the musical preoccupations of the age. With its wide keyboard compasses, lack of pedals, and distinctive tonal scheme, it was fundamentally unlike a German or French organ, and yet incorporated features of both. Through Harris, it acquired colourful solo registers in the French manner: cornets, trumpets, cromornes and hautboys; through Smith, it gained mellow chorus stops – his open diapasons and wooden stopped diapasons were particularly admired – and mixtures with tierces.

Broadly speaking, this style of cathedral organ persisted until the early nineteenth century. The only significant innovation of the intervening years was the Swell – the enclosure in a box with a sliding front or shutters of some of the organ pipes: by operating a pedal the organist could cause crescendos or diminuendos. This was to be of great importance in the nineteenth century, but until then, its primitive mechanism restricted its musical usefulness.

Composition for the Church during this period built on the achievements of the earlier seventeenth century. The role of the organ as an accompaniment in anthem and canticle settings expanded, particularly under the influence of the Chapel Royal composers. With the introduction of symphonyanthems, the organist found himself having to perform on the keyboard sinfonias originally written for the King’s band of violins, and the popular solo anthems, written with virtuoso singers like John Gostling (bass) or Richard Elford (countertenor) in mind, demanded a neat finger. Verse anthems and canticles received more extended treatment, increasingly

using duets or trios of singers in the verses, and some composers began to exploit the solo possibilities of the new organ registers (trumpet, cornet, vox humana) to lend orchestral colouring to the accompaniments. It was a trend that continued throughout the eighteenth century, with composers such as Croft, Greene and Boyce building on the legacy of Turner, Blow and (of course) Purcell.

The organ also began to be used in psalm accompaniment. It seems, again, to be a development pioneered at the Chapel Royal. Plainsong chants had been adapted and harmonised by earlier composers, but now, original four-part chants began to appear. Harmonised chanting of the psalms seems to have been the practice in the Chapel Royal by the 1670s, and it soon spread elsewhere. The organ accompanied, sometimes duplicating the voice parts, sometimes ornamenting them. By 1745, it was being reported that the chant accompaniments of Ely’s organist, Thomas Kempton, ‘are so disguis’d by Variations and running divisions from the one end of them to the other, that the master who composed any one of them would be puzzled to distinguish his own’. Evidently florid psalm accompaniment is no new thing.

Complaints of a different sort were made by Sir John Sutton a century later. In 1847 he wrote: ‘In chanting of the Psalms, the attention is continually drawn from the voices by the perpetual changing of stops and clattering of composition pedals, for the modern Cathedral Organist scarcely ever accompanies six verses on the same stops, or even the same row of keys, and keeps up a perpetual thundering with the pedals throughout the Psalms, when perhaps the choir he is accompanying, consists of ten little boys, and six or at most eight men, three of whom are either disabled by old age, or a long continued habit of drunkenness.’

Sutton was an antiquarian, who deplored the destruction of the old organs of Smith and Harris, but in his opposition to what he termed ‘modern Music Mills’, he remained a lone voice, for this was the nineteenth century, and change was all around.

The cathedral organ was transformed by the musical, technological and liturgical innovations of the Victorian era. It ceased to be principally or solely an accompaniment to the choral service and assumed a much more extensive role, as cathedrals became venues for Sunday evangelistic services,

Winchester Cathedral © David Roberts.

Canon Nicholas Thistlethwaite.

huge choral festivals, and diocesan services. The railway transformed the possibilities of cathedrals by making them more accessible to ordinary people.

It is a fascinating topic and much could be said about it, but focusing on our main subject, organs and choirs, we might start with the transformation of the repertoire. Church composers absorbed the romantic aesthetic of the period, and in both performance and composition, they looked for colour, expression, and contrast. Organists attempted to reproduce orchestral effects by exploiting the dramatic possibilities of Swell Organs and Pedal pipes. The Swell enabled organists to move rapidly from pianissimo to fortissimo effects and to give expression to a melodic line; Pedal pipes contributed a depth and weight similar to orchestral double basses and trombones.

The anthems of S S Wesley illustrate the earlier stages of this development. His precise registrations in pieces like Blessed be the God and Father are a novelty, and attempt to use orchestral effect to heighten the emotional power; examples would include the arpeggios in the left hand on the Swell reed preceding the soprano solo: ‘But he which hath called you is holy’, the affetuoso introduction to the succeeding ‘Love one another’, to be played on the Great clarabella (in the right hand) and the Swell reed in the left hand, or the massive chord with its dominant seventh played on Full Organ at the end of the men’s recitative as the lead into the chorus ‘But the word of the Lord’. Effects such as these could only be achieved on organs with an enlarged tonal palette and with the assistance of mechanical accessories to facilitate rapid changes of registration. When we turn to later Victorian anthems, such as Stainer’s I saw the Lord, or Stanford’s The Lord is my shepherd, and twentieth-century examples such as Harwood’s O, how glorious, Bairstow’s Blessed city, heavenly Salem, and the anthems and canticle settings of Herbert Howells, it becomes clear that composers for the cathedral service since Wesley’s days have relied upon the availability of an organ that could in some measure imitate orchestral effect.

Once such effects were available, organists applied them to the accompaniment of psalms as well. In the 1850s, Dr Corfe at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford was notorious for accompanying the psalms on a single registration, known by witty undergraduates as the ‘Corfe mixture’. Thirty years later, a different approach had established itself. A Cambridge undergraduate recalled hearing Dr Mann accompany psalms at King’s: “Those who have memories of the Twenty-eighth evening of the month, with By the waters of Babylon sung to a plaintive chant of Dr Garrett, will not easily forget the way a few notes, now of the orchestral oboe and now of the 16ft cromorne floated in and hovered for a moment before melting away into thin air; while the pedal, felt rather than heard, moved on like that great river, the Euphrates.”

From serving as a substitute for a consort of viols in the sixteenth century, the cathedral organ now supplied the resources of a full symphony orchestra.

The construction of organs of this character presented considerable technical challenges to organ-builders. In all essentials, the design of organs had not changed radically for three hundred years. In the nineteenth century it was transformed in a generation by the application to organ-building of new technology. Let me mention just three examples.

First, the use of mechanical engines to blow the bellows solved the problem of raising sufficient wind for a large organ. Although the Chichester Cathedral organ continued to be blown by hand until the 1920s, most cathedral organs had hydraulic or electric engines by the end of the nineteenth century.

Secondly, mechanical blowers meant that higher pressures of wind could be generated. This enabled builders to develop

orchestral registers like the tuba, French horn and ophicleide, as well as unison registers of more opaque tone, and this increased the range of tone colours for choir accompaniment. As cathedral choirs grew in size (for example, the number of boy choristers at St Paul’s was increased to thirty-eight in 1874, with provision for eighteen men) more powerful organs were required, and the application of higher wind pressures to the chorus registers contributed to this objective in (for example) the organs of Henry Willis.

Thirdly, the introduction of pneumatic actions in the 1850s made possible the development of a range of console accessories, notably Willis’s thumb pistons, which allowed the player to make instantaneous changes of registration and so vary their accompaniments. Pneumatics also permitted organs to be physically divided either side of a choir (as at St Paul’s Cathedral in 1872 and Westminster Abbey in 1884), and the development of electric actions allowed the organ-builder to locate the console at a distance from the pipework so that the player could better judge the balance between organ and singers (Worcester, 1896).

The result of all this was that by the beginning of the twentieth century the English cathedral organ was a tonally flexible and mechanically sophisticated tool for the accompaniment of Anglican liturgy. The Edwardian organ, typified by the 1908 Harrison instrument at Ely Cathedral, had a commanding voice or a plaintive whisper, as occasion required, and in the hands of players such as Dr Haydn Keeton at Peterborough, Dr Bennett at Lincoln or Dr Brewer at Gloucester, it possessed an integrity of purpose, quite different from, but in no way inferior to, its predecessors.

And the story continues. The twentieth century was no less eventful for cathedral organ design than the nineteenth. Perhaps the most significant change was the growing tension, in the post-war years, between the organ as choral accompanist and the organ as solo instrument. In those years there was an enormous expansion in the availability of scores and recordings of organ music of all periods, and under the influence of players like Ralph Downes, Geraint Jones, Peter Hurford and Gillian Weir it became impossible to think of the organ as simply a liturgical instrument. As a result, the design of new cathedral organs at Coventry (1962), St Albans (1962), Liverpool Metropolitan (1967), Blackburn (1969) and Gloucester (1971) had as much to do with the solo repertoire as with choir accompaniment. Indeed, it is questionable whether these instruments are entirely successful in the more traditional cathedral repertoire. But perhaps a better way of looking at it is to say that they embrace a more eclectic range of music than their predecessors, for it is not only the organ repertoire that has expanded in the last hundred years. The typical cathedral choir’s repertoire has changed, too, putting at least some Victorian and Edwardian anthems and services into mothballs, and introducing more continental polyphony, more Bach and more Purcell, more French mass settings, and more contemporary pieces. With composers such as Kenneth Leighton, William Mathias and Francis Jackson (to name but three) keen to exploit neo-classical registrations in their choral accompaniments we cannot dismiss the post-war cathedral organ too lightly.

The English cathedral organ remains an idiosyncratic instrument firmly committed to the accompaniment of the Anglican choral repertoire. But it is perhaps more in touch today with its continental cousins than it has been for three hundred years, and, in a way, that takes us right back to the beginning: to the mysterious gift sent (who knows when?) to the Carolingian kings from Byzantium. From such serendipitous happenings history is made.

PALESTRINA FOR TUPPENCE

Timothy Storey writes about Richard Terry, Westminster Cathedral’s first Master of Music

Carols for Choirs II contains an attractive little setting of Myn Lyking by one R R Terry. You may have heard his splendid tune Billing on 13 September’s Songs of Praise from Arundel Cathedral, sung to Praise to the Holiest in the height: your choir perhaps sings Pitoni’s Cantate Domino from an edition by him in a series called Polyphonic Motets or Byrd’s Ave verum corpus and Sacerdotes Domini in Oxford University Press’s original series of Tudor Church Music or, if your choir is ambitious, Surgens Jesus (Peter Philips) in Novello’s Tudor Motets. You may have found in the organ-loft of a Roman Catholic church a decaying copy of the Westminster Hymnal which he edited. You may have read that Stanford used to send his composition pupils to Westminster Cathedral to hear in live performance the works whose style they were studying – “Palestrina for tuppence, me bhoy”, i.e. the price of the ’bus fare from Kensington Gore to Victoria. As Westminster Cathedral’s website tells us, ‘It was the intention of the founder of Westminster Cathedral, Cardinal Vaughan, for the liturgies to be furnished with the finest music available. Fortunately, his vision was shared by the first Master of Music, Sir Richard Terry, whose genius established Westminster Cathedral at the heart of the English choral tradition.’

Much of what follows is based on Westminster Retrospect by Hilda Andrews, a biography of Sir Richard Terry published in 1948. We read that Richard Runciman Terry was born in 1865 at Ellington in Northumberland, inheriting from his mother (who died when he was eight years old) not only the name Runciman but also a long line of seafaring ancestors, which may account for his later love of sailing and keen interest in sea shanties. He had the unusual distinction of attending both Oxford (1887) and Cambridge Universities (1888-90), taking a degree in neither and abandoning an organ scholarship in the former for a choral scholarship in the latter, at Kings College; here he absorbed from the legendary Arthur Henry Mann the highest possible standards of choral singing and the vocal training of choristers. Terry also founded the Cambridge University Musical Club and came to the notice of Stanford, who was Professor of Music at Cambridge in addition to his work in London at the Royal College of Music.

By 1890 he was twenty-five years old and felt the need to start earning some sort of living. There ensued short-lived appointments at Elstow School, Bedford, Antigua Cathedral in the West Indies and St John’s School, Leatherhead; in all of these he revealed a rare gift for enthusing singers and accomplishing a great deal in a very short time. In 1895 he was received into the Roman Catholic Church and in 1896 he was appointed Music Master at Downside School by Prior (later Abbot) Ford who had himself only been in post for two years.

Since the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 the Roman Catholic community in England had grown in confidence,

numbers and influence, and one result was a revival of monastic life. The Benedictine community of Downside had in fact arrived from Douai in northern France as early as 1814 and found itself a home near Bath; building of the Abbey Church had begun in 1880. The school (co-educational since 2005) still, as in Terry’s day, provides a schola cantorum to sing at some of the Abbey services.

The choir was in a bad way when he arrived, and he effected a ‘ruthless and complete massacre’ among the so-called choirboys while stimulating a more general interest in music throughout the school. Community singing (including seashanties), concerts and the music for a Greek play (the Alcestis, to music by C H Lloyd) occupied his first year. Having got the choir somewhat more to his liking, he began to teach it the Kyrie from Palestrina’s Aeterna Christimunera mass, following this with numerous relatively straightforward works, some composed by himself; many of the works by sixteenth-century English composers were to be published by Cary & Co, as the Downside Motets, and Banks Music Publications can still supply them. Long after his Downside days, he told an interviewer: “All these years since I left Cambridge I had been conscious of the possibilities of unaccompanied choral singing and of an increasing interest in sixteenth-century polyphony. On taking up the appointment of Music Master at Downside, I began working hard with the boys on Palestrina’s music. From Palestrina I became curious about the contemporary English music which I felt sure existed in sufficient quantity in spite of the musical havoc of that troubled century. I used to spend nearly all my holidays at the British Museum, digging up and scoring the work of such masters as Tye, Tallis, Whyte, Shepherd, Mundy, Byrd and Philips, which had never seen the light since the Reformation. We performed as much of this music as was possible, both in the monastery church and in the school.” On 21 March 1899, the Feast of S. Benedict, Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices was sung, possibly for the first time in three hundred years.

Later that same year the Downside choir sang Byrd’s mass at the opening of the Benedictine Abbey in Ealing, West London. The preacher was Cardinal Vaughan, Archbishopelect of the new Cathedral of Westminster, who is reported to have commented: ‘This is the music I want for my cathedral.’ Two years later Terry was appointed to Westminster and took up his duties at the beginning of 1902. Eleven boys had already been selected as the nucleus of a choir which Terry would have to train from scratch and in rather a hurry, as services in the Chapter Hall, the first part of the cathedral to be opened, were to commence on Ascension Day. Suitably, Byrd’s Mass for five voices was the first work to be sung there. Mass was sung in the Lady Chapel of the cathedral for the first time on 19 March 1903; sadly the first great ceremony held in the Cathedral itself was for a Solemn Requiem for Cardinal

Vaughan on 20 June that same year, the enthronement of his successor Archbishop Bourne following on 29 December.

There had been a change of Pope also. Leo XIII died in 1903 at the grand age of ninety-three; he had been deeply concerned for the state of Roman Catholic music, and had set up a commission to look into the matter. His successor, Pius X, issued as one of his first acts the famous encyclical Motu Proprio, which reaffirmed the perfect fitness of Gregorian Chant, approved the sixteenth-century polyphonists, allowed suitable modern harmonized music but condemned the theatrical style which had become popular in the nineteenth century. Its effect was to leave Westminster as almost the only place in the country where suitable liturgical music could be heard, for even at the Brompton Oratory there was still a preference for Viennese mass music. Terry’s preferences coincided exactly with what Pius X had laid down, and the new Pope had made a point of expressing to the new Archbishop of Westminster his approval of the music at Westminster’s new cathedral. The scene was set for nearly two decades of highquality liturgical music which attracted nationwide interest.

The choir numbered some twenty-five boys and sixteen men by mid-1902, though the number of men could not be maintained at this level and was even more seriously reduced in the Great War. Discipline was rigorous, and any boy who could not read music fluently by the end of his probationary year was dismissed. A vast quantity of music was performed, much of it sight-read in performance from Terry’s own manuscripts; this could on occasion lead to near-disaster, as when through a mistake in the copies half the boys sang F natural as the final chord of a motet and the other half sang F sharp, order only being restored when a quick-witted head chorister signalled to the others to join him on the note he was singing.

The vast repertoire was the result of Terry’s excitement at the riches he was uncovering in libraries. Though Palestrina and his school still maintained an important place, it was the music of native composers which so excited him, not just Byrd, Philips, Tallis and co, but the earlier school of Shepherd, Taverner and Tye, then farther back to Fayrfax and the composers of the Eton Choirbook. Holy Week was a particular highlight, extensively reported in the quality newspapers. It seemed particularly important to Terry that this indigenous music should be brought back into use, for its use could be held to prove that the revived Roman Catholic Church in England was not the ‘Italian Mission’ but had its roots in preReformation England.

As had Stainer at St Paul’s a generation earlier, Terry regarded his work at the Cathedral as having a duty to be an example to parochial musicians. In his early years easy masses suitable for less able choirs were sung on Saturday mornings; in 1912 there appeared the Westminster Hymnal which he had attempted to edit on the best principles, though he confessed himself frustrated by the need to include ‘old favourites’ of doubtful quality. Billing, previously referred to, is the best of his own tunes and appears in the New English Hymnal. He edited a large number of carols and composed twelve of his

own, published by Curwen in 1912; Myn Liking was for many years a favourite at his old college (hence its appearance in Carols for Choirs II) but Joesph and the Angel might merit a revival. Tryste Noel has a somewhat unfortunate text, the reference to the ox’s ‘bowerie breath’ tending to be sung by mischievous choristers as ‘beery breath’!

If Terry’s preferences tended towards what was rather rudely termed ‘musical archaeology’, he nonetheless took seriously Motu Proprio’s approval of suitable new music. As time went by, students from the Royal College might be paying their bus fare to Victoria to hear not only Palestrina but also the first performances of their own compositions, and recent research has produced editions of many of Howells’s early works which Terry championed. Established composers were represented too; Charles Wood’s two settings of the Latin Nunc dimittis were published and thus have survived, but one can only regret the apparent loss of Stanford’s unaccompanied Mass. The jewel in this particular crown was the Mass in G minor by Vaughan Williams, first sung in the Cathedral on 12 March 1923, which Terry regarded as ‘the work one has all along been waiting for’. A year later he retired from the Cathedral. He had done all he had set out to do. He now had a choir much reduced by the Great War, his musical ideals no longer seemed to be in accord with those of the cathedral authorities, and he had been seriously ill in 1922. Since 1916 he had been trying to set up the great project, funded by the Carnegie Trust, for a great folio library edition of Tudor Church Music; as an offshoot octavo editions were published, and four Byrd motets edited by Terry were among the early issues, along with Ascendit Deus by Peter Philips and the Leroy Kyrie by Taverner, these composers always having been his particular favourites. It is notable however that Terry’s name soon disappears from the list, to be replaced by Sir Percy Buck, the Revds E H Fellowes and A Ramsbotham and Miss Sylvia Townsend Warner. These were the editorial committee which he had assembled in 1916, but considerable tensions arose and he withdrew from the project in 1922, though the Taverner volumes of the folio edition carry his name. In truth, he had not the patience for the laborious minutiae of musical scholarship, his attitude having ever been that of treasurehunter rather than musical archaeologist.

He spent the years from his retirement until his death in 1938 in teaching, writing, examining, adjudicating and in the Daily Express Community Singing campaign. He had more time for sailing, and editing sea shanties. He tried to revive his editorial activities around 1931, recycling some of his Westminster manuscripts as Cary’s Polyphonic Motets or Novello’s Series of Tudor Motets, several of which were by his beloved Peter Philips. His true memorial, though, is not to be found in these or Tudor Church Music or carols or the Westminster Hymnal; rather, it is in the music of Westminster Cathedral, where most fittingly Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices was sung on Saturday, 18 September on the occasion of the visit by Pope Benedict XVI, whose views on church music would surely have met with Terry’s approval.

Sir Richard Terry with Vaughan Williams and the Westminster Cathedral Choir.

Sir Richard Terry.

A Short Tour of LONDON CHURCHES with Leigh Hatts

All Hallows on Tower Hill is older than the Tower of London. In the march of history it has often been forced to receive the bodies of those executed in the fortress blocking the view. The number includes Saints Thomas More and John Fisher. Judge Jeffreys, ‘The Hanging Judge’, who sent many to the gallows, was married here in 1667.

All Hallows was nearly lost in the Great Fire of London in 1666, but we can thank William Penn, whose son founded Pennsylvania, for saving the church as he directed the demolition of ‘nearby buildings’ to divert the fire.

Further west along the river is St Magnus. To stand under the tower is to find oneself on Old London Bridge, for the very stones are the pavement approach to the old crossing. The church with its large clock was the gateway to the city before the bridge was rebuilt a few yards upstream. Inside is a large model of the lost London Bridge complete with houses.

Across the road and beyond the Cannon Street tunnel is St Michael Paternoster Royal. Inside on the floor is the tombstone of Dick Whittington. Look up to see his cat in the stained glass window.

Continue into cobbled Skinners Lane to find St James

so you can have your passport endorsed before setting out on your pilgrimage.

Go up Garlick Hill and head along Bow Lane to St Mary-leBow. Here are the bells which may have called Whittington back. They were broadcast by the BBC during the Second World War as a morale booster. This is the place for Australians to see the bust of early Australian settler Admiral Arthur Phillip, who was baptized here, as well as Americans visiting from Trinity Church,Wall Street, the sister church in New York. Media figures, such as Jeffrey Archer, debating from the twin pulpits are also a draw.But many more come regularly to dive straight into the crypt where there is an award-winning cafe.

Continue west along Cheapside to turn north into Foster Lane. Behind the coffee stall are glass doors allowing you to look straight into St Vedast. It’s like an Oxbridge chapel, and you can explore further to find the tiny cloister where there is a stone relief by Epstein of a recent rector. At the far end of the lane is St Anne & St Agnes, a Wren church restored as the City’s Lutheran church. Now head east across the main road and through Postman’s Park to go right into Little Britain. This leads to St Bartholomew-the-Great. You may not think

you know it but you do. This Norman priory is the last church in Four Weddings and a Funeral. It’s also featured in Shakespeare in Love and The End of the Affair and many other films.

So popular is the church that it is the only one to impose an admission charge. But you can avoid that when visiting the cafe in the cloister.

Don’t end the tour here. Opposite is St Bartholomew-theLess which has free entry and boasts an appearance in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.

A day looking at West End churches – 3.1 miles

Starting at Broadcasting House just north of Oxford Circus, you will find All Souls Langham Place which, although much older, served as the BBC chapel. Radio 4’s Daily Service was once broadcast live from here with the public allowed to walk in. John Nash, the architect not just of this church but also Regent Street, is depicted in the porch looking slightly amazed at today’s shopping scene.

Walking south down Upper Regent Street turn left into Margaret Street, where All Saints is found. For over 150 years this has been the flagship of the Anglo-Catholic tradition setting the standard for music and liturgy. It is William Butterfield’s finest church, enhanced inside with a tiled north wall which includes a much reproduced nativity scene.

Further south, hiding behind Regent Street on the fringe of

Soho, and looking like a house, is The Assumption in Warwick Street, which was first known as the Royal Bavarian Chapel. As an embassy chapel it could evade anti-Catholic laws and stage High Mass with opera singers. Here the tune for O Come All Ye Faithful was first heard. Its most unusual wedding must be that of nonCatholic Sir Richard Burton who translated the Kama Sutra.

Cross Regent Street and turn right into Swallow Street to see St James’s Piccadilly framed ahead. This is the only church by Christopher Wren to stand on a new site as work was delayed for almost twenty years whilst he dealt with the numerous rebuilds required in the City following the Great Fire.

There is a handy cafe at St James’s but don’t leave before seeing the font carved by Grinling Gibbons, which was used for the christening of William Pitt, who became prime minister aged 25, and the artist and poet William Blake.

Head east through Piccadilly Circus to Leicester Square. In Leicester Place on the north side is Notre Dame. This is the French Church and, although rebuilt in dramatic style in 1953, retains its round shape based on the panorama building which stood here until the 1860s. The new foundation stone was laid by Maurice Schumann, the voice of wartime France. The Lady Chapel contains murals by Jean Cocteau.

Now turn south down St Martin’s Lane to St Martin-in-theFields. The church has never looked better. When opened in 1721 it was in a narrow street but now, after restoration, James Gibbs’s fine frontage can be seen from across Trafalgar Square. Reverend Nicholas Holtam is managing success with five Sunday services, many memorial services, daily concerts, a mission to the homeless and a popular cafe-in-the-crypt.

Look at the extraordinary new east window and decide if you too think it looks like an elliptical cross.

Having paid a visit to St Martin’s Les Routiers-approved café, you will be ready to wind through the narrow streets at the back to find St Paul’s, the actors’ church, in Covent Garden. Its architect was a costume and stage designer but he got a bit confused over his plans for the church so there are no doors under the portico. It soon proved a handy stage for the very first Punch and Judy show. You will have to go in the side door but it’s worth it to find the garden and the interior walls covered with memorials to stage and film stars. But enter quietly so as not to disturb the two cats, Inigo and Jones.

To the south in Maiden Lane is Corpus Christi. The interior is like a grotto, with very little natural light, making it the perfect place for individual prayer. The window showing Juliana of Liege, founder of the Corpus Christi festival, was given by Charles Dickens’s friend Percy Fitzgerald.

The parallel road to the south is the Strand where in the middle of the road is James Gibbs’s other church, St Mary-leStrand. He was just back from Rome, so gave the building an entrance modelled on Santa Maria della Pace.

Further east along the Strand, the walk reaches its climax, where the traffic swirls round St Clement Danes. This was rebuilt after the war to become the RAF Church and a living memorial to those who died then and since. Look in at the west end to see gold, frankincense and myrrh. The Oranges and Lemons nursery rhyme is rung out on a carillon four times a day.

Walk round the outside to the east end to see a statue of Samuel Johnson who knew the inside of St Clement’s. He would have enjoyed this church crawl, for he famously observed that ‘when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life’.

Leigh Hatts has written London’s Best Churches: An Illustrated Guide. Details and a review can be found on page 56.

LIFE AFTER BACH

An exploration of the organ music of Franz Liszt with Peter King

When in 1848 Franz Liszt (18111886) renounced his career as a virtuoso superstar and settled in Weimar as Kappelmeister, he devoted himself to conducting and composition, reworking earlier compositions and creating some of his greatest masterpieces. This little town soon became a mecca for musicians from all over Europe who came to study with the maestro, pianists and composers alike. Among his disciples were Julius Reubke, whose father was an organ-builder, and an organist called Alexander Winterberger. Not long before, Liszt had transcribed for piano six of J S Bach’s great organ Preludes and Fugues (BWV 543-8). The experience of studying Bach’s organ works, the fact

that he was now operating in the very place where Bach himself had worked and the enthusiasms of these local organists seems to have awakened Liszt’s interest in the organ. Together with another local organist, Alexander Gottschalg, Liszt explored churches in the Weimar area.

Within two years Liszt had produced his first, and longest organ piece, the mighty Fantasia and Fugue on ‘Ad nos, ad salutarem undam’. The original edition, published by Breitkopf and Härtel, prints the organ version sandwiched between the two piano parts of a version for piano duet [example 1]. The seven staves make it an impractical performing edition, but it is worth studying to see how much of the organ

bass line Liszt ascribed to the pedals and how much to the hands, also those (few) places where he elaborated the organ version for the pianists.

This is no ordinary fantasia and fugue; playing at over half an hour, it is a milestone in organ composition, breaking new ground by its very length, by demanding a greater dynamic range and a wider tonal palette than anything that had gone before, by introducing virtuoso keyboard writing and by creating a new type of structure built on the sort of thematic transformation which is the principal building block of works such as the Piano Sonata in B minor. At a stroke Liszt brought organ repertoire into line with contemporary mainstream repertoire.

Ladegast Organ in Merseburg Cathedral.

Photo © Gary Cole (Regent Records).

Inspired by the religious and revolutionary themes of Meyerbeer’s opera Le Prophète, Liszt’s organ piece is based on the chorale sung by the three Anabaptists in Act I. The theme, as adapted by Liszt [example 1b], isn’t heard until the beginning of the central adagio [examples 2a and 2b], but elements of it are heard in practically every bar of the piece.

The fertility of Liszt’s imagination is well illustrated by the contrasting treatments of bars 5 & 6 of the chorale: compare, for instance, the trumpet fanfare passages appearing differently in both fantasia and fugue, with the warm lyricism of the same figure in the adagio. Close inspection will reveal that the recitatives, manual cadenzas, and even the famous ‘Pedal’ semiquavers of the volcanic introduction which introduces the fugue are all derived from elements of the chorale tune. The blaze of C major which brings the work

to its triumphant conclusion, though denied the splendour of full orchestra and chorus, paved the way for the choral ending of Liszt’s Faust Symphony, which, in its turn was to be the prototype for Mahler’s two choral symphonic finales.

With one composition Liszt had removed the spectre of Bach which had dogged serious composers writing for the organ in the century following Bach’s death. Whatever sonorities were in his head, Mozart’s organ compositions were destined for a puny automaton in a clock; Schumann confined himself to canons and conventional preludes & fugues, and Mendelssohn’s organ music, apart from the occasional song without words (though denied the modernism of that title) and a brief flirtation with orchestral and piano textures in the recitative and finale that end Sonata I, is entirely made up of traditional organ

structures such as preludes, fugues, variations, and chorale fantasias.

Having brought the organ well into the nineteenth century with Ad nos, with his two next largest organ works, the Prelude and Fugue on BACH and the Variations on ‘Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen’ Liszt was to go even further, writing harmonies which in their chromatic ambiguity foreshadow the atonalism of Schoenberg and his followers [examples 2 & 3].

BACH is such a familiar work that it is easy to forget what a ground-breaking composition it is. Nominally in the key of B flat it is, incredibly, not until bar 68 that we first hear the tonic chord. Thereafter it is hardly touched until the final page of the work. This homage to Bach (the note known as B flat in English speaking countries is called B in German, likewise our B natural the Germans know as H) is a free fantasia which includes a fugal exposition [example 2]. A more concise work than Ad nos, there is less call for delicacy, so less need for a colourful palette of quiet stops, and the blood and thunder is rather more concentrated than in the earlier work. Although usually played on large romantic organs, this music sounds equally well on a moderate sized two-manual baroque organ (with equal temperament!). The author was once in discussion with a well-known English virtuoso about a programme to be played in The Netherlands on just such an instrument, which sported only a limited pedal division; “Play BACH,” he suggested, “You only need four pedal notes” – An exaggeration, of course, but the piece, when played, did seem amazingly effective.

Originally written for the opening of the new Ladegast organ in Merseburg Cathedral in 1855 the Prelude and Fugue on BACH was not finished in time so Ad nos was played instead (by Winterberger). BACH was completed and premiered the following year. Liszt revised it in 1870 and produced a piano version the following year. Liszt himself preferred the second version1; that is the version which is usually played. The way Liszt expanded the original textures when writing for the piano [example 4], filling out textures by means of chords, arpeggios, octaves, blind octaves, etc demonstrates Liszt’s unique affinity with the piano. It could have been about Ad nos or BACH that Saint-Saëns was thinking when he wrote of Liszt’s Weimar period music as ‘music from a new world’2 – a fitting description of this ground-breaking music.

Liszt wrote the Variations on ‘Weinen,

Example 1

Example 1b Liszt’s version of Meyerbeer’s theme from Le Prophète

Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen’ as a piano piece in 1862 after he had moved to Rome, producing an organ version the following year. It was the death of his daughter Blandine that moved him to write this deeply serious and powerful piece. In a process that is the converse of BACH, Weinen, Klagen provides an insight into how Liszt adapted pianistic writing to organ sonority [example 5].

The variations are based on a descending basso ostinato from Bach’s cantata of the same name; it also appears in the Crucifixus of the B minor Mass. After an arresting introduction, the variations set out much in the manner of a chaconne, but Liszt’s imagination refuses to be constrained either metrically or tonally – indeed, his chromaticism is all but atonal [example 6].

The music passes through different phases of grief, rising to a fever of anguish before it breaks down in a recitative, to be restored by the consoling diatonic harmonies of the chorale Was Gott tut das ist wohlgetan, the chorale with which Bach had ended his cantata. This is powerful music and it is not easy; audiences expecting a showpiece such as BACH, or the lyricism of Ad nos will have to work hard, but given an instrument with both power and colour and a performer with the skill to create and maintain the right degree of tension, it is more than worth the effort.

Liszt wrote several other original organ works, including a Missa pro organo, but of greater interest are some of the transcriptions either made by the composer of his own compositions, or made by his pupil Gottschalg, but altered and approved by Liszt.

The line between original composition, transcription and reworking, never clear, is further blurred by Liszt’s habit of reworking his compositions, either for other media (piano solo, piano duet, organ, orchestra, etc), or for the original instrument, but in a different version. After Weinen Klagen , three other reworkings deserve special mention: Evocation à la Chapelle Sixtine, which also dates from Liszt’s Rome years, exists in an unpublished orchestral version as well as the organ arrangement. It is a fantasia based on two works by composers associated with the Sistine Chapel, Gregori Allegri’s Miserere, and the motet Ave verum corpus natum by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart who, according to legend, circumvented the papal ban on music leaving the chapel by writing out the whole Miserere from memory after one hearing. Audiences enjoy hearing what Liszt makes of these

Example 2 the chromatic fugal exposition in BACH

Example 2a

Example 2b

two well-known pieces. The Trauerode is an organ version of Les Morts , an ‘Oration for orchestra’ the first of Trois Odes Funèbres. It is an elegy written in 1860 in memory of Liszt’s son, Daniel, who had died aged 20 the previous year. Throughout the orchestral (though not the organ) score is written a prose passage by Lamennais: ‘They too have lived on this earth; they have passed down the river of time; their voices were heard on its banks, and then were heard no more... blessed are they who die in the Lord.’ This last phrase recurs periodically throughout the work like a refrain, and each time the male chorus (which Liszt added to the orchestral version in 1866) enters with the words ‘Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur’. At the climax the chorus sings words from the Te Deum, before the music returns to the quiet mood of the opening. The work is validly performed without the chorus, but knowledge of the words assists the listener’s appreciation of this very personal tribute.

The symphonic poem (a genre invented by Liszt) Orpheus (1854) was inspired by the painting on an Etruscan vase in the Louvre; it shows the mythical musician taming wild beasts. Although the opening bars suggest Orpheus tuning his lyre, the music does not set out to tell a story in musical terms; rather it endeavours to portray the image of music (or art) as a civilising influence on mankind. The music, characterised by its lyricism and delicacy has a poetic quality and a nobility which place it on a high plane. The final bars, according to Liszt’s preface, suggest ‘Tones rising gradually like clouds of incense’. The organ version by Gottschalg, revised and approved by Liszt, dates from c1860. Some organists may feel that, as with other Liszt organ versions, the Orpheus score is over-simplified and benefits from some restoration of orchestral textures. Other smaller scale reworkings include the Consolations in E and D flat and Excelsior! (from a song to words by Longfellow) – a marvellous three-minute curtain raiser.

It is likely that it was for the purpose of reworking compositions for piano or organ that Liszt used the extraordinary instrument in his study in Pest. Variously described as ‘PianoMelodium’, ‘Orgel-Piano’ or ‘Pianoforte-Harmonium’, it was a hybrid instrument built to Liszt’s own specification, part piano, part harmonium, manufactured by Alexandre, Père et Fils (Harmonium) and P Sébastian Erard (Piano). The

Example 3 atonality in Weinen Klagen

Example 4 Liszt’s expansion of organ textures when re writing BACHfor piano

Example 5 the complexity of Liszt’s original piano writing in Weinen Klagen

upper manual is a seven-octave piano, the lower a divided harmonium of five octaves with the usual assortment of stops and harmonium devices. It is easy to imagine Liszt experimenting with different organ and piano textures on this bizarre contraption.

It may be the transcriptions of the two Légendes: St Francis Preaching to the Birds –by Camille Saint-Saëns (whom Liszt declared to be the greatest organist in the world) and St Francis of Paola Walking on the Waves – by Max Reger that have encouraged others to follow suit. While the reincarnation of Liszt’s musical aviary at the hands of SaintSaëns on the organ of La Madeleine would surely prove a match for Messiaen’s chirruping down the road at La Trinité, the tempest that Reger whips up from Liszt’s waves makes the storms of Lemmens and Lefébure-Wély seem like a light breeze. Even so, it is the serene nobility of the music which Liszt bestows on the two saints which make these pieces so remarkable.

Two of the finest movements from the cycle Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses have recently been transcribed by distinguished organists: Johannes Geffert has made an unpublished transcription of Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude, and Nicolas Kynaston has transcribed Funérailles, October 1849. These contrasting pieces – the one a meditation on the divine of which Messiaen would be proud, the other an elegy on a heroic scale – are masterpieces of the highest calibre, and both transfer to the organ as if it were their natural habitat.

The playing of organ transcriptions is still a controversial area. The nineteenthcentury justification that they were bringing symphonic music to a wider audience no longer applies, indeed quite the reverse; it is more likely that the orchestration of an organ work will bring it to a wider audience. So do organ transcriptions justify themselves in their own right? Bach’s transcriptions of Vivaldi Concerti are usually accepted without question (as are his many reworkings of his own music). An organ transcription of Liszt’s piano Consolation in D flat with its hymn-like theme and lasting some three minutes is likely to fare better than the Faust Symphony,

clocking in at nearly fifty minutes, and scored for full orchestra, male chorus and tenor soloist. All depends on the relationship between music, player, instrument and audience.

Liszt was the first composer to introduce the organ into the orchestra in symphonic music – in the Faust (1854/1857) and Danté (1855-6) Symphonies . Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Berlioz had all included the organ in the orchestra but, with the exception of the Berlioz Te Deum this was in a quasi continuo role (and only in religious works involving a choir) and Berlioz was writing for the particular circumstances at S Eustache (Paris) where the orchestra and chorus were at the opposite end of the church from the organ which was therefore playing not with the orchestra but against it. Liszt was the first to include the organ as a colour in its own right, chiefly as an aid to sostenuto, but also with a distinctive role in its own right in Hunnenschlacht (1857). Liszt writes detailed instructions in the score about the placing of the organ behind the orchestra. The organ enters in the second half of the piece after the defeat of Attila the Hun by Theodoric and his christian forces, playing the chorale ‘Crux fidelis’, first of all dolce religioso, then fortissimo. At the end, the organ holds the final C major chord long after the rest of the orchestra has fallen silent (beating Strauss with the trick nearly forty years before Also sprach Zarathustra), symbolising the universal victory of love over hate in men’s hearts. Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Elgar and others (even Rachmaninov, Bartok and Szymanovski) have followed Liszt’s lead, greatly to the advantage of the bank accounts of those organists associated with symphony orchestras.

Many of Liszt’s organ works, whether original or transcribed, are inspired by religious, or quasi religious, subjects. Many use hymn-like thematic material. Several pay homage to earlier composers. Two are written in memory of his dead children. But despite its religious nature, Liszt’s organ music is essentially concert music. Many of the organs which Liszt encountered were in and around Weimar, notably of course

the Ladegast organ in Merseburg Cathedral. This large instrument was not greatly different to the organs that Bach encountered in the same part of Germany over a hundred years previously. Liszt was at least as familiar with the organs of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll in Paris (with the swell boxes and multiple reed stops that were less in abundance around Weimar) where he regularly heard Widor play at S Sulpice and Saint-Saëns at La Madeleine. Any claim that a particular type of instrument is right for Liszt will be false; Liszt’s music is of such stature that, like Bach’s, it sounds well on almost any instrument.

While most pianists recognise their debt to Franz Liszt, he is still largely ignored by organists. In a period when most major composers (Chopin, Berlioz, Verdi, Wagner, Bruckner, Grieg, Strauss, Mahler, Debussy, etc) contributed little to the organ repertoire or ignored the instrument completely, Liszt, followed by Reubke (one piece, and heavily indebted to Liszt), Franck and Saint-Saëns stand almost alone in writing a corpus of the highest quality music for the organ. Liszt’s music suits the church and the concert hall equally well; more than any other organ music it is imbued with fullblooded romanticism; in its extraordinary chromaticism it provides us with a link between Bach and Schoenberg and through Liszt’s unique religious credo it bridges the gap between Bach and Messiaen. But more than this, Liszt has given the organ a body of music which, with the exception of pianists and violinists, any other instrumentalist would envy. The bi-centenary of the composer’s birth gives us a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the man who gave the organ new life after Bach and paved the way for all who wrote for it subsequently.

A longer version of this article will appear in Organists’ Review

The Essential Liszt: Regent REGCD278 (2 CDs at ‘2 for 1’ price) Peter King plays all the major organ works of Liszt, together with transcriptions by Saint-Saëns, Reger, Lemare and King, on the Klais Organ of Bath Abbey. Due for release early in 2011.

1 Marilyn Kielniarz, The Liszt Companion, edited Ben Arnold, Greenwood Press, Westport CT, 2002. 201

2 James Harding, Saint-Saëns and his Circle, Chapman and Hall, 1965

Example 6 atonality in Weinen Klagen

Sibthorp makes THE NATIONAL ARCHIVE OF ANGLICAN CHANTS 2010

Peter W J Kirk

An interesting set of manuscripts was sent to me earlier this year and after acquiring around 80 totally new chants I found this delightful single in D flat major. Yes, it is by Friends of Cathedral Music founder, the Revd Ronald Ellwood Sibthorp (1911-1990). I thought I might share this chant with you.

This delightful single chant was (it appears) in a collection of chants that could have been in line for inclusion in The Anglican Chant Book published by Novello and Company Ltd. circa 1956.

The collection now is somewhere in the region of 14538. I envisaged producing some anthologies of the best within this archive. Volume One is currently being proof-read and consists of chants by some of the greatest Victorian chant composers. Chants that are included in Volume One are bySir Joseph Barnby (97 chants), Sir John Goss (41), Sir John Stainer (70), James Turle (85), Robert Turle (3), Dr TA Walmisley (25), his father, Thomas Forbes Walmisley (2) and for that special anniversary, Dr Samuel Sebastian Wesley (42). Looking at possibilities for Volume 2, this could consist of –Dr William Crotch (100) chants, Sir George Job Elvey (59), Dr Stephen Elvey (22), John Browning Lott (28), Dr Arthur Henry Mann (42), Sir Herbert Stanley Oakeley (44), Revd Sir Frederick Arthur Gore Ouseley (81) and Sir Robert Prescott Stewart (18).

I know there could be another four volumes of Victorian Chants, composers of high rank and high output such as Henry Thomas Smart (remember the G major double for the Te Deum?), Gerard Francis Cobb, Sir John Frederick Bridge, Alfred William Bennett and Dr George John Bennett, who crosses over into the twentieth century. Arthur Henry Brown and Revd William Henry Havergal with over one hundred chants written by each of them. There is a double chant by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s Consort. The list is endless. An 18th century volume could contain the chants of Revd Robert Philip Goodenough, Dr Thomas Sanders Dupuis, Dr John Clark Whitfield. Dr John Camidge and Matthew Camidge of York, Dr William and Dr Philip Hayes, father and son then residing in Oxford. They were known as ‘Large and Very Large’, Philip, the son, being so large that he often missed his appointments, this due to his excessive size and, also, that he could not fit into the Chaise, and certainly not the Sedan chair! I have a hilarious cartoon of Dr Philip Hayes at the organ.

Finally, if you are still with me, there could be a volume of 300 or so male voice chants, ATB, AATB, ATTB, ATBB, all worth an airing on those ‘men only evenings’.

peterkirk1685@yahoo.co.uk

DEATH IN THE VESTRY

and other stories

by Humphrey Clucas

89 pages

ISBN 978 0 95504703 9

An elderly village organist is the detective in the opening trio of crime stories, starting with a murder for which several church members have motives. Three fables follow; the longest records the Devil’s involvement in cricket. Finally, an owl has a curious effect on the music and worship of Westminster Abbey, and then a choir man and his girlfriend find themselves part of an old Abbey legend.

To order, send a cheque for £7.50 (including P&P), made out to Humphrey Clucas, at ;

The Lewin Press

19 Norman Road, Sutton, Surrey, SM1 2TB

Regent Records PAST, PRESENT

Certainly I feel very privileged working with some of the country’s finest cathedral choirs and organists, spending several days at a time in a succession of wonderful buildings and gaining insights into many different approaches to choir training.

I’d not had the benefit of being a chorister in any kind of choral establishment and a love of church music came only in my teens. At the age of 13 I took on a local church organist’s job in my home town of Dudley. ‘More confidence than competence’ was how the job was advertised – which is just as well as I didn’t actually play the organ, although I did have Grade 8 on the piano.

A couple of years later I finally succumbed to having my first organ lesson with Timothy Lees, Music Master at my school, Dudley Grammar. He gave me Bach’s 1st Trio Sonata and In dir ist freude and said ‘come back when you can play those’. I never did have another formal lesson with him, but shortly afterwards in 1973 I started lessons with Dr David Rendell, the assistant at St Peter’s Collegiate Church in Wolverhampton (and where much later I directed the music between 1998 and 2001 – Dr Rendell was still the assistant, and has this year retired after 40 year’s service!) I did, however, become Tim Lees’s assistant at St Mary’s, Kidderminster, which had a mixed parish church choir with great ambitions and an astonishing repertoire (Walton Chichester Service, Poulenc Mass in G....). I played for their first cathedral visit to Lincoln in 1974, at the age of 16, and thought: ‘this is what I want to do!’

Firstly to the Royal College of Music, where I studied the organ with Richard Popplewell, and inexplicably obtained one of the highest-ever marks awarded in the ARCM Organ Performing diploma (I believe Margaret Phillips, Jane Watts and Jonathan Rennert are the only people to have done better!) and the Coventry Cathedral Recital Award for FRCO. During my final year there I was Assistant Organist at Birmingham Cathedral, commuting between London and Birmingham on Friday afternoon to play for Evensong, and

returning to London after Evensong on Sunday. I relinquished the Birmingham position to take up an organ scholarship at Cambridge (Emmanuel College), and I naïvely thought a path directly into cathedral music was now assured.

It wasn’t! After teaching music at a couple of public schools I returned to London and freelanced, including playing on an occasional basis at St Paul’s. It was during this time that the idea of starting a record company took hold. In 1987 I made a recording conducting my chamber choir singing Poulenc and Langlais, recorded in Norwich Cathedral during the evenings of the choir’s trip there that summer. To find someone to produce and engineer the recording I looked on the back of Hyperion discs of the Corydon Singers: the names Mark Brown and Antony Howell were very much in evidence. They were duly tracked down and booked and I had my first experience of a professional recording session. I greatly admired Mark’s easy and encouraging manner, and witty retorts over the talk-back speaker: “I think we’d like to try and record more than one bar at a time” and “I hope you know this pitchpipe has been used for even important recordings!” when I complained about the discrepancy in pitch between a G and C he was blowing.

After the mastertape was edited (which took Mark about a year...) I was left with the question of what to do with it. The decision to start my own label was actually an easy one and the initial premise was to make recordings promoting young artists, both instrumental and vocal, and not at all either a ‘vanity’ or specialist ‘choral/organ’ label. I was organist of St Mark’s Church, Regent’s Park in London at the time and ‘Regent’ was the first – actually the only – name we came up with! I subsequently made several further recordings with my choir, all with Mark Brown producing. Some of these were for other companies, including a disc of Handel choruses for the short-lived Novello label. The company concerned agreed to hire whatever orchestra I wanted to use and I decided the City of London Sinfonia was the one (absolutely nothing against

“You’ve got the best cathedral job in the country,” said one of our cathedral organists at the end of a set of recording sessions recently.

Gary Cole

AND FUTURE

original instruments!), largely because it was very ‘userfriendly’ as John Rutter described it!

Still very much on the trail of an, as yet, elusive cathedral position, the turning point came in 1989 when I had a call out of the blue from Hyperion: “Mark Brown has got himself double-booked and suggested we ask you if you could produce a recording for us?” “What is it?” I asked, hoping the slight tremble in my voice was not evident. “Winchester Cathedral Choir, with David Hill.” ‘Stay cool!’ I thought. “I’ll have to see whether I can fit you in” I replied nonchalantly, whilst shaking uncontrollably.

After that there was no looking back and more bookings from Hyperion and other labels including Chandos and Naxos quickly followed.

During the 1990s Regent was almost exclusively a production company producing mastertapes for the aforementioned labels, amongst many others, and programmes for BBC Radio 3, together with private CD recordings. The recordings covered all genres: solo piano, chamber music, orchestral, and brass bands. It was not until the early years of the new century that we saw the potential to develop Regent’s own identity as a serious choral/organ label, and the first major releases were in 2001, with the first three titles in The English Cathedral Series, featuring the organists of the three local cathedrals: Worcester (Adrian Lucas), Birmingham (Marcus Huxley) and Lichfield (Andrew Lumsden). The idea behind this series grew out of a passion for English organ music and English organs (makes a change from French!), and was to bring up to date the iconic EMI Great Cathedral Organ series, featuring the current cathedral organists playing their own instruments. This series has been a great success and all the volumes have been recorded in high-resolution surround sound, although an initial idea to produce DVDs was not feasible with the costs being prohibitive at the time the series started. The series is now up to volume XVI, with the latest release from Peter Wright at Southwark.

Work for other labels has always meant we need to remain at the forefront of current technological advances, utilizing optical disc recorders, and later hard disc recorders, and recording in higher sample and bit rates and surround sound, virtually as soon as they were commercially available. There is

an increased dynamic range and depth with 24-bit hard disc recording compared with, for example,16-bit DAT. There will always be much discussion as to whether this microphone, or microphone technique, is better than that microphone, or microphone technique – there are entire web boards devoted to it! We take a very philosophical view and ensure we have a wide range of microphones available to help get the best result we can in every circumstance. We make use of the well-known and much-respected Soundfield microphone, but also have a selection of the world’s finest microphones from DPA (formerly B&K), Neumann, Schoeps, AKG and Sennheiser, which come into their own particularly in difficult acoustic situations when there simply isn’t a single, ideal, listening spot. We also ensure we have sufficient duplicate equipment so that no failure (other than power cuts!) will delay a session more than a matter of minutes. Over the last twenty years we have made nearly 600 recordings, of which about 350 have been for other record labels. During that time cathedral electrics have blown up and vestries have flooded! Actually, both of those things happened in the same cathedral on different recording sessions. No names, no pack-drill!

Far more important than any technology is building longterm relationships with the artists we record. Over the last few years these include on-going projects with Matthew Owens at Wells (including two recordings of the music of David Bednall), Truro Cathedral Choir, formerly with Robert Sharpe and now Christopher Gray, and York Minster Choir, with Robert Sharpe. We have recently launched the ‘York Minster Edition’, a special imprint featuring new recordings from the Minster. The first releases include a disc of anthems by Wesley, placed in historical context with Mendelssohn and their English contemporaries, and J S W Works for Organ – John Scott Whiteley playing his own compositions, and released to celebrate his retirement from the Minster after 35 years. In October we released our first recording from the choirs of Winchester Cathedral, directed by Andrew Lumsden.

The voice customers usually hear when calling Regent Records is that of the other half of the business, my wife, Pippa. Pippa had been a choral scholar (reading biochemistry) at King’s College, London, where the Director

of Music at the time was the late Ernie Warrell (sometime organist of Southwark Cathedral). Pippa deals with all the administration of the business and generally does the design and typesetting for CD booklets.

We currently have over 30 titles waiting for release in the coming twelve months. These include further choral discs from York, Truro and Wells. There are double CDs of Liszt’s organ music and the complete organ music of Sir William Harris from Peter King at Bath Abbey and Timothy ByramWigfield at Windsor respectively, and we have just finished recording the final sessions in a 16-disc ‘complete’ Bach with Margaret Phillips, featuring the best of historic and modern instruments, mostly in Holland and Germany. In fact, the only ‘modern’ instruments featured in this series were the magnificent Bach-style organ, built by Bernard Aubertin in St Louis-en-L’Île,

The English Cathedral Series is still ‘work in progress’ – whether we’ll make it to all 42 Anglican cathedrals in England, I don’t know. Watch this space!

Gary Cole is Managing Director of Regent Records: www.regentrecords.com

Paris, in 2004,

and the Metzler in Trinity College, Cambridge – another wonderful instrument – based around a seventeen-century Father Smith diapason chorus, and benefiting enormously from being tuned in meantone temperament, arguably making it the only large organ in the UK that actually sounds like a real ‘historic’ continental organ.

We have just released our fifth recording with Thomas Trotter, playing Schumann on the historic Ladegast organ in Merseburg Cathedral, and in August recorded the audio and video for our first DVD: The Town Hall Tradition featuring Thomas at the Town Hall, Birmingham, in a collection of virtuoso transcriptions. Recorded in high resolution surround sound and full HD video, the DVD, with audio CD included, will be released in the spring.

Working with young artists was always one of our original aims, and we have just released a third disc from the brilliant young organist William Saunders, playing the organ of Brentwood Cathedral. The disc includes the first complete recording of the hilarious Animal Parade suite by former St John’s College, Cambridge organ scholar, Iain Farrington. We’re also delighted to have helped bring the music of composer David Bednall to a wider audience with, to date, three discs of his music – two with Wells Cathedral Choir, and one with the Chamber Choir of St Mary’s School, Calne, which features his Requiem – described by the Yorkshire Post as ‘one of the most enjoyable British choral works to emerge in decades’. It is also a great pleasure to work with young singers and we

have on-going recordings with the chapel choirs of Christ’s and Selwyn Colleges in Cambridge.

Philip Moore, FCM Editorial Adviser Matthew Owens and Gary Cole.

LETTERS

Mike Wheeler, Derby.

Andrew Sims’ article Singing in Tune (May 2010) has some valuable points to make about the effect of equal temperament as a factor in choirs losing pitch. I must, though, take issue with the references to ‘smiley faces’ in the article’s heading, and the need to ‘keep them smiling’ in his final paragraph.

A few years ago I was privileged to observe Emma Kirkby [FCM VicePresident –Ed] giving a masterclass at Dartington Summer School. She was working with one student on vowel sounds, and there was one thing she particularly insisted on: “Never smile when you sing!” As she explained, broadening the mouth into a smile shape makes too much tension in the cheek muscles. The lips should be forward in a pout and loose, and the vowel sounds controlled by the position of the tongue inside the mouth.

It was quite a shock to hear her say

All general points and comments welcomed. Please send letters by 4 February 2011 to: The Editor, 21 Belle Vue Terrace, RIPON, North Yorkshire HG4 2QS ajpalmer@lineone.net Letters may be shortened for publication.

this, as it went counter to what I’d heard from so many choral conductors over the years, but I’ve since tried to put her recommendations into practice in my own singing, and do you know what? She’s absolutely right.

So the next time a conductor tells you to smile to keep the pitch up or to make a nice bright ‘ee’ sound, treat the comment with scepticism at the very least, even if open rebellion is, for the moment, out of the question.

Smile with your eyes by all means, but not your mouth.

David Martin, York.

I read with interest Scott Farrell’s article (CATHEDRAL MUSIC, November 2009) on the changes he has made in the choral regime of Rochester Cathedral. But my mouth fell open when I saw the inappropriate picture on the last page of the article. It shows Mr. Farrell and the choir boys in front of an altar.

Mr Farrell is standing still, but the boys are prancing and pulling faces, as if they have been told to imitate a band of especially excitable apes and monkeys.

The picture is inappropriate for two reasons. Firstly, an altar is supposed to be a holy place in a holy space; it should never be the venue for boyish antics. Secondly, a choir is only as good as its discipline. It may be that in normal circumstances, Mr Farrell keeps good discipline in his choir but the photo does not inspire confidence in this. Rather, it suggests that he is going out of his way to tell the boys that he is not a stuffed shirt whose brain cells are chiefly connected by cobwebs. To be sure, an excess of stuffed shirtery can alienate boys. But it is also possible to go too far in the other direction.

It may be that there is a valid explanation for the posing of this picture. If there is, perhaps Mr Farrell, or some other reader, can explain the matter in a letter on this page.

2010 Festivals OVERVIEW Roger Tucker

The heartening news is that there are now more music festivals than ever. They are getting longer and increasingly diversified. The hugely eclectic annual City of London Festival [CoLF], founded in 1962, which came first in my diary this summer, had a record number of events – over 160 (105 of these were free), held in 68 City venues from the intimate Apothecaries’ Hall to St Paul’s Cathedral, the magnificent setting for the Festival Opening Service and three sell-out choral concerts. First an inspired performance of Monteverdi’s Vespersof 1610, given by the St Paul’s Choir of men and boys, under the Cathedral’s Director of Music, Andrew Carwood, with His Majesty’s Sagbutts and Cornetts adding their unique sonority. The choir was on top form, and under this Renaissance expert, the reading was as powerfully impressive as the architectural setting. The baroque coloratura style required of the solo voices of Cecilia Osmond, Rebecca Outram and Mark Wilde was dazzling. A week later I was back under the dome, again a perfect setting for Haydn’s oratorio The Creation given by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the BBC National Chorus of Wales, directed by Thierry Fischer, who secured a serene performance and again the soloists, Julia Doyle, James Gilchrist and Matthew Brook soared and shone in the vast space, with the clearest articulation. The medieval church of St Bartholomew-the-

Great, with its Norman arcading subtly lit, made a magical setting for two concerts of Portuguese choral music (a theme of CoLF 2010). It is disappointing to note that once again CoLF did not itself arrange any organ recitals, although Peter Wright and Stephen Disley each played brilliantly at Southwark Cathedral in the regular Monday slot. At St Michael Cornhill the restoration of the organ was turned into a project to enable children to learn about the way pipe organs work. [In the earlier years of the CoLF, organ recitals were given on some of the City’s historic instruments, thus utilising a valuable part of its heritage at low cost].

The Southern Cathedrals Festival, this year at Chichester, had its 50th Anniversary, which was marked by a special BBC broadcast of Choral Evensong, the first ever from the SCF, recorded on the Saturday for a September transmission on Radio 3. The music of Samuel Sebastian Wesley (this is his bicentennial year) featured heavily, except for the anthem, William Harris’s Faire is the heaven. The service was superbly sung by the combined choirs of Chichester, Salisbury and Winchester, with the girl choristers of Salisbury and Winchester singing the top line, directed by Sarah Baldock and the organ was brilliantly played by Simon Lawford, who delighted us throughout the festival. The combined choirs, this time with the boy choristers, directed by Sarah Baldock, sang for the Festival Eucharist, using Palestrina’s wonderful Missa Papae Marcelli as the service setting. To match the high Renaissance tone of this, the communion motet was Guerrero’s O Sacrum Convivium. Superb! In Saturday’s main Festival Concert we had a programme of 20th century works, beginning with Elgar’s Give unto the Lord and ending with Parry’s stirring ode Blest Pair of Sirens. The centrepiece was Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, one of the most famous and successful festival commissions of Chichester’s Dean Walter Hussey, who then apparently omitted to pay the composer a fee for this masterpiece! The expressive harp soloist was Katie Flanaghan. Sarah Baldock’s first SCF as director benefited from her inspired choices and careful planning, in which she was well supported by her choir and the festival team.

The Three Choirs Festival at Gloucester was also Adrian Partington’s first as director. Unlike in 2007, there were no special problems due to floods or collapsing conductors. Nowadays, the festival has the great asset of the Philharmonia Orchestra resident for eight days, which alone puts Three Choirs in a class by itself. The opening concert on Saturday gave us Elgar’s oratorio The Kingdom with the Festival Chorus, plus Susan Gritton, Pamela Helen Stephen, Adrian Thompson, Roderick Williams and Ashley Grote at the organ. It is an ideal choice for the opener – confident, richly harmonic, with great choral gravitas.

The Opening Service earlier, using the Festival Chorus, the Cathedral Choir and the Philharmonia Brass, had given us splendid settings by Lili Boulanger, Leighton, Vaughan

Monteverdi Vespers at St Pauls –Photo Robert Piwko © CoLF

Williams and the composer-in-residence, John Joubert, whose first commission was a Jubilate. On Sunday we had the Festival Eucharist, using Edmund Rubbra’s setting Missa Cantuariensis (1946). The pleasing communion motets were composed for this service at the Director's request by Mark Blatchly, exGloucester Assistant Organist.

That evening gave us Mahler’s Symphony No 2‘Resurrection’, in another memorable concert by the Festival Chorus and the Philharmonia under the inspiring baton of Jac van Steen, the vibrant solos from Ailish Tynan and Susan Bickley being clearly audible throughout the vast space. For me the reading ranked high in Mahler annals. On Monday evening the Chorus and the Philharmonia under Adrian Partington gave us the second Joubert commission An English Requiem, a very accessible work, using well-known text from a modern version of the Bible to create six movements. The concert had begun

with the Brahms Academic Festival Overture, at the climax of which the Chorus sprang to life and sang Gaudeamus Igitur, to the surprise of everyone (including the lighting controllers!) but it was a superb touch.

Tuesday night’s concert, directed by Sir Roger Norrington, was disappointing: three works from 1910 by Vaughan Williams, Holst and Elgar. This last was one of his greatest orchestral works, the Violin Concerto, in which there were both performance and audibility problems. The French violinist, Philippe Graffin, was erratic, with poor intonation and out of rapport with the conductor but from where I was sitting in the Quire it was hard to hear, a solo violin does not carry well in such a vast acoustic. A very satisfying all-Mozart concert on Wednesday gave the Philharmonia the evening off, in favour of the fine Music for Awhile Orchestra, directed by Geraint Bowen: Symphony No.38 in part one and the Mass in C minor K427 in part two.

This great work was powerfully driven and although incomplete has an overwhelming impact, especially with such a fine quartet of soloists. On Thursday we had a wonderful performance of Monteverdi’s masterpiece L’Orfeo with the excellent New London Consort under Philip Pickett, with a cast of twelve, in a semi-staged production by Jonathan Miller. This was one of the high points of the week, with superb singing and acting, which fully exploited the space west of the organ, all action being well-lit and covered by CCTV, a really exciting experience of ‘opera in the round’ – one of the spirits almost jumped into my lap – this was a Three Choirs tour de force!

On my last day I heard a splendid cathedral organ recital by Simon Preston (including a Gershwin medley), then the excellent Three Choirs Festival Youth Choir’s Debut Concert under Adrian Partington in Tewkesbury Abbey (three Handel Coronation Anthems and Bach’s Magnificat), back to Gloucester for the Wesley Anniversary Choral Evensong, directed by Geraint Bowen, preceded by Peter Dyke’s playing Bach, Mendelssohn and C Wesley’s Variations on ‘God Save the King’ Then a nostalgic concert, sensitively directed by Adrian Lucas: Gurney’s The Trumpet, Elgar’s Sea Pictures and Finzi’s Intimations of Immortality. Sarah Connolly and James Gilchrist were the expressive soloists. Earlier in the week Ashley Grote gave us virtuosic playing of rare quality on the cathedral organ in works by Sanders, Joubert, Briggs, Schumann, Holst and Brewer. There was also a deft RCO recital at St Peter’s by Peter Holder. Late night I heard a beautifully sung Compline and a very polished harp duo recital. The liturgical thread which runs through the week and makes time for spiritual renewal and reflection is Choral Evensong, on most days preceded by an organ recital, except before the first-ever live broadcast on Radio 3. The settings chosen, taken over the week and heard sitting in the soaring Quire space at Gloucester are a cumulatively uplifting experience. If you can stand the pace, the Three Choirs is a unique, so-rewarding experience.

Combined choirs at the Southern Cathedrals Festival

Photo © Peter Hamilton

Gloucester Three Choirs Concert –Photo Roger Tucker

BOOK & MUSIC REVIEWS

THE WESSEX PSALTER

Edd. J D Riding and N J Hale, The Phoenix Press (c/o The Royal School of Church Music)

ISBN 978–0–9563573–0–4

Hardback £19.99

If the advent of not one but two new Psalters last year is an indication of a renewed enthusiasm for the psalms, the Book of Common Prayer and Anglican chant, then it is welcome indeed. The Anglican Psalter edited by John Scott has attracted a number of favourable reviews. It is hard to believe that The Wessex Psalter will not do likewise. At five pounds and one penny less than Scott’s Psalter, Ridings and Hale’s had the added advantage of being an extremely handsome hardback volume which is beautifully bound and finished. As one director of music in Sherborne commented when I showed it to him, “It will look as good on the choir stalls as it will in the bookcase”. It is of a particularly good size: the book fits comfortably in the hand and the print may be read from quite a distance without straining the eyes.

The layout is excellent, both in terms of the textual typeface and the music. An extremely useful innovation is the provision of textual notes to the side and sometimes at the end of the psalm. These help to draw out the meaning of the text and are always uncluttered. Inevitably, however, the real tests are the pointing and the choice of chants. Both are highly subjective matters about which any two musicians (or any two precentors) are almost bound to disagree. The former is, for me at least, something of a triumph: in almost all cases it feels natural and is governed by speech inflexion. One of the choir directors to whom I showed the volume wrote back: ‘The Fifteenth Evening was a joy both to play and sing through. The pointing and the music maintained my interest throughout, and that has not always been the case with chants and settings for this most lengthy of appointed texts: I chose it as the ultimate test and it passed!’ Perhaps there is occasionally some slightly fussy placing of the bar lines, but the whole is most effective and – unlike some of the pointing in some other Psalters – contributes to the text rather than causing any loss of clarity. Clearly indebted in places to the Oxford Psalter, in practice the pointing is likely to fall into triplets between bar lines. Thus a steady tempo may be established with great ease. Those lines of text which have previously caused complicated omissions of individual chords are very clearly marked in the Wessex Psalter

It will come as a great relief to both choir director and choir that it is easy to get the pointing right at first sight. Breaths are clearly marked with an asterisk, while those lines which need to continue to the next are followed by an indicative arrow. Both symbols will be useful tools for any who, regrettably, have managed to miss choir practice! As for the choice of the verse where the chant should change, that is something which is as variable in different Psalters as is the pointing.

Once again, in TheWessex Psalter the changes seem to have been governed by the context. This is ideal for those who sing the psalms of the day but potentially less useful for those who elect to sing a portion of the psalm. But surely Riding and Hale are right that the choice should be governed by textual considerations rather than the need to divide a long psalm into convenient chunks. Both organists and choir members have always differed as to whether it is helpful to have the chants printed above the text or not. Some argue that separate chant books afford greater versatility, although I wonder how much variety is ever achieved in practice.

The musicians in Sherborne to whom I have shown this book agree that the choice of chants is excellent. Those who enjoy the discipline of essentially memorising the chant for each psalm or section of the psalm will no doubt miss the separate volumes, as will those who feel that another tradition has been diminished. But others will enjoy the selection of chants provided – eleven of which have been composed by Jon Riding and ten by

Nick Hale. I used to say that, once a church has lost the habit of Anglican chant, it will never regain it. The Wessex Psalter might just prove me wrong. I hope it does.

Eric Woods

The Wessex Psalter is available from the RSCM via www.rscm.com and via the Music Direct desk on 0845 021 7726, price £19.99. Grants for bulk purchase are available.

THE CHRISTIAN WEST AND ITS SINGERS

Christopher Page

400pages 50 b/w + 12 colour illustrations

ISBN: 9780300112573

‘History is bunk’, opined the great Henry Ford. Would that he had had the opportunity to read Christopher Page’s wonderful account of the first thousand years of Western Christian singing, published by Yale Press. In his introduction, Page declares his intention to pitch his approach at the Common Reader, and this he has achieved, but without sacrificing his heavyweight scholarship credentials; thus the book should appeal to a wide constituency of readership, ranging from the serious scholar to those, like your reviewer, with a more casual and relaxed interest in the subject. It also helps greatly that the author is an executant musician, thus he is able to enhance his discourse with a practical dimension.

The principal purpose of music in worship, says Page, is to laud a divine power, and to intensify the bonds of community; those were the aims that any Jew or polytheist could recognise, and the same could be said of the modern liturgical singer who aspires to the same higher endeavour. Page doesn’t approach the subject as a liturgist, but this hardly matters, as the book is about singing, not liturgy per se. However, his knowledge of liturgical practice appears to be pretty extensive. This is also a social historiography, and we are given insights into the hierarchical structures of the early church, with the singers seemingly often relegated to the lower echelons of the pecking order.

So not much has changed there then! But the real value of this book lies in its ability to provide a sense of place for the present day liturgical singer. We readily identify with composers such as William Byrd, Thomas Tallis and Henry Purcell, for we sing their great works and rejoice in them. On the other hand, how many of us can claim knowledge of the likes of Aidulfus, Crimleicus, Andreas and Wiborada, a forerunner of Hildegard of Bingen. And yet these great men and women were the catalysts for the development of sacred singing in the early Church and Page provides splendid details of their characters and creative lives.

Much is made in the book of the importance of the maritime and seafaring traditions, and how singing travelled in the ships of trade and commerce, which highlight the intrepid nature of, for example. St Paul, and many a journey must have been undertaken in uncertain and dangerous conditions. Furthermore, because there was no staff notation, an invention that came much later, music and singing techniques could only be spread by word of mouth, much as in the way Cecil Sharp found in his research into English folk song.

There was, it would seem, as time went on, a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in the Christian world. For example, by the sixth century, singers could be seen as luxury items to export, along with silk, precious metals and spices. So where did it all start, this glorious tradition of Christian singing? As Page points out, much of its development was borrowed from Roman cultic hymnody and Jewish psalmody, and while this might strike the reader as odd, it is fair to say that composers of sacred music in other generations

have not been averse to borrowing from traditions, both sacred and secular, pace the parody masses of fifteenth to sixteenth century France. And of course, in our own age, some of the hymns in common usage started life as folk songs.

It would seem that prelates were not too concerned about borrowing other music; indeed, it is in the cross-fertilisation of early singing texts and techniques that perhaps explain the sheer strength and longevity of our choral heritage. It is founded on ideas and precepts that reach back into the mists of time. The terms lector and cantor are nomenclatures with which we are familiar, and it is interesting to note that lectors were often children, in other words, choristers.

The author informs us that, by the sixth century, there was a choir school in existence in Carthage, serving the Catholic Church, and that these choristers in turn gave rise to the term cantor, a priest or presbyter skilled in singing, which presumably would be the equivalent of the medieval vicar choral in England. This book fills in the huge gap of knowledge in the first thousand years of singing development in Mother Church. It was a huge undertaking, but Page’s great skill in this project has been his making serious scholarship eminently readable.

Buy his book, and be amazed by how close we can feel to the Christian singers and musicians who enhanced worship in the early Church.

Richard Hill

THE OWL AND HIS BOY

by John Bradbury Robinson

(with illustrations by Marcel Zalme)

Out Now Press (London and Delft) 2009

Choir schools have a small but notable literary history, centred on the poetic and enigmatic stories by William Mayne ( A Swarm in May, Cathedral Wednesday, etc). John Bradbury Robinson’s The Owl and His Boy fits firmly into this tradition, but with one major difference: in a triumph of storytelling, spread over 469 pages, Robinson gives us the narrative of Christ, condensed into three days of an ordinary school year, and in so doing asks us profound questions about philosophy, religion, life, and our future.

The novel centres on Christopher, a seemingly ordinary eleven-year-old day boy at a prep school (possibly modelled on St Michael’s College, Tenbury, which closed in 1985 after 129 years of Anglican choral education), whom we meet on the first day of the autumn term. The routine and minutiae of school life are vividly portrayed: a chorister practising for the Christmas concert by singing lines from Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols as he runs along the corridor to the cloakroom; the contents of Christopher’s satchel (‘Atlas, Bible, Compass, Dried peas and pea-shooter, Eagle comic, Fountain pen, Gobstopper...’); and the behaviour and conversation of the boys, which is occasionally bewildering but always erudite.

But while Christopher is the story’s main character, the hero is a Great Horned Owl, living in the woods beyond the school and who sees and hears everything. At first, Owl appears eccentric and dogmatic, but we quickly learn who he really is, and what, with the help of the school cat, he is up to... As he explains to Christopher’s pet mouse, he is giving humanity a second chance, and that second chance takes the form of Christopher.

The Owl and His Boy is therefore one of those rare novels that works on many levels. Superficially, it can be read as a straightforward school story. The practical and spiritual life of the school is described with a lyricism which is echoed by the frequent musical references: the choristers joining in with Handel’s As Pants the Hart, heard through the open windows of the music master’s flat; James minor’s solo in the chapel (Jonathan Harvey’s Come Holy Ghost) which brings tears to the eyes of the staff; and the use made by Mouse, whenever she is feeling threatened by Owl or Cat, of Christopher Smart’s verses set to music by Benjamin Britten in his Rejoice in the Lamb

Indeed, it is Owl’s fondness for music which has persuaded him to give humanity one last chance, and it is the presence of Owl which lifts the story onto new levels. With its questions and moral puzzles, its concern for the

future of a world which its human inhabitants seem bent on destroying, the story becomes a highly readable and hugely entertaining philosophical treatise, in which the reader is sent on voyages of discovery and enlightenment. And, like the Christian story, it ends, majestically and triumphantly, on a note of optimism.

The Owl and His Boy can be ordered from the book’s website: www.theowlandhisboy.com

Robert Kirkpatrick

THE 900 YEAR HISTORY OF THE MUSIC OF THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST MARY, WARWICK

Geoffrey Holroyde

Orders from Book Offer, Guild of Ex-Choristers, 12 Milverton Terrace, Leamington Spa CV32 5BA. £10 plus £2 postage and package.

There has been a gentlemen and boys’ choir at the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick, since its establishment in 1123. The author graphically traces the history from that time to the present day and mentions in passing the Victorian period when ‘successive organists battled rather unsuccessfully to maintain standards in the face of unsympathetic clergy and the rather lacklustre repertoire’. However, by far the most interesting part of the book is that covering the years from 1946 onwards and the reminiscences of various directors of music, organists and singers.

In 1962 Geoffrey Holroyde was asked to deputise for his predecessor who had died in office, until a replacement be found. Holroyde, who worked in industry and was not a professional musician, stayed in the job for ten years. He was good at finding the right help and persuaded 16-year-old Edward Higginbottom (now of New College, Oxford) to join him as an unpaid organist and to help out in training choristers. St Mary’s has always proved a good jumping-off place for directors of music and organists, many of whom have gone on to greater things and the list includes Arthur Wills, Andrew Fletcher, Paul Trepte, Simon Lole, Kevin Bowyer and Katherine Dienes: a formidable collection, most of whom contribute to the book. Paul Trepte said: “Music Directors come and go but the key to survival of choral traditions, such as the enviable one at St Mary’s, is the singers – those that continue to support through changing times and, of course, the magnificence of the building itself.”

Trevor Godfrey.

REPRISE An Irish church musician looks back

Harry Grindle

ISBN 978-0-956378-00-2

There are some interesting snippets in this church musician’s autobiography. Grindle’s journey from childhood in Bangor through to his appointment at Belfast Cathedral and then retirement makes for an enjoyable read. Grindle gained first-class degrees in French and Music, came top in organ diplomas and his thesis on Irish Cathedral Music meant he was awarded a PhD. In 2005 a Lambeth Doctorate was conferred upon him and in 2009 he was awarded the MBE. Belfast Cathedral was one of the first churches in Ireland to adopt the Choristers’ Training Scheme introduced by the RSCM in 1965 which probably explains the excellent reputation of the boys’ top line. There were difficulties along the way such as dealing with over enthusiastic choir members and the need to be diplomatic on the road to achieving favourable outcomes. He touches on that period in Northern Ireland history known as the ‘Troubles’ and discusses broadcasts, producing the choir’s first commercial recording, where Alan Maitland writing in the precursor to this magazine (FCM Annual Report 1975) wrote it was ‘a pleasure to welcome the first commercial recording to be made at Belfast Cathedral.

‘No cathedral anywhere in Britain is working under greater difficulty

than Belfast, and the continuance of such high standards by this big choir is a tremendous achievement.’ By the end we understand his work ethic and how hard he worked to achieve the results and his determination too. He had fun along the way and the style in which he has written these memoirs highlight many of his admirable characteristics. As The Rt Revd Lord Eames OM of Armagh writes in the foreword: ‘It is a real privilege to be allowed to live again with him people, events, places and of course, music... I have seen Harry develop his-God-given talents to the benefit of countless numbers of people.’

Ian Morgan

LONDON’S 100 BEST CHURCHES

An illustrated Guide

Leigh Hatts

Canterbury Press £14.99

ISBN 978 1 84811 944 6

This is a delightful book packed with wonderful photographs to entice the reader to go out and explore the wealth of architectural splendours and historical buildings. Leigh Hatts has included opening times and church websites and full postal addresses as well as snippets of information and facts that you may not have known: St Paul’s, Covent Garden is the actor’s church and one of the first actors to worship there was David Garrick.

The 100 churches include Southwark Cathedral, a Baptist, RC and Anglican, as well as churches in the Greater London area such as St Michaels, Croydon where the grand piano once belonged to Vaughan Williams and St Lawrence Whitchurch, Little Stanmore, where Handel composed two settings of the Te deum and 12 Chandos Anthems and where you would find the grave of the Harmonious Blacksmith. In fact I could go on. St Bartholomew the Great in Smithfield has appeared in eight films including Four Weddings and a Funeral and Shakespeare in Love. Jools Holland is quoted in the Preface: ‘churches are the spiritual background to our whole country, they are real life, they are where our ancestors lie’.

It’s a treasure trove and well worth £14.99. The FCM AGM in 2011 is in London and those who want to spend a few days exploring the capital would be wise to buy this book and tour round. We learn the background to the name of Blackfriars, St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe and that F A G Ouseley and Basil Harwood were associated with St Barnabas, Pimlico. The book is so delightful is the book and each entry is short not too long enough to tempt the reader to want to find out more. We even find out where Dick Whittington is buried, but you’ll have to buy the book to find that one out.

Recommended

Alan Spedding VARIATIONS ON AVE MARIS STELLA

Banks Music Publications £5.55.

BEETHOVEN ARIA & VARIATIONS IN D FOR MANDOLIN arr

Darius Battiwalla

Banks Music Publications £4.75.

Alan Spedding’s piece is a delight and will be welcomed into the repertoire. His compositions are always a pleasure to learn and to hear. This piece comprises the theme and then eight contrasting variations. They are for a two-manual organ and a player of reasonable ability and can be used as an effective recital piece or at different times during a service. Recommended. Battiwalla’s arrangement of Beethoven is slightly more difficult and can be played on two manuals throughout. The registration should be bright and clear but not too loud and heavy. The printing and overall presentation is of excellent quality.

CHORALCDs

Patrick Mayhew

Patrick Mayhew

EDITOR’S CHOICE CHORAL MUSIC by

Jonathan Dove

Bless the Lord O my soul; Missa brevis; I am the day; Wellcome, all wonders in one sight! The Star-Song; The Three Kings; Run, shepherds, run! Ecce beatam luceml In beauty may I walk; Seek him that maketh the seven stars; Into thy hands

Wells Cathedral Choir.

Director: Matthew Owens.

Organ: Jonathan Vaughn.

HYPERION CDA67768 TT 70:25.

This is most timely, and it is hard to imagine it being better done, for the performances are uniformly excellent. The earliest work included is Wellcome, all wonders in one sight! Which dates from 1990; the most recent is a Missa brevis composed in 2009 at the behest of the Cathedral Organists’ Conference, a wellcrafted work with moments of great energy and excitement, though brevity is not perhaps its outstanding quality despite its title. In some of the works there is more than a hint of the ‘I cannot grow’ section of Britten’s Hymn to St Cecilia, where a sort of rapid patter-song is set against a slower tune; and in general I was gratified to find unaccompanied choral writing embodying such traditional devices as imitation and development, and all at a good pace with plenty of rhythmic interest. Perhaps occasionally he has taken too literally the time-honoured advice that if you get a good idea you should repeat it –yes, but there are limits! If I had to pick a favourite it would be The Three Kings, a haunting setting of a text by Dorothy L Sayers which was commissioned for King’s Cambridge in 2000; and in general I preferred the works for unaccompanied choir as when an organ accompaniment is provided it relies rather too often on providing a tinkly background to the voices filigree, tintinnabulation, call it what you will. I prefer the reported reaction of a Geordie engine-driver (circa 1925) to the sound effects from the connecting rods and outside valve-gear on Sir Nigel Gresley’s locomotives: ‘Whey, man, it’s a kind of continuous ponkity-tink.’ That said, this CD gives us an excellent chance to get to know a new and distinctive voice among choral composers, and I warmly recommend it.

See interview on page12.

FAREWELL TO WAKEFIELD

40 Years at Wakefield

Bielby Except the Lord build the house; Let the roaring organs loudly play; Love divine; Exsultet; Love’s endeavour, Love’s expense; When I needed a neighbour; Carol of the birds; Three kings are here; Carol for Grimethorpe; Brightest and best; Sans day carol; Kyrie Eleison (Millennium Mass); Psalm 66; Psalm 119 vv 49-56; Magnificat for Trebles Service; O taste and see; The Lord from out of Sion; Lord, I have loved the habitation; Millennium resolution; God’s Garden, O my saviour, lifter (Carharrack); Leighton Finale from Sequence for All Saints; Moore It is a thing most wonderful; Carter Nunc Dimittis from Wakefield Service; Farrell Strengthen for service.

The Boys, Girls and Men of Wakefield Cathedral Choir.

Director/Organist: Jonathan Bielby & Thomas Moore.

HERALD HAVPCD 357 TT 77:59.

THE ORGAN WORKS OF JONATHAN BIELBY

Performed by the composer on the organs of Wakefield Cathedral

Timothy Storey

Carillon de Wakefield; Three Hymn Preludes; Little Suite; Deo Gratias; Cornish Holiday played on the cathedral chamber organ; Francis’s Fandango; Nine Variations on a Well-Known Tune

HERALD HAVPCD 356 TT 64:01.

These fascinating recordings are a fitting salute to Jonathan Bielby’s distinguished and unusually long record of service to a single cathedral,

whose choral programme he has maintained and expanded, and whose fine organ he has conserved and improved. He was Organ Scholar of St John’s College, Cambridge and Assistant Organist of Manchester Cathedral before his appointment to Wakefield in 1970; among his first set of choristers was a certain John Scott, who from New York contributes an affectionate and appreciative foreword to the second of these discs. The cathedral’s organs (a delightful chamber organ is used as well as the five-manual Compton) come over well in a selection of music that is varied, attractive and sometimes humorous; the choral disc contains more Bielby, interspersed with works by Andrew Carter, Sean Farrell, Kenneth Leighton and Philip Moore written for or associated with the cathedral. The Lay Clerks and the Boy and Girl Choristers generally acquit themselves well, though some of the music clearly stretches them considerably and it cannot be claimed that all the material is of equal quality or interest.

Timothy Storey

GUERRERO

Missa Congratulamini Mihi

Guerrero Missa Congratulamini; Dum esset rex; Maria Magdalena et altera Maria; Post dies octo; Regina Caeli a 4; Ave Maria; Regina caeli a 8; Crecquillon Congratulamini mihi.

The Cardinall’s Musick.

Director: Andrew Carwood.

HYPERION CDA67836 TT 65:09.

“I do like this”, said Mrs Storey about five minutes into the programme, and I can only agree with her! Based on an Easter-tide motet by Thomas Crecquillon (c.1505-57) which sets S Mary Magdalene’s words beginning

‘Rejoice with me, all you who love the Lord, for he whom I sought has appeared to me’, this tuneful and instantly attractive Mass is given a performance of great joy and exhilaration; Crecquillon’s motet is joined by six of Guerrero’s, all but one also apt to the Easter season. I was occasionally disturbed by some less than perfect intonation, especially from the sopranos; but against this should be weighed the sheer quality of the music and the commitment of the performers. Francisco Guerrero (152899) is a fascinating character, well-known in his day and widely published but ignored thereafter until quite recently; I will not attempt to summarise his somewhat chequered career, so you had better buy the recording and read all about it in the excellent liner notes. You are sure to enjoy the music as well!

Timothy Storey

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Dona Nobis Pacem; Sancta Civitas

Winchester Cathedral Choristers. Winchester College Quiristers. Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

Soprano: Christina Pier.

Baritone: Matthew Brook.

Tenor: Andrew Staples.

Director: David Hill

NAXOS 8.572424 TT 64:39.

David Hill achieves a very ‘Anglican’ performance in both works and I was left wondering how Sancta Civitas would have sounded with the Bach Choir under Vaughan Williams at the first performance. For a ‘cheerful agnostic’ Vaughan Williams sensitively and devotionally sets the words from Revelation in Sancta Civitas and the prayer that is Dona Nobis Pacem, with words from the Mass together with Biblical fragments, Walt Whitman and John Bright. There are some beautiful moments in the Dona Nobis Pacem where the choir and orchestra create a sublime unity. The battle between good and evil that is Sancta Civitas shows Vaughan Williams’s great skill in utilising the chorus and orchestra; perhaps this is where one feels that the performance was a little too restrained, even polite. The balance between orchestra and chorus is good but sometimes the soloists seem to sound as though they are in a different acoustic. At the price, this is a disc that you will want to buy, especially if you are a lover of the music of Vaughan Williams.

Neil Page

THE FEAST OF SAINT PETER THE APOSTLE AT WESTMINSTER ABBEY

Duruflé Tu es Petrus; Radcliffe Preces & Responses; Psalm 138 (Chant Ley); Stanford Te Deum; Jubilate; Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis in B flat; Byrd Mass for five voices; Palestrina Tu es Petrus a 6; Psalm 124 (Chant Crotch); Walton The Twelve; Bach (transcribed Dupré)

The Choir of Westminster Abbey. Director: James O’Donnell. Organ: Robert Quinney. HYPERION CDA67770 TT 70:17.

This is, I think, the fifth in this highly imaginative series, which presents a Feastday’s complete music for Mattins, Eucharist and Evensong. There is great authenticity and integrity in the planning of this latest disc, as in all the series; it would have been all too easy to pack it with ‘blockbusters’, but instead we have a mixed programme such as a sensible choirmaster might choose with due regard to the available rehearsal time and to the singers’ physical and mental endurance. Thus it stands as a true example of what is routinely to be found each Sunday in our cathedrals, though few establishments could equal the quality of the Abbey’s choir. There is indeed a ‘blockbuster’ in the shape of Walton’s The Twelve, given a performance of tremendous energy and confidence, and a mighty work of another sort is Byrd’s Mass for five voices, beautifully sung and admirably paced. We have also a very jolly Bach voluntary, motets by Duruflé and Palestrina, Psalms and Responses – and good old Stanford in B flat at Mattins and Evensong. Rather dull? Not at all. Can there be another setting simple enough for a parish choir but still worth the attention of the finest in the land? Don’t you wish you could write something like this? It is, of course, given a thoroughly satisfying performance here, with all the tempi comfortable and natural; and Robert Quinney spices up the Te Deum with some choice extracts from Stanford’s later orchestral score. I recommend this CD without reservation – and I am sure Mr Quinney could earn a little pocketmoney by making his version of the Te Deum available!

Timothy Storey

SING ALLELUIA

Favourite Anthems from Rochester Cathedral

Parry I was glad; Purcell O God thou art my God; Ferguson It was in that train; Ashfield The Fair Chivalry; Brahms How lovely are thy dwellings fair; Goss O saviour of the world; Handel Zadok the priest; Mendelssohn Hear my prayer; Leighton Solus ad victimam you a new commandment; Gibbons See, see, the word is incarnate; Byrd Sing joyfully; Chilcott Be thou my vision; Stainer God so loved the world; Rutter The Lord bless you and keep you; Stanford Gloria in excelsis Rochester Cathedral Choirs.

Directors: Scott Farrell and Dan Soper.

Organist: Roger Sayer.

REGENT REGCD329 TT 78:36.

This CD from Rochester Cathedral choir is the first produced by Scott Farrell since becoming Director of Music in 2008. He has structured the repertoire to appeal to both the casual visitor to the Cathedral with traditional works by Parry, Handel and Mendelssohn, at the same time introducing some lesserknown yet delightful compositions. The Lay Clerk/Choral Scholar set-up shows a long list of men singing on the disc, but not all at the same time, with the treble line of boys and girls combined for the big numbers. I have several recordings of the opening track, Parry’s I was glad and have to confess that I have never heard it sung so slowly and at 6:07 is a full minute longer than the King’s College recording by Sir David Willcocks. That observation apart, the CD contains many delights not the least of which is the unaccompanied anthem by Barry Ferguson, (ex-Rochester and author of the accompanying notes). It was the train, inspired by Mother Teresa’s train journey to Darjeeling. Sung by the boys’ and men’s voices, the simplistic beauty of this music conveys her epoch-making decision to serve God among the poor in the slums of Calcutta. In Mendelssohn’s Hear my prayer, the boy soloist (who sadly doesn’t get a mention) holds his own confidently and soars with ease above the choir. Two tracks which particularly appeal are Peter Nardone’s setting of Christ’s words ‘I give you a new commandment’, and Bob Chilcott’s Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart

Tudor Vernon

PIERRE DE MANCHICOURT

Missa Cuidez vous que Dieu nous faille

The Brabant Ensemble.

Director: Stephen Rice.

HYPERION CDA67604

Pierre de Manchicourt was born in Béthune in Northern France, perhaps in 1510 or possibly somewhat earlier. After holding positions at Tours, Tournai and Arras he was recruited in 1560 to head the chapel of Philip II of Spain; he died in Madrid in 1564. As was so often the case at that time, the Mass which forms the centrepiece of this programme is based on a work by another composer, in this case Cuidez vous que Dieu nous faille (‘Do you believe that God has failed to invest in us sufficiently?’), a sacred chanson for five voices by Jean Richafort (c.1480-1547), included here along with four of Manchicourt’s motets and his only setting of the Magnificat. We encounter here a style of composition which is technically confident and quite complex, exhibiting the composer’s great delight in his mastery of an idiom only lately come to a degree of maturity. I feel however that this CD may well be heavy-going for those listeners who are less than fully attuned to music of this period; but the performances are absolutely first-rate, a delightful touch in the Mass being the singing of Benedictus qui venit by three members of the same family. If this is your kind of music, you should definitely add this disc to your collection.

Timothy Storey

CHORAL EVENSONG from Tewkesbury Abbey

Tallis Sancte Deus; Statham Preces & Responses; Psalm 91 (Chant Alcock); Psalm 131 (Chant Peterson); Gabriel Jackson Tewkesbury Service ; Vaughan Williams Valiant-for- Truth ; Howells Te Deum (Collegium Regale); Master Tallis’s Testament; Vierne Toccata in B flat minor

The Abbey School Choir, Tewkesbury.

Director: Benjamin Nicholas.

Organ: Carleton Etherington.

DELPHIAN DCD34019 TT 74:37.

Despite being a parish church, Tewkesbury Abbey is bigger than 16 of our cathedrals and, what is more, has a choir to match. But it nearly lost it in 2006, when the Abbey School choir closed. This valedictory recording of the final Evensong service was made at that time by Delphian Records and has recently been released. To much relief the Choir was reborn as the Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum and the boy choristers relocated to Dean Close School, Cheltenham. Its survival was in no small way due to a large grant from FCM. This is the choir of men and boys which now sings the weekday services in the Abbey. Here is a first-class recording of an English Choral Evensong service which reminds those of us who treasure such music of the wonderful privilege which is ours to enjoy and our responsibility to ensure its continuing future. Ironically it would not have been made but for the closure of the Abbey School. The CD would make a wonderful gift for anybody at home or overseas who cannot enjoy live music from the English choral tradition.

Trevor Godfrey

PHILIPPE ROGIER

Videntes stellam; Cantantibus organis; Missa Ego sum qui sum; Caligaverunt oculi mei; Locutus sum in ingua mea; Laboravi in gemitu meo; Verbum caro.

The Choir of King’s College London. The English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble. Director: David Trendell.

HYPERION CDA67807 TT 70:48.

The Flemish composer Philippe Rogier (c.1561-1596) enjoyed the patronage of the pious Philip II, introduced to the Spanish Court as a chorister, not as a composer. This disc demonstrates that Rogier has been unfairly overlooked as a composer. Missa Ego sum qui sum, for six voices, is based on an Eastertide motet by Gombert; Rogier takes this motet more as inspiration than as a strict framework and his fluent use of imitation and expressive dissonance leads Trendell to assert that ‘it must rank as one of the finest settings of the Mass ordinary of the late sixteenth

century’, and after hearing this disc I have to agree. The choir is joined by The English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble for two of the motets; the combination of these forces is at its most magnificent at the words ‘aurum, thus et myrrham’ in the magical Videntes stellam. There is a lot of attention to detail in these performances and the abundant dissonance and suspensions are not overplayed nor romanticised. The choir has a full and youthful sound with a lovely blend only slightly blemished on occasion by some soprano vibrato at loud climaxes and occasional lack on unanimity on entry but not enough to in any way detract from my wholehearted recommendation that you buy this disc to both enjoy the choir and discover the music of Rogier.

Neil Page

PIERRE MOULU

Materfloreat; Missa Missus est Gabriel angelus; In Pace; Missa Alma redemptoris mater; Josquin Missus est Gabriel angelus.

The Brabant Ensemble.

Director: Stephen Rice.

HYPERION CDA67761 TT 74:38.

Pierre Moulu (1484-c.1550) may perhaps have been a cleric of the diocese of Meaux; whoever he was, he composed five masses, around twenty motets and a number of chansons. Missa Alma redemptoris mater was noticed by pioneering musicologists as long ago as the 1870s for its ingenious construction; it is designed to be sung either with or without all rests of a semibreve or greater, the music fitting together whichever option is taken, though sounding quite different. The ‘short’ version (i.e. without rests) is given here, but with Kyrie and Agnus Dei also presented in the ‘long’ version with the rests added. More to the point, the music is full of colour and interest, and the performances are first-rate, with some delectable French vowel sounds. Like so many other works of the early sixteenth century (some reviewed elsewhere in this magazine), the other mass, Missus est Gabriel angelus, is based on a motet by Josquin; this is included along with Moulu’s lovely In pace, and again the singing is very fine.

Timothy Storey

THE SPIRIT OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE – 4

The Missa Caput, an anonymous English Mass setting from c1440.Fifteenth-century carols

Gothic Voices

Director: Christopher Page.

HELIOS (HYPERION) CDH55284 TT 68:02.

The anonymous English Missa Caput, dating from around 1440, was a pioneering work in many ways and found great favour on the Continent. It introduced the four-part texture, a forerunner of our standard SATB, and it popularised the building of lengthy compositions on a melody laid out in the tenor. The melody here employed is a chant for Maundy Thursday, in which Peter asks Jesus to wash not only his feet but also his hands and his head – Latin, caput. In this performance the Mass is interspersed with the familiar plainsong Pange lingua melody, but sung to a selection of verses from a lengthy poem, a sort of ‘Just so’ story describing the origins of the antiphon Salve Regina; and the recording is completed by some carols and other short works of the period. The music is fascinating, the performances first-rate; the CD is well worth buying at the new bargain price.

Timothy Storey

WILLAERT

Des Prez Mente tota; Willaert Missa Mente tota; Laus tibi, sacra rubens; Creator omnium Deus;O iubar, nostrae specimen salutis; Verbum bomum et suavel Quid non ebrietas?; de Rore Concordes adhibete animo. Cinquecento Renaissance Vokal.

HYPERION CDA67749 TT 70:47.

I was immediately struck by the supremely beautiful singing of these six singers from Austria, Belgium, England, Germany and Switzerland; the sole Englishman is Tim Scott Whiteley, son of York Minster’s distinguished former organist John Scott Whiteley. This programme highlights the musical relationship between Adrian Willaert (c.1490-

1562), Josquin des Prez (c.1450/55-1521) and Cipriano de Rore (c. 1515/16-1565); Willaert’s motet Verbum bonum et suave (here included) was thought by his contemporaries to be by Josquin and was greatly celebrated as a contrapuntal tour de force until its true authorship was revealed, when it suddenly became a far inferior piece! Whatever the truth of that episode, Willaert used Josquin’s Marian motet Mente tota, with which this anthology begins, as the foundation of a mass for six voices; it is a supreme example of his mastery of complex contrapuntal structures, every movement containing a double canon but never sounding academic or dull. Of the other works included perhaps the strangest is Quid non ebrietas? a musical puzzle which sets a passage from Horace’s Epistles describing the miracle of drunkenness. The programme is concluded with de Rore’s motet on the death of Adrian Willaert, a surprisingly joyful work celebrating the deceased composer’s achievements. Strongly recommended.

Timothy Storey

O PRAISE THE LORD Restoration Music from Westminster Abbey

Child O praise the Lord; Blow Voluntary in A; God is our hope and strength; Venite; Voluntary in D minor; Salvator mundi, salva nos; Turner Psalm 113; Purcell Benedicite; Benedictus; O Lord God of hosts; Jehova, quam multi sunt hostes mei; Voluntary in D minor; Hear my prayer, O Lord; Psalm 54; Voluntary in C; Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis; Lord, how long wilt thou be angry? Voluntary in G

The Choir of Westminster Abbey.

Director: James O’Donnell.

Organ: Robert Quinney.

HYPERION CDA67792 TT 70:06.

This generous anthology, marking the 450th anniversary of the English Restoration in 1660, presents Benedicite, Benedictus, Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis from the Service in B flat by Henry Purcell (1659-95) interspersed with four of his anthems and three organ voluntaries. John Blow (16491708) contributes a Venite, a couple of anthems and three voluntaries, while William Child (1616-97) and William Turner (1651-1740) are represented by an anthem and two psalm settings respectively. Some attempt has been made to arrange the contents in the order of a complete day’s music, but the plan founders on the lack of a Communion Service by any composer of this period. The singing and playing are of course excellent, but perhaps almost too polished and well-drilled and, dare I say, a little lifeless as a result. I felt compelled to revisit an LP by the Westminster choir from about 1963 entitled Westminster Abbey’s Greatest Composers which the late Douglas Guest directed soon after his arrival at the Abbey, and which contains three of the same anthems, God is our hope and strength and Salvator mundi (Blow) and O Lord God of hosts (Purcell). In it we find the distinguished alto singing of Grayston Burgess and John Whitworth, as well as a bass line of Wagnerian proportions; the result could not be accused of being polished or refined (though the boys sing uncommonly well on this old recording) but in those days there was a certain crude vitality about the proceedings which today’s very fine performances are in danger of losing.

Timothy Storey

MEMBRA JESU NOSTRI Buxtehude

The Sixteen.

Director: Harry Christophers. CORO COR16082 TT 61:23.

This is an exquisite recording of this most intimate work where the attention to detail is everything you would expect from Harry Christophers and The Sixteen. Some fine soloists join forces here and for me it is the performance from Robin Blaze (counter-tenor) that is truly outstanding and sets this recording apart. Christophers succeeds in making each of the seven cantatas unique and poignant with an ensemble that is skilled in period performance. This disc was originally released in 2000 and was named Gramophone Editor’s choice, this re-release on the Coro label is dedicated to the memory of Jane Coe, principal cellist with The Sixteen for twenty years. This is a disc that you will listen to again and again.

Neil Page

DAVID BRIGGS MESSE POUR NÔTRE-DAME

David Briggs plays the organ of Gloucester Cathedral

Messe pour Nôtre-Dame; Ubi caritas et amor; Organ improvisations: Introit; Élévation; Sortie; Toccata on Te Deum laudamus; I will lift up mine eyes; The Trinity Service; Te Deum laudamus; O Lord, support us.

The Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge. Director: Stephen Layton.

HYPERION CDA67808 TT 72:34.

David Briggs is the undisputed leader of the current British school of French-inspired organ improvisation; this disc presents a mixture of his music both improvised and written, the longest work being his Messe pour Nôtre-Dame modelled on the familiar masses by Widor, Vierne and Langlais for choir with loud organ interludes. We are also given his Trinity College Service along with his version of the plainsong Te Deum and three anthems, Ubi caritas, I will lift up mine eyes and O Lord, support us. The performances, needless to say, are excellent, though there is a slight ‘just out of the pub’ quality to some of the men’s singing in the Te Deum; the recording was made in Gloucester Cathedral where Briggs was formerly organist and supervised several additions to the cathedral organ by Nicholsons of Great Malvern to improve its suitability for the French repertoire. He can conjure up the most beguiling added-note harmonies, and much of the quieter music is extremely beautiful; I was especially taken with Ubi caritas. The mass is the kind of music that organists love and singers hate, for it relies for much of its effect on the pyrotechnics in the organ interludes; by the end of this CD the excitement was beginning to wear a little thin, and the organ seemed to become increasingly out-of-tune and even a little short of wind. (I hope my good friends at Nicholsons will forgive me for saying so!) If you are a musical Francophile you should enjoy this recording; others may be less convinced.

Timothy Storey

AWAKE UP MY GLORY Choral and organ music by Philip Moore

Awake up my glory; Salve Regina; O sacrum convivium; All wisdom cometh from the Lord; Three Pieces for Withycombe; Thou art my life; Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis; The Song of the Roses; Dance-Rondo; In Memoriam; Cantate Domino; Deus Miseratur.

The Exon Singers.

Director: Matthew Owens.

Organ: Jonathan Vaughn.

Soprano: Susan Hamilton.

REGENT REGCD315 TT 71:15.

No fewer than nine first recordings of Choral and Organ works by Philip Moore, but why should this be a surprise, Moore has more than 400 compositions to his credit. The name Philip Moore is closely linked with York Minster from where he retired, after 25 years, in 2008. This disc, however, was recorded at Wells Cathedral, where the Director of the Exon Singers, Matthew Owens, is Organist and Master of the Choristers and Organist Jonathan Vaughn is assistant organist. The composer was present for the recording. The Exon Singers have established themselves as one of the country’s premiere Chamber Choirs, giving a much fuller sound than that of a Cathedral Choir, principally due to the soprano sound. This disc firmly establishes what many already know, that Moore is a very skilled church composer. I first heard the anthem All wisdom cometh from the Lord broadcast by the Exon Singers from Buckfast Abbey; despite the rhythmic sharpness, Buckfast’s acoustic gave the music just enough reverberation to sound rich and full, without loss of clarity, for my taste it would have been good to capture some more of the Wells reverberation. The singing is tightly controlled and Moore’s music can be fully appreciated. Unfortunately, the CD I have for review has a lot of ‘clicking’ in places, especially in the work for solo soprano and organ, In memoriam; soloist Susan Hamilton still clearly shows her girl chorister roots with her youthful sounding voice fitting for this work, composed in memory of Moore’s cousin. An excellent showcase for the composer and beautifully accompanied on the Willis/Harrison by Jonathan Vaughn.

Neil Page

A PAGEANT OF HUMAN LIFE Music of Granville Bantock

The Golden Journey to Samarkand; They that go down to the sea in ships; In the silent west; Coronach; One with eyes the fairest; The Lake Isle of Innisfree; The Mermaid’s Croon; The Happy Isle; Requiem; The Isles of Greece; Three Choruses for Male Voices; A Pageant of Human Life; Darest thou now O soul. The Saint Louis Chamber Chorus. Director: Philip Barnes.

REGENT REGCD310 TT 77:26.

‘[Bantock’s] music was often original and inspired, and always well crafted; that his star has faded is attributable more to ignorance of his prodigious output than to its inherent weakness…’, so writes Philip Barnes in his accompanying notes to this recording of the unaccompanied vocal works which is intended to restore Bantock’s reputation as a ‘premier composer of choral music’. It provides a comprehensive overview of his output weighing in at one hour 17 minutes featuring varied texts and vocal combinations including women only, men only, children’s voices and expanding to full choir textures of up to twelve parts. The recording’s title is drawn from the choral symphony of the same name which is a setting of a text by Sir Thomas More. Each ‘movement’ is a setting of a single stanza meaning that each ends up being a miniature of just over a minute long. This seems to be a feature of the recording that most pieces are relatively short. Even the more extended pieces, like the opening track The Golden Journey to Samarkand, seems never to develop an idea to its full potential before moving to a new one. This is partly a reaction to the text with each new idea being represented by a completely new musical gesture. This is frustrating because there are a number of interesting ideas which one yearns to hear developed. There are some instances of surprising chromaticism which begin to surprise the listener and peak an interest but are ultimately short lived. There are also moments when the chordal textures produce an interesting tonality which one wishes would continue just a little further into the polyphonic textures. Perhaps this is symptomatic of the period and one to which I am not used to given the unfashionable nature of this music today. This said the performance is pleasing to listen to. The choir makes the most of the sliding chromaticisms and the larger textures. Unfortunately I did struggle to hear the words until track18 which was suddenly full of vitality and vocal colouring previously unheard. While this is not something I would wish to listen to in one sitting, it does prove an interesting insight to the choral music of a once influential composer.

Chris O’Gorman

MIKE BREWER’S WORLD TOUR

The National Youth Choir of Great Britain sing Zulu, Bengali, Chinese, American; Moravian, Argentian, Icelandic, Maribian, French, Russian, Maori, Tunisian and Mexican music.

Director: Mike Brewer.

DELPHIAN DCD34080 TT 68:02.

I have to confess to approaching this recording with more than a little doubt and suspicion. Why would an English choir made up of young people choose to make a recording of ‘world music’ when, in this day and age, one can access the ‘real thing’ just as easily? Sure, African folk songs and the like have long been the staple repertoire of many youth choirs however, for a choir of the National Youth Choir’s calibre, it seems an odd choice. Then I listened to it! This project seems to be the culmination of many years of collecting songs from around the world for the group’s director, Mike Brewer. In his programme notes, he talks about his fascination with musical connections coming himself from the combined backgrounds of the English choral tradition and the wider-ranging world of jazz. This is evident in all of his arrangements. While the essence of each song is preserved in terms of melody, Brewer manages to put each song into a structure which is distinctly western (while still remaining faithful to the tradition being drawn upon). There is a heavy reliance on techniques used by many a cappella groups on the American University a cappella scene where the voice is used to imitate instruments and a convincing rhythm section is created through the layering of ostinato patterns. This layering of ostinatos also creates passing harmonies which would not be out of place in a piece by Whiteacre (with whom the NYC has worked). Brewer also uses the mass of combined voices

extremely creatively, encouraging singers to explore the colours of their voices to imitate the singing styles of traditions being explored. There are extremely chesty sounds during the African numbers, a more reserved and nasal sound for the pieces from Asia. There is also an exploration of the harmonics one can create while holding a drone. In terms of performance, this is an extremely encouraging indication of the state of singing among young people today. The performance is precise yet enthusiastic and therefore extremely exciting to listen to. Highly recommended.

Chris O’Gorman

LUMINOSITY The music of James Whitbourn

Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis (Collegium regale); Alleluia jubilate; A Prayer of Desmond Tutu; He carried me away in the spirit; Pure river of water of life; Eternal Rest; Of one that is so fair and bright; There is no speech or language; Luminosity.

Commotio.

Director: Matthew Berry.

Tenor: Christopher Gillett. Viola: Levine Andrade. NAXOS 8.572103 TT 68:44.

Reading the introductory notes of this album, one is struck by how much of James Whitbourn’s work seems to be the result of the broadcast media. The BBC has commissioned him to write pieces for the funeral of the Queen Mother, the sixtieth anniversary of D-Day and a broadcast service held for the victims of 9/11 in Westminster Abbey amongst others, and yet he is still relatively unrecognised. Far from being a hindrance, “Whitbourn seems to thrive on the constraints of working to a brief using these as a starting point to explore the depth and breadth of each project”, so says Ettienne RollandPiègue when describing the modern media as playing the same roles as aristocratic patrons of old. This ease of integrating and response to the brief is evident in all of the music featured; all seems to be accessible (described as simple and straightforward) and thoughtful responses to a specific situation. This exclusive response does not get in the way of the flow of the album as a whole though. The programme is expertly constructed to allow an easy current of texts and musical relationships. The disc’s title track is a larger scale work, which was a combined commission for choir, dancers and viola; the aim to focus on transcendent beauty and eternal love. Whitbourn responds to the mixed-media commission by mixing musics with the striking juxtaposition of tanpura and choir and later viola and organ. This ‘eastern’ drone combined with his ‘simple’ western harmonies provide a very contemplative base from where to explore these themes. One could be forgiven for thinking that this is pastiche Lauridsen with his use of first inversion harmonies and the three-note motif which characterises the latter’s famous O magnum mysterium, but perseverance is rewarded with an intelligent development of these ideas. This is engaging music and should not be dismissed on first hearing. The performance is commendable throughout. One does occasionally feel that the soprano line could be a little more stable, however this is an engaging overall introduction to the music of an interesting contemporary English choral composer.

Chris O’Gorman

CEREMONY AND DEVOTION Music of the Tudors

Byrd Laudibus in sanctis; Domine, praestolamur; Haec dies; Infelix ego; Sheppard Sacris solemnis iuncta sint gaudia; Media vita in morte sumus; Tallis Jesu Salvator saeculi Verbum Patris; Miserere nostril; Iam Christus astra ascenderat.

The Sixteen.

Director: Harry Christophers.

CORO COR16077 TT 75:48.

How The Sixteen find time to fulfil their numerous commitments is incomprehensible. Not content with dominating the concert platform in this country and abroad as well as the airwaves as the ‘voices of Classic FM’, their discography is also steadily increasing with over one hundred discs already under their collective belt. That is before one even considers their hugely

engaging series for the BBC with Simon Russell Beale exploring sacred music from medieval Paris to the present day. Their most recent recording is an exploration of music from Tudor England and celebrates the 10th anniversary of their annual Choral Pilgrimage around the nation’s greatest cathedrals. As one would expect, the recording is superb in all aspects. The performance is immaculate and distinctively ‘Sixteen’ with soaring soprano lines expertly supported by the ever-present bass section. The inner parts are never overpowered though and all give a very solid performance. The acoustic of the recording space also contributes to the wash of sound that this combination of voices creates. One can instantly see why this would appeal to a generation of harassed professionals. However, one cannot consider a recording of Sheppard’s epic Media Vita and Byrd’s Infelix ego without the context of recent releases of the same works by other groups. For me the opening plainchant Veni, Creator Spiritus typifies the whole disc; note-perfect and perfectly judged within the acoustic, it is extremely measured but does not convey a sense of the text in any way. This is the case with much of the polyphony too. It is extremely beautiful to listen to but lacks a sense of communication of the text. The recording asks an interesting question about the role of recorded music. I could easily close my eyes and drift off to this, but wonder if I would be satisfied if I heard it in context for real?

Chris O’Gorman

REISSUECDs

CHOIRS OF CAMBRIDGE

Jesus College Choir

Byrd Sing Joyfully; Ave Verum Corpus; Magnificat & Ninc Dimittis (Great Service); Duruflé Tota Pulchra es Maria; Morley Nolo Mortem Peccatoris; Gibbons O clap your hand; Sheppard Libera nos; Fayrfax Aeternae Laudis Lilium; Mathias Magnificat; Wesley Wash me throughly; Tomkins Almighty God, the fountain of all Wisdom; Bairstow Though I speak with the tongues of men; J Varley Roberts Seek ye the Lord; Monk Abide with me.

Directors: Geraint Bowen. Andrew King. Christopher Argent. GRIFFIN GCCD 4069 TT 72:53

I found this reissue of selections from three mid-1980’s Abbey recordings highly impressive and most enjoyable. Since its ancient chapel was restored in 1849 Jesus College has maintained an all-male choir, with boys drawn from local schools; since 1980 there has also been a mixed choir (I assume the male choral scholars are common to both choirs), but not until 1999 was a full-time Director of Music appointed. Before then the chapel music was in the hands of a succession of undergraduate organ scholars, including such great names as Malcolm Archer, Peter Hurford, Richard Lloyd and James O’Donnell; the present distinguished Organist of Hereford Cathedral is one of the three conductors on this disc, which attests to the excellent standards which could be reached under direction that was by definition both youthful and relatively inexperienced. Nor is the repertoire safe and hackneyed; a highlight is a fine performance of the evening canticles from Byrd’s Great Service, and there is more Byrd to delight you, plus Bairstow, Fayrfax, Mathias (Jesus College Magnificat), Morley, Sheppard, Varley Roberts and S S Wesley. Buy this one: it is of more than merely historic or local interest.

Timothy Storey

BRAHMS MOTETS

Two Motets Op 29; Geistliches Lied; Three Sacred Choruses; Psalm 13; Three Motets; Two Motets Op 74; Ave Maria; Fest-und Gedenksprüche. Corydon Singers.

Director: Matthew Best.

Organ: John Scott.

HELIOS (HYPERION) CDH55346 TT 68:42.

My recollection is that this was somewhat of a trail-blazer when it first came out over twenty years ago, but there is now a slightly dated feel to some of the singing, the rather over-articulated and mechanical treatment of semi quavers recalling Bach recordings of the same vintage. That said, there is still much to praise, with some simply lovely singing of quieter and more intimate music such as the familiar Geistliches Lied. And if you think that all Brahms is heavy and serious, try the motets for four-part ladies’ voices, especially the jolly and exhilarating Regina caeli. Overall, well worth buying at its new bargain price.

Timothy Storey

FAURÉ REQUIEM

Corydon Singers. English Chamber Orchestra.

Director: Matthew Best

HYPERION CDA30008 TT 58:12

BACH: TOCCATAS AND FUGUES

Christopher Herrick plays the Metzler Organ of the Stadkirche Zofingen, Switzerland

Toccata and Fugue in D minor; Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C, Toccata and Fugue in F; ‘Dorian’ Toccata and Fugue in D minor; Passacaglia in C minor.

HYPERION CDA30004 TT 63:54

ARVO PÄRT TRIODION

Dopo la vittoria; Nunc dimittis; ...which was the son of...; I am the true vine; Littlemore Tractus; Triodion; My heart’s in the Highlands; Salve Regina Polyphony.

Director: Stephen Layton.

HYPERION CDA30013 TT 78:27

THOMAS TALLIS

O Salutaris hostia; In ieiunio et fletu; Salvator mundi I; In manus tuas, Domine; Salvator mundi II; The Lamentations of Jeremiah I; O sacrum convivium; O nata lux de lumine; Te lucis ante terminum; The Lamentations of Jeremiah II; Spem in ‘s alirtum. Winchester Cathedral Choir.

Director: David Hill.

HYPERION CDA 30024 TT 58:56

JOHN RUTTER: REQUIEM

Requiem; Hymn to the Creator of Light; God be in my head; A Gaelic Blessing; Cantate Domino; Open thou mine eyes; A Prayer of Saint Patrick; A Choral Fanfare; Draw on, sweet night; My true love hath my heart; The Lord bless you and keep you. Polyphony.

Bournemouth SInfonietta.

Director: Stephen Layton.

HYPERION CDA30017 TT 69:06

VICTORIA REQUIEM

The Choir of Westminster Cathedral

Director: David Hill

HYPERION CDA30026 TT 57:32

These are all classic performances and it is understandable why Hyperion is re-releasing these CDs as part of its 30th birthday celebrations. Here we have David Hill at Winchester and Westminster Cathedrals where the Tallis is beautiful and exquisite. The sound is immense at Winchester and this is one of the best CDs around. I bought it when it was first released and was spellbound –a definite desert island choice. The Victoria is magnificent and both these CDs demonstrate the brilliance of David Hill’s career. John Rutter’s delightful Requiem is given a consummate performance along with some of his other shorter choral works by the magnificent Polyphony who also appear singing Pärt’s evocative music. The pedigree of the Corydon Singers is well-known and here is a superb reading of Fauré’s Requiem along with the delightful Cantique de Jean Racine. Polished performances by everyone, the best in the field. The organ disc here is of Christopher Herrick playing Bach authoritatively demonstrating he is the master of technique.

All these CDs are outstanding, all deserve to be re-released and all are supreme, showcasing the finest recordings and performers around. My advice is buy them all, you will not be disappointed and it will be a good investment.

Patrick Mayhew

HIS MAJESTY’S SAGBUTTS AND CORNETTS GRAND TOUR

Music from 16th and 17th century Italy, Spain and Germany

Buonamente, Marini, Merula, Macque, Bassano, Castello, de Arauxo; Ximénez, Weckmann, Schein, Vierdanck, Scheidt. HELIOS (HYPERION) CDH55344 TT 69:26.

At first sight it may seem surprising that a Friend of Cathedral Music has been asked to review this disc; but a sixteenth or seventeenth century Friend (assuming such a creature existed) would not be at all surprised, for much of the music in this anthology would have been heard in church. The cornett (a banana-shaped wooden instrument covered in leather and having the same finger-holes as a recorder – and very difficult to play well!) was especially prized for its ability to blend with and reinforce treble voices, and was to be found in that role in the English Chapel Royal and elsewhere after the Restoration; the sagbutt (or sackbutt) is a more civilised ancestor of the trombone. The composers are an exotic-sounding bunch, thought the familiar names of Bassano, Schein and Scheidt are to be found there; their music is quite delightful, and the performances are of the highest order. Full marks to Hyperion for re-issuing this fine recording at the new bargain price; make sure you buy it – unless, of course, you bought it first time round.

Timothy Storey

PALESTRINA

Missa O rex gloriae

Missa Viri Galilaei

Viri Galilaei; Missa Viri Galilaei; O rex gloriae; Missa O rex gloriae.

The Choir of Westminster Cathedral. Director: James O’Donnell.

HELIOS (HYPERION) CDH55335TT 67:39.

Hyperion is doing us a great service by re-issuing its older recordings on the mid-price Helios label, and if you missed this superb disc first time round now is your chance to remedy the omission. James O’ Donnell’s excellent choir sings two motets for Ascension Day and the masses which Palestrina subsequently built on them; joyful and expressive music though seemingly somewhat neglected over the years. It is greatly to the credit of Hyperion and the Westminster Cathedral Choir that so much more of this music has been re-discovered; as I said before, make sure that this CD joins your collection if it is not there already.

Timothy Storey

ORGANCDs

THE ENGLISH CATHEDRAL SERIES

Peter Wright plays organ music from Southwark Cathedral

Demessieux Te Deum; Adeste Fideles ; Guillou Fantaisie, op 1; Saga no 6; Peeters Aria; Chorale Prelude on ‘O Gott, du frommer Gott; Variations on ‘Herr Jesus hat ein Gärtchen Guy Weitz De profundis clamavi; Lemmens Fanfare; Jongen Chant de Mai; Sonata Eroica.

REGENT REGCD335 TT 69:40.

My earliest impressions of Southwark Cathedral date from the days of austerity just after the Second World War. As a child at a service, I remember a freezing, cold and gloomy building with many broken windows allowing a variety of noisy avian life free access. Trains from London Bridge rumbled and rattled past and the organ had a chronic cipher which the organist fell foul of during the sermon. All that has changed now that the beautiful building has been cleaned and renovated and the superb Lewis organ has been sensitively restored by Harrison & Harrison to give it back the voice its builder intended for it. Peter Wright gives stunning performances of a range of music by French and Belgian

composers. It is always a pleasure to hear an organ played by one who has become familiar with it through regular use and Peter Wright brings out the colours of this fine instrument in a programme which requires outstanding virtuosity on the one hand and musical sensitivity on the other. The recording engineers have triumphed in avoiding extraneous noises and the CD is well produced with excellent and informative accompanying notes. A worthy addition to the Regent series. Highly recommended

Alan Spedding

SIR EDWARD ELGAR Music for Organ

Sonata No 1 in G; Nimrod; Imperial March; ‘Prelude’ from the Dream of Gerontius; ‘Angel’s Farewell’ from the Dream of Gerontius; Sonata No 2. Anthony Hammond plays the organ of St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol.

PRIORY PRCD 1037 TT 67:09.

Anthony Hammond, Organist and Director of Music at Cirencester Parish Church, recorded this disc in 2007 on the magnificent Harrison & Harrison organ at St Mary Redcliffe church, Bristol before its recent restoration. It produces just the right sounds for this music and Anthony Hammond is obviously very comfortable with the instrument, having been organ scholar at the church while studying at Bristol University. The accompanying booklet acknowledges that there is some wind and action noise, but this never interferes with one’s enjoyment of the music. The Sonata in G, the only original organ work recorded here, opens the programme in grand fashion, exploiting the wide dynamic range available on such an instrument. The playing here and throughout is clear and technically assured. The Allegretto trips along nimbly, though maybe the main theme is slightly overshadowed by the accompaniment. The Andante is given just the right amount of breadth and the last movement bustles along with energy and the huge Tuba stop puts in an appearance. All in all, a stylish performance. The rest of the CD consists of arrangements of orchestral works. There is the ever-popular Nimrod which again exploits the resources of the organ to the full. The Imperial March is given a suitably rousing performance and is particularly well registered. Following that come two movements from The Dream of Gerontius, the sombre Prelude using some new reed and string colours and the Angel’s Farewell given a sensitive and moving performance. The final work is the Sonata No 2, three out of four movements taken from the Severn Suite for brass band. Again the playing is superb and the organ used to great musical effect. This excellent disc is accompanied by interesting and informative notes, written by the performer, about the music, particularly the Sonata in G and about the St Mary Redcliffe organ.

Adrian Moore

BENJAMIN SAUNDERS at the organ of Leeds Cathedral

Vierne Cathédrales; Pärt Trivium; Britten Playful Pizzicato (Simple Symphony); Kushnariov Passacaglia; Fugue; Glass Satyagraha; Howells Psalm Prelude (Set 1 No 3); Dvoŕák Largo (New World); Guilmant Marche Triomphale.

HERALD HAVPCD 358 TT 72:10.

It must have been a great day for the musicians of Leeds Roman Catholic Cathedral when the rebuilt pipe organ was back in use after thirty years of ‘make-do-and-mend’. The original 1904 Norman and Beard has been reconstructed and enlarged by Johannes Klais Orgelbau, under the supervision of Benjamin Saunders with consultant David Sanger, whose tragic death has been such a loss to the organ world. The aim was to provide an instrument in harmony with its distinctive Arts and Crafts surroundings and in tune with the requirements of the Catholic liturgy. Vespers and Mass are sung daily in the cathedral and Leeds is at the centre of the largest choral outreach programme in the UK, under the direction of its dynamic Director of Music. Benjamin Saunders makes the most of the new organ in this, its first recording, with a varied programme of original pieces and arrangements. He is obviously aware of the acoustical properties of the building and maximizes the subtle effects of carefully chosen registrations, especially in his own arrangements of Britten and Dvořák The most substantial work, the Passacaglia and Fugue by the Russian

composer Kushnariov, is a real find. It is difficult for any composer to bring anything new to the passacaglia without reference to earlier models (Bach, Reger even Rheinberger, for example), but Kushnariov achieves an intensity of feeling which is matched by the performer in this interpretation. The arrangement of Satyagraha by Glass provides a vehicle for a skilfully contrived crescendo throughout (even though this reviewer must own to a lack of affection for Glass’s fidgety repetitions). Guilmant’s somewhat pompous Marche brings the recital to a most satisfying end with the sound of the full organ. The new organ, as well as satisfying the immediate needs of the church, brings Leeds Cathedral fully into the forefront of the vibrant musical life of the city and Benjamin Saunders is to be congratulated.

Alan Spedding

ORGAN LOLLIPOPS 2

More musical delights played on the Klais organ of Bath

Abbey by Peter King

Karg-Elert Marche Triomphale ‘Now thank we all our God’; Valse Mignonne; Bach Chorale Prelude ‘Wachet auf’; Hollings Evening Rest; F Scotson Clark Marche aux flambeaux; Grainger arr King Irish Tune from Country Derry ‘The Londonderry Air’; Brewer Marche Héroïque; Elgar Chanson de nuit; Bossi Scherzo in G minor; Martin Evensong; Thalben-Ball Tune in E; Lefébure-Wély March in C; Camidge Gavotte in G minor; Walton Popular Song (Façade); Widor Toccata (Symphony 5).

REGENT REGCD312 TT 69:49.

There are lollipops a plenty in this second volume from the 1997 fourManual 62 stop Klais organ of Bath Abbey. If Peter King could combine the glockenspiel with the cymbelstern – you could easily imagine an ice-cream van in the choir… (perhaps on the next volume…)! This is music to listen to while you work or drive and expertly played. Each of the fifteen tracks explores different nuances of this impressively rebuilt organ at Bath. There are delights to excite you such as Karg-Elert’s Now thank we all our God which opens the CD with the imposing sound of the full organ, and the Widor Toccata which closes the album (surely the daddy of all organ lollipops). Between lie other delights which bring a really broad smile to the face, a smile that just goes on getting wider and wider right up to the final chord. Popular Song from Walton’s Façade in an arrangement by Robert Gower, is guaranteed to bring a smirk to your face as the jaunty tune (bringing fond memories of the BBC quiz programme Face the Music) moves skilfully through different registrations. Peter King increases this to a ‘cheesy grin’ during the March in C, another amusing gem from Lefébure-Wély very much in the ‘Opéra Comique’ mood of his more well-known Sortie pieces –what an ending. Karg-Elert does get a second bite at the cherry lollipop on this CD with his Valse Mignonne. To quote the excellent programme notes by Peter King, the composer stated that the piece ‘was composed after a visit to a fabulous cinema organ …rather sentimental …May St Cecelia forgive me my sins!’ Sit back and enjoy the ravishing sounds of this instrument – it could be Reginald Dixon playing! The Glockenspiel on the Abbey organ (a gift from The Friends of Bath Abbey in 1998) is apparently composed of brass bowl shaped bells, rather like the ones found in a grandfather clock and when I first heard them during Evening Rest by Alfred Hollins, I was reminded of the chimes on my grandfather’s pocket watch. Composed a year earlier in 1915, Marche Héroïque by Herbert Brewer is another hidden gem not often heard. Written in the tradition, as Peter King states, ‘of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance’, this performance shows the Abbey organ to its grand best. The engineers have managed to capture a perfect balance of organ clarity and acoustic that places you in a seat right at the front of the nave (the organ stands in its own gallery high up in the North Transept). I can recall many years ago, having just finished singing the Agnus Dei from the Byrd Four Part Mass in Westminster Abbey, when the organ scholar broke the spell-binding atmosphere by playing Evensong by Easthope Martin on what sounded like the Blackpool Tower organ. Words were exchanged between the conductor and organist after the service! It appears that some things do not change – even Peter King’s notes state ‘This music is now delightfully unfashionable and in smart circles it is not done to own up to enjoying it’. Well I enjoyed the mellifluous tones of the Klais organ and stylistic playing. Evensong is at last heard amongst friends on this CD. Virtuosity and panache shine in the performance of the Scherzo by Bossi as Peter King explores the many colour combinations offered on

this organ. and as arranger, Peter King has added to the list of organ lollipops his own new lollipop with The Londonderry Air. Percy Grainger’s haunting tune is given space and grace in this powerful performance. A delightful and highly recommended CD, offering a lollipop for your every mood as you indulge in the wonderful sounds of this magnificent Bath Abbey instrument.

Matt Dowdy

BACH PIANO TRANSCRIPTIONS - 8

complete Bach transcriptions by

The

Eugen d’Albert played by Piers Lane

Passacaglia in C minor; Prelude (Fantasia) and Fugue in C minor; Prelude and Fugue in G; Prelude (Toccata) and Fugue in F major; Prelude and Fugue in A; Prelude and Fugue in F minor; Prelude (Toccata) and Fugue in D minor ‘Dorian’; Prelude and Fugue in D. HYPERION CDA67709 TT 74:06.

This final disc in Hyperion’s excellent Bach transcription series is devoted to the work of Eugen d’Albert (1864-1932). Little is known of him today but he was, during his lifetime, one of the world’s most celebrated pianists and composers. Born in Scotland of a German/French father and English mother, his precocious talent ensured his early entry to the Royal College of Music, where he was taught by Arthur Sullivan. A period of study in Weimar with Liszt followed, at the end of which he declared his intention to remain in Germany. His repertoire as a pianist increasingly centred on Bach and Beethoven and led to his transcriptions of some of Bach’s great organ works for concert performance. Together with his contemporary, Busoni, he became one of the pre-eminent arrangers of Bach’s music in the generation after Liszt. His transcriptions, however, differ from Busoni’s in that they are more restrained, often lighter and of greater clarity. In the six preludes and fugues we find the minimally invasive

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approach of Liszt, his revered master, to the works of Bach. The problem of how to transcribe the organ’s pedal part is dealt with by arpeggiating the wider stretches and octaves to include the notes that were given to the pedal in Bach’s original. D’Albert’s transcriptions, in contrast with Busoni’s, have sometimes been accused of being thin-textured and lacking virtuosity. On the contrary the Prelude and Fugue in D minor ‘Dorian’ and the self-standing Prelude and Fugue in D major show D’Albert using an enormous number of virtuoso octaves and extended chords sufficient to challenge the most gifted of pianists. It is unfortunate that these works are not better known or more often performed. It is to be hoped that through Piers Lane’s masterful performance many more young, gifted pianists will be inspired to take up the challenge of adding D’Albert’s transcriptions to their concert repertoire.

Ann Parsons

JOHN STANLEY Six Concertos in seven parts Op 2 (1742)

The Parley of Instruments.

Director: Roy Goodman.

HYPERION (HELIOS) CDH 55361 TT 58:13.

This is perfect for any lover of John Stanley. From the moment The Parley of Instruments under its conductor Roy Goodman begins playing with a clean rhythmic start, you know that this is indeed special. The musicality shines through with deftness and also a lightness of touch. Stanley stands out among his contemporaries as a composer of ‘grand concertos’ in that he used Handel’s Op 6 concertos of 1739 as a model. The Parley play early instruments, with harpsichord and organ continuo in different combinations: they are on top form and produce a wonderful sound. Recommended without hesitation.

Patrick Mayhew

DVD REVIEWS

THE ELUSIVE ENGLISH ORGAN

Presented by Daniel Moult

Byrd Fantasia in A minor; Tomkins A Sad Pavan for these Distracted Times; Blow Voluntary in A; Locke Voluntary in A minor; Purcell Voluntaries in G and D minor; Handel Concerto No2, Fuga No2; Hart Fugue in A; Worgan Piece No7 in D minor; Stanley Voluntaries Nos 7 & 8; Russell Largo; Wesley Three short pieces.

DOUBLE DISC

DVD TT 50 mins & CD TT 72 mins

Recorded in 16:9 widescreen PAL colour; with Dolby digital 2.0 stereo FUGUE STATE FILMS FSV DVD 002

Order from: www.fuguestatefilms.co.uk

This album will appeal to lovers of early English organs and their repertoire: it has been recorded in six locations, two of them in France. Daniel Moult, who has a relaxed and engaging style of speaking, introduces the programme in the church of St Botolph, Aldgate, in the south east corner of the City of London. This contains an organ built by Renatus Harris in 1704, which is the oldest surviving complete church organ in the country, on which Daniel plays some John Stanley Voluntaries. The oldest organ (c1680) we are taken to hear on this quest for authentic instruments on which to play English repertoire in Daniel Moult’s chosen period of 1550 to 1830 is at Adlington Hall, whose builder is unknown. This has been restored by the London firm of John Mander and the boss is there to meet Daniel and describe the very poor state in which they found the historic instrument. Others who join in the story are Dominic Gwynn and Kimberley Marshall. The third English location is St James, Great Packington, with an organ built by Thomas Parker in 1749, ideal for the works of Handel. Finally, we visit St James, Bermondsey, which has an organ by J C Bishop of 1829, which Daniel demonstrates is just right for Samuel Wesley. The camera work is good but there is a glaring disregard for continuity in the editing and some rather jarring cuts. The sound quality is excellent throughout. Notes and specifications of each instrument are given and there are also four substantial trailers, one of which is a well-shot demonstration of metal pipe-making. The CD is 22 mins longer than the DVD and has nineteen tracks, in which Daniel shows off the best qualities of all six organs with some stylish playing.

Roger Tucker

SACRED MUSIC –AN EASTER CELEBRATION

presented by Simon Russell Beale with Harry Christophers & The Sixteen

Concert Programme with 13 tracks.

Plainsong Vexilla Regis; Palestrina Gloria (Missa Papae Marcelli); Assumpta est Maria; Pérotin Viderunt omnes ; de Monte Super flumina Babylonis; Byrd Quomodo cantabimus; Ye Sacred Muses; Agnus Dei (Mass for Four Voices); Haec Dies; J S Bach Komm, Jesu, komm; Tallis Salvator mundi; Anerio Stabat Mater; Allegri Miserere

This list does not indicate the playing order of the programme

SINGLE DISC DVD

CORO CORDVD3 COR16079N

One needs a road map to navigate this DVD, which is the most confusing I have seen, with repeating teasers, menu loops and trailers. It is in fact a spinoff from the excellent first 4-part BBC Sacred Music series, presented by Simon Russell Beale, which took The Sixteen to the chosen locations to perform in splendid architectural settings in Paris, Rome, London and Leipzig. A couple of those sequences are included here but the majority of the programme is sung in St Luke’s, Old Street on the northern edge of the City

of London. It was one of the last of the 50 new churches provided for by the 1711 Act and designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor and John James. In 1959 it was found to have structural problems and the roof was removed but recently it has been semi-restored and turned into a musical performance space, known as LSO St Luke’s. The acoustics are excellent and very suitable for medium-sized ensembles but visually there is a certain starkness about the bare, unplastered walls and modern metal stairs and gallery, which becomes wearying to the eye, especially when lit with a ghastly, ghostly blue light, as for The Sixteen’s concert featured here. This performance setting does not juxtapose comfortably with the sporadic location cutaways, taken from the original series, which, incidentally, have suffered a colour and quality change. There is a lack of specially shot cutaway material but some very bizarre, unidentified visuals are dropped in at random (eg of Tower Bridge) and several uncomfortable links to camera by Mr Beale, with traffic whizzing past in front of him. It gradually emerges that the concert sequence is presented in two different ways: one with voice-over links by Harry Christophers, which needs restarting after each piece; the other has links to camera by Simon Beale and audience applause after each number. Too many of the 130 mins are filled by repeating material for my liking., however, nothing can detract from the polished (sometimes too polished) renderings by The Sixteen of this wonderful choice of repertoire, from plainsong to Bach; it’s a pity composers’ dates aren’t given in the very basic programme leaflet. There is a very good talk about the music by Harry Christophers as a bonus track.

There is apparently a second Sacred Music series in the pipeline, which has yet to be shown on BBC-4. This may then be issued on CORO as a DVD.

Roger Tucker

Cathedral MUSIC Cathedral MUSIC

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