Cathedral Music: Autumn 2022

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From the EDITOR

The Queen’s funeral on 19 September was a clear and powerful statement of the excellence of cathedral music in the UK. How wonderful it was to see and hear the choir and organists in Westminster Abbey and elsewhere beforehand performing beautiful music with total professionalism and outstanding musicianship, and what better way to show the world this glorious part of our heritage! It is hard to imagine a more high-profile event: nearly 30 million people watched the service in the UK alone, with coverage also on most international channels – plus more exceptional music and immaculate ceremony from St George’s Chapel at the end of the day. The beauty and solemnity of the music and the ritual in the services will surely have made plain to all how immensely valuable to our country this special tradition is – a point that the report commissioned from The More Partnership (MP) makes with emphasis. Yes, high quality cathedral music is expensive, but it verges on the unique; cathedral choirs in the UK inhabit the elite realms of choral music worldwide (although they are not elitist, and they work hard to demonstrate this); and they are valued the world over. Details from the MP report will be more widely available shortly; in essence, the report covers the background (‘the cathedral music landscape’), examines the reasoning behind many people’s church or cathedral attendance, scrutinises the funding of choir schools and cathedrals in some depth, investigates gender and race disparity in choristers, conductors, composers and lay clerks, and looks at specific actions, areas of focus and possible ways forward for Cathedral Music Trust. Most readers of the magazine are already familiar with at least some of this, but the increasing amount of financial support needed to help overstretched church and cathedral budgets necessitated an in-depth look to see how the Trust can expand its horizons and encourage contributions from areas outside its committed and stalwart Friends. It is also clear from remarks made by many cathedrals that help is needed on several levels, not just financial.

In some cases, sadly, the report has not come quite soon enough: St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast, where a particularly fine service was held after the death of The Queen, has been forced to disband its musical staff and rely on a voluntary choir due to insufficient funds. This action is doubly disappointing since under Matthew Owens’ regenerative approach (he was appointed Director of Music in 2019) the choirs and their members have expanded greatly, new levels of excellence have been attained and highly regarded CDs have recently been recorded (two of which are reviewed in these pages). It is to be hoped that some resolution can be found swiftly.

Looking ahead in a more domestic way, as this issue is my last as Editor, it is reassuring to know that the magazine’s greatly valued and superlative reviewers are planning to remain in position for the foreseeable future, and to them I offer heartfelt gratitude for a job carried out in a unique and complementary fashion. Some I inherited, some I appointed, and they have all been towers of strength and of enormous help to me in my editorship. I would like to pay particular tribute to Tim Storey, who even after his stroke continued to

provide interesting fodder in the form of articles and many, many (mostly incisive!) reviews. Sadly, his sojourn in hospital last year with a longstanding infection has meant that he has not been able to resume his post, and he is much missed. The others, Christopher Barton, Nicholas Kerrison, Simon Lindley, David Thorne and, more recently, Mark Bellis and Bret Johnson, stepped most willingly into the breach, and have unfailingly produced consistent, informative and pertinent reviews. And let me not forget the clear-sighted Roger Judd, who hung up his pen a while ago after several years of excellent critiquing and many an apt comment. On the design side, for most of my time as editor (since 2011) I have been in the safe hands of Debbie Trewhitt, from whom I have learnt much. She is consistently reliable, accommodating and painstaking, and she designs with insight and discernment. I shall miss working with her, and with the numberless others with whom I have been in contact over the last ten or so years, not forgetting Graham Hermon, who as Production Manager oversaw so much of CM’s content over the years. I would also like to sing the praises of the two advisers to the magazine, David Flood and Matthew Owens, who have been such a steadfast source of assistance and guidance to me since 2011.

Also retiring, in February next year, which you will have seen from Cathedral Voice, is our chairman, Peter Allwood, who has kept a steady hand on the tiller of our developing organisation through some interesting times, as the charity has moved from being run by volunteers to one with firstclass professional staff and a completely new management system. Peter’s oversight of the process has been thoughtful and constant, and his straightforward leadership, particularly through the difficult months of the pandemic, has been very welcome. His successor, Jonathan Macdonald, who has been known to me for so long that I hesitate to wax lyrical (or otherwise) about his virtues, has stepped down from chair of the development committee and will take over from Peter in February 2023. Jonathan has a great deal of experience in the corporate world and also has – just as important, if not more so – a genuine and enduring love for cathedral music, and a clear vision of where the organisation should be heading over the next few years. Many readers will have already met him at recent gatherings.

And not only do we have a new chairman, we also have a new ambassador for the Trust (in addition to the wonderful Alexander Armstrong) in the shape of Anna Lapwood, who you may have seen at the Proms, as a presenter and as an organist. She is currently Director of Music at Pembroke College, and in addition – she is clearly a multi-tasker – she is not only Artist in Association with the BBC Singers but has also been appointed Associate Artist of the Royal Albert Hall. She was the first female organ scholar at Magdalen College and not long ago released a solo album of organ music (reviewed in CM 1/22). She and Alexander together will make a formidable duo, and will be outstanding advocates for the myriad benefits of cathedral music and the work of the Trust.

Enjoy the magazine.

Sooty Asquith

1938-2022

Simon Preston in 1984

Photo: © Dean & Chapter of Westminster

Christopher Herrick

Photo: Hans Weichselbaum

The Pope was due to process past Westminster Abbey in his Popemobile, but his entourage was well overdue. Three of the four Abbey organists – Geoffrey Morgan, Jane Watts and myself – were part of the small expectant crowd in front of Dean’s Yard Gate. The minutes ticked by and, as the Pope failed to appear, Jane and Geoffrey became increasingly anxious because Simon Preston would be expecting us all, teapot in hand, for the weekly organists’ meeting. Rightly or wrongly, I stood my ground as I was determined to experience the Pope’s cavalcade, but the others dutifully decided to be on time for the meeting. Whatever purple epithets may have been used about me in my short absence, it has to be said that when I did eventually arrive at the meeting, Simon was typically all broad smiles and papal jokes.

Only a novelist of the stature of George Eliot could do justice to such a colourful character as Simon Preston. Simon had an unassailable reputation as an organist: for instance, his Bach In dulci jubilo stunningly played at the end of the King’s carol service; his early vinyl disc recordings from Westminster Abbey; his concert appearances at the Royal Festival Hall. These were the tip of the iceberg of an extremely busy and successful career on the road as a concert organist. After sailing smoothly from organ scholar at King’s to sub-organist at Westminster Abbey, from stand-in for Peter Hurford at St Albans Abbey to Christ Church Cathedral and then back to Westminster Abbey, he subsequently went on to have an extremely active globetrotting solo career, sharing a friendly rivalry with Gillian Weir. The story goes, and he confirmed this to me, that he was playing a concert somewhere in the States when to his horror he noticed Gillian in the audience. In front of everyone present he said, half jokingly and half seriously: “Gillian Weir!! Go away!!”.

Let us skip rapidly over the abundant tittle-tattle from his Christ Church days: the infamous ‘Press off, Piston’ episode; the rumours of dippings in the Quadrangle Pond; his furious walkout from Choral Evensong with slammed door punctuation – all this contrasting so vividly with his demonstrable success with the cathedral choir.

He was clearly not a person to mess with, and this is endorsed by one Westminster Abbey lay vicar’s memories of his arrival as Organist and Master of the Choristers.

I recall his arrival at the Abbey. All the lay vicars were on their mettle and tried to impress the new man. Some were more successful than others! Instantly we knew that he meant business and would not accept anything other than one’s best. Each rehearsal and service seemed to be a rollercoaster ride, yet rewarding because of the high standards which Simon demanded. He was always totally focused on the job in hand and could often be quite abrasive, yet as soon as he left the Song School his outgoing personality surfaced and he became a delightful and very amusing social companion.

When Simon first came to the Abbey he decided to concentrate his energies on the choir, consciously allowing his organ-playing to recede. However, as an exception to this, he instituted a listed major organ piece to be played by himself after Evensong on Sundays. My memory is vague as to which great Bach organ work was thus duly listed – maybe it

was the 9/8 Prelude and Fugue in C [BWV 547]? Anyway, having conducted the unaccompanied anthem, Simon stormed up the organ loft stairs in a frightful mood, boiling over with a combination of anger at the choristers’ generally poor performance and frustration that, because he was due to play the specially listed voluntary, he couldn’t go straight over to the Song School after the service to berate the boys. At this point I tentatively offered to play the voluntary myself… His mood lifted and with his well-known right-hand gesture to his right brow he exclaimed – “Would you?”. During my time at the Abbey with him, he hardly ever played anything from that time on!

But with the choir he was a man in a hurry – it was certainly an exciting time to be accompanying a choir on the move upwards. The repertoire expanded exponentially and standards were demanded rather than coaxed. A newly instituted pre-Evensong rehearsal in the Abbey itself on Saturdays was probably the main time that he and I interacted most fruitfully. Although he was known for his volatility, I found him gracious in showing appreciation when he was genuinely satisfied. This was particularly so after Sir William Walton’s 80th birthday concert, when we performed all that composer’s church music in his presence – a technically demanding repertoire for choir and organist alike.

I cannot resist a short postscript to this occasion. During the drinks party afterwards in the Jerusalem Chamber, Simon approached Walton, who was hunched up in a seat, and a rather stiff conversation ensued in which Simon told Sir William proudly that he had recorded the Crown Imperial March on the Abbey organ. Walton responded gruffly, “With or without the cuts?” – Preston answered triumphantly, “Without, of course!” – I love Walton’s growling comeback: “Bloody fool!”

So, my time at Westminster Abbey came to an end, and Harry Bicket, who had been with Simon at Christ Church, took over. His thoughts are below:

‘I had known Simon since I was 12, when he first started giving me organ lessons. I was then an organ scholar under him at Christ Church before taking the job at the Abbey in 1984, so I knew what I was coming to.

He was not the perceived stereotype of a cathedral organist: film star good looks, a love of fast cars and excellent food, and the life and soul of any party. I was always reluctant to introduce him to any girlfriend of mine because they would all immediately fall under his spell.

His organ-playing was of course extraordinary, but he also worked incredibly hard at it. He rarely had any fingerings or registrations in his music, everything was so physically in his body. He once cursed after an immaculate performance of Liszt’s Ad nos, for which I was turning pages, because he had used a wrong fingering. I pointed out that he hadn’t played any wrong notes, but he said, “That’s not the point!”

He had a remarkable ability to make even the simplest music seem uplifting, whether it was a psalm chant, the

responses, or a workaday Mag and Nunc. An Evensong on a wet wintry day in November was as keenly rehearsed and prepared as a big televised Royal occasion. He also felt it was important that he was seen to be not just conducting the choir for services; he insisted on playing the psalms on a Sunday morning, and even once decided he wanted to play Tippett’s St John’s Service while I conducted. I asked why, since it would have been much simpler to do it the other way round; he replied: “Well, I’ve never played it before, and it’s good that the choir sees that I can still do it!”

Above all, it was the most fun music-making I’ve ever had. He always rehearsed music thoroughly, but also left room for spontaneity, and everyone knew to expect the unexpected in performance. We also laughed the whole time, mainly at his groan-worthy jokes which were told

with such relish, and so repeatedly that one could not help but be swept away by his enthusiasm.

During Simon’s slow mental decline he came to give an organ concert on Kingston’s Frobenius organ. My wife Sarah and I hosted Simon and his wife Elizabeth for a light pre-concert meal during which he suddenly became anxious as to whether he had in fact registered Liszt’s famous Ad nos or not. Instead of the planned rest period, we had to hurry him back to the church to do the work that he may, or may not, have already done. The concert itself was given with his usual panache and virtuosity, and I treasure his characteristic throwaway remark after the applause had died down – “Isn’t it wonderful to get all this adulation?” – said with that sparkling sideways conspiratorial look of his!’

Colin Walsh writes on Simon’s time at Christ Church (1970-81):

The year 1970 saw the 32-year-old Simon Preston arrive in Oxford. He had already acquired a wealth of experience in cathedrals and their music as a chorister and later as organ scholar at King’s, as Sub-Organist at Westminster Abbey, and looking after the music at St Albans for a year. He had a phenomenal reputation as one of the leading organists in the world, and as a fine and successful choir director, and now he had the opportunity to run his own show. The following 11 years would see the Christ Church cathedral choir elevated to one of the finest choirs in the world, with a large discography stretching from Byrd and Lassus to Stravinsky and Poulenc.

When I arrived at Christ Church in 1974 what struck me instantly was Simon’s infectious enthusiasm and his total commitment to the music. For the next four years I was to become fully immersed in and involved with Simon’s inspiring music-making, balancing my work in the cathedral with reading for a Music degree. I was very fortunate.

It was the custom that the organ scholar would be prepared to the extent that he would learn all the music for the services whether he was playing or not. This was divided between Simon, Nicholas Cleobury (the assistant organist) and me. It was usual for the organ scholar to play for all the rehearsals. Simon would normally play the psalms while the choir conducted themselves. It is easy to overlook his talents as a fine accompanist in favour of his solo playing; as in all things nothing was left to chance, and Simon’s psalms were meticulously presented with an imaginative sense of drama and colour – subtle and never overdone.

The organ was interesting – a 4-manual Willis (1884)/ Harrison (1922). The ivory white keys were chipped or very worn, the black keys rounded off at the ends and the stop knobs very large. The pneumatic manual pistons could not be changed and the settings emphasised the 8 and 16 foot stops, as was the custom in the early 1900s. There were no general pistons. Apart from the regular tuning visits, I don’t believe any substantial work had been carried out since 1922. It was useful as an accompaniment organ, but very limited as a solo instrument, unless you were playing Elgar and Stanford.

Simon played very few voluntaries but when he did he made it sparkle in a way nobody else could.

Christ Church is one of England’s smallest cathedrals, with a dry acoustic, and whether by intuition or design, Simon used this to great advantage when training the choir. Any fault of any kind in the choir’s performance could not be hidden. He cultivated a bright tone with a seamless legato, dynamic changes were exaggerated to create more drama, speeds were never hurried. The impression was therefore given that the choir was singing in a bigger place. When the opportunity came for the choir to enjoy a more lively acoustic they sounded better than ever. The 1977 disc Romantic Choral Classics, recorded in the acoustic of Keble College, is a good example of this.

The weekly choral repertoire was focused on the music for the Sunday morning Mass. Singing from the east end (under the spectacular vaulting) and at a distance from the organ, the choir sang a cappella, a rich diet of Palestrina, Vittoria, Lassus, Byrd and Vaughan Williams. Every movement of the Mass was sung, including the often lengthy Credo. Music for Evensong ranged from the short services of Weelkes, Byrd etc to the larger settings such as Byrd ‘Great’, Parry ‘Great’ and Wesley in E. Big anthems included Walton’s The Twelve, the extended motets of Byrd and the verse anthems of Purcell. It sounds like a large repertoire, but much of it was repeated within the year, enabling Simon to spend more time on precision, less on notes.

A detailed music list was drawn up and circulated before the start of each term so that choral scholars and lay clerks knew what to learn. There was an expectation that music would be known by each individual before every rehearsal, allowing Simon to concentrate on the sound and the performance. Rehearsals always began on time, were taken very seriously and not a second was wasted. If Simon spotted a problem he would often prefix his remark with, “To my way of thinking...”. I recall his rebuke to the four altos – “I don’t understand how I can hear five notes when there are only four people singing!”

He expected from the choir the same standard as he achieved in his own playing. He gave very few recitals during the years 1974-1978, preferring to focus his musical energies on the choir. One recital that stands out for me is one he gave at the Royal Festival Hall in 1977. Simon prepared for this recital (as he did for others) by hiding himself away for weeks before, going to another college chapel which was quieter and without tourists where he would spend hours working on the programme, always returning to Christ Church for the rehearsal before Evensong. The RFH recital included the mighty F major Toccata and Fugue of Bach and the Reubke Sonata on the 94th Psalm. I had the best seat in the house, turning the pages. The energy, the drive and the control, coupled with a profound understanding and enjoyment of the music, was all there in a faultless performance.

His musical interests extended well beyond Christ Church. He was a frequent visitor to the opera and concerts in London, discussing the performances for days afterwards. Always interested in other choirs (in particular ones that he viewed as ‘rivals’), he would discuss their qualities in great depth. A choir in Cambridge was once described as ‘the worst good choir I know’. He kept a close eye on the local competition at New College and Magdalen.

The cathedral formed a large part of his work at Oxford. In addition, he was responsible for teaching harmony and counterpoint to the music undergraduates in the college and lecturing in the university. His tutorials were always illuminating. Taking a piece of Palestrina or Bach which I

had completed to him, he would glance through my feeble efforts, spotting any faults and correcting them swiftly. Handing it back to me, he would remark, albeit kindly, “I don’t understand your difficulty” or, “Well done, anyway”. His lectures at the faculty of music focused upon his favourite composers. He loved the music of Richard Strauss and a series of presentations that he gave on this composer brought much enjoyment to the students.

I have long maintained that apart from his remarkable abilities as an organist and choir director his sharp intellect, humour and infectious enthusiasm made him one of the brightest and most entertaining people I have ever met. Always excellent company, he was full of good stories and observations about people. Well-read and with a razor-sharp wit, he was more than a match for others at High Table. The Dean, Henry Chadwick, himself a former organ scholar at Cambridge, called him a genius. He enjoyed a wide circle of friends to whom he was extremely generous and loyal. When things had gone well (as they usually did), an invitation to his rooms was issued by the command, “Drink?”

After leaving Christ Church for Salisbury we kept in touch, and I enjoyed his company and his music. For many years a support and a wise adviser, his clear mind could always find the root of a problem. The last concert I heard him give was in Lincoln some ten years ago. The longest item was the Liszt Ad nos. At home on the Willis organ, his playing was inspiring and full of energy, bringing the cathedral to life as ever.

Christ Church cathedral

Photo: Nina Ali

FRIDESWIDE VOICES –OXFORD’S FIRST GIRL CHORISTERS

Helen Smee, Director of Music, Frideswide Voices

For a city soaked in choral music, girls’ voices came late – some would say embarrassingly late – to the chapels and cathedral of Oxford. The choral foundations of New College, Magdalen College and Christ Church Cathedral have enjoyed boy choristers, all educated at their own college schools, for centuries, and yet girls had been confined to the city’s (often excellent) parish choirs. By 2014, this had become a pressing issue for a number of parents of choristers at the city’s choral foundations, where their sons were enjoying the singular privileges and delights of choristership while their sisters could only look on. Many parents were themselves

talented singers who had held chorister aspirations as children, and were frustrated at watching their daughters being denied similar opportunities. Tanya Simpson, along with the Revd Dr Jonathan Arnold, Cecilia Osmond and Sarah Coatsworth, decided that the time was right to form a liturgical girls’ choir which would give girls of ‘chorister’ age (roughly age 7 to 14) the opportunity to sing in some of Oxford’s most beautiful spaces, and contribute to the rich liturgical life of the city – and thus Frideswide Voices was born. It was clear that there was significant support from other parents, musicians and academics, so Tanya and her team

Frideswide Voices on the evening of their induction into the Foundation at Christ Church, September 2019

Photo: Hugh Warwick

began to consider what would be required. It was immediately recognised that for the choir to succeed, it would need some level of institutional support, and Arnold (then chaplain of Worcester College) offered Worcester as a base for rehearsals and the first Evensong services.

A charitable trust, the Frideswide Foundation, was set up to oversee the choir’s activities, headed by Canon Sarah Foot, and the search for a Director of Music resulted in Will Dawes’s appointment in September 2014. Almost immediately the group set about recruiting and auditioning girls from across the city and county. Information sent out to local primary schools, singing workshops, and by word of mouth were all vital tools in the initial recruitment drive, but crucially many of the initial cohort were girls who had chorister brothers – and whose families, therefore, already understood the demands and challenges of choristership. Most of the initial intake were aged 9-11, although the committee correctly predicted that numbers would even out to 4 or 5 girls in each year group in due course. Auditions were held in early October, and by the end of the month the choir was up and running with 19 girls.

It was a conscious decision, says Dawes, to get singing right away, and he remembers that it was only a matter of weeks between auditions and the girls’ first service – problems were resolved as they were encountered! A founder member, speaking in 2018, recalls:

“A few weeks later [after the DoM] auditions I auditioned. I don’t remember any of it except breathing in the wrong place and the chocolate biscuit I got at the end. FV didn’t exist back then so my first service was also the choir’s. Tanya and Sarah sang the psalm and we wore black because we didn’t have any robes. Everyone was so supportive of our dream, applauding us on our way out, and it is incredible to see how far we’ve come.”

The girls met just once a week for the first two years of the choir’s life – a necessity while girls and their families acclimatised to the commitment, but hugely challenging for generating and retaining momentum. Evensongs were fortnightly, held on Mondays at Worcester College, meaning a long gap between rehearsals and services. Psalmody was a particular challenge, with no girls having any experience of plainsong or Anglican chant; repertoire came to include a great deal of plainsong, and everything else – since the girls always sang alone – all for upper-voices only. Much had to be drawn from public domain sources, and some sheet music was generously loaned from other chapels. In Simpson’s words:

“Will had total and masterful command of the music list, making sure it evolved from straightforward unison to more elaborate SS and then SATB over the years.”

Despite the very limited rehearsal time, theory and singing lessons were offered from the earliest days; an acknowledgement that choristership should be a comprehensive musical education. These lessons, and the probationer programme delivered by Laura Ashby, were offered by members of the committee initially on a voluntary basis until the Frideswide Foundation was able to build a programme of financial support – the goodwill and generosity of supporters who felt it was important and worthwhile work was the primary sustaining force in the early

days. Girls’ families paid a modest subscription (although chorister bursaries were offered from the start for families who could not afford to pay), in stark contrast to the types of financial benefit enjoyed by most choristers in UK cathedrals and chapels. Even so, subscription income only covered the most basic costs, and expenditure for resources such as robes and folders was initially beyond the choir’s means. The girls’ cassocks and surplices eventually came (just in time for a concert with the Magdalen College choristers at the University Church in 2015) from an anonymous benefactor; the purple hue became known to many choir staff and supporters as ‘suffragette purple’, and to the girls themselves as ‘aubergine robes’!

While the choir was based at Worcester College – and it benefited enormously from the generosity of the college and chapel community, including the talents of its organ scholars – it was also welcomed in its first year to Trinity and Queen’s Colleges. Many of the choir’s earliest choristers remember this period of itinerant singing very fondly – including theory lessons in Worcester’s beautiful orchard – but it undoubtedly posed significant challenges: constant adjustment to the singing (to suit the various acoustics), endless transporting of music and robes, and reliance on a huge amount of parent help and volunteer goodwill. As the choir’s profile grew, invitations to sing followed from many Oxford chapels and six or seven different locations each term became commonplace – but it was clear that for the choir to develop, it would need a greater level of consistency.

It was at this point that Oxford’s choral foundations entered the Frideswide Voices story: all three offered the choir a home for a term each – Michaelmas term at Christ Church, Hilary term at New College, and Trinity term at Magdalen College. Considerable support from the foundations’ directors enabled the girls to take an historic step forward, and the new arrangement meant that more time could be spent on music – and less time on procession rehearsals! For the first time, the girls were able to sing occasionally with a back row of altos, tenors and basses, and the choristers’ horizons were significantly broadened with the inclusion of SATB repertoire. (The annual Advent carol service had always included some volunteer altos, tenors and basses, but that was generally the limit for the first few years.) Simpson recalls that even after some years, it was easy to overlook how new and inexperienced the girls were :

“When first presented with a 4-part SATB piece, Will had a query from one of the younger choristers: “Which line am I supposed to sing?” she said.

We took so much for granted.”

The commitment had, by this point, grown to two sessions a week, with a resultant escalation in the girls’ confidence and range. Despite the consistent support of many of the foundations’ directors, organists, lay clerks and college staff, there were occasional interactions with those who fervently believed that the girls had no place in Oxford’s finest chapels, and who were only too happy to make their feelings known. It was at this time that the choir began to travel further afield: trips to Salisbury, Gloucester and St Paul’s Cathedrals all took place, and in June 2016 the first residential visit (to Malvern Priory and Tewkesbury Abbey) was made possible partly thanks to the financial support of the Friends of Christ Church

Cathedral. By now, Merton College had also founded a girls’ choir – testament to the strength of interest in choristership for girls amongst families in Oxford.

After three years of rotation – agreed by all but the most ardent critics of girl choristers to be a rich addition to Oxford’s choral landscape – it was once again becoming apparent that for the choir to continue to develop and grow it would need a permanent home of its own. Even with more continuity from week to week, much of the committee’s energies were spent on practical issues such as moving crates of music folders around, or securing funding for long-term projects. Around the same time, Christ Church had been looking at ways in which girls might be offered a significant place in the cathedral’s life and worship, with significant support from the cathedral’s chapter, musicians and wider community. The happy confluence of these events resulted, in the spring of 2019, in Frideswide Voices being invited to become the cathedral girls’ choir, with Steven Grahl (then in his first year as Organist of Christ Church) and Canon Sarah Foot heavily involved in the work of ensuring a meaningful place in the cathedral’s musical ecosystem for Frideswide Voices. It was at this stage that Will Dawes stepped down as the choir’s director, and I was appointed to take over as the girls moved to Christ Church that September.

It proved to be an immensely exciting, though occasionally very challenging, period – largely shaped by the necessity of completely re-framing the girls’ repertoire. Up until this point, their ‘back catalogue’ still consisted largely of uppervoices repertoire, but a key step forward in the choir’s move to Christ Church was that the girls would sing with the cathedral lay and academical clerks every Wednesday (stepping into the slot which was previously the weekly lower-voices Evensong) – i.e. requiring an almost entirely SATB repertoire. The immediate issue was that although the girls had spent five years growing into a confident and resilient choir, they knew very few mixed-voice canticle settings, or indeed sets of

responses. What followed was a period of intense learning, with the support of the large team of tutors and pastoral staff who had moved to Christ Church with the girls. Much of the infrastructure for supporting Christ Church’s boy choristers rests with the cathedral school (chaperoning, chorister tea, theory and singing teaching, parent liaison, for example), but for the girls, coming to the cathedral from more than 20 different schools, a different way of operating was required. On rehearsal evenings, six adults are required to staff the choir, with singing and theory lessons, probationer teaching, exam preparation and the main rehearsal all taking place concurrently. The usual frustrations – generally parking! –were never far away when we first arrived, but I was happily surprised by the very near universal joy and support which greeted the girls whenever they were on-site. It was clear from the outset that they were valued and respected in their own right, and that the wider cathedral community welcomed them with open arms. Equally importantly, being brought into the foundation at Christ Church meant an immediate expansion in educational provision for the girls: a dedicated rehearsal space, extensive choir library, and the move from group theory and singing lessons to weekly one-to-one lessons for every girl were just some of the practical improvements the choir enjoyed.

No choir history of recent years could be complete without a brief discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic. For Frideswide Voices, this came at a very difficult moment: only a little over one term into its new incarnation at Christ Church, we found ourselves suspended as the national lockdown was introduced. Every aspect of the girls’ musical education went online, with two weekly rehearsals, probationer teaching, singing and theory lessons, music history classes and socials all taking place via Zoom. Despite the obvious difficulties, frustrations and disappointments, two positive discoveries were made. First, that Zoom teaching can be very effective for theory teaching – so much so that many of the older girls have continued to have their lessons online, freeing

The Frideswide choristers after a concert at the Beamish Museum, on tour July 2022

Photo: Eleanor Sperling

up much-needed rehearsal time. Second, that our muted rehearsals did turn out (much to my surprise) to be effective at teaching a lot of repertoire. We chose to look only at new service music in our online sessions (apart from when team morale was at its very lowest), and as a result when the time came to return to services, the girls had learnt a great deal of new music.

Eight years after its foundation, Frideswide Voices continues to go from strength to strength. The choir now numbers 26 full choristers, and a further nine probationers in Year 3 and Year 4; it is consistently over-subscribed and continues to attract families from a very wide variety of backgrounds, and from across the city and county. The girls continue to sing every Wednesday in term-time, and at many additional services throughout the year, including around major festivals, and at the cathedral’s patronal celebrations for St Frideswide (aptly) in October. Away from Oxford, a typical year has come to include a wide range of concerts, special services, cathedral

visits, and tours. The excellent live-streaming facilities now available at Christ Church mean that for the first time, many listeners outside Oxford are able to hear the girls and appreciate their contribution to the cathedral’s worshipping life. As the first alumnae reach adulthood, it has been a joy to watch ex-choristers go on to university choral scholarships and into positions of musical leadership.

Several parents have recounted to me that they were concerned at the prospect of the choir being brought into the foundation at Christ Church, but that gradually it became clear that the choir was not in danger of losing its identity, nor being swallowed by a large and busy institution. Indeed, if anything, the girls have an ever-deepening sense of their place in Oxford’s choral ecology. As Canon Sarah Foot reminded us all when the girls were inducted into the foundation: Christ Church’s earliest singers were the women of Frideswide’s nunnery – how fitting that at long last they have returned home to sing the praises of God.

Helen Smee is an Oxford-based choral director, teacher and keyboard player. Brought up in London, she held an organ scholarship at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where she read Music, and went on to complete a Master’s degree in Choral Conducting at the Royal Academy of Music, graduating with the Alan Kirby Prize. Passionate about widening access to choral music, she won the Action for Children’s Arts Members’ Award in 2018 for her work with young people. Since 2019 she has been the Director of Frideswide Voices of Christ Church Oxford, the cathedral girls’ choir, and in July this year was appointed Director of Music at Worcester College Oxford. Helen was made an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music this year, in recognition of her contribution to the field of choral music.

The Darkness to Light service in Salisbury Cathedral (2013)

MAKING LIGHT OF WORSHIP

Photographing in Cathedrals by Ash Mills

Being a photographer can be a wonderful job. To capture images in the beautiful surroundings of mediaeval and modern cathedrals is full of challenges, but the benefits to the cathedrals and the numerous communities they engage with are huge, and the results are well worth the effort.

Background

My beloved Dutch grandmother, Tineke Robson-Augustijn, was an accomplished artist, with a fascinating life story. She’d lived in the Far East and been a prisoner of the Japanese during the Second World War, and worked as an art presenter on Hong Kong TV. She returned to Europe when I was growing up, and she taught me a huge amount about art and how to look properly at a scene, to study what colours really were there, how light falls and changes, and how to compose what is in front of you into a frame. We travelled to Venice and Florence together after my A Levels, relishing the galleries and talking about light, movement and form as we got lost in the back streets.

After attending Salisbury College of Art, I worked in television for about ten years, particularly assisting those who were making programmes like the BBC’s QED and Channel 4’s Time Team, as well as film and commercial work. With shoots all over the world I always took my stills camera with me, and it soon dawned on me that capturing photographs allowed me to carry out the whole process of storytelling through images in my own style.

My first introduction to working in cathedrals came about through my wife, who sings with, amongst others, the Sarum Voices choir. Photographing the singers and producing images of a decent quality provided me with a foot in the door at Salisbury Cathedral.

Techniques

Early on, I did some unpaid work for a few landmark events –I photographed the beautiful Advent Procession for the first time in 2005 and I immediately learned the importance of stealth and timing, with the service starting in pitch darkness and total silence – a loudly clicking shutter, misplaced ‘beep’ or dropped lens cap could ruin it for everyone!

At that time, photographing services was a pretty rare occurrence, with photographers relegated to distant vantage points that they were expected to stick to. To get better images I had to build up a foundation of trust with all involved. With plenty of planning with the then Canon Precentor, Jeremy Davies, and the vergers, we were gradually able to reduce the distance separation, to the point where I was able to employ what became known as my ‘invisibility cloak’ to get closer to the action – and yet remain out of everyone’s way!

I like to experiment with angles and techniques when I can – a huge cathedral with light moving and changing throughout the year is unpredictable and exciting to work in, the array of columns and arches can mean there are spots that the light only aligns with incredibly infrequently, so you have to keep your eyes open for these rare moments.

Photographing the action in cathedrals requires quite specialised gear. I invested in the quietest cameras, carrying often three at once so I did not have to change lenses and settings to capture as many variations of shot as I could find. At the very least I carry a wide-angle, a ‘standard’ lens and a longer telephoto – all very ‘fast’, light-sensitive models for the darkest of corners (a necessity in cathedrals).

Working alongside the many excellent press agency photographers for pictures for news stories, I was often asked for my advice on what to look out for, and would guide them around the building, passing on exposure tips and even lending out tripods or a lens here and there when the

conditions surprised them. I learned a great deal by watching their style of work too, especially when I was given the opportunity to take pictures alongside the renowned Magnum photographer, Ian Berry, who was there for the months running up to the Magna Carta celebrations in 2015.

Many of the events I have covered have been very personal for the people involved – from baptisms and weddings to ordinations and awards. As I have a background working in documentaries, I try to capture the whole story of any occasion, and my clients have got used to me providing them with plenty of images that include the background details beyond the obvious key moments.

Breaking down the barriers within the bastions of cathedrals has opened these places up to show them at their best as welcoming places for worship, visits and contemplation. The value of high-quality images should not be underestimated. I would like to think that other places have learned from the huge success Salisbury has had by widening their doors and improving their ‘kerb appeal’ with richly illustrated web pages, brochures, adverts and guides.

Music

Obviously music plays a huge role in churches and cathedrals, and over the years photographing musicians and musical performances has been an important part of my work. Capturing the emotion and atmosphere of music to make sense in a photograph for me involves a combination of things that need to work together to avoid very boring photos. It is necessary to watch very closely so as to catch the shapes and composition of people and instruments – the choir engaged, maybe mid-phrase, the strings with bows not hiding the players’ faces, the conductor’s baton and expression at the peak of emotion – ideally all in one shot!

I have had the pleasure of photographing at least 12 organists in my time, including my own father. Getting a decent shot of an organist ‘at work’ is quite fun, though I am always very careful not to lean on anything as I squeeze into the corners of their lofts while they play; I’m always filled with admiration as their hands and feet dance across the manuals and pedals.

Two of the things I have been most proud of are the recruitment films that we made for the choral foundation at Salisbury, in 2007 and 2015, following the choir throughout a choir year to show what a fabulous opportunity choristership is for boys and girls. Working with the school, the clergy and the musicians of the cathedral convinced me that being a chorister is truly a wonderful experience, and I am overjoyed now that both my own children have made the grade to become choristers themselves.

Behind the Scenes

Documenting the world behind the scenes at cathedrals has been a fundamental part of my work. Spending a few hours watching a stained-glass window being repaired, or a conservator examining a document creates empathy and an understanding of the processes and people that can be easily missed with a more casual approach. Providing striking images of the artisans and experts at work is crucial to support all the departments of a cathedral’s working community,

and I do believe that those back-room people have felt more appreciated by having their efforts carefully documented.

I was extremely fortunate to have been able to follow the process of the Harrison & Harrison restoration of the famous Father Willis organ at Salisbury, from dismantling to re-installation, including a trip to the H&H workshop in Durham. Seeing deep inside the workings of the incredible instruments there was a fascinating experience, and snapping the details of what was being done for the future was really lovely ‘work’.

PR and marketing at cathedrals has become image-led, especially now that social media is so important, so the requirements for punchy images to fit the story, delivered fast, are ever-increasing.

Art

Some of my most rewarding work is photographing artists’ installations, not because I always love the art itself, but because as the photographer you are forced to align several different ‘visions’ at once. The client has a requirement for a particular image, either as simple as ‘all of it, in a portrait format’ to more complex – for instance, if the work has to be put in context of other pieces around it, perhaps excluding others, or to align with something within the building. The artist’s own vision when they made the work is often quite specific, and their favourite angle, light and context is not always aligned with how it is installed – I have sometimes made photos during installation when they work better for me, before pieces were placed in their final spot.

It is wonderful when artists appreciate your photographs of their work, and I have been keen to extend the connection – following Helena Blumenfield’s work to London and Ely, for example, and as far afield as keeping track of the art of Michael Pendry to New York and on to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

I also love the contrasts and similarities you find when travelling for work – for instance, the response you get when asking to borrow a stepladder can vary a lot from place to place, but apparently there is always a ‘friendly’ tourist on hand to query my choice of gear.

Working with the school, the clergy and the musicians of the cathedral convinced me that being a chorister is truly a wonderful experience, and I am overjoyed now that both my own children have made the grade to become choristers themselves.

Worship

Working closely with the people of any church requires a huge amount of care, not just with worshippers and clergy, but with all visitors. Having a photographer around should never lessen the feelings people experience, as sometimes they may have travelled huge distances, be struggling with strong emotions or have spent hours queuing to be there. So I’m always careful to move out of the way so as not to ruin a tourist’s photo, look closely to see that no one is trying to ‘hide’ (trying to avoid being photographed), or check that I’m not standing directly in the sight line for a soloist and conductor.

It is important to be continually aware, especially in a service, that photographs are secondary to the event itself, so to be intrusive is never acceptable. I haven’t yet felt totally in the wrong spot, although with the onset of Covid and live-streamed services it has become harder to keep in mind where I can be safely out of the way! An occasional look from a verger as they head my way has helped, especially if I was tucked under the streams of water around the font!

Past and Future

I have been really lucky to have witnessed some amazing events over the years. Obvious personal highlights for me have been Desmond Tutu’s visit to Salisbury in 2008, the Queen’s visit in 2012, and the Evening Songs events which were collaborations between the cathedral, cathedral school and Exeter House special school run by La Folia Music to packed cathedrals.

In 2018 I created a new nativity for Salisbury, in the form of a huge semi-transparent Renaissance-style tableau, in collaboration with the curator Jacquiline Creswell. Ten metres high and eight wide, it formed a traditional nativity scene to hang over the spire crossing at the centre of the cathedral, using members of the cathedral’s community as the cast. It was a massive challenge involving hundreds of hours work, including driving overnight to Belgium to pick it up in order

to get it safely back on time – uncreased! The installation had real impact, with pick-up worldwide, and in 2020 Jacquiline Creswell and I and made a second one, for Chichester Cathedral, documenting people’s responses to the Covid crisis.

The last two years have been very strange times indeed, but photographically I do have some fond memories. Covering Salisbury Cathedral’s transformation into a vaccination hub during the pandemic, with the energy and atmosphere of this life-saving effort, accompanied by John Challenger and David Halls at the organ – separately! – was something I will never forget.

My personal favourite cathedral events of all have been photographing both my children being baptised in Salisbury’s font at dawn on Easter morning, hearing my wife singing with the antiphon choir at the Advent Procession, and my son being ‘made up’ as a chorister. Looking forward, I am now trying to spend more time enjoying my family life at the cathedral, whilst framing it more often with my own eyes and in consequence less frequently with a lens!

All photos by Ash Mills www.AshMills.com

The girls of Salisbury Cathedral Choir (2021)

WHERE LIGHT AND SHADE REPOSE: JUDITH BINGHAM AT

70

Dr Phillip Cooke

“Composing was always the main thing, right from when I was a small child. In my teens I thought I might be an actress as well, but I grew out of that as the singing took over.” These are the honest and beguiling words of one of the country’s leading composers who celebrates her 70th birthday this year, a composer who has continually written powerful, colourful and dramatic works across the genres since her first pieces in the early 1970s. A composer whose oeuvre straddles monumental orchestral canvases, characterful concerti, a plethora of idiomatic organ pieces and a lifetime’s work writing for the voice in all its many guises. A composer who has written for the country’s leading orchestras, a stellar list of singers and instrumentalists, and all the best choirs in this country and much further afield. The composer, of course, is Judith Bingham, one of the most distinguished and performed British composers working today, and one of the most prominent voices in contemporary choral music.

Other than being known for her finely wrought music, Judith Bingham is often remembered for being a member of the BBC Singers (the only full-time professional choir in the country) from 1983-1995, a seminal experience which cemented her links with the group as a composer, and for which she has written many works over the years. Despite her strong association with the choir, Bingham is quick to stress that the composing came before her time in the group, not as a result of such – in fact she was already a well-respected young composer with a series of striking pieces under her belt before she joined the singers – for example, A Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni, a work for the choir, was premiered by them in 1982. Despite the obvious and prosaic benefits of stability and security that singing in the group gave her (and the negative impacts on her composition time), it must have been a hugely beneficial experience being surrounded by contemporary music-making and having exposure to such fine singers. Her choral output increased exponentially during and after her time in the choir. As her composition career continued to bloom, she left the group as a singer but returned in 2004 as Composer-in-Association (a role she

held until 2009) and is still working with the group in her 70th year.

Bingham was born in Nottinghamshire to a broadly musical family, her father had a business renting out pianos and was a good amateur pianist. Perhaps more significantly, he was a subscriber to the World Record Club, which issued longplaying records and reel-to-reel tapes, mainly of classical music and jazz, through a membership mail-order system during the 1950s and 1960s – through which Bingham learned much of the standard repertoire and ‘the sort of pieces children are supposed to like’ – supplementing this with more contemporary fare on BBC Radio 3 (or its predecessor the Third Programme). A heady mix of 1960s’ pop (Bingham was actually a member of the Beatles’ fan club in her youth), television music and Berlioz led to singing lessons before entering the Royal Academy of Music in 1970. Here she had various voice and composition tutors (including notable characters such as Eric Fenby and Alan Bush) but she also experienced some of the stylistic dogma of the time, as she recalls: “There was a clash between the post-war brutalism and complexity, and baby boomers like me.” A more supportive voice was the leading critic, writer and teacher Hans Keller, with whom Bingham had informal lessons in the mid-1970s when Keller was at the apex of his power as the BBC’s ‘Chief Assistant, New Music’ and an important voice on the BBC’s powerful New Music Panel. Keller provided support, encouragement and necessary critique at a pivotal time for the composer, and many of his lessons lingered long into Bingham’s later career (Bingham dedicated her 1981 piano work Pictured Within to him).

One of the most significant events of Bingham’s early to midcareer was the premiere of her 1988 orchestral composition Chartres by the BBC Philharmonic in 1993. This 40-minute work for large orchestra has the intriguing subtitle of ‘A piece for orchestra about some features and ambiguities of Chartres Cathedral’ and was the composer’s first piece for orchestra, written following a visit to the medieval cathedral in 1986. The premiere brought added prominence to

Bingham’s composing career and several large commissions followed, including the ‘dreamscape for orchestra’, Beyond Redemption, and the BBC Proms commission for choir and brass ensemble, Salt in the Blood, both in 1995. The impact of Chartres changed everything and hastened Bingham’s departure from the BBC Singers, sending her back to the world of full-time composition. It was revived to great acclaim for further performance in 2004.

The success and importance of Chartres highlights the achievements Bingham has had across the different genres – it would be wrong to pigeonhole her as a composer for choir and organ despite the fact that these forces make up the majority of her output. As well as the aforementioned orchestral works there are two bassoon concerti, a trumpet concerto and a recently premiered clarinet concerto written for the virtuoso Michael Collins in his own celebration year. There are many chamber works – including the oftenperformed Chapman’s Pool for piano trio – instrumental works, and a body of dramatic songs (perhaps hinting at the composer’s early desire to become an actress) for various different combinations and timbres. There is even an operatic work from the late 1970s, Flynn, based on the life, times and reported speeches of the legendary actor Errol Flynn, which typifies the breadth and diversity of Bingham’s work.

However, arguably, Bingham’s reputation hangs on her compositions for choir – an amazing and original body of work that continues both to grow and to explore different moods, colours and textures with every passing year. There are many works for the church and cathedral including – amongst many other pieces – services for York Minster, Oriel College Oxford, King’s College Cambridge and the Edington Festival of Music within the Liturgy; responses, motets, anthems and a beautiful carol, God Would Be Born in Thee, for the 2004 Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s. There are also seven settings of the Missa Brevis, including two written for cathedrals in Sweden – Västerås and Kalmar – a country where Bingham has forged strong links in the past decade. There are just as many secular works for choir which set a whole panoply of diverse poets, texts and sources (some of which are incorporated into sacred works to great effect) including Shakespeare, Manley Hopkins, Auden, Wordsworth and often the composer’s own poetry. Like many of the best choral composers, the act of choosing the text for a piece is amongst the most enjoyable parts of the composition, as Bingham states: “Searching for a text is the most carefree part of creating a piece for me… I read a great deal and like to set unusual things.” One of the most striking recent pieces that interpolates sacred and secular texts (and highlights Bingham’s prowess at choosing texts) is the 2003 work The Christmas Truce written for the BBC

Judith Bingham

Photo: Patrick Douglas-Hamilton

Singers and Britten Sinfonia. This 25-minute piece which meditates on the brief cessation in fighting over Christmas 1914 during World War I features hymns and chorales in addition to well-known Christmas carols, interspersed with ‘eyewitness and newspaper accounts selected, adapted and poeticised by the composer’. The effect of this interpolation is unsettling and disturbing, but the overall impact is hugely emotive and memorable – it remains one of Bingham’s most emotional and powerful works.

we interact within it). Her compositional voice is clear and authentic, and it is unwavering, from the smallest motet to her grand oratorios and cantatas.

It is no surprise that during her career she has picked up various honours and accolades that befit her place as a leading artist of national significance. She was appointed an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in 1997 (becoming a Fellow this year) and a Fellow of the Royal Northern College of Music in 2005. She was given an honorary doctorate in Music from the University of Aberdeen in 2017 and was appointed an OBE in the 2020 New Year’s Honours for service to music. Amongst other accolades she has won several British Composer Awards, including ‘Best Choral Work’ for The Christmas Truce. In her 70th year there have been various events of celebration, including a concert of her works from her long-term collaborators, the BBC Singers, which were broadcast during her birthday week on BBC Radio 3.

Perhaps the most high-profile of Bingham’s more recent works is also one of the most unusual, and it is something that the composer refers to as “probably one of the best experiences of my life” – the 2014 piece for choir and organ, Ghostly Grace. The work was written for the reinterment of King Richard III that took place at Leicester Cathedral in March 2015, the King’s body having been found in a nearby car park during an archaeological search in 2012. The finding of the long-deceased King and the subsequent reinterment service made international news and provided Bingham with one of the strangest yet most difficult commissions of her career. She recently reflected on the commission: “It was always a subject I was interested in, from childhood, and to write an anthem for his funeral was beyond surreal and very moving… I got to see his books in the British Library and spent an inordinate amount of time choosing the text.” The austere, restrained but strangely optimistic service required a specific piece of music to channel the difficult scenario of this reinterment (the post-Shakespeare reputation of Richard III and his alleged deeds creating a fairly damaged reputation in the public conscious), leading Bingham to fashion a piece that caught the mood and the moment to perfection.

Ghostly Grace, like a great deal of Bingham’s music, is extremely well-crafted, with much thought given to how to express the text appropriately as well as ensuring that all performers (especially the singers) have idiomatic and satisfying material. Bingham’s work is questioning; it goes to dark places and takes awkward turns – it is music that requires engagement in order to fully appreciate the craft and the technique. Unlike much contemporary choral music, it isn’t instantly gratifying, and even the simplest and most immediate piece will have something unanswered at its core, something that is necessary for the composer and listener to unravel before the work is finished. In a genre where modern, post-modern and traditional are so blurred, Bingham’s voice is uniqueher music is so contemporary in the word’s broadest sense (something that represents the modern world and the way

As Judith Bingham begins the next stage of her career (which includes a new work for brass band (her sixth), a second string quartet and a new Advent anthem for the BBC Singers), it is interesting to hear how the compositional arena has changed since she started in the early 1970s: “It’s a very different world now. 1970 was still a non-technological age, scores and parts were written by hand… I still have a mark on my third finger where my pen rested, because of hours of work.” Although the world may be more interconnected and the ease with which composers can get their music to the public may have changed, it is perhaps most different in the way that female composers are treated by the musical establishment: “There is no doubt that the 1970s were a pinnacle of misogyny. The 1960s altered behaviour but not attitudes… although sexism hasn’t gone away, it is so much easier now.” Like Bingham’s music, there is an openness and honesty to her words which is to be admired as much as the creeping textures of Ghostly Grace or the luminous colours of Chartres – long may this continue and long may we be presented with challenging, dramatic and vivid works from this important composer.

Phillip Cooke is active as a composer and academic with regular performances of his work across the UK and further afield by the likes of The Sixteen, the BBC Singers and many cathedral choirs. He was the co-editor of The Music of Herbert Howells in 2013 and has written the first study of James MacMillan’s work, published by Boydell & Brewer in 2019. He is currently Professor of Composition at the University of Aberdeen. www.phillipcooke.com

A composer who has written for the country’s leading orchestras, a stellar list of singers and instrumentalists, and all the best choirs in this country and much further afield.

Interior of Chartres Cathedral

Photo: Robert Megicks

THE CHAPEL ROYAL YEARS Dr Martin Neary

In September 1948, aged eight, I joined the choir of the Chapel Royal. This was a small choir, ten choristers and six men, and the regular repertoire was somewhat limited. We sang the morning services which took place at St James’s Palace chapel on Sundays – Sung Communion on the first Sunday in the month and Matins on the other Sundays, at which the Te Deum and Jubilate were often sung to chants. There were some unforgettable occasions during my seven years as one of ‘The Children’.

The first was the 1948 Service of Remembrance at the Cenotaph. As we processed out from the Home Office, the army band played solemn arrangements of Chopin’s Funeral March and Purcell’s Lament from Dido and Aeneas. As soon as members of the Royal party were in their places, everyone stood silently as Big Ben sounded 11 o’clock. The two-minute silence, followed by Last Post and Reveille, remains one of the experiences which has moved me most. The crowds were enormous, stretching to both ends of Whitehall, and among the vast throng was my French uncle who had been a prisoner of war for five years, and had come to London specially for the Remembrance Observance. Even at the age of eight, I could sense from everyone the feelings of sorrow and thankfulness.

Our next ‘outside engagement’ was to sing at Buckingham Palace for the christening of Prince Charles. The choir rode in three of the sovereign’s horse-drawn carriages. The christening, and indeed all the services at Buckingham Palace during my time as a chorister, took place in the Music Room, as the chapel had been bombed in 1940 and the King and Queen had insisted that any repair and renovation should wait. According to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Fisher, who officiated, the young prince was ‘as quiet as a mouse’, while being baptised with water specially brought from the River Jordan – a royal tradition which dates back to the Crusades.

Less than two weeks later we were unexpectedly back at Buckingham Palace for a short carol service, as the Royal Family had been forced to stay in London over Christmas on account of the King’s poor health. On Christmas Day, my fellow new boys and I were presented with bibles, signed by King George VI. Years later I said to The Queen how much this gift had been appreciated, and she asked: “Have you still got yours?”!

An annual highlight was the Royal Maundy service at Westminster Abbey, during which we combined with the Abbey choir and were able to sing some much more exciting music. By far the most popular work was Handel’s Zadok the Priest, thanks not least to the thrilling accompanying of the sub-organist, Dr Osborne Peasgood I also loved the beautiful

chant by Walter Alcock to Psalm 91, ‘Whoso dwelleth under the defence of the most high’, which has remained a favourite of mine ever since. On returning to St James’s Palace, each of the Children was given a set of Maundy money, four coins totalling ten pence: 1, 2, 3 & 4, in respect of our services.

It is difficult today to conceive of the air of excitement aroused in 1951 by the Festival of Britain. At the opening of the Royal Festival Hall, we ten Children were only a part of a huge number of singers drawn from the choirs of Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral and seven London choral societies. In front of us were the instrumentalists and the state trumpeters of the Royal Horse Guards. The two conductors were Sir Adrian Boult and Sir Malcolm Sargent. There was quite a debate among the choristers about the respective merits of the two conductors, some preferring the restraint and subtle control of Sir Adrian, while others liked ‘Flash Harry’. When we rehearsed Rule, Britannia Sir Malcolm told us: “Sing the first three verses as loud as you possibly can, and in the fourth verse… you sing still louder.”

The Music Room at Buckingham Palace

In November 1951, I finally made an appearance at the annual St Cecilia Service, sponsored by the Musicians Benevolent Fund and held at St Sepulchre’s, Holborn (St Sepulchrewithout-Newgate). I say ‘finally’ because only the top six boys from the Chapel were invited, and it had taken me four years to enter that elite. We joined singers from Canterbury Cathedral, St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey for a festival service which traditionally had a new commission each year. Not all these new works have gone into the regular cathedral repertoire, but in 1951 Gerald Finzi’s God is gone up absolutely hit the spot.

It was at the St Cecilia Day Service in 1952 that we first met Mr Harry Gabb (sub-organist at St Paul’s Cathedral) who directed the choirs that year, and who in 1953 was to become Composer and Organist at the Chapel, succeeding Dr Stanley Roper, who had retired after a long illness. I have to thank Dr Roper for placing his trust in me at my audition, when I was barely eight and making such a small sound. I also remember the way he played a phrase on the piano so that it always had elegance and charm.

Some of my fellow choristers and I also undertook extra ‘work’ singing at Evensong at the Church of the Annunciation behind Marble Arch, where the organist was Leslie Taylor, Music Master at the City of London School. Thanks to Leslie, I also sang up in the highest gallery at the Royal Albert Hall, in the Lift thine eyes trio from Elijah. We could barely see the distinguished Austrian conductor Josef Krips, but we could hear his disapproval of our intonation. One of the older singers, David White, has since told me that by the time the orchestral sound reached us it sounded flat, just as by the time our sound reached the platform it also sounded flat. Not surprisingly, this did not go down well with a conductor described in the New Grove as ‘a benevolent despot in

performance’, and, to try and improve the situation, a violinist from the London Symphony Orchestra was dispatched to join us in the gallery, with instructions to play our cue a semitone higher.

In December 1951, we again sang a Christmas service at Buckingham Palace, but within six weeks, devastatingly, King George VI was dead and the whole country was plunged into mourning. As members of the Court, we wore black armbands on our coats for six months, and our first duty was to sing in Parliament’s Westminster Hall at the opening of the King’s Lying-in-State, a ceremony that was as simple as it was poignant.

It was not long, however, before preparations were under way for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and in February 1953 the 183-page service book arrived. For me, the musical highlight of the service was Sir William Walton’s thrillingly orchestrated Coronation Te Deum. Walton used all the forces at his disposal – the state trumpeters from Kneller Hall (which housed the Royal Military School of Music), two semichoruses, full orchestra, the organ (which was given a brilliant antiphonal solo part) and a huge group of singers.

A 1953 innovation, which surprisingly caused the Archbishop some misgiving, was the singing (at the composer’s suggestion) of Vaughan Williams’s Old Hundredth, by the entire congregation. I later learnt that never before at a coronation, apart from the singing of the National Anthem, had the congregation had a chance to sing a hymn. Yet His Grace remained unconvinced, possibly because of the congregation’s uncertainty as to when to start singing after the opening fanfare. Posterity has thought differently.

Another highlight was VW’s Mass in G minor with its timeless triads, and today when I hear the Sanctus I invariably think back to the coronation service (albeit with English words fitting not very comfortably instead of the Latin text originally composed by Vaughan Williams for Westminster Cathedral). The only Latin words allowed in the service were the Vivats (Vivat regina! Long live the Queen!). These were sung quite raucously by the 40 King’s Scholars of Westminster School, who were placed high up in the triforium in the course of Hubert Parry’s special arrangement of Psalm 122, I was Glad

Besides the jubilant fanfares, there were also some beautiful reflective moments including Vaughan Williams’s O taste and see, sung while The Queen and Prince Philip received communion. Another work to make a particular impression was the introit, Behold, O God, our defender, my first encounter with the music of Herbert Howells. I was bowled over by the phrase, ‘For one day in thy courts is better than a thousand…’.

It had been decided that, on the night before the coronation, we Children should stay at St James’s Palace to make sure we were at Westminster Abbey by 7.30 am the next morning. We actually slept on mattresses on the floor of the chapel, but, despite our awesome surroundings (not least the Holbein painted roof), we were determined to enjoy ourselves, and I guess this was the first and last time the chapel will have been the scene of pillow-fights!

On Coronation Day we were up well before 6 am; it was raining. After a cooked breakfast, we left by coach for the

Abbey, where our first excitement was hearing the news that Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay had reached the top of Mt Everest.

We then had a rehearsal with the Abbey choristers, practising the semi-chorus in the Coronation Te Deum and the opening of O taste and see. By 10 am we were duly in place to sing the Litany in procession from one end of the Abbey to the other. The 400 singers were placed in specially constructed galleries on either side of the quire. We were incredibly privileged to be in the second row, behind the Abbey choristers, and therefore able to see not only the conductor, Dr McKie, and his two assistants, John Dykes-Bower and William Harris, but also the moment when The Queen was crowned.

After the service we were driven back to St James’s Palace; it was still raining, but our coach stopped where Horse Guards Road meets the Mall, and we had splendid views of the royal processions and the state coach on their way back to Buckingham Palace. At St James’s we were given our coronation medals, and soon I was on my way to join my family and to watch some of the ceremony on a telerecording, as it was then called. But I do not think there was one shot of the choirs, even of the Litany which the choirs of Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal had sung in procession.

A week later we were involved at St Paul’s Cathedral for a coronation thanksgiving by the peoples of the Commonwealth. Although the service was simpler and much shorter than the coronation itself, there were some individual moments just as powerful in their way – Sir Winston Churchill reading the lesson from Ephesians VI: “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might”; another coronation anthem by Handel The Queen (changed from ‘King’) shall rejoice and Vaughan Williams’s Te Deum in G.

Thanks to Mr Gabb, there was no sense of anti-climax for the rest of my time in the choir. In 1954, the two seniors, Peter Lough (son of the renowned Temple Church chorister, Ernest Lough) and I represented the Chapel Royal at the opening of the Royal School of Church Music at Addington Palace. The service included Sir William Harris’s beautiful anthem Behold, the tabernacle of God, and I was delighted, when I arrived at Winchester Cathedral nearly 30 years later, to find it in the repertoire there.

My last visit to Buckingham Palace as one of the Children was for a carol service in December 1954 when we sang Stanford’s The Monkey Carol, a delightful choice of Mr Gabb’s, which amused our audience and us.

Sunday 25 July 1955 was a day of desolation. By then I had come to feel so much a part of the Chapel and could hardly imagine life without the weekly routine of practices and the Sunday service. Around Easter, Mr Gabb had gently mentioned en passant “that of course I would be leaving in July”, and quite right, too, as my voice was beginning to break (as we described it in those days). However, he came to the rescue by offering to give me organ lessons as soon as I left the choir. To have had a choirmaster who cared so wholeheartedly about his choristers is something for which I shall be for ever grateful, and it certainly contributed to my eventual decision to pursue a career in church music.

Martin Neary’s principal appointments have been at St Margaret’s, Westminster, Winchester Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. At Winchester he commissioned many works by the contemporary composers, Jonathan Harvey and John Tavener. His recording with the Westminster Abbey Choir of Purcell’s MusicforQueenMarywas nominated for a Grammy award. He has twice been President of the Royal College of Organists. His awards include a Lambeth Doctorate of Music and being appointed Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order after directing the music at the funeral of Princess Diana.

Bible inscription

A LIFETIME OF SINGING Simon Tilley

Iwas born in March 1934. On my ninth birthday, Dad took me down to the local village church, St John’s Walmley, and announced, “He wants to join the choir”.

The choirmaster at St John’s, a Mr Bennett, was a kindly man who taught me to sing the hymns and chant the psalms. The canticles were sung to chants, there was no Sung Eucharist and the choir worked for weeks rehearsing simple anthems for Easter and Harvest Festival and a few carols for Christmas.

After a year or so I was ready for more and I joined the choir of Holy Trinity, Sutton Coldfield, where a larger choir produced a monthly Sung Eucharist – I remember in particular George Oldroyd’s Mass of the Quiet Hour – and monthly choral evensongs with frequent anthems. High spots were weddings – and I was chosen to sing the treble solos in Mendelssohn’s Elijah

When my voice broke I was relegated to the back row to learn the bass line. As the junior, it fell to me to receive the collection from the sidesmen and pass it to the rector. My acknowledgement of the altar was noticed and I was told in no uncertain terms that if I wanted ‘that brand of Anglicanism’ I would be happier at Emmanuel, Wylde Green.

Emmanuel Church is an impressive brick gothic Grade II* listed church built in the early 1900s by Bidlake with, at the time, a large Kingsgate Davidson organ in the west gallery.

Ernest Daniels was the organist/choirmaster and the mixed adult choir included most members of his family and their spouses. There was a weekly Sung Eucharist, and a weekly Choral Evensong with canticles and anthems. During the next few years I learned a great deal of music.

In 1945 I moved to King Edward VI Grammar School in Birmingham, and by 1949 I was preparing for my Higher School Certificate in modern languages. Generous free study time enabled me to work in the Birmingham Central Library, where I encountered a group of students from St Philip’s RC Grammar School attached to the Birmingham Oratory.

This led to my venturing into St Chad’s Metropolitan Cathedral where I was mesmerised by the beauty of the music. The organist and choirmaster was Dennis Crosby, a very kindly man who had been a chorister at York Minster under Edward Bairstow, who had also had taught him the organ. Made very welcome at St Chad’s, I was introduced to plainsong, Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony.

In 1951, as part of the Festival of Britain, there was to be a concert in the Royal Albert Hall by a choir of 1,000 voices drawn from schools all over the UK. The Midland rehearsals were under the direction of Stanley Adams, music master at Moseley Grammar School, and the music, comprised of partsongs from the various nations, culminated in a specially commissioned cantata by Ralph Vaughan Williams based on

Simon Tilley

Simon Tilley as a chorister, aged 15

Zodiac themes and entitled The Sons of Light. Sir Adrian Boult was the appointed conductor and he visited each region to assess progress.

On Sunday morning there was a full choir rehearsal in, I believe, the Queen’s Hall. The Vaughan Williams piece included some rhythmically difficult passages and, at one point, Sir Adrian put down his baton and asked, “Will the Birmingham basses please stand?”. With some trepidation we obeyed and he took us through several bars. “On my regional visits, these were the only people who sang it correctly. Now, let’s put it right!” Thank you, Stanley Adams!

At the concert, I was placed in the front row of the basses. No more than 20 feet away, the great RVW was seated in a burgundy velvet chair, straining through an ear trumpet to hear his own music. Over 60 years later, after a Cheltenham Bach Choir concert in Gloucester Cathedral in which we had sung RVW’s Dona nobis pacem, I was introduced to his daughter, to whom I related the above. Having listened intently, she thanked me warmly, saying that she had had no previous knowledge of it.

I left King Edward’s in July 1951 with my Higher School Certificates. There appeared to be a nine-month wait before call-up for National Service, so I opted to join the army on a 3-year regular engagement. Job experience had not been invented!

Since leaving school, I had taken to attending the weekly midday organ recitals given by the City Organist, George Thalben Ball. So it was that, on the day before my enlistment, I attended with my mother and father, having requested Mr Thalben Ball to play for me Mozart’s Fantasia & Fugue in G minor. Afterwards, we met him in the green room, a great moment for Dad, who was an ardent admirer. Thalben Ball continued as City Organist for many years, though he was plagued in later life by ill health and the weekly recitals were kept going by Roy Massey and Harold Britten, who frequently had to play George’s published programmes at a few hours’ notice.

My first years as a sergeant instructor in the Royal Army Educational Corps were spent in Chester teaching young soldiers basic skills. On Fridays when I had a weekend pass I would sit in the cathedral organ loft with George Middleton. On one occasion he went downstairs to conduct the anthem, leaving me to give the chord. I then hurriedly left the building to catch my train, with Byrd’s Sing joyfully ringing in my ears.

My final two army years – 1953 and ’54 – were spent in Minden, North Rhine Westphalia, where I immediately looked round for somewhere to sing. The Catholic cathedral, dating from 803, had been bombed in the final weeks of the war by a US Army B17, but the mixed adult choir had been retained and sang for Mass each month at various churches around the city. Franz Bernhardt, a kindly and sensitive choir trainer and organist, accepted me warmly and during the next two years I was exposed to a great deal of music – Matyas Seiber comes to mind. The three churches – Johanniskirche, Martinikirche and Mauritiuskirche – were west gallery affairs from the organ console of which Herr Bernhardt directed unaccompanied pieces. The Johanniskirche, dating from 1208, with walls over a metre thick and tiny lancet windows, had served as a munitions magazine during the First World War. On top of

the console was what looked like a telephone dial, from which the organist rang up the hymn numbers which then appeared on small illuminated glass screens at the front of the nave. I have never seen this anywhere else.

Released from the army on 31 December 1954, I found employment as a technical trainee with Dunlop, which was where Dad and many of our neighbours worked. At the suggestion of a colleague who was on the committee, I auditioned for the City of Birmingham Choir, which was directed at the time by the then Mr David Willcocks. The audition consisted of a test to assess my range, after which David told me to sing the evening’s rehearsal and then he would make his decision. It was during this rehearsal that I realised just how sharp his hearing was, given that some 200 singers were rehearsing in a tiered lecture hall and I was some 40 feet away from him. I ensured that whenever he looked in my direction I was looking at him.

One evening, I asked the baritone sitting next to me if he sang anywhere on Sundays. He replied that he was singing for Roy Massey at St Alban’s Conybere Street, a magnificent Pearson church. After hearing my voice, Roy suggested that I come and sing ‘a bit of quiet tenor’. “And if I look at you, you’ll know I’ve heard you.”

The choir consisted of some dozen trebles and half a dozen men. There was a weekly High Mass which comprised mainly Renaissance music – Viadana’s Missa L’Hora Passa sticks in my memory – and a weekly Choral Evensong which drew on Victorian and mid-20th-century composers. The trebles mostly came from a very poor local area. Roy not only taught them to sing, but to sing intelligibly in Latin. When one boy had been missing after many months in the choir, Roy enquired of his parents as to his whereabouts, to be met with the rejoinder, “Choir – what choir?” Notwithstanding that their son had rehearsed twice on weekdays and appeared at services twice on Sundays, they had not known where he had been. On another occasion, a mother apologised for her son’s impending absence on one Sunday, “Because his brother has to have the shoes!”

Pearson’s design produced a remarkable acoustic. When David Willcocks needed to record the BBC Midlands Singers for a forthcoming broadcast, he always opted to use St Alban’s. I remember sitting spellbound in the west gallery watching the great man work.

In 1959, Roy was appointed Organist of St Augustine’s, Edgbaston. He opted to take with him from St Alban’s one man on each voice part and I went along as a tenor. It was a very different situation from Conybere Street. Edgbaston was at that time an affluent Birmingham suburb and the churchmanship, being rather low, was something of a shock. The St Augustine’s choir comprised a set of ageing men and a dozen or so boys, and Roy set about recruiting boys and creating a new repertoire. After a somewhat taxing piece, one of the countertenors suggested that he might have to retire. By the following Friday, Roy had replaced him with two young sixth-formers from King Edward VI Five Ways, where he was music master.

The musical scope was somewhat limited after St Alban’s – a Choral Eucharist and Evensong once a month with

anthems at every service. Occasionally, a former organist of St Augustine’s, Sir William Harris of St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, would visit his friend Freddie Ledsam and they would attend morning service. On these occasions, Roy – having first disappeared up the steps to the loft – would reappear with the whispered instruction, “Keep your wits about you, Sir William’s in church!”

Around this time Simon also became involved with the RSCM Midland Cathedral Singers, organising several twice-yearly Evensongs at the request of Dr Gerald Knight. He moved to sing at Croydon Parish Church under Roy Massey, then to Belfast where he sang at St Anne’s Cathedral (conveniently located 100 yards from the Belfast Telegraph newspaper, where he was working). The escalating violence in the city encouraged him and his family to return to the UK, and he sang at Roy Massey’s suggestion at St Mary’s Warwick, and once more became involved with the RSCM Midlands Cathedral Singers.

My connection with Chichester, where the Warwick choir made annual visits, prompted me to organise a week for the RSCM singers. The choir was directed by a number of distinguished musicians – Andrew Fletcher, Paul Hale and Carl Jackson, among others. Our organist was usually David Thorne, who was at the time sub-organist at Portsmouth Cathedral. David always arrived with a large reel-to-reel tape recorder on which he had amassed a selection of things that went wrong on BBC Choral Evensong, such as the occasion when a precentor intoned on the wrong note and half of the choir followed him and the others responded in the correct key.

Carl Jackson and Jeremy Filsell also accompanied us from time to time, Carl eventually becoming Master of the Music at Hampton Court. Jeremy, who had started out with us as a treble from Holy Trinity, Coventry, later achieved worldwide success as a recitalist and recording organist. Tim Storey of St Peter’s, Wolverhampton (and long-time reviewer and correspondent of Cathedral Music magazine) also sang with us at this time.

During our penultimate appearance in Chichester, the RSCM’s newly appointed Midlands Commissioner arrived unexpectedly, asking if he might sing tenor. The week was

being directed by Paul Hale of Southwell Minster. After morning service, this Commissioner – in the presence of Paul who was seated at the piano – was scathingly critical of our performance, indicating that he would be directing the visit the following year and that, in any case, we were all too old to take part.

After Evensong, a small group of us sat over coffee in the garden of the Bishop Bell Tea-rooms, discussing our future. We finally agreed to continue as an ATB choir, taking as our title ‘The Prebendal Singers’ out of affection for the Prebendal School which had so many happy memories for us. Accordingly, at a meeting in the Athenaeum Club with Gerald Knight’s successor, Lionel Dakers, I indicated that we would resign en bloc from the RSCM and continue independently.

Later on, in the week running up to our annual Chichester visit, David Thorne rang me to say that he had glandular fever and would not be able to accompany us. After some frantic phoning around, Michael Fleming suggested Carl Jackson, who agreed to play. Believing that disaster had been averted, I slept easily – until Thursday, when Paul Hale made the same call. I eventually contacted Dr Edward Higginbottom at New College. He suggested Nicholas Kok, a former organ scholar who had just left Oxford. Taking a phone call from a complete stranger with a pressing request, Nicholas was understandably diffident and so I drove up to North Derbyshire, with John Stephens, feeling that I had to make this opportunity stick. After some discussion, Nicholas agreed to direct the choir and I drove home praying that nothing else would go wrong. The combination of these two new musicians proved to be a great success and Carl Jackson accompanied and conducted us on several subsequent occasions.

That was in 1982 and ‘the Prebs’ – as they are affectionately known – have continued to this day, deputising for the choirs of most of England’s cathedrals and abbeys when the resident choirs are away.

Edward Higginbottom called on us several times for this when he was taking his choir on recital tours. One such occasion also involved singing at the wedding of a former New College

The amazing painted chancel ceiling of St Augustine’s, Edgbaston

Photo: Carolyn Gifford

student. I had to negotiate with the bride-to-be over the music. Her only stipulation was that, as they processed out of the chapel, the organist should play ‘Hail, the Conquering Hero Comes!’ John Pryer duly obliged, improvising an introduction and fugue. I subsequently learned that, until a few days before, the groom had been flying sorties over Bosnia.

Since 2004, the Prebs have been directed by David Blackwell, who started out with us as a treble. He is a headmaster in Derbyshire and a fine brass player. John Pryer has been our accompanist from the very early days. Roy Massey agreed to be our President and I know that his name opened many doors – especially in the early years – as did that of the Very Revd Michael Tavinor, the former Dean of Hereford, who is our Vice-President. The choir has made successful visits to France and Belgium.

During my time at St Augustine’s, I introduced Ruth Grove, a former Dunlop colleague, to Roy Massey. Their friendship blossomed and they eventually married when Roy had moved to Hereford Cathedral. As an usher, I stood at the North Porch, awaiting the bride. Eventually, I walked up the nave to tell Roy that Ruth had arrived. “Then she’ll have to wait,” he said. “He’s only just started the fugue!”

I remained at St Mary’s for some 13 years after which, aged 65, I felt that I needed to call time on what was a very exacting weekly pattern of rehearsals and weekend ties which was a strain on family life. By this time I had joined the Cheltenham Bach Choir, the director of which, Stephen Jackson, also conducted the BBC Symphony Chorus. The Cheltenham Bach Choir was some 150 strong and gave three or four concerts a year in Cheltenham Town Hall, Gloucester Cathedral and Tewkesbury Abbey. I left after some five years, agreeing with my wife that the return journey – especially in the winter – was rather hazardous.

At Hereford Cathedral in 2019, at the age of 84, I retired from the Prebs, having sung in major church and cathedral choirs since my ninth birthday. While my voice was (I was told) still OK, I was physically unable to manage rehearsals, and the access to many of our venues was impossible. A month later, after Evensong in Gloucester Cathedral, Roy Massey presented me with a selection of wonderful gifts which – apart from the case of delectable Alsatian wine – I still treasure. Joan also received a lovely bouquet.

This account of the Prebs’ many activities would not be complete without an acknowledgement of the tremendous

contribution made by Joan who, with our daughter Claire and a small team of helpers, catered for the choir from the early RSCM week-long visits to Chichester, subsequently to St Edmundsbury and Norwich and more latterly to Hereford, where the AGM and annual dinners were a highlight of the year. At Chichester, on the final Saturday evenings when the boys’ parents had arrived to collect them, Joan would cater for an outdoor supper party, when numbers could be pushing 100 people.

Shortly after my retirement from St Mary’s Warwick, I received a telephone call one Saturday evening from a lady who asked whether I could be available the next morning to deputise at the Birmingham Oratory. After a brief conversation concerning the music and how to get into the car park and the rehearsal room, I agreed. This was followed by a further five years of regular attendance which I consider to have been a wonderful postscript to my singing career. It involved one service per week with a rehearsal on Sunday morning.

The music at the Oratory was superb and the ceremonies immaculate. Founded by Fr John Henry Newman in what is now the sacristy, the church is a large classical basilica. Most services are sung from the west gallery, which has its own organ, rebuilt by John Pryer, David Briggs and David Dunnett. On special occasions we performed Haydn and Mozart Masses, accompanied by a small orchestra.

I have been fortunate to have had a lifelong successful and happy career in church music. Though lacking any formal musical education, I have learned from working with some of the finest musicians in this country, Germany and Ireland. Every move I made from one choir to the next was a step up to learn more and improve my ability. In addition, singing on both sides of the liturgical divide has enriched my experience immensely. Had I not joined St Chad’s Cathedral choir, for example, I would not have learned about Gregorian chant, which I came across again so many years later at the Oratory.

I frequently recall a comment made by the Revd Michael Moxon, one-time vicar of Tewkesbury: “You people who sing in choirs are probably unaware of the tremendous influence which your music has on the people in the pews.”

Throughout my life I have been exceptionally fortunate to have experienced that glory which is Church Music in all its historic richness.

Roy Massey

Photo: Gordon Taylor Paul Hale

Carl Jackson

Photo: Richard Champness David Thorne

Ifirst became aware of the Friends of Cathedral Music, now the Cathedral Music Trust, when I was a chorister at Southwell Minster – a formative period of my musical life that began 40 years ago this September. The Trust has been a constant and supportive presence wherever I have worked: Carlisle, Lincoln and Chichester. Shortly before the pandemic, a grant from the Trust allowed us to recruit a chorister whose parents needed help with school fees.

That boy has recently won a substantial music scholarship to Lancing College. The opportunity to be a chorister here was a decisive turning point in his development – an opportunity made possible by the generosity of the Cathedral Music Trust. During the difficult days of lockdown, when the financial position of many cathedrals seemed uncertain, a grant from the Trust allowed us to retain music staff, plan for the future and continue to offer choral worship. This was valued highly by the cathedral community, and it gave us confidence as we emerged from the pandemic.

Earlier this year I was asked to offer an instalment of this cathedral’s Lent Course; the theme was ‘Comfort in music’. I blithely agreed, even though it fell around the same time as a visit by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the chorister open day, and at a time when our baby son was still showing little interest in sleeping at night. But I am glad that I agreed to lead the session, because in preparing for it I was able to examine afresh all the many reasons for my commitment to cathedral music. Revisiting the primary drivers of our enthusiasms is a healthy practice: it guards against taking them for granted,

or liking them for their own sake, or holding on to traditions purely because they make us feel comfortable. I asked myself: why have I chosen to devote my working life to cathedral music, and why does the church continue to commit such great resources of time and money to sustaining it? There were many answers to these questions; some of the more important ones are as follows:

1. The theme of the talk was ‘comfort in music’. The word ‘comfort’ has its roots in the Latin confortare, which means to ‘strengthen’ or ‘build up’. The idea of ‘comfort’ as ‘producing physical ease’ only arose fairly recently. We might also think of comfort as involving ‘freedom from constraint’: music can have the effect of transporting us to new spiritual spaces, freeing us, for a while, from the demands of the material world. And good music, performed well, can often bring about a sense of mental and spiritual strengthening. It is not comfort in the sense of ‘relaxation’, but comfort in the sense of development, just as good literature or poetry can develop our minds.

2. Language, written and spoken, is a wonderful gift, and it has played an important part in our growth as a species (just think of the value of recording, accumulating and passing on knowledge, as distinct from having to learn everything from scratch in each generation). But language has its limitations; it does not always seem capable of expressing all the things that we experience. If it had that capability, we would have no need of beautiful cathedrals, let alone of beautiful music with which to fill them. It has been shown quite conclusively that music occupies more areas of the brain than language. So music goes beyond spoken language, in what it can express, even though we can’t translate music back into spoken or written language. Music speaks to people in its own way.

3. Listening to music requires simultaneous attention to multiple elements: form, texture, melody, harmony, counterpoint. From the perspective of the listener, these are all abstract concepts that have no counterpart in the world of material things.

4. Any kind of ensemble music-making can be seen as a model of a good community: taking part involves forbearance, co-operation, patience, the subduing of any strident individual characteristics that might not be conducive to a pleasing result, and a desire always to strive to do better. These are all features of a flourishing community, and of a flourishing choir. A good choral performance points us towards a good society.

5. The involvement of children in the music-making of our cathedrals and churches reminds us of Christ’s wish to see the young at the centre of our communities. Children have a central role in the life of the church through their musical ministry as choristers. Their presence is a celebration of their gifts: their skill gives us confidence about the future of music, and the future of our communities.

In Chichester we are in the minority of cathedrals that maintain only one choir. When we admit girls later this year, they will join as equal members of a mixed treble line, and will follow the same routine as the current choristers. Like the boys, they will be boarders at Prebendal, our superb choir school which does so much to support our music-making, and which works with us to offer our choristers the best possible care. The weekly schedule involves about 18 hours of rehearsals and services, with duties each day during termtime, except Wednesdays. Of the eight choral services sung here each week, seven are sung by the full choir, and one is sung by the lay vicars alone. The repertoire of pieces that regularly appear on music lists at least once each year includes 435 anthems and carols, 30 sets of morning canticles, 94 sets of evening canticles, and 40 mass settings. A benefit of having a single treble line is that all the children will get to know the full repertoire. This is not to criticise those institutions that run two or more choirs: I am a great admirer of the work done at Portsmouth Cathedral, for example, where far more people, perhaps four times as many, participate in choral music than is the case here. There is room for different models of cathedral music, and they all have their particular strengths. I enjoy the intensity of the experience at Chichester, working with the same people from day to day, getting to know the individuals, and planning the many small details that I hope will contribute to a happy and flourishing team. As with any choir, the various strengths and limitations ebb and flow. The challenge of dealing with these constantly shifting dynamics is, for me, one of the joys of the job. Sometimes, the full team of senior trebles reach their final service with unbroken voices, blessing us with their wealth of experience and skill until the very end of Year 8. In other years, voices change early, and recruitment can be difficult. In these periods, a judicious choice of repertoire and realistic music lists will help to develop the confidence of the younger choristers, while maintaining the musical standards expected of us. There is little slack in such a small choir: one absence or early departure from the choir is likely to have a telling effect on the overall sound. On the other hand, our small size encourages children to take responsibility from an early stage – I think that all our choristers feel themselves to be valued members of the team.

Nor is there any slack in the back row. With just six lay vicars, the responsibility on each individual is considerable. For the young professional singer, Chichester is a good place

for learning the trade: singing here, while not for the fainthearted, does equip musicians for the next stage in their careers. We are proud that recent former lay vicars have gone on to sing with the Tallis Scholars and The Sixteen, among other distinguished ensembles. We are also delighted that they remain in touch, and occasionally return to deputise.

The choir undertakes the familiar range of extra-curricular activities. We make recordings every couple of years, and have recently completed sessions for a disc of music by Thomas Weelkes, my most distinguished (and disreputable!) predecessor. We were thrilled to be joined by the Rose Consort of Viols, and look forward to the release of this recording in 2023, Weelkes’s 400th anniversary year.

We tour every few years, prioritising visits that strengthen ecumenical partnerships, especially those in Germany initially cultivated by Bishop George Bell. We make regular visits to churches around the diocese: when we sang Evensong at Rye a few years ago, a chorister pointed out that we were closer to at least five other cathedrals than Chichester: Canterbury, Southwark, Chelmsford, Rochester and Boulogne. Such visits make for a long day, but they form an invaluable part of the cathedral’s mission to the diocese. Regular radio broadcasts include appearances on BBC Choral Evensong and an annual Christmas service for BBC Surrey and Sussex.

Each year, we sing six Christmas concerts at the renowned Chichester Festival Theatre, and join with our friends from Winchester and Salisbury for the Southern Cathedrals Festival. We enjoy the fellowship of our colleagues, and relish the opportunity to sing larger-scale repertoire that we cannot manage on our own. Recent festivals have included such works as Bach’s St John Passion, the Monteverdi Vespers and Tippett’s A Child of our Time. This year, at Salisbury, a performance of Haydn’s The Creation concluded the Festival.

I am supported in my work by Tim Ravalde, who has been Assistant Organist here since 2010. I have known Tim for over 25 years: I took him on as a piano student when he was nine years old! Not only does Tim play the organ beautifully, but he is a much loved tutor of the young probationers, and a wise, thoughtful colleague. He also manages the lunchtime recital series, which offers a varied programme of chamber and

It has been shown quite conclusively that music occupies more areas of the brain than language. So music goes beyond spoken language, in what it can express, even though we can’t translate music back into spoken or written language. Music speaks to people in its own way.

instrumental music throughout the year. Performances are regularly attended by audiences of 300-400. The continuing success of this series is a tribute to Tim’s discernment, good judgement and administrative acumen.

The organ scholar here is an indispensable member of the music department. We typically recruit a gap-year candidate, and enjoy working with our scholars to develop the many skills required in our profession: accompanying, liturgical solo playing, improvising, teaching children and running the choir library. Cathedrals with larger music department than ours, and multiple choirs, often prefer a fully-formed professional as an organ scholar, simply because there is so much work to be done. Here, we have the distinctive opportunity to work with outstanding musicians at the very start of their careers, and observe their rapid progress with great pride and admiration.

for us, and Vaughan Williams’s Mass in G minor can only be performed here with some deft rearranging. However, there is plenty of wonderful repertoire available: our small numbers, and the intimate setting in the choir stalls, allow for a chamber-like quality that (on a good day) is subtle, nimble and flexible. Further, this building does not call for a huge sound: the warm acoustics, along with the gently voiced organ, encourage a relaxed approach to singing. For understanding this so clearly, and overseeing the installation of an organ so well suited to the space, I pay tribute to Alan Thurlow, whose work at Chichester was an early inspiration to me, and who is always generous with his advice and guidance.

The compact size of our choir here at Chichester does present challenges, but it also brings benefits. As I mentioned, some repertoire is beyond us by dint of our small numbers: the Mass by Frank Martin, for example, has too many vocal parts

The financial support of the Cathedral Music Trust is invaluable to Chichester Cathedral. So too is the knowledge that its members share our passion for cathedral music, and our determination to nurture, sustain and advance it. We hear troubling statistics concerning church attendance, and bleak predictions about how many more years the Church of England can continue to exist in its familiar form. The Church proceeds with some uncertainty as it seeks to serve a society that defines itself in secular terms. And yet, cathedral music is as vigorous as ever, with more people (children and adults) involved than ever before. Cathedrals remain attractive, both to those of committed faith and to those on the fringes of religious practice. The music offered in our cathedrals is, surely, one of its most appealing attributes: it sustains our regular congregations and it draws in the curious. For a few, it might even be the only reason that they come to church –but our hope must be that a chance encounter with Howells, Byrd or Palestrina at one of our services will be the start of a spiritual journey, and an ever-deepening engagement with all that cathedrals have to offer. Back in 2020, as the first lockdown was tentatively relaxed, Peter Allwood, Chair of the Trustees, made a point of attending our first choral service in many months. We were so touched by this gesture, which symbolised the support of you all, not just for us but for all our colleagues in cathedrals around the country. Thank you for your solidarity, generosity, friendship.

Chichester Cathedral choir

PETER TRANCHELL –

For many years Peter Tranchell was a well-known fixture of the Cambridge University Music faculty – from his appointment as an Assistant Lecturer in 1950 (becoming a full lecturer in 1953) to his retirement in 1989, lecturing to and supervising many generations of students preparing for the Music tripos. For much of this career he was Precentor (Director of Studies and of Chapel Music) and Fellow of Gonville & Caius College from 1960. A prolific composer, for the time he was at Caius the bulk of his output was written for performance in the college, either for use in chapel services or as cantata-like ‘entertainments’ for May Week concerts. He died in 1993.

Peter was born in 1922 – so 2022 is his centenary year – in Cuddalore, India. He spent most of the first four years of his life there, and in 1925 his brother James was born. Their mother took both children to Eastbourne to be cared for by her father and unmarried sister Celia, while she herself returned to India for the next ten years. Peter showed a strong interest in music from an early age and asked for – and was given – a piano in 1927. He was soon picking out tunes and simple chords.

Peter went to the Dragon School (Oxford) in 1930. There was no significant choral or chapel tradition in the school, singing being confined to the annual Gilbert & Sullivan production – Peter was Pitti-Sing in The Mikado (1934) and a

highly-acclaimed Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe (1935). He thus did not benefit from the immersive musical education which was gained by cathedral or collegiate choristers – nor was he ever encouraged to learn an orchestral instrument.

He gained a Classics scholarship to Clifton College (Bristol) in 1936. Two years later his beloved brother James was killed in a cycling accident in Oxford, a loss which Peter felt keenly for the rest of his life. The school had a thriving musical scene under the renowned Douglas Fox, and Peter was one of several gifted organists and pianists among the pupils. He did not, however, attempt an organ scholarship to Oxbridge, gaining instead an Exhibition in Classics at King’s College Cambridge. Under wartime regulations this permitted him one year of academic study at the university before he was required to enter the Army. At Cambridge he threw himself into the available musical activities but had no discernible relationship, formal or informal, with the chapel choir.

After four years in the Army, he returned to King’s in November 1946 and read for the newly established Music tripos under Boris Ord. He rapidly became an essential member of the Footlights, writing many numbers for the ‘Smoker’ concerts and the annual revues, becoming their musical director (1947-8), and he continued with serious composition – and not just for the Music tripos, where he

Peter at the piano, 1951

A CENTENARY John Gwinnell

was awarded a First in 1948. It was in this period that he composed a 140-page setting of Matins and Evensong from the Book of Common Prayer which he called The Prodigal Son. Complete with responses, morning and evening canticles with their alternatives, chants for psalms, a couple of hymns, and everything else that could possibly be sung, it was set for four-part choir (specifying trebles for the top line) and organ. Musically extremely demanding (both technically and in its harmonic idiom; for practical purposes it’s unsingable), it’s not clear who he was writing it for, if indeed it was not simply an academic exercise. Given his lack of musical background in or contact with Anglican worship, it was an extraordinary enterprise on which he spent months of effort. He was at the time close to Jane Scott (who later emerged as the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard) and she was disapproving of the whole enterprise – her view was that he should concentrate on writing instrumental works or get started on his projected opera, to be based on one of Hardy’s novels, for which she was intending to write the libretto.

Peter was awarded the MusB in 1949 with reputedly the highest distinction ever given for his performance of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor. Indeed, it was while practising this work in his digs that he heard through the wall someone in the nextdoor house playing it back to him. A competition to transpose it into different keys ensued; and it was not long before he encountered the other pianist at the bus stop: Raymond Leppard, in his first year at Trinity. A lifelong close friendship was born, quickly expanding into a triumvirate with the addition of Malcolm Burgess, who was not a musician but instead a very gifted designer. During the 1950s, when they all resided in Cambridge, they were inseparable.

Peter’s student career completed, he was appointed Deputy Director of Music at Eastbourne College (1949), where his eccentricities made a considerable impression on the boys. He wrote some pieces for the school to perform – incidental music for The Merchant of Venice, and City of God (described as ‘an extravaganza for chorus & orchestra’, based on the hymn tune Richmond) but was also starting serious work on his Hardy opera based on The Mayor of Casterbridge. An outline had been submitted in 1949 to the Arts Council competition for an opera to be performed as part of the Festival of Britain in 1951, but it was rejected. Patrick Hadley, Professor of Music at Cambridge, was very supportive of the project and it’s possible he ‘arranged’ for Peter to be appointed an Assistant Lecturer in the faculty (he was certainly invited to apply) so he could work on it under Hadley’s wing, undistracted by schoolmastering.

The libretto was written in collaboration with Peter Bentley, who also produced the performance which was – just about – ready for the amateur production at the Cambridge Arts Theatre in July 1951 as part of the Cambridge Festival. It was met with considerable, though not unanimous, acclaim – Eric Blom wrote very enthusiastically in the Observer and carried that over into the 1954 edition of Grove’s Dictionary, which he edited. Peter submitted the score as his thesis for a

competitive Fellowship at King’s in 1952. The electors’ voting records show that he was a very strong candidate, despite a damning report from Benjamin Britten – until the last round, when (it seems) his candidature was torpedoed in a rather shady fashion, most likely on the intervention of Noel Annan.

Casterbridge was revived in 1959, slightly revised, and conducted at the Arts Theatre by a young Guy Woolfenden, but despite considerable interest it has not been heard since; a revival would pose significant artistic and financial challenges.

Although disappointed not to gain the King’s fellowship, Tranchell continued to work very energetically: he was Director of Studies in Music at Fitzwilliam House from 1950, for which he wrote his second ‘concert entertainment’, Murder at the Towers in 1955 (the first had been Daisy Simpkins for Corpus Christi College in 1954). In collaboration with James Ferman, an American postgraduate student, he wrote the musical Zuleika (Arts Theatre 1954, sets by Malcolm Burgess). This attracted considerable commercial interest and a professional production started a provincial tour in 1956, culminating in a run at the Saville Theatre in 1957. Charles Mackerras reorchestrated the music and conducted; Osbert Lancaster designed the costumes and sets. The production was plagued by problems and Peter had very little to do with it after some initial consultations, although he had produced some new numbers in an increasingly fractious collaboration with Ferman.

Towards the end of the 1950s Patrick Hadley, who was Precentor of Gonville & Caius as well as Professor, retired, and Peter took over, becoming successively Director of Studies in Music from 1959, Director of College Music from 1960 when he was elected to a Fellowship, and Precentor from 1962. As a consequence of his responsibility for music in the chapel, his composing became more and more focused on works for the choir to sing at services. However, as a gesture towards his relationship with Fitzwilliam (he finally ceased to be their Director of Studies in 1967) he wrote the Fitzwilliam Mass in 1960 (privately expressing a very low opinion of the choir’s abilities – ‘a paralytic choir under a charlie of an organist’). It has recently been arranged by Geoffrey Webber for modern liturgical use, having had its first outing at Hampstead Parish Church in May this year.

Peter felt he had a home at Caius, threw himself into college life and was inspired to write several more concert entertainments now that he had a ‘captive’ group of performers and a guaranteed place to perform: Aye, aye, Lucian! (1960), The Mating Season (1962) and The Robot Emperor (1965). There was also His First Mayweek (1963), produced in St Catharine’s College. Several of these were revived by other colleges and later revised by Peter for May Week concerts at Caius. In 1962 he wrote the five Thackeray Ditties for the Cambridge University Madrigal Society’s May Week Concert.

Peter’s last large-scale involvement was to write a ballet for Covent Garden starring Rudolf Nureyev, with choreography by Kenneth MacMillan. This had an impossibly short timescale for its composition, so Peter resorted to the time-honoured practice of composers re-using their own music. He drew on some of his Greek play music, a three-movement orchestral work Scherzetto written for CUMS at David Willcocks’s invitation in 1960, a movement from the piano duet Friendly Grotesques (1953), and incidental music from The Jew of Malta (1957). The performance received mixed reviews: Clive Barnes opined ‘inflated, ponderous music’, others found it dense and too filmic. This was yet another setback for Peter; and though Raymond Leppard remarked, ‘Peter was amazingly stoical in disappointment’, this was enough. Thereafter he wrote for a more domestic audience, though his former pupil Peter Marchbank commissioned the Festive Overture (1966) and a Concerto Grosso (1972) for the Basingstoke orchestra he was conducting at the time. The Festive Overture was recorded for a commercial CD by John Wilson conducting the BBC Concert Orchestra and has recently been arranged by Tim Harper as an exhilarating organ solo – it is hoped that this will feature as part of the centenary soirée in November.

When Peter took over the chapel choir in 1960 it was made up of tenors and basses; altos joined in 1972 and after the college became co-ed in 1979 women joined as sopranos and altos from 1982. These changes in available forces necessitated

transposition of existing works at the very least, and often extensive re-arrangement, so there are frequently two or three versions extant of many of the more popular works. Peter wrote pieces for the chapel’s liturgical needs, so there are settings of the canticles, some in fauxbourdon; versicles and responses, and some substantial anthems. Two carols have become popular and feature on several recordings – If ye would hear the angels sing from King’s and People, look east from St John’s. The former is published by the Church Music Society, the latter may be downloaded from the Foundation website.

Peter’s church music varies in nature quite extraordinarily –often demonstrating his tremendous gift for memorable and attractive melody, but just as frequently seeming perverse and positively strange, reaching extremes in his idiosyncratic harmonic invention. He had a difficult relationship with one dean, John Sturdy; essentially the pair loathed each other and it’s likely that some of the music was intended to infuriate him – which is a sad descent into pettiness (not unknown in closed communities) and a squandering of effort which could have been put to much better use. Peter could at times be difficult and prickly, but more often he was friendly, generously hospitable and endlessly supportive – many of his former students have said how his advice was frequently completely perspicacious in guiding them onto the right path – and he was much loved.

The Peter Tranchell Foundation, recently formed as a charitable incorporated organisation, has launched an appeal to help make Tranchell’s music as accessible as possible by promoting performances, arranging typesetting and offering many pieces for free download. The website is a treasure house of material and repays exploration – there will be found not just scores of orchestral and choral music, but writings, photographs, recordings and information.

The culmination of this centenary year (and the successful appeal) will be the concert and soirée in St Paul’s Knightsbridge on Saturday 26 November when the Caius chapel choir will perform music by Peter Tranchell as well as a new commission from former Caius music student Cheryl Frances-Hoad. Kevin Bowyer will perform the winning entry in the organ composition competition and some Tranchell pieces for organ; James Thomas, a former organ scholar, will play the piano piece Sonatina for Jane [Scott]

Full up-to-date details can be found on the Foundation website www.peter-tranchell.uk

John Gwinnell is a trustee and treasurer of The Peter Tranchell Foundation, and has typeset many of Tranchell’s works over the years. He was a choral exhibitioner at Caius 1970-73 and for several vacations worked as ‘Precentor’s Clerk’, arranging and transcribing music for the choir. He is working on a biography of Tranchell and is preparing a selection of his letters and writings for publication.

FOSTERING EDUCATION RESEARCH IN THE FIELD

Dr Geoffrey Webber

General Editor, Church Music Society

Since its foundation in 1906, the Church Music Society has sought to support church music in various ways, though its central purpose has always been to publish music for use in the liturgy in editions that are both practical and authoritative. A century ago, the society’s principal players were Anglican men, but today a notably more diverse society exists. The current President, the Most Revd Bernard Longley (Archbishop of Birmingham), and Chair, Professor Patrick Russill (the London Oratory), are both Roman Catholic, and the trustees include Tansy Castledine (Peterborough Cathedral) and Canon Victoria Johnson (York Minster). Reflecting these developments, the society’s recent output has included music for the Roman Catholic liturgy, such as Robert Gower’s complete three-year cycle of Responsorial Psalms (available for free online), and music by women composers, notably the earliest known published anthem by a woman, Whilst shepherds watched their flocks by night by Jane Savage (1785), and a research paper entitled ‘Psalms and Hymns in the early nineteenth century: the collections of Jane Clarke and Theophania Cecil’.

Most of the society’s publications since 1906 have contained music by English composers from before the 19th century, especially from the 16th and 17th centuries (including a Purcell tercentenary tribute in 1995), though music from the 18th century began to appear more prominently from around 1970, with works by composers such as Greene and Boyce. Towards the end of the last century an increasing number of 19th-century works began to appear as awareness of that century’s significant musical contribution became more widely appreciated; thus composers such as Walmisley and both Samuel and S S Wesley featured strongly in the publications list of the society’s ‘Reprint Series’. A modest quantity of continental music can also be found, often in English versions, from the iconic edition of Bach’s Jesu, joy of man’s desiring by H P Allen to two recent versions of Charles Gounod’s Christmas classic Noël, one with its original uppervoice scoring and one with the chorus part arranged for SATB.

A significant expansion of the society’s publication activities occurred in the 1960s with the establishment of an ‘Original Series’, comprising music by living composers, the first item being the Communion Service in D (Op. 45) by Kenneth Leighton for congregation and organ with optional choir

(1965), a work that has proved very popular over the years and which has just been reprinted. At present the complete publications list shows an almost exact 3-1 proportion in favour of the older repertoire, with the 150 and 50 milestones just having been passed in the two series. It will be interesting to see how this proportion changes over time, though external factors will naturally play a significant role, notably the way most established living composers are tied to a particular publishing house, and the fact that so much earlier music is being made freely available on the internet (though often in unreliable editions). Publications used to be issued relatively few and far between, but former Honorary General Editor Richard Lyne, who retired from the post in 2019, did much to develop a steady flow of important titles and to establish the highest standards of design, presentation and scholarship which remain benchmarks for the society’s published output. Since 1994 the works have been published in partnership with Oxford University Press; cover pictures and sample pages of all our available titles can be seen on OUP’s choral music website.

Perhaps the most significant recent development in the society’s publishing activities is the establishment last year of a downloads page on our website which contains music by members of the society. This comprises original compositions, editions and arrangements that are freely available for liturgical use. The collection includes, for example, three anthems by Simon Lindley and a communion service and set of evening canticles by Norman Harper. And in another move towards recognition of the popularity of downloading, all the new titles of hard-copy publications with OUP are now being made available as downloads through OUP’s partners, so music can be obtained instantly.

One of the society’s most influential publications has been its set of Tudor Preces and Responses, used by almost every Anglican choir in the country. The original collection appeared in 1933 at the request of the Cathedral Organists’ Conference of 1932, and was edited by Ivor Atkins and Edmund Fellowes, a formidable duo with both musical and liturgical expertise. It contained the two sets by Tallis plus those by Byrd, Morley, Smith and Tomkins. The musical note-values were halved and the music transposed up, mostly by a tone. Some of the music appears quite differently to what we are now used to. Take, for example, the opening of the Tomkins set, here in the major:

AND OF CHURCH MUSIC

Or the adaptations made so that the music could work in conjunction with the 1662 Prayer Book, such as these two options given in the Tomkins set for the 1662 response ‘The Lord’s name be praised’:

The society also brought out separate editions of the Tallis Preces & Responses, one in five parts comprising a favoured amalgamation of the two Tallis sets, and the other an arrangement of the same music for four parts, which also included an edition of Robert Stone’s Lord’s Prayer.

This year, the society has re-published Shaw’s classic collection, but with some notable changes and additions (see image). The principal aims have been to maintain Shaw’s editions and reconstructions, but also to revise the overall contents, first by removing the now seldom sung 1662 adaptations of the Preces, and second by adding a Tallis set (in four parts) and two settings of the Lord’s Prayer, those by Robert Stone and Thomas Morley. A range of supplementary material is also now available on the society’s website (under ‘Commentaries’), including the excised 1662 adaptations.

In 1964 the society invited Watkins Shaw to reconsider the whole enterprise ‘de novo’ (to use his phrase), and since Shaw had previously edited the two Tallis sets for Novello (1957), the decision was made to omit the two Tallis sets when the publication appeared in 1966. For the rest, Shaw took a new look at the sources, wrote his own ‘1662’ adaptations and provided his own editorial alto parts (which resulted in the famous false relation in the third Amen of Byrd’s set), choosing to adopt original note values and miniature barlines (both trail-blazing features in the 1960s), and favouring a slightly higher transposition, mostly a minor third. A fourpart version of the Smith Responses by Richard Graves was also included.

Further changes took place over time, including a new four-part version of the Smith Preces & Responses by Richard Marlow, and the inclusion of a setting of the Lord’s Prayer by John Farmer, edited by David Lumsden, the start of which is shown below (though this version was later withdrawn).

It is a common experience of those who enjoy attending Choral Evensong in different places to be surprised by a turn in the Stone Lord’s Prayer that they weren’t expecting. The same would indeed have occurred from the piece’s earliest days, as musicians in different places routinely developed their own versions. There is no surviving autograph copy (as sadly with so much of our great 16th-century repertoire), and although the work was published in 1560, it appeared in a notoriously defective volume with many errors. The ‘member of the CMS’ who edited the piece followed mainly this printed source. The start is shown here:

In 1973, Anthony Greening provided an edition for Francis Jackson’s Anthems for Choirs 1 (OUP) in which he prioritised the slightly earlier manuscript version in the Wanley partbooks, c.1548, which has a dotted rhythm for ‘hal-low-ed’. Both these editors used the original versions of the text, with ‘and let us not be led into temptation’, a formula used in the

1540s before the appearance of the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549. Many choir directors over the years have made their own adaptations of the piece in order to incorporate the standard 1662 text, probably working from either the CMS or OUP edition, and adding their own solutions to other problems such as accidentals and consecutives. There can surely be no other piece of 16th-century liturgical music that is performed so frequently today in so many different versions. Nevertheless, a new CMS edition has been prepared for the 2022 publication, this time closer to the Wanley source than before.

Looking ahead, the society has also recently decided to produce a second volume of early settings of Preces & Responses, mostly containing material from the 17th and early 18th centuries, due for publication in 2023. The main ingredients will be the sets by Ayleward and Ebdon, a new version of the Gibbons/Barnard combination, and new reconstructions of the incomplete settings by Reading and Child.

Recent publications by the CMS have included a wide variety of music suited to the varied needs of church, chapel and cathedral choirs, and during the covid pandemic work was partly focused on producing more material for smaller forces. Amongst the early repertoire, an ongoing series of editions of great English Responds from the 16th century, edited by Sally Dunkley, has already resulted in the publication of works by Tallis, Taverner and Sheppard. 2021 saw the publication of the evening canticles by Nicholas Strogers, taken from one of the earliest complete settings of the Church of England liturgy in the so-called ‘Short Service’ style. The service is also notable for including the Deus misereatur, the alternative canticle to the Nunc dimittis at Evensong. Since the use of the alternative

canticles at Evensong is a little-known tradition, a paper on the history of this tradition will appear soon on the society’s website. In this way the society seeks to fulfil its supplementary aim, to foster education and research in the field of church music. A collection of music for upper voices sung by the girls and boys of various charity institutions in Georgian London is also being prepared. Recent issues in the ‘Original Series’ include the Easter anthem Most glorious Lord of life by former Vice-President Francis Jackson (see image) and a new setting of the Litany to the Holy Spirit by Christopher Ouvry-Johns.

If you’d like to support the work of the CMS by becoming a member or making a donation, please contact the Membership Secretary & Treasurer, John Roch, by email on webenquiries@ church-music.org.uk. Members receive copies of all the Society’s publications with OUP, and can order multiple copies with a discount from Banks Music Publications: info@ banksmusicpublications.co.uk, tel. 01653 628545. The CMS website is www.church-music.org.uk

Geoffrey Webber has been General Editor of The Church Music Society since 2020. His other principal post is Director of Music at Hampstead Parish Church. Previously he worked at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge as an organist, conductor and academic.

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SOME THOUGHTS ON ELGAR AND WORCESTER Dr David Dilks

Many years ago, I heard the distinguished conductor and organist Dr Simon Lindley (than whom no one has done more for music in the north of England in the last 40 years) play at Leeds Parish Church (forgive me if I slip into the old nomenclature) delightful music by the blind organist of Notre Dame, Louis Vierne, Les Cloches de Hinckley. Now, Hinckley is a middle-sized industrial town a few miles west of Leicester. Enquiry suggested that Vierne had written this explosive and intricate piece after visiting Hinckley during the First World War. It seemed at first improbable. I mentioned the subject to my father. He made the most unexpected of replies: “Oh, yes – I was there!” And it transpired that at the age of nine he had cycled with his own father, then organist of Markfield Church, to hear Vierne play at Hinckley, and there it was that Vierne had heard the bells.

My grandfather had left school at the age of 14, was apprenticed and became a builder. He worked mainly down the pits of the Leicestershire coalfield; and, possessing both love and aptitude for music, he saved up from his wages – none too ample, I dare say – until he had sufficient to buy himself a series of lessons from the organist of what is now Leicester Cathedral. Having come off his shift at 5 of an afternoon and drunk a pint or two of hot tea, to get the dust out of his lungs – it was a point of honour with my grandmother that the kettle should always be singing on the hob as he came through the front door – he would set off in all weathers to cycle 10 miles out to Leicester and 10 miles back. My father had the same talents redoubled: well before his legs were long enough to reach the pedals he had deputised for my grandfather at Markfield, on the organ given by Andrew Carnegie; and he had a fine tenor voice. Indeed, he enjoyed a singing life of some 80 years.

The longevity of organists might have provided me with another theme for this talk. Simon Lindley served for 41 years as Organist and Master of the Music at Leeds Parish Church, for example. (It is a curious accident of history that the second largest provincial city in England should not have an Anglican cathedral) – but from a musical point of view at least let us deem the parish church to be a cathedral, and note with admiration that Dr Lindley was one of the few organists at a British cathedral to have occupied the same post continuously for more than 40 years. Mark you, at Worcester, Thomas Tomkins served as organist for 48 years, Dr William Done, Elgar’s mentor, for 51 years, and Sir Ivor Atkins for no less than 53.

Elgar’s father and uncle ran a music shop in the High Street at Worcester, hardly more than 100 yards from the cathedral. The father was organist of the Roman Catholic church, in which post Edward Elgar eventually succeeded him. The boy had access not only to a vast range of scores in the shop but also to the cathedral library. He played the violin, the piano and a variety of other instruments. The family were prominent in musical circles in Worcester; and it is a profound mistake to imagine, as some have done – not least because they wish to give the fullest recognition to Elgar’s genius – that Worcester was some deprived, stagnant backwater. The Three Choirs Festival, alternating between Worcester, Gloucester and Hereford, provided memorable experiences. Did not Edward Elgar himself play under the baton of Dvorak? Three years later, at the Festival of 1887, no fewer than four of the Elgars were members of the Band (as it was then called); his father among the second violins, his uncle Henry playing the viola, his brother Frank the oboe, and Edward Elgar himself among the first violins.1

All the same, it is right to think of him as being essentially self-taught. He left school at 15 and did not attend a grammar school, let alone a university. Even in the early years he could be found on the banks of the River Severn or, still better, the River Teme, listening dreamily, scribbling notes on the small pieces of music paper which he carried always. Asked by a passer-by what he was doing, the child replied, “I’m trying to write down what the wind in the reeds is singing,” and in answer later in his life to the question, “Where does your music come from?”, he responded, “Music is in the air, music is all around us. You have only to reach out and take as much as you need.”2

Elgar loved to spring surprises upon his friends, and practical jokes – he used to call them ‘japes’. And he had a pretty wit. Immediately after a depressing first performance of The Dream of Gerontius, he composed a rousing concert overture entitled Cockaigne, subtitled In London Town, ‘Cockaigne’ being a land of mirth and jollity, with a connection to the word ‘cockney’. An admirer of this work addressed him in jocular fashion: “But Mr Elgar, I had always understood that cocaine is a soporific. I do hope it won’t have that effect upon those who hear it. Perhaps if it does you ought to call it Chloroform.” Without a moment’s hesitation Elgar replied, “Ether will do.”3

Papers released in The National Archives show us how the government was to be carried on in 1940 if the Germans invaded England and advanced upon London. Believe it or not, the government was to be transferred to Worcestershire. The King, the Queen and their two daughters would move to Madresfield Court; Mr Churchill to Spetchley Park; the Cabinet Office to Hindlip Hall. It is, by the way, a fine example of the continuity of British history that when invasion by Napoleon was thought imminent in 1805, arrangements were made for King George III and his family to move to the same house, Madresfield, which stands within a few miles of the places in which Elgar composed the Enigma Variations and Gerontius. In each of these houses, incidentally, Elgar’s father had tuned the pianos and the son had played them.

Biographies and studies of Elgar abound. To my mind, only one4 does justice to the durability, intimacy and fruitfulness of his friendship with Ivor Atkins, the red-headed Welshman who, too moved to speak, came to the artists’ room at the Public Hall in Worcester after the première in 1890 of Elgar’s overture Froissart, his first important orchestral work. Atkins, at the age of 20, was serving as assistant organist at Hereford under G R Sinclair who – or rather, whose bulldog Dan – is immortalised in the Enigma Variations. ‘I knew,’ wrote Atkins, ‘that Elgar was the man for me, I knew that I completely understood his music, and that my heart and soul went with it.’5 For well over 40 years their companionship was sustained; it became intimate when Atkins moved to Worcester as cathedral organist in 1897. Love of literature was not the least of the bonds between them. Before long, after both had relished a 15th-century book printed by Caxton, Reynard the Fox, the two began a playful correspondence. ‘My dear Reynart’, Atkins would write, signing with the name which Elgar had chosen for him from the book, ‘Firapeel’, the leopard. Nothing, I may add, would have been more surprising to those who knew the two of them only in their public personalities.

From his early days, Elgar had loved to listen to the organ voluntaries after services in the cathedral. An ineffaceable impression was left upon him by the virtuosity at the Three Choirs Festival in 1875 of S S Wesley, one of Dr Lindley’s distinguished predecessors at Leeds Parish Church, who extemporised wonderfully before embarking upon the Giant Fugue of Bach. More than half a century later, by then living again in Worcester, Elgar would call constantly at the cathedral and ask Atkins to give an impromptu recital, which had always to end with that fugue. Both Elgar’s organ sonatas received their first performances in the cathedral, the first in 1895. The Second Sonata is a transcription, but more than a transcription, by Atkins of pieces originally written by Elgar for a competition between brass bands and known as the Severn Suite. The first proofs arrived in January 1933; when the

cathedral was closed after Evensong, Atkins played the sonata, with Elgar himself, Lady Atkins, her son Wulstan (Elgar’s godson), and the assistant organist of the cathedral (Edgar Day) all crowded into the organ loft. The delighted composer insisted that Atkins should thereupon play the whole work again, the party dispersing to the nave – save for Elgar who in his usual fashion roamed about the cathedral to test the varying acoustical effects.6

Elgar continued to conduct fine performances at the Three Choirs and elsewhere, and became the first great composer to conduct a large portion of his own music in the recording studio. The Severn Suite was dedicated to George Bernard Shaw, who remarked at Malvern in August 1929 that it had been perfectly easy for him to become a very distinguished playwright, since the state of the London theatre had been so lamentable, whereas Elgar had to come on top of Beethoven and Wagner, and had succeeded. “Not only is he,” said Shaw, “the greatest English composer, but one of the greatest in the world. I do not believe England is proud of it and that is the disgusting part of it.”

In the twilight of his life, Elgar explained to the Friends of Worcester Cathedral how he learned his first ideas of music from and in that dearly loved building. To the lay clerks he paid the warmest of tributes: ‘A man in a cathedral had to be a musician who could read off a composition and in two or three rehearsals be note perfect.’ He recalled from the distant

past the day when one of the tenor lay clerks at Worcester, a Mr James Smith, whom Elgar had known from early boyhood, had been taking part in the Three Choirs Festival. A piece with a quintet of soloists was being performed and Smith was standing by when the bass, an international artist, entirely lost his place. And then, as Elgar recounted, ‘Smith, who knew nothing about it at all, but simply had a copy of the music, sang the whole thing through, putting on as near a bass voice as he could. The London critics – one of the most distinguished was there that afternoon – never noticed what had happened.’7

Elgar died, as he wished to die, at Worcester, in a house commanding a splendid view of the city, the cathedral, the vale of the Severn and the Malvern Hills, what he used to call the sweet borderland. Thirty years later, in an act of civic folly, the city council allowed the demolition of the house.

In the realm of music, let us reassert that it alone, without barrier of language or geography, opens magic casements to moods of exaltation and solemnity, in massive works and in small ones; Elgar himself provided plenty of both, by techniques sometimes traditional and sometimes experimental, through celestial melodies as well as dissonant passages. The vitality of music in all its forms, in the provinces as well as in London, is on this reading a matter of the most enduring significance.

Adapted from a 2016 address to the Doncaster Choral Society

Footnotes

1. E W I Atkins, The Elgar–Atkins Friendship (David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1984), p481

2. ibid., p473

3. This is the version recounted to me by my father, himself a lover of plays upon words, who had it from Edgar Day. Several variants have been published.

4. The Elgar–Atkins Friendship (note 3)

5. ibid., p26

6. ibid., p454

7. Atkins (note 3), pp443-4

David Dilks taught at LSE from 1962-70, worked as research assistant for Anthony Eden, Lord Tedder and Harold Macmillan, and was then for more than 20 years Professor of International History at the University of Leeds before becoming ViceChancellor at the University of Hull 1991-9.

CHORISTERS, RECRUITMENT AND COMMUNITY DURING COVID-19 AT BRECON CATHEDRAL AND ACROSS SOUTH WALES

For two years from March 2020, restrictions and guidelines imposed by the Welsh government affected performances, community, recruitment and chorister education in church music at South Wales’s three cathedrals of Brecon, Newport and Llandaff. Although these three are distinct institutions in the structure of their choirs, frequency of services and demographic, they have all found everyday life equally impacted by repercussions from the pandemic. This includes the effects of limited funding, as income for all venues has been greatly reduced by lockdowns. Although crisis fundraising and the Cathedral Music Trust’s emergency grants significantly helped the choirs, the logistics of singing with social distancing restrictions still in place were complicated, and the long-term effects on chorister education and recruitment, while less obvious, have nevertheless been considerable.

Lockdowns notwithstanding, the reality of children growing up and ‘ageing out’ of their choristerships remains. For young boys approaching their early teens, in particular, voice change meant that their education within the choir had to come to an end.

Online learning and reduced or cancelled services and rehearsals have had an effect on children’s confidence, skill and enthusiasm to continue which cannot be underestimated. Eleven to 13-year-olds in church choirs across the UK who were not given special dispensation to continue singing for professional purposes were perhaps the most noticeably

affected. Having missed out on learning and advancement of essential skills such as sight-reading and the development of vocal strength, tone, stamina and core repertoire, they have been unable to lead junior probationers as they normally would. As Stephen Moore, director of music at Llandaff Cathedral, pointed out, “This Easter [2022] will be the first with the choristers since 2019. Most of the current senior choristers were in Year 5 the last time they sang the repertoire and will simply not remember it.”

Even once initial restrictions on social distancing and singing were lifted in Wales, community-centred choirs were disproportionately affected by the lack of a dedicated chorister school. Whilst educational bubbles and the defined professional role of paid lay clerks allowed cathedrals with adjoined schools to hold rehearsals far earlier, parish-style cathedral choirs were left unable to rehearse because children attending different schools could not meet.

Before the pandemic, Brecon Cathedral had a mixed top line of 14 choristers, which fell to nine in September 2021 and six in May 2022. The choristers usually sing two evensongs and one Sunday service each week. Older girl choristers, who would ordinarily have ‘retired’, continued to sing throughout 2021, but choristers ageing out, as well as family members who were vulnerable or worried, contributed to the decreasing numbers. One boy chorister, whose family had previous links with the choral tradition, joined in 2021, while one girl was recruited from the cathedral’s junior choir. Outside

Zoe Solomon

the existing community it has been difficult to draw in new members.

Llandaff also brought their girls’ choir up to the same standard and service frequency as their boy choristers in 2021, with the particular benefit of two musical directors taking rehearsals of both top lines. Stephen Moore said that, though running separate boys’ and girls’ choirs through collaboration with Assistant Director of Music Tim Hill is sometimes “A challenge, as two people have differing views”, the structure is healthy because it doesn’t create competition.

The issue of restrictions revolving around educational versus extracurricular activities is significant when understanding disparities in recruitment opportunities; though Llandaff can afford to subsidise school fees for students and pays its lay clerks, this comes with the expectation that they must always be prepared for broadcast and major events as the cathedral in Wales’s capital, whilst reliance of both Newport and Brecon on community involvement through schools visits and social events, rather than financial incentive, have limited the opportunities for scouting new choristers and lower voices.

At Newport Cathedral, the choristers are split into top lines by gender and they rehearse separately (though both are conducted by Emma Gibbins, the Director of Music). The girls’ choir, started by Emma in December 2015, contained 11 girls in September 2021 compared to 18 previously, and the boys were down to seven, compared to 16 pre-lockdown. Both groups sing three services a week, alternating the two upper voice lines.

The junior choir at Brecon was started by Assistant Organist Jon Pilgrim in September 2019. In a community-focused cathedral music environment, the presence of a junior choir is incredibly beneficial in engaging siblings and wider family members who may not yet be old enough, or have enough singing experience, to become a chorister. A successful postservice performance of Jonah Man Jazz by Michael Hurd immediately before the first national lockdown was well received by parents and congregation members, and during

the 2021 Advent and Christmas period the children joined the cathedral and consort choirs in singing carols outside St Mary’s Church in Brecon town centre and in the cathedral grounds. This junior choir, which regularly has between ten and 15 children attending, provides an opportunity for families to understand what church music entails without the full commitment to a choristership; as Stephen Power says, “It provides a way into the cathedral which may otherwise appear a mysterious place.” Following the success of a separate girls’ top line at Newport, the prospect of a junior choir is also being considered.

music department compiled a pamphlet entitled ‘Becoming a Chorister at Brecon Cathedral’, which could be scanned by prospective choristers and their parents in lieu of face-to-face interactions.

Both Brecon and Newport cathedral choirs have unpaid back rows, with focus placed on a love for music, tradition, and each other. At Brecon, many of the lay clerks first started singing as choristers there and are now approaching their 40th or even 50th year in the cathedral’s service, through various evolutions of musical directors and clergy. Their particularly strong bond as a group – the memories they share, from regular Sunday lunches and trips to the pub to choir tours abroad – mean that singing together goes far beyond the music itself. This love and desire to keep singing together is not only reserved for older generations; young people who were once choristers and have since left for university often return to sing at Christmas or Easter, something they would not be able to do without the friendly structure.

Much of the recruitment difficulty stems from resistance to cathedral staff physically going into local schools to recruit because of their status as external visitors. Brecon Cathedral has instead decided to turn to technology, using their grant from Cathedral Music Trust to work with local production company Lodge Productions in the creation of a recruitment video that can be distributed on social media and shown in schools in place of visiting in person. Their first ‘virtual visit’ to Llangorse School in March 2022 also involved a live video stream from inside the cathedral. In addition, the

In the first lockdown, Brecon’s Stephen Power, who first joined the cathedral community as Assistant Organist in 2014, organised regular zoom calls in place of the usual choir social

Lockdowns notwithstanding, the reality of children growing up and ‘ageing out’ of their choristerships remains. For young boys approaching their early teens, in particular, voice change meant that their education within the choir had to come to an end.

Llandaff Cathedral

gatherings in order not to lose the vital feeling of mutual support. Keeping everyone in touch not only benefited their mental health, but also meant that when the time eventually came to begin singing again, no one felt disconnected. As of March 2022, the cathedral choir had two altos, five tenors, and five basses in their regular back row.

At Newport, a similar sense of community is fostered; for Emma, who took on her role in 2015, the extra-musical relationships are just as important as the music itself. Members of the back row attend services even when not singing because they consider themselves worshipping members of the congregation, and the parish style also allows for choristers to immediately move into a lower voice part as their voices develop, meaning that there is less of a sense of disconnect for leaving choristers. As of September 2021, three ex-choristers were a part of the back row made up otherwise of two altos, five tenors, one baritone, and five basses.

One way the three South Wales cathedrals have improved communication and links in recent years is through the introduction of a local miniature ‘Three Choirs Festival’, in the form of a collaborative Evensong. Originally the brainchild of Emma Gibbins, who was “astonished [that a joint evensong] had never happened before”, the idea was voiced at a cathedral organists’ conference and the first event took place at Llandaff Cathedral in 2016. Official evensongs under the ‘Three Choirs’ title took place on a Sunday in May in both 2018 and 2019, hosted by Llandaff and Brecon respectively. Singers included Llandaff boy choristers, choristers from both top lines at Newport, and Brecon’s mixed line, as well as lower voices from all three. Combined with refreshments available after the events, Stephen Power describes the event as “not just a great occasion musically, but also a great opportunity to bring clergy and congregation together in fellowship. It reminds us that we’re not alone in our cathedral ‘bubbles’!”

Emma Gibbins echoed this sentiment, saying that church music can be a “total bubble” for choristers, and the festival reminds them that “there are other people doing the same thing”.

The lasting effect of this three-way partnership, even though it has only been going for a few years, has been a connection that allowed strengthened communication and a discussion of ideas between the three cathedrals throughout the pandemic. As Stephen Moore said, “Despite differences [between the choirs], we have been in touch through similar challenges and it has been useful to have that link set up by the Three Choirs. It allows us to know what’s going on a bit better.” The next South Wales Three Choirs Evensong will be held in May 2023. As Newport Cathedral is the next on the list to host and is also the smallest of the three, accommodating large numbers of singers might be difficult if social distancing or limited numbers are reintroduced (although hopefully we are beyond that now). All three directors of music are keen for the event to continue as an invaluable collective opportunity.

Other events at Brecon Cathedral included a concert to celebrate Vaughan Williams’ 150th anniversary and the resurrection of a cancelled 2020 performance of Handel’s Messiah. A lunchtime concert series in the cathedral ran from 1pm every Friday from April 29th to the end of August, and organ recitals took place on the first Wednesday of each month from April through to September, featuring the Director of Music, Assistant Organist, and Organ Scholar, as

well as visitors from Newport, Gloucester and London. Full details of events are available on the website and Facebook page.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkKD2jDum-w

The Prebendal Singers

Est. 1982

This ATB group has deputised for the choirs of virtually all of England’s Cathedrals, Abbeys and major Churches over the past 40 years. Our unique repertoire comprises works from the Renaissance to the present day, including numerous works composed for us.

We fulfil a programme of some 6 – 8 events a year, rehearsing and performing on the day. Some events may comprise a full weekend’s music. Members fulfil those events which their existing commitments permit, but a full choir is always presented.

We welcome enquiries from singers with Cathedral or College Choir experience. Please send CV with dates to:-

David Blackwell

44 Meadow Vale, Belper Derby DE56 4DG0

davidjblackwell44@gmail.com

Zoe Solomon was an intern with Cathedral Music Trust during 2021, President of St Cuthbert’s Society Choir, Durham University, and intermittent alto at Brecon Cathedral. She is also conductor of the Brandon and Byshottles Parish children’s choir.

FURTHER TRIBUTES TO RICHARD SEAL Dr Martin Neary

Richard Seal’s initiative and achievement in creating the girls’ choir at Salisbury was, I believe, the most important event in the cathedral music world of our lifetime. The organisation behind it must have been extraordinary, but the results speak for themselves.

Richard and I, with John Birch from Chichester, worked together for 16 Southern Cathedrals Festivals (1972-87). As well as being incredibly painstaking and hard-working – he invariably marked up all the choristers’ music himself – Richard ensured that Salisbury was always scrupulously prepared for the Festival, even though he probably had his doubts about some of the newer settings! I don’t remember his discussing the possibility of starting a girls’ choir at that stage, but it must have been germinating in his mind.

For this tribute, rather than duplicate the many excellent obituaries, I decided to consult Richard’s sister, Jenny Sporton, and several of the original girl choristers as well as a boy chorister and Richard’s successor as Director of Music.

To begin with Jenny:

“When Richard was a chorister at New College Oxford, I decided I wanted to be one as well and a few days before the end of every holiday I would launch into very long and loud demands to my parents that I should be allowed to go too. They patiently tried to explain to me but words like tradition to a seven-yearold meant nothing. They suggested that boys’ voices were clearer, and they could sing higher than girls, but I didn’t accept that either and Rick repeatedly said, ‘You can’t because you’re a girl,’ which added to my fury and frustration. Perhaps all that energy I used slipped into his subconscious and, when he heard of other young girls desperate for the same opportunity many years later, he felt compelled to act.”

He was certainly ready for the challenge when, in 1989, he received a letter from the mother of a girl at Salisbury Cathedral School asking if he would be prepared to audition her daughter. Separately, the sister of an existing chorister wrote to a BBC children’s television show, asking if it could be arranged for her to sing with her brother in the cathedral choir. That same year, Richard attended a meeting of church music directors held at Church House, Westminster, when the subject of girls in choirs came up. The story is that Richard’s mind was made up on the train while returning to Salisbury,

and, two years later, in October 1991, the Salisbury girls sang their first service.

Jenny continued:

“Happily, he had the backing of the Dean and Chapter, without which I doubt he could have withstood the unkind vindictive opposition from afar. The fact that most cathedrals have followed suit is wonderful. So, for me, the formation of the girls’ choir alongside the boys’ one was an extra special moment in his life devoted to music and, in particular, music composed to be played and sung to the glory of God.”

All the girl choristers spoke highly of Richard:

“Dr Seal was such a wonderful man. He was patient, hilariously funny, kind, and had a unique twinkle in his eye! He had some great ways of describing what he wanted from us musically – he used to shout, ‘Roast beef!’ when he really wanted us to give it some welly!”

Hannah Waddington

“Richard did more than he ever took credit for in moving towards equality in the cathedral music world. He gave us girls an opportunity to sing, to defend our abilities against critics and to prove we were just as good.”

Katharine Unwin

“When the first girl choristers hit 18, it had a big impact on the mixed Oxbridge college choirs. These were treated as inferior to choirs with boy trebles, because the sopranos didn’t have the same training as the boys. Girls’ choirs changed all that.”

Amy Russell

“He was very physical in choir practices. I have a memory of him jumping up on the piano stool to encourage us to sing with a longer line – he said it was like stretchy bubble-gum and he pulled his arms far apart as if he were stretching it. I remember learning how to sing psalms, and, in Richard’s words, ‘strange beasts called magnificats’. I especially remember him explaining about phrasing off the ends of words like ‘abominable’ – bouncing a ball so that the first bounce comes back highest but all subsequent bounces get smaller until there are no more.”

Nicola Ridley

It should not be forgotten that balancing the introduction of a separate girls’ choir whilst simultaneously protecting the rich heritage of the existing boys’ choir was of paramount importance to Richard. His intention was always that the two choirs should be separate but eventually be of equal standing in the cathedral, sharing the singing duties between them.

So here is a tribute from one of Richard’s boy choristers, who later became a lay vicar:

“Richard was an inspirational choir trainer and conductor. I think, as a youngster, I simply regarded him as a musical god whom we were eager to please. As choristers, with eight services a week, I’m sure we worked hard, but it never seemed like hard work.

There was serious graft to be done, but Richard was always entertaining. Rehearsals would be peppered with references to The Goons, and the time would pass quickly.

“Of course, there was a subversive side. To isolate but one example, from so many… At one stage in the late 80s, the practice of the clergy, at Mattins and Evensong, was to welcome the congregation at the very start of the service. One Sunday morning, we processed in and noticed a large gathering of people of a certain age, very smartly dressed, in uniform, the gents wearing navy blue blazers with an impressive-looking badge on the breast pocket. They were duly welcomed. “We extend a warm welcome this morning to all visitors, including today members of the Brighton & Hove Bowls Club.” Cue the first response. O Lord, open thou our lips: Richard didn’t conduct the choir response. He bowled it. Straight-faced. And the second one. Vintage Seal.”

Stephen Abbott

David Halls, former Sub-Organist at Salisbury Cathedral and the current Director of Music there, remembers:

“Richard had a gentle, instinctive way of getting the best out of musicians. His relationship with the choristers was built on respect and encouragement and I rarely heard him raise his voice.

“There was an underlying modesty and diffidence which many found both appealing and mystifying. His lack of self-confidence which occasionally surfaced was far outweighed by his experience and musicianship. For example, he was very self-critical of his organ playing but I always found it extremely polished, and he was an excellent accompanist.

“Richard saw the Opus Dei – the daily sung services – as the most important part of his musical existence, and the ‘extras’, such as touring, recordings and broadcasts which play a significant part these days, were further down his list of priorities.”

What wonderful memories of a much-loved organist and choirmaster, who will be for ever remembered for his vision and courage. Richard excelled in whatever he touched – in retirement, as well as continuing to play the organ at parish churches in the Chalke Valley, I gather he became a skilled carpenter. But above all, in addition to his exceptional talents, Richard had a personal warmth and wit which those of us lucky enough to have known him will never forget.

Richard Seal’s initiative and achievement in creating the girls’ choir at Salisbury was, I believe, the most important event in the cathedral music world of our lifetime.

CD REVIEWS

CHORAL CDs

LOCKLAIR REQUIEM

Choir of Royal Holloway

Southbank Sinfonia

Dir: Rupert Gough

Organ: Martin Baker

Locklair Requiem; Comfort ye, my people; Calm on the listening ear of night; O light of light; Arise in beauty; The mystery of God;

Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis (Montréal).

CONVIVIUM CR070 TT 73:00

Dan Locklair (b. 1949) is an American composer too little known in the UK despite a large output of compositions in a wide range of media and a CD catalogue of over 50 issues. His most important works comprise choral and orchestral music, with several symphonies and concertos already recorded. His imaginative, approachable style lies somewhere within the Copland/Roy Harris/Samuel Barber terrain, a field which some might think is already very crowded, but Locklair demonstrates that there is much hinterland here worthy of exploration. He has also absorbed the influence of the English choral tradition and in particular the music of Finzi and Rutter, as is apparent in his radiant and rich setting of the Requiem (2012-14), originally written for choir and organ and later revised to include the string orchestra heard in several movements on this recording. At 40 minutes (and with an enormously long gestation period of 30 years) it is his most substantial choral work to date. Dedicated to his mother and father, it is a warm celebration of two lovingly remembered parents. The mood is often exuberant, as in Let not your hearts be troubled, sometimes more reflective, as in the (almost Duruflé-like) Agnus Dei and Lux aeterna, which builds to a powerful climax. Very notable is the dramatic bass aria I am the Resurrection, and a magnificent setting for soprano and organ of verses from Psalm 121, immediately followed by the radiant finale In paradisum, which brings the Requiem to a fitting and satisfying conclusion.

The CD is filled out with seven further works, starting with a lovely a cappella setting, with much divisi, of Comfort ye, my people, an Advent anthem based on Isaiah ch. 40, followed by a Christmas commission Calm on the listening ear of night (2017), an extended and dramatic work with organ to words by the American Unitarian minister Edward Sears. O light of light, a setting of the tenth-century text O nata lux, feels like an American spiritual, and the gentle ostinati and swaying motifs of another extended anthem, Arise in beauty, contains music of rapt devotion. The contemplative, sensuous motet The Mystery of God sounds like the perfect introit for choral evensong. Finally, Dan Locklair adds to the many examples of the evening canticles with another dancing Magnificat (Kenneth Leighton’s Second Service is not too far away), composed for the

Montreal Boys Choir. The lilting Nunc Dimittis, not without its moments of dramatic colour, provides the ideal complement to its Marian companion.

This is a landmark recording, taking advantage of the warm resonance of Christchurch Priory and its organ by a choir that is fully committed to this music. If the name of Dan Locklair is unfamiliar to you, I recommend that you explore this disc – you will not be disappointed. These are very high quality performances of fine music.

Bret Johnson

AS THE LEAVES FALL

Choral music by Darke and Duruflé

Guildford Cathedral Choir

Dir: Katherine Dienes-Williams

Darke As the leaves fall; The Kingdom of God; Duruflé Requiem.

REGENT REGCD 563 TT 66:02

This recording juxtaposes familiar and unfamiliar, and it is hard to know which is the more welcome. The two Darke works certainly richly deserve to be heard, while one really cannot have too many Duruflé Requiems, especially in performances as musical as this.

The CD starts with two works by Harold Darke, both with orchestra: the substantial 17-minute As the leaves fall, and the smaller-scale The Kingdom of God. The former sets a text by Joseph Courtney (1891-1973), first published in the volume Soldier Poets: Songs of the fighting men in 1916. While not of the literary quality of some of the better-known ‘soldier poets’, its romantic expression offers distinct opportunities to a composer, and Darke does not disappoint. The (excellent) booklet refers to the melodic and harmonic language of S S Wesley, Parry and Brahms, but for me it is most evocative of Darke’s slightly older contemporary, Vaughan Williams. Certainly any lovers of Vaughan Williams’s music would, I am confident, enjoy making the acquaintance of this work, especially in a performance of such integrity. The substantial soprano solo is confidently and expertly sung by choir member Hannah Dienes-Williams, who also makes a significant contribution to the second piece.

This, The Kingdom of God, is shorter at just seven and a half minutes, but it is nonetheless a varied and wide-ranging work. The poem, by Francis Thompson (1859-1907), is mystical, almost metaphysical in places, and, although very different to As the leaves fall, it similarly offers much to inspire the composer. Like Blake’s Jerusalem, it evokes the vision of Christ in our own land: ‘And lo, Christ walking on the water/ Not of Gennesareth, but of Thames!’ This appropriately finds expression in the unmistakeably English idiom adopted by Darke, an idiom which is totally understood by soloist, choir, orchestra and conductor alike.

It is remarkable how, after this quintessentially English music, the timbre of both choir and orchestra seem to change for the Duruflé Requiem. Maybe it is just the change in musical language, but the performance seems to inhabit a radically different soundworld from that of the Darke. And a very fine performance it is, too. The arching, plainsong-inspired lines, the soaring sopranos, the clear, expressive altos, the rich and resonant (but not overbearing) tenors and basses, the musical phrasing, the sense of direction, the feeling for the music’s architecture, the power and the pacing of the climaxes, all combine to create a visionary, and beautifully recorded, performance. I would guess that this work is in the repertoire of many, if not most cathedral choirs, but you would travel a long way to hear a better performance. The soloist (Janet Shell) and the cello soloist (Lorraine Deacon) are both excellent, and the choir is fully equal to the musical and technical demands of the work. This is the chamber orchestra version, and the added dimension offered by the ever-reliable Chameleon Arts Orchestra is very special; the orchestral sonorities, not least the contributions of trumpets and timpani, are an integral part of the musical success of this venture.

Even if you already have two or three recordings of the Duruflé Requiem, this would be an extremely worthy addition to your collection – and with the inclusion of the two Darke rarities, I would go so far as to say that this is an essential purchase.

Christopher Barton

ASSUMPTA EST MARIA Music for the Feast of the Assumption

Luceat

Dir: James Fellows

Andrea Rota Gaudeamus omnes; Francisco da Peñalosa Missa Ave Maria Peregrina; Byrd Optimam partem elegit; Bach Fuga sopra il Magnificat; Rose Responses; Howells Psalm

132; F Jackson Evening service in G; Mendelssohn Ave Maria; Hymn: Sing we of the Blessed Mother; Widor Final from Symphony No. VI. HYMNUS HYMCD101 TT 77:31

This CD by the not-so-recently formed (2017) 26-voice mixed choir, Luceat, conducted by James Fellows, is something of a mixed bag. The two halves of the CD comprise a Mass for the feast of the Assumption – Spanish composer Francisco da Peñalosa’s (1470-1528) Missa Ave Maria Peregrina – followed by music for choral evensong for the same feast day. It has to be said that the choir sounds rather more at home in the latter repertoire than the former.

The Peñalosa Mass, while certainly commendably enterprising programming, comes across as worthy rather than inspired, with rather little harmonic contrast and minimal relief from its omnipresent Aeolian G tonality, and here, and throughout, the choir’s blend and tuning are suspect in places. Overall, the atmosphere is curiously penitential for a supposedly joyful, celebratory feast day.

In the Rota introit – also interesting repertoire – the choir might again benefit from a more carefully graduated blend, and while compositionally Byrd’s Optimam partem elegit is more engaging, the sopranos are sometimes taxed by the rather high tessitura.

We seem to be on much more secure ground with the music for choral evensong – repertoire the choir is more used to, perhaps – with effective performances of the Rose

Responses, Howells’s lovely B flat minor chant to Psalm 132, and Jackson in G. Mendelssohn’s Ave Maria, while not perhaps the most inspired music, is well done, with its solo tenor and choir alternations.

Both the organ solos – Bach and Widor – are very effectively played on the two-manual organ in Stratford upon Avon Guild Chapel. Overall, a slightly underwhelming debut CD from this young choir and conductor – I hope they will go on to greater heights.

Mark Bellis

MUSIC FOR GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL

Ian King

Dir: Adrian Partington

Organ: Jonathan Hope

The Gloucester Service; We beseech Thee, Almighty God; O clap your hands; O God, who by the leading of a star; Jubilate; The Gloucester Girls’ Service; Almighty and ever-living God; The Christmas Truce; God, who as at this time; The St John Passion; Almighty God, give us grace.

SOMM CD0649 TT 66:40

Ian King (1962-2020), whilst a fully-trained professional musician who started as a cathedral chorister and spent his career teaching piano, was entirely self-taught as a composer, and it was only in the last decade of his life that he wrote his sacred choral works. He collaborated with Gloucester Cathedral during that period and produced a number of the pieces heard on this CD.

The programme notes say that Ian King also had a deep love of folk music. This is evident in several pieces including O clap your hands, the Gloucester Service and Jubilate, where the music is lively and dance-like, and if you know some of Bryan Kelly’s music (the Jamaica Canticles, for example) you will know what I mean. In the Jubilate, though, what I first took to be rifle shots turned out to be staccato claps by the singers! However, this is nicely contrasted with several contemplative works subtitled ‘Collects’: short, unaccompanied introits which reflect on the texts to which they are set. The serene Gloucester Girls’ Service (completely different from the other Gloucester setting on this disc) shows that the composer wrote skilfully for upper voices: the melodic, soaring lines and finely balanced organ accompaniment add a restful timelessness to this music.

Very different is The Christmas Truce, a setting of a poem by Carol Ann Duffy. I had to work at this, as music with spoken narration is something I have never greatly enjoyed. But I was won over by the poignancy of the subject matter and the sensitivity with which it is handled, and the craft by which the scene is set. The other large work on the CD, St John Passion, is a setting of the Good Friday liturgy from St John’s gospel. This was one of the composer’s final works from 2019 and the long, sombre passage recounting the events leading to Jesus’s trial, crucifixion and death is compelling and moving. The composer achieves variety by using three separate voices as narrator: tenor, bass and alto.

This is a disc of very pleasant, if not spectacular music. The composer had a real talent for vocal writing and a sensitive and imaginative ear. The performances and recording quality are very good and you get 82 minutes of music rather than the 66 stated on the cover. I found it well worth exploring.

Bret Johnson

WHEN SLEEP COMES Evening Meditations for Voices and Saxophone Tenebrae/Christian Forshaw

Dir: Nigel Short

Gibbons arr Forshaw Drop, drop, slow tears; Forshaw In paradisum; Renouncement; Hildegard von Bingen arr Short O vos imitators; Chant arr Forshaw Te lucis ante terminum; Psalm 121; Tallis Sancte Deus; Tallis arr Forshaw O nata lux; Te lucis ante terminum; Victoria Reproaches; Park Night Prayer; Lyte & Monk arr Forshaw Abide with me; Brumel Lamentations.

SIGNUM SIGCD 708 TT 62:31

Many readers will remember the wonderful Hilliard Ensemble collaborations with the saxophonist Jan Garbarek. This is very much in the same vein, and only seven members of Tenebrae (including the director, singing baritone) are used – an ensemble rather than a choir. There is a subtle difference in the present recording, however, in that sopranos are present as well as the lower voices, creating a more radiant soundworld. The interplay of saxophone and voices is very reminiscent of the Hilliard/Garbarek recordings, with the instrument weaving in and out of the texture, sometimes as another quasi-vocal line, and sometimes in a more soloistic way.

The music ranges from chant and Hildegard of Bingen, through various Renaissance pieces, past the hymn Abide with me, to two works by the saxophonist Christian Forshaw. There are also three settings of the Compline hymn Te lucis ante terminum – the original chant, the familiar Tallis setting, and Night Prayer by Owain Park, which uses the chant in a setting of the English translation. One of Forshaw’s works, Renouncement, is one of the most ambitious pieces on the disc, with some quite dissonant harmonies; like all the disc, though, these are performed with laser-like precision, even delicacy. Such is the beauty of the singing and the playing that the dissonances seem to lack any harshness, and the mood is not disturbed.

And it is the mood which is the USP of this disc. The title When sleep comes is taken from the poem Renouncement by Alice Meynell, and sleep, calm and tranquillity pervade the disc throughout. More than most, this is a CD which requires its listener to be in a particular frame of mind – and if you are, it is exceptionally beautiful.

Christopher Barton

MARC’ANTONIO INGEGNERI (Vol. II)

Missa Voce mea a 5

Motets for double choir

Choir of Girton College, Cambridge

Historic Brass of RWCMD

Dir: Gareth Wilson

Ingegneri Exultate Deo; Missa Voce mea a 5; Ave verum corpus; Hodie assumpta est Maria; Paolo Animuccia Voce mea

TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC 0630 TT 62:44

The limpid, beguiling timbres establish this superb choir’s credentials right from the opening bars of this latest recording project – a second anthology of Marc’ Antonio Ingegneri’s superior output recorded at St George’s in Chesterton outside Cambridge.

A native of Verona, Ingegneri spent the final 11 years of his life as Maestro di Cappella at the cathedral in Verona, and may well have been in office for rather longer, serving until his death in July 1592. He thus was a somewhat younger contemporary of Palestrina with whom he is often (favourably) compared.

Ingegneri presided over the cathedral’s musical fortunes at a particularly distinguished period. He was also widely renowned as the teacher of that master of the subsequent Baroque period, Claudio Monteverdi.

In broad terms, Ingegneri’s was a more concise style than Palestrina’s, though it is certainly no less ‘a thing of beauty and a joy for ever’. His universally sung evergreen motet for the Holy Week rite, In monte Oliveti, is probably his one known sacred choral piece.

The Girton choir, along with Historic Brass from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, have done a grand job of enhancing the Verona-based musician’s reputation for all posterity. The movements of the Mass texts are imaginatively placed with motets interspersed between them.

It is surely a tribute to this second recording that it compelled your reviewer to send promptly to his regular supplier with an order for its immediate precursor as an early birthday present to himself.

The performance is enhanced by the brass players under the leadership of Jeremy Wise. All credit, too, to Toccata Classics engineer Dave Rowell, and producer Adrian Peacock, for working wonders with the balance. The chamber organs are a real joy. A final credit to the authoritative and informative notes from Carlos Rodrigues Otero and Gareth Wilson himself. Dr Wilson is a master of the Renaissance vocal cadence as those who listen to this superb recording will appreciate throughout.

Simon Lindley

JEAN MOUTON

Missa Faulte d’argent & Motets

The Brabant Ensemble

Dir: Stephen Rice

Confitemini Domino; Gaude virgo Katherina; Benedicam Dominum; Illuminare, illuminare, Jerusalem; O quam fulges in aetheris; Laudate Deum in scantis eius; O salutaris hostia; Missa Faulte d’argent.

HYPERION CDA 68385 TT 72:53

This is another hugely enterprising CD from The Brabant Ensemble – a small, highly professional, ten-voice mixed choir under the direction of Stephen Rice. Their previous CDs for Hyperion have explored byways of Renaissance repertoire such as Gombert, Crecquillon, de Fevin, Hellinck, de Manchicourt and Lupi, as well as better known composers such as Josquin des Prez, Lassus, Obrecht and Palestrina. Here, they depart from their usual practice and return to a previously recorded composer, Jean Mouton (1459?-1522), in honour of the quincentenary of his death. Their first CD of works by Mouton (2011) featured his Missa Tu es Petrus and here, the focus is his substantial (37-minute!) Missa Faulte d’argent. Commendably, all the recordings on the current CD, except one movement of the Mass, are first recordings, and one can pay no higher compliment than to say that this superb CD really does force one to re-evaluate this rather littleknown composer’s significance. Mouton was born in the Pasde-Calais in the late 1450s and was Master of the Choristers at

Amiens Cathedral, finally working at the royal court in Paris from 1500 to 1522.

The unaccompanied Mass is beautifully sung. Right from the opening Kyrie wonderful blend and tuning is in evidence, and Stephen Rice’s expert approach to pacing and tempi seems exactly right. The Gloria successfully creates a quite new mood, with exceptionally clear lines throughout, often using duetting pairs of voices à la Josquin, though sometimes with even more additional lines enriching the texture. The Faulte d’argent motif (C-A-C-B) is woven throughout the texture to delightful effect, and there is a wide range of dynamic contrast while the style is faithfully followed. The forceful endings of both the Gloria and the Credo are particularly gripping, and the Et incarnatus est, at a very convincing slightly slower tempo, makes for a solemn and moving moment of homophony. All voices sound entirely reliable and unforced throughout their (sometimes considerable) range. The Sanctus and Benedictus again well illustrate the sensitive use of vowel sounds and immaculate blend to colour the scrupulous approach to this music, and their respective ‘Osannas’ are moments of uninhibited joy. No fewer than three settings of the Agnus Dei are provided, the second being a lovely duet for sopranos and altos.

The motets which make up the remainder of the CD are equally worthwhile. Confitemini Domino and Benedicam Dominum have a complex six-part texture of two canonic voices surrounded by four free contrapuntal parts; however, they emerge with wonderfully lucid lines, very clearly recorded, and, in the case of the latter work, with delightful false relations in the final cadence. Gaude Virgo Katherina, in honour of St Katherine of Alexandria, is another substantial work, this time inhabiting the major mode – a lovely contrast – again with much two-part duetting, similar to Josquin. Yet again, the pacing – a rather brisk tempo, here – seems faultless. Illuminare, illuminare, Jerusalem also has good contrasts of texture, often reducing to fewer parts, with lovely pealing ‘Alleluias’, and O quam fulges in aetheris, with its simpler, homophonic refrains, and sensitive quiet dynamics, is delightfully done. Laudate Deum in sanctis eius has quicker figuration in a major mode, making an effective contrast, while O salutaris hostia, a very short, homophonic motet, is beautifully sung.

Overall, this is a CD of high sophistication, which makes a strong case for Jean Mouton as a really significant composer. All items are finely sung, with expertly shaped individual polyphonic lines, hugely sensitive direction in terms of pacing and dynamic variation, and excellent recording. A delight throughout and very strongly recommended.

Mark Bellis

THE CANTICLE OF THE SUN Charles Wood Singers

Philip Scriven organ

Dir: David Hill

Stanford Magnificat in B flat; Eternal Father; Wood Expectans expectavi; Wood arr Moore It were my soul’s desire; O Thou, the central orb; Oculi omnium; Nunc dimittis in B flat; Amy Beach Let this mind be in you; Bonum est confiteri; Deus misereatur; The Canticle of the Sun

REGENT REGCD 567 TT 72:59

The Charles Wood Festival of Music and Summer School takes place annually in Armagh, Northern Ireland. It was founded

in 1994 to celebrate and promote the legacy of Charles Wood, who received his early musical training in St Patrick’s (Church of Ireland) Cathedral, where this album was made.

Released in May 2022, it showcases well-known sacred choral works by Stanford and Wood, together with the first recording of Philip Moore’s arrangement of Wood’s It were my soul’s desire, and four works by the American visionary, Amy Beach. With words by St Francis of Assisi, her large-scale cantata, The Canticle of the Sun, is the first recording of the version with organ accompaniment, whilst the two psalm settings receive their first performance on disc.

The festival itself will be familiar to BBC Radio 3 listeners who might well catch elements of the course within the Choral Evensong slot. David Hill’s excellent choir-training ability is fully revealed whilst the recording demonstrates the outstanding organ accompaniment of Philip Scriven. However, the main purpose of the disc by the Charles Wood Singers is to showcase the talents of the singers aged between 18 and 28 and focus on the choral work of Amy Beach, whose vast output of music has become so prominent in recent years. The title track is taken from an extended canticle composed in 1928 and the CD also includes three of her shorter works. Whilst The Canticle of the Sun is highly effective, the ultraromantic operatic writing is certainly not for the faint-hearted, and the excessively operatic solo sections are a challenge to both soloists and listener alike. On the other hand, the overall ensemble highlights excellent dynamic control; the emphasis is on blend combined with extended beautifully performed melodic lines sung with so much ease.

Whilst the purpose of the disc is to showcase the compositional skills of Amy Beach, both the Wood and Stanford works are most enjoyable. Especially effective is Philip Moore’s arrangement of It were my soul’s desire, which in itself serves as a most welcome addition to the English Choral tradition.

David Thorne

THE REEDS BY SEVERN SIDE

Choral Music by Edward Elgar

Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea

Dir: William Vann

Organ: Joshua Ryan

Gloria; Credo on Themes from Symphonies

5, 7 and 9 by Beethoven; Hymn Tune in F major; O salutaris hostia; Jesu, word of God incarnate; Jesu, Lord of life and glory; Jesu, meek and lowly; As torrents in summer; There is sweet music; Psalm 68; Angelus; They are at rest; Intende voci orationis meae; Give unto the Lord; Fear not, O land; I sing the birth; Good Morrow; Queen Alexandra’s Memorial Ode. SOMM CD 278 TT 79:47

A truly impressive degree of research underpins this major release recorded within the sumptuous surroundings of Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, just a short walk from the Royal Hospital. The Hospital is, of course, the home of the famous ‘Chelsea Pensioners’, and their choral foundation’s resident base is within Christopher Wren’s glorious chapel (completed between 1681 and 1687 and consecrated in 1691).

William Vann may justly be proud of his present choir, whose stylish singing on this significant release is splendid in its sheer expressive beauty. Its impressive musicality delights from the outset in masterly choral transcriptions produced by the very youthful Elgar. A deliciously deft Gloria, modelled

on a movement from a Mozart violin sonata, is the curtainraiser, followed by a choral setting of the Credo which takes as its inspiration themes from the 5th, 7th and 9th symphonies of Beethoven.

It is great to have recordings of the English versions of Elgar’s Op. 2 in such beguiling, affectionate accounts –underpinned by simplicity of utterance. As intermezzi come welcome and fresh-voiced performances of As torrents in summer from King Olaf, and the setting of Tennyson’s There is sweet music. The 1911 Coronation Gradual is presented in its Latin text (Novello issued this in both languages, though at the coronation only the English O hearken thou was used).

Elgar made superb, even heartfelt, contributions to the English anthem heritage, here represented by Psalm 29 (Give unto the Lord) and the Harvest anthem so beloved by church choirs of yester-year, Fear not, O land; Will Vann, Joshua Ryan and the Chelsea choir give a swashbuckling, no-holds-barred account of this latter work. There follow in conclusion two carol settings, I sing the birth and Good morrow, with a finale in the form of Queen Alexandra’s Memorial Ode to a fine text by John Masefield, one of its composer’s last works, for which he was commissioned as Master of the King’s Musick to write, in collaboration with the Poet Laureate (Masefield had been appointed in 1930 as successor to Robert Bridges).

One ventures to suggest that The Reeds by Severn Side bids fair to match the success of the recording from Christopher Robinson’s Worcester Cathedral choir of the mid-60s, accompanied by Harry Bramma – it is certain that it will be equally cherished and probably as influential; it deserves to be.

Simon Lindley

ORGAN CDs

CHRISTMAS BELLS

Organ music from Belfast Cathedral

Organ: Matthew Owens

Bach Canonic variations on ‘Vom Himmel hoch’; Guilmant Introduction et variations sur un ancien noël polonais; Noël écossais; Moore A fugal flourish on ‘Personent hodie’; Prelude on ‘Irby’; Daquin Nouveau livre de Noëls; Noël suisse; Owens Prelude on ‘Yorkshire’; J G Walther Partita ‘Lobt Gott, ihr Christen, allzugleich’; Peeters Chorale preludes on ‘Vom Himmel hoch’ and ‘Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern’; Wilby Ding! dong! merrily on high; Gary Davison Seven versets on ‘Divinum Mysterium’; Liszt Die Hirten an der Krippe; Skempton Christmas Bells; Edmundson Toccata on ‘Vom Himmel hoch’.

RESONUS 10293 TT 78:29

A wide range of music inspired by much-loved Christmas carols and other seasonal melodies make up the essence of this very attractive release. J S Bach’s Canonic Variations on ‘Vom Himmel hoch’ is a fine partita from his mature years, skilfully wrought with much contrast and interest. His cousin Johann Gottfried Walther (1684-1748) contributes another partita on a Lutheran chorale which, although a little less familiar, very nicely complements, rather than emulates, its companion.

Louis-Claude Daquin (1694-1772) wrote a set of Noels of which organists and audiences probably know No. 10, Bon

Joseph, écoute moy, best. The Noel suisse (No. 12) played here has a robust, rustic charm.

Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911) was an early master of the French Romantic tradition. Of his two organ carols here, the Noel écossais may not be as well known as the Noel polonais, in which we hear a triumphant paraphrase of Infant holy, infant lowly. Franz Liszt provides a suitably atmospheric impression of In dulci jubilo, evoking the manger scene with the shepherds. Flor Peeters (1903-86) is renowned for his many recital compositions for organ, and also for a large catalogue of chorale preludes and variations in which he revives the Baroque spirit of Bach and Couperin and recasts them in an agreeably original 20th-century context. Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern is a real challenge to the recitalist, who is required to play more than 1000 semi-quavers in the right hand without blemish in about three minutes (no problem for Matthew Owens!). And in Vom Himmel hoch Peeters gives us yet another version of the chorale, placing the melody in the pedals.

Whenever I hear a Philip Moore organ work for the first time, I say to myself, “What a fantastic piece!”, and the two works recorded here are no exception. The Flourish on ‘Personent Hodie’ is a wonderfully concise, skilful and joyous exposition on the well-known carol from Piae Cantiones, as is the Prelude on ‘Irby’, in which we hear an intriguing improvisation on the familiar tune ‘Once in Royal’. Philip Wilby’s exuberant impression of Ding! dong! merrily on high is a happy addition to his many works for choir and organ, and Matthew Owens contributes his own pleasant prelude on ‘Yorkshire’. The American composer Gary Davison (b. 1961) has written a nicely balanced set of variations on ‘Divinum Mysterium’ (the tune known as Of the Father’s heart begotten), and this very well-filled programme is rounded off with a short prelude by Howard Skempton, Christmas Bells, and perhaps the most famous setting of Vom Himmel hoch in the form of a brilliant toccata by the American organist Garth Edmundson (1892-1971).

This is a finely played programme of music on the superb Harrison organ of Belfast Cathedral; the 32ft pedal tones certainly made my floor rumble at times! Very enjoyable and can be listened to all the year round.

Bret Johnson

J S BACH FROM LINCOLN

Organ: Colin Walsh

Toccata in C; Fugue in G minor; Chorale

Preludes: Dies sind die heil’gen zehn Gebot x 2; In dulci jubilo; Christus, der uns selig macht; O Mensch, bewein’ dein’ Sünde groß; Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ; Fugues: in C minor after Legrenzi; à la Gigue; Prelude and Fugue in G minor; Prelude and Fugue; Trio in C minor; Adagio; Allegro; Toccata and Fugue in F; Toccata; Fugue.

PRIORY PRCD 1241

‘This work was probably written at Arnstadt (before 1707); it is of little musical interest, and to play it in public is to injure Bach’s reputation.’ So wrote Walter Emery, in 1940 in the preface to the Novello edition of Bach’s Organ Works (Volume VIII), about the Toccata in C BWV 566. The Prelude in G minor BWV 535 doesn’t fare much better, in Emery’s assessment: ‘Though expressive, it is scrappy, and perhaps best avoided unless one is sure of a sympathetic audience.’ Colin Walsh’s new disc of Bach’s music from Lincoln Cathedral features a

number of works which are not heard very often but, even if we accept Emery’s assessment as correct, both works mentioned so far are given fine and, in the case of BWV 566, majestic performances on the wonderful Willis organ at Lincoln, an instrument so associated with the performer. Most of the pieces are early works by Bach, very much influenced by the music of Buxtehude. A number of shorter works feature, including well-known chorale preludes from the Orgelbüchlein such as O Mensch bewein’ and Ich ruf’ zu dir which, had Emery reviewed them, would (I suspect) receive a much more favourable assessment. For many of these smaller works, the more delicate and intimate registers of the organ are used to telling effect and, as ever, played with absolute precision and a clear understanding of the texts associated with them. The final work on the disc is the Toccata and Fugue in F BWV 540.

I have said before that the superb Willis organ in Lincoln Cathedral may not be the most suitable instrument on which to play Bach, but the total commitment from Colin Walsh to all the music presented here is absolutely clear. The acoustic of the building may blur some of the lines occasionally, but both the beauty of sound and the majesty of the instrument shine forth in every piece through the brilliant playing. This disc is a very useful addition to the catalogue, and, on listening, you can make up your own mind as to whether Walter Emery was correct in his assessments!

Nicholas Kerrison

UNBEATEN TRACKS

Karl Hoyer

Organ: Graham Barber

Chorale Prelude: Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott; Variations on a Sacred Folksong; Memento mori (Funeral Procession; Dirge; Dance of Death; Transfiguration); Chorale Prelude: Alles ist an Gottes Segen; Fantasy and Fugue on the chorale ‘Wunderbarer König’.

FUGUE STATE RECORDS FSRCD 025 TT 64:41

I hope I can be forgiven for having hitherto had a very slight recollection of the name Karl Hoyer (1891-1936). I found that the only other piece in my library was a set of variations: Jerusalem, du hochgebaute Stadt (Jerusalem, thou high-builded city), recorded also by Graham Barber many years ago on the Great European Organs Series No. 20 (Priory PRCD297). Insult was added to injury – I confused him with the more well-known German composer, Karl HOLLER (1907-87), who also wrote a significant number of organ works. This new release has suitably defenestrated my credulous ignorance and brought forward an important figure of the post-Reger era who was himself a well-known organist and whose life was cut short by a freak accident at the age of 45.

At the Leipzig Conservatory Hoyer studied composition with Max Reger and organ with Karl Straube, the greatest German player of his day and a noted performer of Reger’s music. Steeped in the highly chromatic musical language of Reger, he embodied that ethos for the rest of his life, well beyond the period when it had fallen from fashion. As Graham Barber succinctly states in his programme notes, he ‘seemed to prefer the safe crucible of extended tonality’, eschewing the modernism that had taken hold in European music and culture by the time he reached maturity. Consequently he has suffered many decades of neglect, and until now has not enjoyed the revival of interest seen in the music of neoimpressionist organ composers like Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-

1933) and the Belgian Paul de Maleingreau (1887-1956). Hoyer’s music, despite the debt it clearly owes to Reger, nonetheless possesses a personality of its own and exudes a good deal of the quality of his mentor. Its re-discovery is thus worthy, and this CD gives us a good perspective of his 65 or so works, starting with a very concise chorale prelude on the famous Lutheran tune ‘Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott’. The Variations on a Sacred Folksong (1925) are alternately simple and powerfully expressive. The centrepiece of this programme, Memento Mori (1922), is a 30-minute suite inspired by the medieval practice of reflecting on death, and was written at a time when memories of the slaughter and suffering of the Great War were still fresh. Funeral Procession is followed by Dirge (Dupré’s Cortège et Litanie come to mind). The Totentanz (‘Dance of Death’) evokes the macabre dance whereby corpses lead mortals to the grave. Verklärung (‘Transfiguration’) moves from a hushed opening to a triumphant conclusion. The late Fantasy and Fugue on ‘Wunderbarer König’ was published posthumously in 1937. This intense and dramatic work encapsulates the massive structures of Reger’s chorale fantasias, and the tremendous final climax with its huge chords and thundering pedal octaves provides a fitting conclusion. Graham Barber once again convincingly demonstrates his commitment to and mastery of the world of late Romantic organ music with a fine release played on an instrument ideally suited to this repertoire.

Bret Johnson

PROCESSIONAL (2 CDs)

Organ music by Dom Sebastian Wolff

Organ: Richard Lea Processional; Advent Chorale; Chorale Preludes on ‘O come, O come, Emmanuel’, ‘Lo, he comes with clouds descending’, ‘Christe Redemptor omnium’, the Somerset carol, ‘O sacred head, sore wounded’, ‘Aurora lucis rutilat’, ‘At the Lamb’s high feast’, a melody by Orlando Gibbons, ‘Our Father’, ‘Most ancient of all mysteries’, ‘Come, Holy Ghost’, ‘Adoro te devote’, ‘Te beata sponsa Christi’; Chorale Partitas on ‘Unto us is born a Son’, ‘Christ the Lord is risen again’; Fantasia & Fugue; Fanfare for Holy Saturday; Entry for Easter Sunday on ‘Jesus Christ is risen today’; Fanfare for Easter Day; Carillon (Hommage à Mulet et Vierne); Introduction, Chorale and Fugue on ‘Let all mortal flesh’; Adagio and Fugue on ‘Liebster Immanuel’; For a Festive Occasion; Nocturne; arr Lea Fanfare (Cantata for a New Era).

AD FONTES AF007 TT 93:25

Dom Sebastian Wolff became a monk at Buckfast Abbey in 1948 at the age of 19, studied the organ with Lionel Dakers and was appointed musical adviser to the diocese of Plymouth at a time when the Roman Catholic church was in the process of liturgical change, particularly with the introduction of English into the Mass. This was the stimulus for Wolff’s considerable compositional output. Although there is a substantial amount of choral and congregational music, these CDs are of his organ music. Richard Lea, who from 2016 to 2018 was the organist at the Abbey, is the performer and author of the accompanying notes which, in typical Ad Fontes tradition, are extensive and very well presented. Although the opening Processional is most definitely in early 20th-century English Romantic style, much of what follows is, as Lea comments, inspired by ‘neoclassical musical language – with a debt to J S Bach, to Lutheran chorale, to Mendelssohn and to contemporary

masters that included Flor Peeters’. Lea continues that ‘the iconic French traditions of Messiaen and Langlais inform much of Wolff’s language’ whilst also acknowledging ‘a nod to the English pastoral style’. Many of the pieces on this twodisc set are chorale preludes for the different seasons of the church year, and it is obvious how useful these pieces would be within the liturgies of the Abbey and further afield. In recent years OUP has published a series of books (Oxford Hymn Settings) and Dom Sebastian’s chorale preludes would compare very well with many of those pieces. The chorale prelude on O sacred head and the chorale partita on Christ the Lord is risen again are fine pieces, and very useful for those organists who are careful to choose music which fits with the liturgy in hand. There are more extensive pieces, such as the Fantasia and Fugue on Disc 1; the Fantasia shows a highly imaginative improvisatory style with the Buckfast organ displaying all its glory. Richard Lea plays with obvious enthusiasm for the music and uses the Ruffatti organ so well, demonstrating its widely varied registers – compare the liberal use of the 32’ reed in Entry for Easter Sunday Morning to the beautiful delicate sounds of the chorale prelude on Salzburg (both on Disc 1) and the rounded flue sounds in Let all mortal flesh (Disc 2). Performances and sounds of the organ aside, these discs are really the demonstration of an extensive catalogue of music by a man who has dedicated his life to the liturgies of the Church, and it is a catalogue which deserves to be played and heard more.

Nicholas Kerrison

SYMPHONY HALL SORCERY Organ of Symphony Hall, Birmingham

Thomas Trotter

Dukas arr Trotter The Sorcerer’s Apprentice; Widor Symphonie V, Allegro vivace; John Gardner Five Dances for organ; Saint-Saëns Fantaisie in E flat major; Bourgeois Serenade; Susato arr Trotter Dances from Danserye; Gárdonyi Mozart Changes; Rachel Laurin Sweelinck Variations.

REGENT REGCD 566 TT 74:46

Most readers will be aware of the brilliance of Thomas Trotter, but some might not appreciate his versatility as both a performer and arranger. This disc reveals the dual aspects of his talent. The recording, made in a couple of days in August 2021, demonstrates Trotter’s ability to perform music in a lighter style. Not only are we presented with a highly colourful and stunning performance of the first movement of Widor’s Fifth Symphony, but there are less challenging offerings to be enjoyed as well. The title of the disc is inspired by Trotter’s superbly vivid and colourful rendition of his arrangement of Dukas’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice; his performance highlights the diversity of sounds made on the Klais organ (built for Birmingham’s Symphony Hall in 2001). Immediately following the Dukas is the Widor, and while the powerful Toccata is much better known, listeners less familiar with the first movement might well be surprised by its stylistic variety, which gives the performer an opportunity to demonstrate a vast amount of orchestral colour.

John Gardner was far from a ‘one work’ composer: he composed almost 300 pieces, all of which reveal his own unique stamp with an emphasis on lively rhythmic writing and catchy melodic lines. David Gammie’s excellent notes reveal far more detail about his music.

Whilst the Saint-Saëns is a firm favourite, Derek Bourgeois might be better known as a prolific symphonic and brass band composer. Bourgeois was no lover of the organ, and in some ways this is revealed in the irony of his most attractive and witty Serenade. His dry personality comes to the fore within the 5/4 piece written for his own wedding!

The influence of jazz is most significant within this compilation. It is certainly revealed in a rather cheeky piece, Mozart Changes by the Czech composer, Zsolt Gárdonyi, and also in the Sweelinck Variations by the Canadian organist and composer Rachel Laurin, who was commissioned by Trotter to compose a piece for his 800th recital as Birmingham City Organist in February 2020.

This superb recording is close miked, but prospective purchasers will be aware that the instrument is of German design and specifically built for a concert hall. Certainly one of the most enjoyable organ discs I have played in a long while.

David Thorne

B-A-C-H: Anatomy of a Motif (2 CDs)

Organ of St Paul’s Cathedral

Simon Johnson

Bach Contrapunctus XIV a 4 (‘Unfinished Fugue’); Ricercar à 6; Mendelssohn Sonata on the chorale ‘O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden’; Schumann Sechs Fugen über den Namen ‘Bach’; Brahms Fugue in A flat minor; Liszt Präludium und Fuge über den Namen B-A-C-H; Reger Fantasie und Fuge über B-A-C-H; Karg-Elert Passacaglia and Fugue on B-A-C-H. CHANDOS CHSA 5285 (2) TT 69:39 and 65:27

Firstly, warm congratulations both to organist Simon Johnson (since September 2021 Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral in succession to Martin Baker) and to the Chandos team under Jonathan Cooper, Producer.

The initial two works on the first CD draw on the talents of Lionel Rogg and Rudolf Lutz respectively. Lutz’s quite remarkably stylish expansion of the briefest of fragments left by Mendelssohn into a substantive three-movement suite is just one of the joys of this significant production.

With the entire set of Robert Schumann’s Op. 60 Six Fugues on the name ‘Bach’ we enter more familiar territory. Here, as so frequently on this recording, Johnson’s measured, judicious, and – importantly, ever upwardly mobile – tempi fit the music as well as the voicing of the Willis/Mander St Paul’s instrument to absolute perfection. The lion’s share of this rich recital is allotted to the Schumann six pieces, each strongly contrasted with the other. This is particularly the case in the two final works in the set.

The second of the two discs consists of three pieces famed for their respective treatments of the slenderest of mottos from the German musical nomenclature of the BACH surname, that immortal and compelling pair of descending semi-tones.

At the outset of the second CD comes the famous sixpart noble Ricerare from The Musical Offering, here given a quintessentially splendid and, indeed, authoritative, account. A particularly happy inspiration is the very satisfying presentation of the three major BACH-inspired pieces in chronological order. One is reminded of recitalists from a previous generation of the calibre, skill and technique to tackle them with similar confidence and elan – not least of

another great London-based player, Yorkshire-born Richard Popplewell, in turn at St Paul’s, Cornhill and HM Chapels Royal.

Listen to the treatments, homages if you prefer, accorded by Simon Johnson so masterfully to the Leipzig master himself by, in their turn, Liszt, Reger and, ultimately, Karg-Elert. You will rarely spend a more fulfilling three-quarter of an hour or so.

Not the least of many splendours of this excellent production are notes on the music by that prince-ofprogramme-notes for the discerning listener, David Gammie.

Simon Lindley

ELISABETH LUTYENS ORGAN MUSIC

Tom Winpenny plays the organ of St Albans Cathedral

Soprano: Philippa Boyle

Organ: Dewi Rees

Epithalamion; Trois pièces brèves; Plenum IV; Nativity; Sinfonia; Suite (Op. 17); A Sleep of Prisoners; Chorale Prelude; Temenos.

TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC 0639 TT 70:47

Tom Winpenny continues his exploration of 20th-century organ music with this survey of Elisabeth Lutyens (1906-83), a more-or-less unknown name until recently. Daughter of the renowned architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, she entered the Royal College of Music in the mid-1920s when music was almost a closed profession for women. Sir Hugh Allen (the Principal) did not want her to study composition, but she found a kindly mentor in Dr Harold Darke, the organist of St Michael’s Cornhill, who taught her to play the instrument and became a lifelong friend. It may well be that were it not for him she would never have written for the organ. Her musical sensibilities were utterly attuned to everything that was new and exciting, and of her contemporaries (such as Grace Williams, Elizabeth Maconchy and Phyllis Tate) she was the most musically progressive. Her aristocratic social background and her father’s work abroad (especially in India) enabled her to travel when young, and exposed her to exotic influences including the Theosophical movement, and Indian literature. Despite an unhappy personal life, she persevered as a composer, favouring the serial models of the European modernists like Schoenberg. She supplemented her meagre income by writing for films and by teaching. An early pupil was Malcolm Williamson, whose organ compositions clearly show her influence.

In later years, and with the support of William Glock, she landed a number of important BBC commissions. She produced several organ works, nearly all recorded here for the first time. Epithalamion (1968), a setting of words by Edmund Spenser for organ and soprano, shows her at her most lyrical. This was followed by the mysterious Trois pièces brèves (1969), the French title clearly hinting at the influence of Messiaen, whose Meditations sur le mystère de la Sainte Trinité appeared in the same year. The same may be said for Plenum for organ duet (1975) in which extreme tonal potentiality is explored through dense chords and relatively static progressions. Nativity (1951), a carol for soprano and organ, articulates a dark and fearful atmosphere far removed from the usual bucolic joy of the manger scene. Sinfonia (1955) (another Glock commission) is a compressed essay in serial

form. Epigrammatic sketches also feature in the Suite (1948), a Webernian set of short pastiches. Two substantial works from the 1960s include the incidental music to a Christopher Fry play, A Sleep of Prisoners, which contains music of vivid intensity and contrasting moods. Temenos (1969), dedicated to her old mentor Harold Darke after he had retired from playing in public, has lain unperformed until now. Tom Winpenny believes it is her most significant organ work, citing its orchestral colour and richness of texture.

This is not ‘easy listening’, but its immaculate presentation and convincing advocacy by a superb performer coincides with a revival of interest in Lutyens’ music: two volumes of piano works have been released by Martin Jones (Resonus 10291 and 10306) and this disc proves beyond doubt the importance of Lutyens’ contribution to British organ literature.

Bret Johnson

CHRISTMAS CDs

HARK! WHAT A SOUND

Advent from Dublin

Choir of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin Dir: Stuart Nicholson

Weir Drop down, ye heavens; arr Rutter O come, O come, Immanuel; Ledger Adam lay ybounden; Springfield ‘O’ Antiphons; Stanford A Song of Wisdom; arr Vaughan Williams

Hail to the Lord’s anointed; Goldschmidt A tender shoot; arr Blackwell Lo, how a rose e’er blooming; Poston Jesus Christ the apple tree; David Cooper Come, my way; Shephard Never weather-beaten sail; Terry Hark! What a sound; arr Nicholson Tomorrow shall be my dancing day; Jack Oades There is no rose; Howells Magnificat (Gloucester Service); Olivers, with introduction by Stuart Nicholson Lo, he comes with clouds descending.

REGENT REGCD 556 TT 58:37

This is certainly not the first review of a recording made by the choir of St Patrick’s Cathedral Dublin to feature in this journal. As the title suggests, the choice of music relates to Advent, and this disc certainly does not disappoint! It reveals customary careful musical planning combined with an excellent recorded sound which highlights the quality of this large choir. The liner notes list an impressive number of singers including 24 boys, but nevertheless the musical timbre is most refreshing and well controlled, allowing successful performances of stylistically diverse pieces ranging from Poston’s Jesus Christ the apple tree to the large-scale resources required in Howells’s Gloucester Service. Perhaps the interpretation of the Magnificat reveals the choir at its finest: it showcases the work’s vast dynamic range within a style which requires sensitivity, excellent tuning and, basically, sheer musicality.

The recording was made in the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel near the cathedral because of building works taking place in the cathedral during 2020. In many respects, the venue enhances the recorded sound.

The idea of a disc based on music for Advent is certainly not new, but one of the imaginative concepts here is to

intersperse the fully scored pieces with a number of Advent antiphons. In contrast, a number of the more conventional Advent hymns are sung with both integrity and passion – not necessarily a feature found everywhere.

Worth particular mention is David Cooper’s less familiar Come, my way and Richard Shephard’s very moving Never weather-beaten sail, sung without too much sentimentality yet capturing the mood of the text very effectively. The setting of There is no rose, composed by a former organ scholar of St Patrick’s, Jack Oades, is a short but highly effective setting of the familiar text which enables the choir’s musicianship to shine.

Stuart Robinson’s skills as Director of Music are very evident. It is always a joy to listen to his talents as an arranger, revealed here in a lively arrangement of Tomorrow shall be my dancing day – it allows the choir to showcase not only its musicality but, at the same time, enables his organist, David Leigh, to demonstrate his excellent accompanimental skills. By coincidence, the disc concludes with Martin How’s arrangement of the final verse of Lo, he comes, which serves as a most fitting tribute to a fine musician who was an inspiration to so many choristers for over 50 years and who passed away in July of this year. He leaves a rare legacy, reflected partly in an excellent disc.

David Thorne

A BELFAST CHRISTMAS

Choir of Belfast Cathedral

Dir: Matthew Owens

Organ: Jack Wilson

Poston Jesus Christ the apple tree; O Bethlehem; Ledger The voice of the Angel Gabriel; Still, still, still; The Sussex Carol; Davison Rorate coeli desuper!; Stopford Adam lay ybounden; Lullay, my liking; What shall we offer thee, O Christ?; Moore Immortal Babe; Watts’ Cradle Song; In the bleak midwinter; Ireland The Holy Boy; Praetorius A great and mighty wonder; Hadley I sing of a maiden; Rutter Mary’s Lullaby; Gardner A Gallery Carol; Wilby Moonless darkness stands between; Owens Toccata on ‘Good King Wenceslas’; Chilcott Good King Wenceslas.

RESONUS 10292 TT 67:59

Since its consecration in 1904, music has played a significant role within the worship of St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast. The general ethos of the choir itself has not necessarily changed over the years, but the appointment of Matthew Owens as Director of Music in 2019 and the decision to employ a professional group has enhanced the musical side of the cathedral’s liturgy; it has also allowed the choir to make a diverse number of recordings exploring works by composers such as the late John Joubert, Philip Stopford and Philip Wilby. The cathedral has as a result been put on a par with its counterparts in the remainder of the UK.

The diversity of Christmas repertoire is well represented on this CD. There are many hitherto unknown works which are not only impressive but also most approachable even to the casual listener, and there are several familiar carols in addition. Mentioning all 20 items would be foolhardy. Suffice it to say that all are relatively short, very well conceived and performed most convincingly. And the contrast between the works is most admirable. Philip Stopford’s pieces are always very fine, whilst Philip Moore captures the more reflective side of the Christmas season. Especially effective

is a rearrangement of Praetorius’s A great and mighty wonder in an arrangement by the Danish composer, Pederin. Highly attractive is Gary Davison’s Rorate coeli desuper accompanied by harp, hand drum and finger cymbals. The only really extrovert offering is Gardner’s Gallery Carol, where the highly rhythmic organ accompaniment provides extra colour and support for the singers.

The recorded sound is exceptional, and it is enhanced by the resonance of the building, which allows the choir to produce a well-blended and bright tone. The disc would serve as a superb stocking filler – although Resonus is mainly in the downloads market.

Sadly, and despite receiving generous grants, including financial support from Cathedral Music Trust, the distinguished performances by the choir featured on this disc will most likely be the last under Owens owing to financial cutbacks. It is a pity that the cathedral authorities seem unable to find the resources necessary for such quality music-making to continue.

David Thorne

ALL THE WORLD TONIGHT REJOICES

Contemporary Christmas Music

Truro Cathedral Choir

Dir: Christopher Gray

Organ: Andrew Wyatt

Tranchell arr Marchbank People, look east; G Jackson Nowell sing we; Gauntlett arr Stopford Once in royal David’s city; Campkin The bells of the city of God; Julian Philips I sing of a maiden; Helen Paish While Mary slept; Becky McGlade Infant Holy; In the bleak midwinter; Allain Coventry Carol; James Whitbourn The Magi’s Dream; Russell Pascoe There is no rose; I sing of a maiden; Neil Cox I sing of a maiden; Bingham The dawn of redeeming grace; Shephard

All my heart this night rejoices; Trad. arr Gary Cole Away in a manger; Weir Illuminare, Jerusalem; Johnson Manning

All the world tonight rejoices; Briggs Variations on ‘Greensleeves’.

REGENT REGCD 560 TT 72:58

Right from the outset this highly commendable new issue nails its credentials to the mast as a worthy ambassador for Contemporary Christmas Music. Initial textures from Peter Tranchell and Gabriel Jackson are refreshingly rhythmic in their dance-like approach. Gauntlett’s Once in royal David’s city is heart-warmingly lovely in Philip Stopford’s mellifluous and fluent setting, and Mrs Alexander’s stanzas are carefully accorded full beauty in clarity of text.

No fewer than seven of the 19 tracks are first recordings, as are the organ solos from the pens of Judith Bingham and David Briggs. To hear the justifiably world-famous Father Willis – surely the quintessential English cathedral organ? –in two appealing contemporary pieces from Andrew Wyatt’s nimble fingers and feet is a good complement to such finely wrought singing, enhanced as it is by superb intonation and blend – a very special bonus.

If you buy no other Christmas recording this year, this must, for sure, be it! The legendary musician Gary Cole is responsible for this beautifully balanced recital and contributes, too, a glorious arrangement in the form of an affectionate setting of William Kirkpatrick’s iconic lullaby, Away in a manger.

Christopher Gray, in charge of this recording, should take very real delight in his singing forces as well as their strong

advocacy of creative Cornish spirits. As Mr Gray himself points out in his preface to the inlay booklet, the challenges presented by post-Covid legislation such as social distancing have been quite magnificently overcome.

Of very special significance is the contribution made by two recent boy choristers in jointly providing the text for Sasha Johnson-Manning’s highly infectious All the world tonight rejoices. Step forward, Benji Harvey and Oliver Thorpe, for your creative contribution to a quite splendid endeavour!

To the previous Truro organist, Robert Sharpe, belongs the credit and vision of instigating the support of contemporary composers in providing new music for this first-rate choir to sing in recent years.

Simon Lindley

VIDIMUS GLORIAM EIUS (2CDs)

A Festival of 9 Lessons and Carols for Christmas

Luceat

Dir: James Fellows

Hildegard von Bingen O Pastor animarum; Mendelssohn Frohlocket, ihr Völker; arr O’Donnell Once in royal David’s city; arr Pearsall In dulci jubilo; arr June Nixon The holly and the ivy; arr Cleobury Joys seven; Aaron King A spotless rose; arr Willcocks

Of the Father’s heart begotten; See amid the winter’s snow; Quelle est cette odeur agréable?; The first nowell; Rütti A patre unigenitus; arr Chilcott Sussex Carol; Rutter Dormi, Jesu; What sweeter music; arr Quinney Sing lullaby; Stopford Lully, lulla, lullay; A Christmas Blessing; arr Neary We three kings; arr Wilberg/Peter Stevens Ding! dong! merrily on high; arr Ledger/Fellows Adeste, fideles; Messiaen Dieu parmi nous.

HYMNUS HYMCD 102 TT 107:50

Created in 2017, Luceat Choir was conceived as a cathedral visiting choir. It has now become a touring group, with many of its members singing in other ensembles such as Genesis Sixteen, the Monteverdi Choir and Ex Cathedra. James Fellows has brought together a talented group of singers who now give performances of, for example, Bach’s St Matthew Passion and Handel’s Messiah (and I am sure the choir’s reach will expand further). Another recording, Assumpta est Maria, has already shown that it is tackling less familiar repertoire. Listening to this two-disc set during the July heatwave, I am taken to thoughts of Christmas through a selection of mostly very well-known carols. The opening track is the surprise, in many ways, with a beautiful rendition of Hildegard von Bingen’s O pastor animarum, the sound of the upper voices crystal clear and assured. What follows is the traditional Nine Lessons and Carols, and yes, all the readings are there. In addition to more familiar fare there are some rarities such as Mendelssohn’s Frohlocket, ihr Völker, which is a short but rousing piece which should be heard more often. New to me was June Nixon’s The holly and the ivy, which uses a French carol tune rather than the traditional one we all know so well. New also were Aaron King’s A spotless rose, an attractive piece, and Carl Rütti’s A patre unigenitus, a dramatic addition to the repertoire, although unlikely to rival his I wonder as I wander. There are also several arrangements which I had not come across before: amongst them is a very energetic version of Sussex Carol (Chilcott) which will most certainly compare well with the Willcocks and Ledger arrangements. Martin Neary’s We three kings offers an alternative take on what can be a rather dull carol. Mack Wilberg’s In dulci jubilo (which is

really a showpiece for the organist, and which I have always thought would sound better at least a tone higher) is given a rousing performance with some excellent work on the organ from Rory Moules. Philip Stopford’s music is represented by two pieces, Lully, lulla, lullay and A Christmas Blessing, and both pieces are sung beautifully. Perhaps rather inevitably, the organ voluntary is Messiaen’s Dieu parmi nous (played very well and exploiting the Keble College organ very effectively), which I suppose is the alternative to Bach’s In dulci jubilo (Note to organists – there are other voluntaries out there!) One negative point to mention – some of the readings are very quiet in comparison with the other tracks, even to the point of mumbling, which is unfortunate, but then, we have heard them all before! Christmas CDs are part of a very competitive market and there will be many alternatives to consider, but we do have here some fine singing from an up-and-coming choir which, I suspect, will go from strength to strength.

Nicholas Kerrison

IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER

Choir of King’s College, Cambridge

Dir: Daniel Hyde

Organ: Matthew Martin

Arr Mann, Willcocks & Cleobury

Once in royal David’s city; Goldschmidt

A tender shoot; Bach How shall I fitly meet thee?; Darke In the bleak midwinter; arr Willcocks Of the Father’s heart begotten; arr Jacques Angels from the realms of glory; Quilter An Old Carol; arr Pearsall/Hyde In dulci jubilo; Moore The angel Gabriel; arr Willcocks, Robinson & Hill

O come, all ye faithful; arr Vaughan Williams Sussex Carol; Trad While shepherds watched their flocks; Thou who wast rich beyond all splendour; As I sat on a sunny bank; Leuner arr Macpherson

The Shepherd’s Cradle Song; Holst arr Wilberg In the bleak midwinter; Trad. arr Chilcott Still, still, still; Martin Prelude to ‘Hark, the herald angels sing’; Mendelssohn Hark, the herald angels sing; Pott Improvisation on ‘Adeste, fideles’.

KINGS KGS 0060 TT 74:30

The ‘bleak midwinter’ in question here is that of 2020, in the depths of the first year of the pandemic, and if you are struggling to remember whether the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College Cambridge took place that year, this CD provides the answer – it did… sort of. It was realised well in advance that no congregation would be allowed, but the choir nevertheless rehearsed, ready to broadcast the service live on Christmas Eve from an otherwise empty chapel. At a dress rehearsal early in December, a fortuitous decision was made to make a recording, to see if any elements could be improved. Then in the run-up to Christmas Eve, a further spike in infections meant that it was deemed too risky to ask the choir to return to sing live, so what was broadcast (as live, complete with the sound of choir sits and stands – though these are not heard on this CD) was actually the recording of that rehearsal. Sixteen of the 20 of the tracks here comprise what went out on Christmas Eve and four tracks were recorded later.

Right from the first notes of ‘you-know-what’ – beautifully sung by treble Samuel Hodson – and particularly from the first entry of the choir, it is evident that something is different – the acoustic seems much more resonant. There are two reasons: virtually all the furniture had been removed from the chapel and, of course, there was no congregation,

muffled in winter coats, to deaden the sound. The result is an astonishing warm resonance which the choir must be used to hearing when rehearsing, but which sounds quite unlike the usual Christmas Eve broadcasts. That, and the absence of a congregation joining in the big carols, make for an undeniably moving experience.

The singing throughout, as one would expect, is peerless, with a certain Willcocks-like fastidiousness of phrasing. It is a joy, and perhaps rather a surprise, to hear so many old favourites from Carols for Choirs 1 (1961 – ‘the green book’) – can we remember when we didn’t know them? Simple arrangements, but here sung quite wonderfully. For instance, Pearsall’s evergreen (sorry!) In dulci jubilo could hardly be improved on, and the beautiful pealing ‘Glorias’ of Angels from the realms of glory bring a tear to the eye.

One or two more modern items refresh the time-honoured formula successfully – the commissioned carol that year was Philip Moore’s joyful and surprisingly dramatic setting of The Angel Gabriel, and the final voluntary was Francis Pott’s exuberant Improvisation on ‘Adeste, fideles’, written for the 2005 service and brilliantly played here by Matthew Martin, the highly effective accompanist throughout.

Two versions of the title track are included, Harold Darke’s perfect setting featuring a nice solo by Owen Elsley. But I cannot warm to Mack Wilberg’s soupy arrangement of the lovely Holst version, which seems to me maudlin (with apologies to one of Mr Hyde’s previous posts) in the extreme. Though even here, and in Bob Chilcott’s arguably slightly sentimental arrangement of Still, still, still, which was touchingly interpolated before the final Hark, the herald angels sing, the performance is beyond praise.

However, these are very minor criticisms of a quite superlative CD, which documents a unique, and probably never to be repeated, carol service. For that reason alone, this is an essential purchase – very strongly recommended.

Mark Bellis

ADVENT LIVE II

Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge

Dir: Andrew Nethsingha

Organ: James Anderson-Besant/Glen

Dempsey/Timothy Ravalde

Dove I am the Day; Pärt Bŏgŏroditsye Dyevo; Howells A Spotless Rose; McDowall A Prayer to St John the Baptist; G Jackson Vox clara ecce intonat; McCabe The last and greatest herald; Trad. ‘O’ Antiphons; Goldschmidt A tender shoot; Distler Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen; Milner Out of your sleep; Bingham Introduction to ‘Hark, the glad sound’; Maconchy There is no rose; Telemann Ach, so laß von mir dich finden; Manz E’en so, Lord Jesus, quickly come; Trad. arr Jacques The Linden Tree Carol; Britten arr Julius Harrison Deo gracias; Wolf Einklang; Hymn: Lo! He comes with clouds descending (descant Robinson); Bach Chorale Prelude ‘Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland’.

SIGNUM SIGCD661 TT 62:59

First, a word about the CD booklet. It includes three exceptionally thoughtful and interesting pieces: a reflection on Advent itself, its history and its themes by the Revd Canon Mark Oakley, Dean of St John’s College; next, a detailed exploration of the music on the CD by Dr Martin Ennis; and finally, a more informal ‘Conductor’s Postscript’ in which Andrew Nethsingha outlines his reasons for some of the

selections, and introduces a more personal note on what the music means to him.

It is worth mentioning that (as the disc title suggests) these are all ‘live’ performances, taken from the Advent carol services at St John’s; most are from 2018 and 2019, with one solitary item from 2008.

The sequence (and it is a sequence – the pieces follow on quickly from each other) starts with the longest work on the disc, Jonathan Dove’s I am the day, sung with the musical insight and choral precision one would expect. Dissonances are rock solid, and the dancing sections move with both energy and clarity. Arvo Pärt’s Bŏgŏroditsye Dyevo is rich and resonant – shorter than Rachmaninov’s setting, but equally powerful in its effect. Cecilia McDowall’s A Prayer to St John the Baptist revels in its variety of textures, and in the fluid organ part, which is not so much an accompaniment as an integral voice in the whole.

The saxophone flourish introducing Gabriel Jackson’s Vox clara ecce intonat surprises on first hearing, but the new colour quickly finds its place, interlocking with the choir in a most effective and distinctive motet. The recording of another St John’s commission, The last and greatest herald, reinforces my long-held view that its 20th-century composer, John McCabe, is unjustly neglected; we do occasionally hear his work, but we should hear more of it. This anthem is one of the finest pieces on the disc, vivid, colourful, and always musically coherent.

The inclusion of the Advent antiphons in the St John’s Advent Service is well established, and four are included here, part of the successful attempt to create a liturgical feel to the disc. There are also two full-throated hymns (one with a splendid and original introduction by Judith Bingham, which features the solo saxophone again, as well as the choir), and a closing organ voluntary.

Anthony Milner’s Out of your sleep was new to me: an effervescent, joyous and thoroughly enjoyable piece. Elizabeth Maconchy’s setting of There is no rose has an attractive freshness; mind you, this choir makes everything sound fresh! One of the most delightful tracks is Telemann’s aria Ach so laß, where the trebles (alone) are joined by archlute. The boys’ voices soar into the acoustic, while nevertheless maintaining a sense of intimacy.

Much of this review has focused on the less familiar music, but there are also old favourites by Howells, Goldschmidt, Manz and Britten (with harp), all beautifully sung. This is a fabulous CD, well worthy of a place in anyone’s collection.

Christopher Barton

EASTER MUSIC

RESURREXI!

Choir of Keble College, Oxford Instruments of Time and Truth

Dir: Paul Brough

Mozart Regina coeli; Spaurmesse; Church Sonata; Michael Haydn Victimae paschali laudes; Joseph Haydn Te Deum; Chants: Gaude et Laetare; Resurrexi; vidi aquam; Haec dies; Pascha nostrum; Victimae paschali laudes; Terra tremuit; Pater noster; Pascha nostrum; Ite, missa est.

CRD 3539 TT 56:05

This is a delight from beginning to end. The concept is a reconstruction of a Mass for Easter Day in late 18th-century Salzburg or Vienna, with music by Mozart, Joseph Haydn and Michael Haydn. We begin with Mozart’s joyful Regina coeli (1779), complete with trumpets and timpani – a truly glorious sound – and the Mass setting is Mozart’s so-called Spaurmesse (in C, K258), possibly written for the consecration of Count Spaur as Dean of Salzburg in 1777. As is well known, Mozart’s employer, the formidable Archbishop Colloredo, decreed that the entire Mass should last no longer than 45 minutes, even for solemnities at which he himself was presiding, and Mozart duly obliges here, with a Mass of little more than 15 minutes – so brief, in fact, that its alternative nickname is ‘the Piccolomini Mass’. But as the booklet notes put it, ‘Brevity does not equal levity’; the music is absolutely delightful, with scurrying ‘Salzburg’ violin lines (no violas, of course) and lovely alternations between the choir and the solo vocal quartet. Why are these wonderful works so rarely included in cathedral music lists? Yes, the Coronation Mass is marvellous, but there are least another 17 Mozart Masses where the music would fit liturgically and which we hardly ever hear. Not perhaps the Weisenhausmesse (Orphanage Mass), composed when Mozart was 11 (!) – not because of any lack of quality, it is a very fine work, well worth performing – only because its Gloria is perhaps rather too long to work liturgically nowadays, but almost all the other Masses are quite performable liturgically, and they are gems we hardly ever hear.

Interspersed between the Mass movements we have the appropriate plainsong chants – sensitively done – and even an unctuous Church (Epistle) Sonata (K274 in G) for two violins and continuo – utterly delightful, though called ‘miserable fiddling’ by Archbishop Colloredo! After Mozart was (literally) kicked out in 1781 – by the chief steward, Count Arco, to Mozart’s disgust, and not by the Archbishop himself – he was replaced by Michael Haydn, whom the Archbishop commissioned to compose a series of choral graduals to replace the Church Sonata, and we have a lovely example here – Victimae paschali laudes.

The whole concludes with (Joseph) Haydn’s early Te Deum, possibly written for Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy’s arrival at Eisenstadt in 1762 – a suitably rousing conclusion to a really excellent CD.

Throughout, the choir has an infectious, youthful enthusiasm, entirely appropriate for this high-spirited music. And the period band, Instruments of Time and Truth, strike just the right note of joyful celebration. Incidentally, thanks to the inclusion of both Mozart’s Church Sonata and Michael Haydn’s gradual, the CD comes in at 11 minutes longer than Archbishop Colloredo would have sanctioned. I didn’t want it to end, however! A joy. Very strongly recommended.

Mark Bellis

TENEBRAE RESPONSORIES

The Gesualdo Six

Dir: Owain Park

Tallis Lamentations of Jeremiah I and II; Bingham Watch with me; Gesualdo

Tenebrae Responsories for Maundy Thursday; Ward Christus factus est.

HYPERION CD A68348 TT 70:30

Formed in 2014, this awarding-winning ensemble goes from strength to strength – if this disc is anything to go by. One of

the wonderful things about singing one to a part is the sheer intimacy which can be achieved in performance, with ideas bouncing off each other. Owain Park says in his introduction: ‘In a departure from our previous recordings, we set ourselves up in a circular formation. This enabled us to see each other’s faces and pick up on the slightest movement, playing off one another as the lines intertwined.’ He adds: ‘We hope that this creates a gripping picture’, and, goodness me, it does! The music written for the penitential seasons of Advent and Lent/Holy Week has always meant so much more to me than that written for the festive seasons, and singing the Tallis Lamentations in Peterborough Cathedral on Good Friday was always a highlight of the year. This is the music which opens the new disc. As the lines of Tallis’s music unfold we become more and more aware of the quality of the voices and the tremendous musicianship which brings the beauty of this music to us. The sense of line and understanding of where this music is going is magical. The section, in the first set, at Jerusalem convertare ad Dominum Deum tuum is astonishingly calming and meditative. Subtle changes in tempi move the music on as the lines develop, and the suspensions and false relations are beautifully pointed. Here is exemplary singing of Tallis’s music. As if to help us move to a very different soundworld in Gesualdo’s Tenebrae Responses, the ensemble sings Watch with me by Judith Bingham. Some might think that the inclusion of a piece far removed from Tallis is rather odd, but the compositional style and, of course, the text, seem quite appropriate, and very effective in their expression of loneliness. It certainly helps us to move from the security of Tallis’s consonant soundworld to the rather strange and often quite extreme and harmonically unstable techniques of Gesualdo. Just as the Gesualdo Six sang with great beauty and understanding of the music and texts in the Tallis Lamentations, so here, in this extraordinary music, they respond to the many changes of character and mood, one moment serene, the next dramatic, even frantic, and all this is done with what appears to be total ease. In reality it is no easy task, but these singers are completely up to the challenge, both technically and musically. Joanna Ward’s Christus factus est is the concluding piece to the programme. Like the Bingham piece, Ward’s brings us another experience, and, despite the rather strange and dissonant sounds, it almost comes as a relief from the experience of Gesualdo. In a concert programme I can imagine walking out of the concert hall feeling completely relaxed and fulfilled. This is a very fine disc indeed.

AN ENGLISH PASSION

According to St Matthew

Philip Wilby

Belfast Cathedral Choir

Dir: Matthew Owens

Organ: David Leigh/Jack Wilson

Wilby God’s Grandeur;

The Knaresborough Service;

An English Passion according to St Matthew.

RESONUS RES 10298 TT 67:44

Philip Wilby is regarded as one of the most prominent composers and arrangers within the world of brass band music. However, he was also a violinist in the National Youth Orchestra, later studying composition under Howells, and ultimately becoming Professor of Composition at

Nicholas Kerrison

Leeds University. The items on this disc certainly reveal his dedication to church music.

His succinct setting of St Matthew’s account of the crucifixion, composed for Matthew Owens and the choir of Wells Cathedral in 2018, is relatively unknown. All credit to Belfast Cathedral for recording it before the demise of the professional choir in the early autumn of 2022.

Within the narrative written by Richard Cooper, Canon Emeritus of Ripon Cathedral, are traditional hymns placed in a similar way to the chorale within the Baroque Passions, but in this case the hymns are taken from the English Hymnal The melodies and texts serve both as a thread and also as an explanation behind the title of the disc. Most are relatively well known, and thus allow a congregation or audience to participate, although within limits! Especially effective is the setting of ‘All glory laud and honour’ to the tune Kingsfold, where only the first verse of the original text is used, while the final hymn, ‘It is a thing most wonderful’, set to the very simple melody, Herongate, serves as a powerful and moving conclusion to the work.

Wilby’s Passion is through-composed, providing few moments for reflection on the Passion story either in the choruses or arias. The narration is shared between the soloists and choir except for the tenor, who sings the role of Jesus. From a musical viewpoint, one of the most dramatic moments is the episode where Christ is before Pilate. It is fast-paced and most intense – especially where the crowd calls for the release of Barabbas. Part II of the Crucifixion is austere, yet most beautiful.

The death of Christ is depicted with great emotion and reflected in the music by a beautiful rendition of ‘When I survey the wondrous cross’, set most effectively to the melody of O waly, waly

The Passion is a fine work lasting only an hour but at a pace which keeps the listener fully involved. Occasionally there is a disappointing moment regarding diction, but this is understandable given the limited numbers allowed to sing during the strict Covid regulations faced by us all in 2021. A most fine work worthy of many performances.

David Thorne

EASTERTIDE EVENSONG

Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge

Dir: Andrew Nethsingha

Organ: James Anderson-Besant/ Glen Dempsey

Julian Anderson My beloved spake; Leighton Preces and Responses; Psalms 12, 13, 14 (Goss, Hylton Stewart, Stanford); Howells Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis Gloucester Service; Taverner Dum transisset Sabbatum; Widor Final from Symphonie No. VI.

SIGNUM SIG CD 707 TT 57:07

As I write, Andrew Nethsingha has just been appointed as the new Organist and Master of the Choristers at Westminster Abbey. If this new CD from St John’s Cambridge is anything to go by, the choral music at the Abbey will be in very safe hands. Andrew’s tenure at the Cambridge college, as with his time at Truro and Gloucester, has been a period of consistently high standards of singing along with considerable innovation through commissioned new music and the championing of composers such as Jonathan Harvey

and Michael Finnissy. This disc of an Eastertide Evensong is a live recording from May 2018 and, as Nethsingha says in his detailed notes, ‘Nothing beats the adrenaline of such an occasion’. He continues: ‘And the inexorable build-up of the Nunc Dimittis [from Howells’ Gloucester Service] that day particularly sticks in my memory’ – and so it should as it is absolutely astonishing, singers and organ blended and balanced to perfection. For that moment alone this disc has to be heard! Andrew reminds us that, in the World Cup of Evensong Canticles on Twitter during the first Covid lockdown, it was the Gloucester Service by Howells, not the Collegium Regale or St Paul’s, which won the tournament, and with the beauty of the singing here it is obvious why. It is often all too easy to comment on the quality of the top line of any choir (notably here in the opening of the Magnificat), but it is ‘the sum of all the parts’ that makes this performance of Howells’ music all the more special. Evensong is of course made up of more than the canticles, and it would be easy to ignore the varied characterisation given to Kenneth Leighton’s Preces and Responses. The attention to the words of these and the three psalms is exemplary. The introit is Julian Anderson’s My beloved spake, which was included in the 2012 Choirbook for The Queen celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of our Queen’s accession, and this is an effective piece sung with sensitivity and attention to the words. John Taverner’s great (and often recorded) motet, Dum transisset Sabbatum, is the ‘anthem’. The singing here is beautifully refined and the high treble parts sound effortless, such is the skill of the St John’s boys. Andrew Nethsingha says that ‘The enduring appeal of Evensong is aided by the fact that we can interpolate musical items which Cranmer would not have expected – a French organ voluntary, for example, or a motet sung in Latin.’ True, but even though the performance of the Widor is wonderful, why not, after an all-British programme, have some Parry, Stanford, Howells or Leighton to finish a firstrate, live Evensong?

Nicholas Kerrison

PÂQUES À NOTRE-DAME

Maîtrise Nôtre-Dame de Paris

Dir: Henri Chalet

Organ: Yves Castagnet Monteverdi Adoramus te; Castagnet Guéris nos cœurs; Messe brève; J’ai vu l’eau vive; Lotti Crucifixus a 8; Jean-Charles Gandrille Stabat Mater; Duruflé Ubi caritas; Tantum ergo; arr Jehan Revert O filii et filiae; Victimae paschali laudes; Hassler Missa VIII Octo vocum; Lise Borel Regina caeli; Franck Dextera Domini. WARNER CLASSICS TT 63:45

This disc provides a fine survey of music to be heard in NotreDame de Paris in Holy Week and at Easter. The recording was made in the Basilique Sainte-Clothilde de Paris in 2021, as restoration of Notre-Dame continues after the 2019 fire. The story of the Maîtrise’s response to the fire is briefly but movingly told in the accompanying booklet. The opening track, Monteverdi’s Adoramus te, Christe, is dark and intense, and the dissonances of Lotti’s Crucifixus (a 8) are relished in a performance which rises to a substantial climax before subsiding to repose. The Stabat Mater by Jean-Charles Gandrille is a fine work for high voices and organ which demonstrates admirable concision in getting through the 20 stanzas of the text in five and a half minutes; there is a sense

of movement, but not of hurry, and the repeated rhythms create a powerful effect. This was one of the last pieces sung in the cathedral the day before the fire. The two familiar Duruflé motets, Ubi caritas and Tantum ergo, are tenderly sung. The sound is perhaps a little less blended than it might be by most UK choirs, but it is undeniably authentic. An enjoyable contemporary work is the setting of Regina caeli by Lise Borel, written for these performers in 2020; textures are interesting, the melodic lines and harmonies are graceful, and its final chord is radiant.

The first Mass setting on the disc is the Messe brève by Yves Castagnet, the organiste titulaire of the choir organ at NotreDame. Richly coloured, it breathes the spirit of its tradition as much as a Howells evening service breathes the spirit of the English cathedral tradition. It is sung with utter conviction, and the organ part is authoritatively played by the composer himself. There are two other items by M. Castagnet in the programme, of which J’ai vu l’eau vive is especially enjoyable. Later on the disc there are three movements from a Hassler Mass which, although in eight parts, are concentrated in expression and which receive performances which are by turn rich and sonorous, and light and airy. This is a large choir compared to most UK cathedral choirs, but it can achieve some commendably delicate singing.

The longest work on the disc is the final piece, Franck’s setting of Dextera Domini. Here, in complete contrast to the concision of the Stabat Mater earlier in the programme, we find four lines of text plus two ‘Alleluias’ taking over ten minutes – but who is going to complain at ten minutes of such beautiful, lyrical music unwinding with such leisurely grace? Certainly not I.

This is a lovely disc, a little out of the ordinary, and with an important ‘back story’. The choral sound is quite different from that of most UK choirs, but it is full of vitality, and choir, organ, repertoire and circumstances combine to produce a unique achievement.

Christopher Barton

NOW THE GREEN BLADE RISETH

Choral Music for Easter

Choir of King’s College, Cambridge

Dir: Daniel Hyde

Malcolm Ingrediente Domino; Trad. Ride on, ride on in majesty; There is a green hill far away; When I survey the wondrous cross; King of glory, king of peace; Jesus Christ is risen today; Duruflé Ubi caritas; Rossini O salutaris hostia; Wesley Wash me throughly; Blessed be the God and Father; Byrd Civitas sancti tui; Lotti Crucifixus a 6; Ireland Greater love; Stainer God so loved the world; Chilcott Now the green blade riseth; Elgar Light of the world; arr Baker Christus vincit; Tournemire Choral improvisation sur le ‘Victimae Paschali’.

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The title of the disc is misleading, in that the bulk of the music presented is for Holy Week rather than the season of Easter. The notes by Nicholas Marston are headed Darkness into Light – the journey from Palm Sunday to Easter, and this might have been a better title to the disc. A brief but fantastically exuberant fanfare by Matthew Martin introduces George Malcolm’s Ingrediente Domino, the opening of which is also fanfare-like and, although it pains me to say it, the choir’s performance is a little lacklustre in comparison to the organ

preceding it. Thereafter, what we have is a wonderful selection of music, mostly very well-known and oft recorded. As would be expected, the singing is immaculate and refined, dealing perfectly with the acoustic of the chapel. The recording dates were in June and July of 2021 and a photograph of the choir shows the back row choral scholars to be standing apart from each other. Amongst the familiar pieces, John Stainer’s God so loved the world is beautifully sung and the performance is as far from the hackneyed Victorian-choral-society style as could be possible. A setting of King of glory, King of peace by the English organist Frederick Candlyn, who settled in New York and was organist at Saint Thomas Church (Daniel Hyde’s previous post), is a welcome track on the disc, and there are two ‘new’ pieces: Bob Chilcott’s Now the green blade riseth is attractive (not based on the tune Noel nouvelet) and should be set to become a firm favourite in the Easter repertoire; Martin Baker’s Christus vincit has all the hallmarks of Westminster Cathedral with its rhythmic take on the plainsong. The organ has the last say with the music of Tournemire. In reviewing the Eastertide Evensong from ‘the choir down the road’ in Cambridge, I commented on music by Widor being the closing voluntary in an otherwise all-British programme and here, at King’s, we have Tournemire. Why does it always have to be French music?! Nevertheless, the performance, by Matthew Martin, is superb, and the King’s organ is displayed in all its majesty to conclude this fine journey from Darkness into Light.

Nicholas Kerrison

George Frideric Handel

SATURDAY 10 DECEMBER, 19.00

The City of London

Sinfonia joins the Choir of Salisbury Cathedral for a special performance of Handel’s masterpiecethe perfect way to begin the Christmas season!

BOOK REVIEW

AN ORGANIST REMEMBERS: Dr Roy Massey RSCM Publishing

a firmer footing. Massey felt the poor relation in terms of experience, though his accomplishments in other areas speak volumes: his Presidency of the RCO (where he had as a young man achieved his FRCO and other challenges with ease and prizes, and later became an examiner), his training of the Hereford choir to a very high level, and his serving as organ advisor to the Diocese of Hereford for 48 years.

Along the way there are detailed descriptions of his trips abroad, the people he met, the friends he made and the organs he played. Throughout there is a charm and ease of manner which conquers any feeling of repetition – yes, there are plenty of deans, five admirable assistants, many descriptions of organs and organ recitals – but there is heart here, a genuine interest in people, a particular thankfulness and gratitude towards those who helped him throughout his career, in particular David Willocks, who unstintingly (and without charge) imparted knowledge, advice and counsel.

Paul Hale (Editor of Organists’ Review for over ten years and, of course, Rector Chori at Southwell in a past life) has had a hand in the editing and structuring of the text, and his admirable input is clear. This book is a fine, interesting and engaging read, and one well worth your time.

The splendid photograph of the smiling author in his doctoral robes on the back cover of this autobiography bears witness to the infectious optimism and warmth with which it is written.

Starting as a seven-year-old chorister at St Martin’s, Birmingham, the author’s life has been a voyage of humble discovery. A boy who did not relish school sports, Massey instead embraced organ-playing with enthusiasm, and the language of the BCP became engrained in his soul. ‘The music of the Church binds young and old together,’ he says, and tells us of his myriad friends, amassed without effort on his trajectory through churches in Birmingham, worldwide RSCM courses, Addington Palace, where he reigned for a few years, and the culmination of all this labour as Organist and Master of the Choristers at Hereford Cathedral for 27 years. It should have been 26, but it was not felt fair for the new incumbent to have to deal not only with the Millennium celebrations but also with taking charge at the Three Choirs Festival (TCF) for the first time.

Hereford naturally plays an enormous role in this happy volume, and for the first 20 years the triumvirate of John Sanders, Donald Hunt (Worcester) and Massey brought consistency and a raising of standards to TCF, setting it on

Sooty Asquith

CATHEDRAL MUSIC

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