Cathedral Music: A Jewel to Treasure

OF CATHEDRAL MUSIC

‘A JEWEL TO TREASURE’

A new report shows the way forward for music in our churches and cathedrals

RACHEL MAHON

Coventry Cathedral’s Director of Music discusses her career

CROWNING GLORY

We delve into the history and pageantry of coronation music

GREEN SHOOTS

Bradford Cathedral’s city-wide eco initiatives bear fruit

Image:JasonBryant

CATHEDRAL MUSIC TRUST

Royal Patron

HRH The Duchess of Gloucester

President

Harry Christophers CBE

Ambassadors

Alexander Armstrong, Anna Lapwood

Honorary Patrons

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd and Rt Hon. Dr Justin Welby

Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, His Eminence Vincent Nichols

Board of Trustees

Jonathan Macdonald (Chair), Jason Groves, Sue Hind-Woodward, Stuart Laing, James Lancelot, Giverny McAndry, Heather Morgan, James Mustard, Isobel Pinder, Gavin Ralston

Director of Impact and Delivery

Cathryn Dew

Director of Development

Natasha Morris

Director of Finance

Jessica Lock

Digital and Communications Manager

Anna Kent

Development Officer

Katy Ashman

Finance Administrator (freelance)

Amanda Welsh

Cathedral Music Trust is extremely grateful to our team of volunteers across the UK who give many hours of their time each year to support the work we do.

Cathedral Music Trust

27 Old Gloucester Street London WC1N 3AX

info@cathedralmusictrust.org.uk

020 3151 6096 (office hours) www.cathedralmusictrust.org.uk

Registered Charity Number 1187769

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CATHEDRAL MUSIC MAGAZINE

Editor

Adrian Horsewood editor@cathedralmusictrust.org.uk

Editor-in-chief

Maggie Hamilton

Designer

Jo Craig

Production Manager

Kyri Apostolou

Cathedral Music is published for Cathedral Music Trust by Mark Allen Group twice a year, in May and November.

May 2023

FROM THE EDITOR

Welcome to this issue of Cathedral Music, particularly if this is the first time you’ve dived between its covers. Those of you who aren’t newcomers will notice that there have been changes to the design and the content of the magazine; it would be of great help to us to learn your thoughts on the new look.

I’m delighted to be assuming the editorial mantle, and would like to pay particular tribute to my predecessor Sooty Asquith, during whose twelve years as editor Cathedral Music flourished. She has been a great source of encouragement and advice, and if I manage a tenure even half as long as hers I shall be extremely pleased!

There has also been change in the upper echelons of Cathedral Music Trust, as Peter Allwood has stepped down as Chair after six years; we include an appreciation of his many achievements in post, alongside an introduction from his successor, Jonathan Macdonald, who has moved from heading the Trust’s development committee.

As Sooty mentioned in her last editor’s letter, the report commissioned by Cathedral Music Trust from the More Partnership has provided all those involved with cathedral music with much food for thought. The report was formally unveiled at Southwark Cathedral last November – preceded by a rousing Choral Evensong – when a lively panel discussion debated its findings and how the Trust could best follow its recommendations. There is an account of the event on page 8, which is supplemented by a number of responses to the report from different parts of the cathedral world.

A key way in which Cathedral Music Trust operates is in the financial support it gives to choirs across the country; from this issue we will be profiling a number of recipients of grants from the Trust and how they have benefited. Such work is made possible only by your continued support of Cathedral Music Trust, for which I and my colleagues thank you heartily.

Adrian Horsewood, Editor

The views expressed in articles are those of the contributor and do not necessarily represent any official policy of Cathedral Music Trust. Advertisements are printed in good faith, and their inclusion does not imply endorsement by the Trust; all communications regarding advertising should be addressed to info@cathedralmusictrust.org.uk.

Every effort has been made to determine copyright on illustrations used; we apologise for any mistakes we have made. The Editor will be glad to correct any omissions.

Front cover: Salisbury Cathedral Choir (Photo: Finnbarr Webster) Back cover: Rachel Mahon conducts Coventry Cathedral Choir (Photo: Jamie Gray) Andrew Wilkinson

36 Music at British coronations

Dr M atthias R ange explores t he role t hat music h as played in the rituals and ceremonies surrounding the crowning of British monarchs

A s Christopher Gray departs Truro for Cambridge, Clare Stevens surveys the rich musical scene in this corner of Cornwall

Heritage Collections, UK Parliament

Courtesy St Mary-le-Tower, Ipswich

REGULARS

3 From the Editor

Adrian Horsewood welcomes you to the new-look magazine

14 News & Previews

C atch up with the latest developments in the world of cathedral and church music

25 People & Places

We offer congratulations to musicians and other figures who are on the move

27 Cathedral Music Trust

Events

C athedral Music T rust organises and hosts events for members at locations all over the country

28 Grant Recipients

L earn how cathedral and church choirs have benefited from the financial support of Cathedral Music Trust

32 A New Song

In this new series we chat each issue to the composer of a new choral or organ work

55 Reviews

O ur writers sample some of the newest choral and organ recordings, as well as recent books and sheet music

66

Q&A: Alexander Armstrong

One of Cathedral Music Trust’s Ambassadors recalls his earliest musical experiences and discusses his role at the Trust

48 It’s green up north

Bradford was the first cathedral to install solar panels – but its eco credentials don’t stop there

51 David Hill in conversation with … Harry Christophers, founder-director of The Sixteen and President of Cathedral Music Trust

Katie Glover

Marco Borggreve

A BRIGHT VISION

A thank you to Peter Allwood, recently retired Chair of Cathedral Music Trust

By ISOBEL PINDER

Peter Allwood, Chairman of the Friends of Cathedral Music and – subsequently – Chair of Cathedral Music Trust, stepped down from the Board of Trustees in February 2023, having decided not to seek reappointment. His six years of office saw a period of significant change for the charity, partly driven by Peter’s own clear plan for the way forward and partly brought about by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the world of cathedral music.

So what was Peter’s vision for the charity? He joined after a distinguished career in music education, latterly as Headmaster of Lichfield Cathedral School. Together with his experience as a freelance musician and his particular interest in choral composition and direction, Peter brought valuable skills and expertise to the charity. He recognised that there was scope for the organisation to play an even more proactive and dynamic role, working closely with choral foundations and other partners to shape the future for cathedral music.

Under his leadership, the charity moved to Charitable Incorporated Organisation status, with a new name and a new image that represented its refreshed and broader vision and aims. Managing a period of change is challenging, but Peter was always ready to listen to different points of view while retaining a clear focus on the longerterm goal.

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic reinforced the need for change. With fellow Trustee Christopher Gower, Peter recognised that decisive action was required to ensure the survival of cathedral music and its subsequent recovery. Peter drove forward the creation of the Cathedral Choirs’ Emergency

Fund, in partnership with Ouseley Church Music Trust and the Choir Schools’ Association, raising £1 million alongside a further £1 million contributed by the Church Commissioners to help choral foundations through a dark period when cathedrals were silenced. Peter recalled attending the joyous occasion of the first full Evensong at Chichester Cathedral after the pandemic, with the sound of Elgar’s coronation introit resonating through the building; he had done much to make this possible.

Peter spearheaded the employment of a dedicated staff team to work alongside an energised group of trustees and volunteers, transforming the charity into what we recognise today. In my role as Honorary Secretary, I saw at first hand how hard Peter worked for the charity. A steady stream of emails, with arguments carefully thought through and lucidly expressed, would regularly emerge very late at night. Peter was always ready to pick up the phone, handling sensitive situations with discretion and wisdom. He was a keen participant at events and gatherings, travelling to cathedrals across the UK and the Republic of Ireland to celebrate the musical excellence of their choirs and to meet the charity’s supporters and beneficiaries.

Cathedral Music Trust is hugely grateful to Peter for his dedication, integrity and energy. He leaves a forward-looking and dynamic organisation with much already to be proud of and ambitious to achieve more, but always mindful of keeping the best interests of cathedral music at the core of what the charity does. Thank you, Peter, and we hope you now finally have the time to focus on your work as a conductor and composer!

A BRIGHT FUTURE

By JONATHAN MACDONALD

There was a time when, rather naively, I thought I might make a career as a cathedral organist. I had sung in choirs under some inspiring musicians, and had dutifully ploughed my way through endless tricky organ exams. I assumed I had all the qualifications to succeed. On reflection, I actually had no idea how much skill, determination and hard work was required in such a challenging role. With hindsight, I think it was good that I chose a different path!

I was thrilled to join Cathedral Music Trust in 2020 after a long ‘first career’ in finance. In my role as Chair of the newly formed Development Committee two things quickly became clear to me. The first, prompted by the many and varied stories of successful ex-choristers, was how privileged I was to have been a chorister myself. I know that Friends, Patrons and supporters of the Trust are well versed in the benefits of such a grounding, so I will not elaborate further. The second thought that came to mind was that the skills I acquired through such a multi-faceted apprenticeship, and my subsequent studies – which included taking a degree in music while acting as organ scholar at my Oxford college – set me in good stead as I embarked on a rather different career path.

It strikes me that there is a wonderful virtuous circle to this story. When I decided I wouldn’t make it in the music world, ironically, it was the very skills I had acquired during my

extended music education that gave me the confidence to apply for an equally challenging role in a different field. Indeed, my interview pitch to an American bank, where I made the case that I had already ‘run a music business, with a staff (i.e. choir!) of 30 people’, won me my first job in New York. The circle has now been completed as I am able to utilise highly transferable business skills acquired in a commercial arena to my role at the Trust. I’ve learned that many approaches to problem-solving used in business can be equally effective in a cultural or educational setting.

As our choral foundations slowly emerge from a profoundly difficult journey through the pandemic, while many individuals continue to struggle with household budgets, the work of the Trust has never been more important. As we conclude our latest round of grant giving, where we received a record number of applications, it is very clear that the cathedral music world continues to face serious financial challenges. On the positive side, following our groundbreaking work last year with the More Partnership, which culminated in the publication of our joint report ‘A Future for Cathedral Music’, the Trust has huge positive momentum. We continue to conduct research supporting the benefits derived from choristerships, recently completing wide-reaching surveys with both our Friends and the choral foundations we support. This research

is already proving valuable in our fundraising efforts. In parallel we are in the process of developing plans for a number of educational initiatives aimed at opening up pathways to choristerships for young people from all backgrounds, supporting singers and organists across the country.

Cathedral Music Trust is such a wonderful organisation to be involved in. I work with a committed and talented team of staff and volunteers all over the UK who are passionate and incredibly knowledgeable about cathedral music. I am delighted that we have been able to involve many of our Future Leaders in the work of our organisation with a majority of the group now joining the committees and teams that are shaping our future strategy. I also feel tremendously privileged to be part of a wider network of charitable organisations that support our supremely gifted musicians and singers in their work sustaining the highest levels of excellence in cathedral music. As an added bonus, I get to explore the treasure trove of ancient and glorious edifices that have housed our nation’s choirs for centuries. I have never found any role so fulfilling!

We are hugely grateful to everyone who supports us in our work, whether as Friends and Patrons, or simply those who regularly attend choral services. My aim is to meet as many of you as possible over the coming years as we join together in supporting such an important cause.

The new Chair of Cathedral Music Trust introduces himself

A FUTURE FOR CATHEDRAL MUSIC

In

By ADRIAN HORSEWOOD

In early 2022 Cathedral Music Trust commissioned the More Partnership, a leading fundraising and philanthropy consultancy, to produce a report on the future of music in the UK’s cathedrals and churches, with the aim of helping the Trust to allocate its resources and support more effectively.

The More Partnership carried out a wide-ranging and thorough review of current practice and literature, as well as interviewing more than 50 senior leaders in cathedrals, the church, government, education and the arts – in the end producing a 69-page review of literature and practice, and a summary report of key findings and recommendations, broadly consisting of three sections.

The first highlights the most compelling reasons given for why cathedral music matters today:

– the possibilities it affords for spiritual transcendence (‘Cathedral music is a jewel to be treasured. It is widely appreciated for its ability to stir a range of aspects of our humanity – emotional, sensual, spiritual, aural and visual’);

– its importance in national life, with particular emphasis placed on the part played by music in the numerous nationwide services held after the death of Queen Elizabeth II;

– its role in the education and personal development of young people, especially ‘beyond the direct musical, artistic and religious experiences involved’;

– its centrality to Christian worship, as evidenced by the growth in popularity of sung services, despite declining church attendance.

The second section acknowledges that, despite the above, cathedral music departments face the challenge of balancing tradition with innovation in a rapidly changing world and that external and internal pressures – changes in culture, lifestyles, governance and financial climates – make it harder to do what they have always done. What is at the core and needs to be sustained and what should move with the times? The report identifies three elements central to the future of cathedral music: excellence, participation and affordability.

a rapidly changing world, it is vital that Cathedral Music Trust is able to give help and support where and when it is most needed; a new report explores the key issues

The panel discussion at Southwark Cathedral

Nick Rutter

To finish, the report outlines three areas in which (initially, at least) the most impact could be brought about by action on the part of Cathedral Music Trust: the construction of an even stronger case for the support of cathedral music by the communities in which it takes place; the support of increased socio-economic diversity and inclusion in the participation, appreciation and leadership of cathedral music; and the training of well-equipped leaders for cathedral music.

The More report was formally unveiled at Southwark Cathedral on 15 November; after a festal Evensong sung by the Cathedral Choir, a panel discussion was held, in which the participants were Peter Allwood (in one of his final appearances as Chair of Cathedral Music Trust), Charles Harrison (Director of Music, Chichester Cathedral), Victoria Johnson (Precentor, York Minster), Joseph McHardy (Director of Music, HM Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace), Nik Miller (Partner at More Partnership, and one of the report’s lead authors) and Alex Patterson (Director of Music, Salford Cathedral); Anna Lapwood (Director of Music, Pembroke College, Cambridge and an Ambassador for the Trust) chaired proceedings.

The panellists discussed their experiences of the issues raised, bringing valuable insight into the health of music in settings across the country, before the evening was rounded off with a rallying cry given by Alexander Armstrong, also a Cathedral Music Trust ambassador.

One point raised was that, for all the thoroughness of the More Partnership’s review, it is clear that there are still many aspects of contemporary cathedral musicmaking into which little research has been carried out. Cathedral Music has asked five figures from different walks of cathedral life for their thoughts on the More report, and their particular concerns reflect to an extent this scarcity of supporting evidence. Consequently, Cathedral Music Trust is determined to use its resources to understand the current landscape better and thereby to plug the gaps in knowledge, and is already engaged in, among other projects, an ongoing Chorister Survey.

The More review of literature and summary report can be read on Cathedral Music Trust’s website, www.cathedralmusictrust.org.uk; alternatively, please contact the Editor if you are a Friend or Patron of the Trust and would like a printed copy posted to you.

JOSEPH MCHARDY

Director of Music, His Majesty’s Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace

I was grateful to be invited to take part in the discussion which launched Cathedral Music Trust’s report back in November 2022. The Trust’s work, especially during the pandemic, has been invaluable to the cathedral music sector. The report lays bare some of the conversations which our sector has started to have, and will need to have. Even the report itself seems, unwittingly, to reproduce some of the assumptions that it is inviting us to challenge: diversity and inclusion are opposed ‘on the one hand’ with a notion of excellence ‘on the other’; gospel music and popular music are situated as somewhere between ‘the base of the … pyramid’ and its ‘apex’, which is cathedral music. We might reflect on how being free of ‘elitism, and by implication, exclusion’ could require some hard conversations about the assumptions we consider ‘common sense’. Those hard conversations might well mean taking more care with data collection and with data reporting, and they will mean hearing voices from cathedral music’s peripheries and beyond. They are there: will we listen?

‘

With the current decline of music education in the UK, accessibility to choristerships is more important than ever’

Southwark Cathedral Choir and Director of Music Ian Keatley

Nick Rutter

Nick Rutter

IMOGEN MORGAN

Assistant Master of the Music, St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh; Co-Chair of Catheral Music Trust’s Future Leaders

The More Partnership report highlights the importance of cathedral music as a core part of Christian worship and an indispensable form of professional and personal development. With the current decline of music education in the UK, accessibility to choristerships is more important than ever. The recommendation of the report to Cathedral Music Trust to help strengthen pathways for choristers and adult musicians from a range of socio-economic backgrounds is welcome and indeed essential for the future of cathedral music. The wide range of musical and transferable skills gained by those involved are undisputed, and the more people who have access to cathedral music, the more easily and widely our tradition can be perpetuated.

As a former chorister, I am heartened by the rapidly increasing parity for girl and boy choristers in many cathedrals. The More Report helpfully expresses this, and highlights that

cathedrals have been slower to embrace female adults than to enrol girl choristers. Further to this, it is important to explore the lack of diversity in cathedral director of music and suborganist positions, where women and ethnically diverse musicians hold extremely few posts. The report also stresses that further progress is needed in expanding the repertoire of choirs to regularly include music by female and ethnically diverse composers. The model currently adopted by Pembroke College, Cambridge, of including at least one piece by a female composer in each service, may provide a useful framework moving forwards.

The More Report rightly focuses on the sustainability and future of choristerships. Alongside these recommendations, I believe that Cathedral Music Trust needs to explore further methods of improving pathways for cathedral adult musicians. While improved chorister pathways will eventually lead to a possibility of greater numbers of adults in cathedral music, it is important to investigate what can be done on a shorter-term scale.

DAVID HILL

Professor Adjunct of Choral

Conducting and Principal Conductor of Yale Schola Cantorum, Yale Institute of Sacred Music; Musical Director, Bach Choir; former Director of Music at Westminster Cathedral, Winchester Cathedral and St John’s College, Cambridge

The report on cathedral music facing a sustainability crisis has prompted a wide-ranging set of reactions. I am viewing all this as a passionate advocate of the tradition and in support of my musician colleagues who are facing difficult times along with the many cathedrals who are presented with an ever-increasing demand on budgets.

I was struck by the phrase encapsulating the importance of music in our cathedrals, chapels and churches as ‘a jewel to treasure’; also the comments referring to church music ‘transcending religious beliefs or practices’ – all very compelling. I thought I would contextualise my comments in some past history.

My experiences of the cathedrals at Westminster and Winchester were very different. However, the one overriding feature they shared were ‘financial challenges’.

Westminster, under Basil Hume, saved its choir school in the late 1970s, and in 1984 raised a million pounds for the organs and choral scholarships – a lot of money then. Winchester faced several financial problems during my nearly 15 years there: it was Dean Beeson who ensured the music foundation’s funding, even if cuts elsewhere were required.

Hume and Beeson were, frankly,

Nick Rutter

remarkable leaders as they were not prepared to sacrifice the musical excellence for which both cathedrals were renowned. They may have been seen to be autocratic in ensuring this, but they clung to their beliefs which they made very clear to those who held opposing views. Neither Hume nor Beeson was ‘musical’ – indeed, Cardinal Hume’s singing was always welcome for its adorning of the liturgy rather than its vocal quality; Dean Beeson had an excellent voice whilst admitting music was something he admired more and more during the hundreds of Evensongs he had to sit through! He admired the craft of the composers and performers, and his respect for the musicians was exemplary.

Most importantly, Hume and Beeson believed in their musicians as valued colleagues, able to add a unique dimension to the liturgy.

Cardinal Hume’s words ‘nothing is too good for God’ was a phrase he would use on a regular basis. It is a reminder of what all are attempting to continue today but which, as the report points out, is under threat.

Mentioning this past is a reminder of how others have faced difficult times and adds to the importance of leadership in support of the arts. Church music is at the forefront of educating singers and congregations in the heritage and beauty of sacred music. Hearing the quality of the music at the late Queen’s funeral and as it will be for King Charles’s coronation will make us proud of our choral tradition, and rightly so; but as we all know it is carried out every day, not merely for glorious, national occasions. Such daily service is at its core, as is perfectly illustrated by the girl choristers from Truro joining all the other choral forces for the coronation: their training, commitment and pursuit of excellence are reasons why they will be at Westminster Abbey.

The recent climbdown by the BBC over the BBC Singers is an example of a lack of proper leadership, accountability and what can then ensue. Knowing the cost of

something but not its value is an increasing threat within the arts and it is my belief that cathedral music foundations must be protected and affirmed financially in their pursuit of excellence through inclusivity and diversity. For church music to flourish, it is essential that partnerships are created to find new and innovative ways in which money can be raised. Deans and Chapters are ultimately responsible for the maintenance of music, not accountants and administrators. The fostering of stronger relationships between all involved is an imperative for all to face and the Trust is an ideal partner in assisting this.

If I have a serious concern, it is the common notion that a cathedral is run as a business and by many who do not have the same perspective or interest in the Opus Dei as distinct from those who are involved in it: the clergy, musicians, vergers and all who ensure the daily worship is absolutely the central most important act and reason the cathedral exists. The music – as the report sets out –changes the lives of all who experience it, from the children who are educated in singing through to the loyal adult singers who undertake their roles with usually modest remuneration.

The office of Evensong is perhaps the most significant continuum since the Reformation and, when sung, is the most attended act of worship week by week (as the report points out). When broadcast on Radio 3, it has a larger audience than any other programme on the network. I imagine cathedrals responding to this by saying they are managing as much as they can afford in the circumstances, and that has to be respected. None of this is straightforward and the many complexities being faced need aligning to even stronger working relationships in order to navigate a safe and permanent future for cathedral music foundations.

An existential threat to those who have to work within the independent schools’ sector will be an additional 20% VAT on fees should a future

Labour government go ahead with its manifesto on penalising private education. Now is a time for collective lobbying, along with the specialist music schools, to seek exemption on the grounds of the type of music education being offered to young singers.

My departure from Winchester in 2002 coincided with the end of that year’s Southern Cathedrals Festival. In my parting words, I suggested that the acronym SCF be turned into ‘Save Choral Foundations’. I proposed, as I do now, that models of raising money should be investigated and this is something which is more pressing than ever. The Trust is in a strong position to help. For instance, if each music foundation could create funding through local support, it would begin to provide a basis of financial support, taking some of the pressure off Deans and Chapters. This needs to be regarded as a separate stream of money from the regular income a cathedral receives and in addition to supporting the Trust in its work nationwide.

Theatres, festivals and orchestras, who are lucky enough to receive support, are still required to raise separate funds to exist. Fundraising concerts and other events could be catalysts to a more secure future and allow a greater connection with the local community than just religious services. The difference between this type of fund-raising and an appeal is obvious: to make any decent annual income from invested capital, millions are required, whereas subscription income is a constant flow of funding. This is but one area for consideration in finding more of those partnerships to which the More report refers. I am not optimistic about the arts, which are under greater threat than ever, and we must all come together to ensure that cathedral music – in all its aspects – can continue, grow and ultimately overcome the issue it and others now face.

THE REVD CANON ANNA MACHAM

Precentor, Salisbury Cathedral

This is a very welcome report, clearly outlining the challenges cathedral music faces for the future.

As the report makes clear, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and other factors on parish church choirs means that cathedral choirs now must look to other routes to recruit talented young people as choristers. More research could perhaps be done, and good practice shared, around how to make our youth outreach programmes – a great good in themselves – feed more intentionally into the recruitment of choristers, so that choristers are not drawn only from the same narrow pool of people who already know about it. There is a danger that these programmes are seen as something separate from being a chorister, rather than the two going hand in hand.

Cathedrals, and the Church of England in general, also need to get better at understanding cathedral choirs as an integrated part of our mission, not as something separate or incidental to it. Perhaps a good piece of theological work could be done on

this. As cathedrals, we need to be more intentional about making strategic links into our towns and cities, taking our choirs out to where the people are who may then become interested in choristership, rather than performing largely in the context of our own buildings – so that people are not always having to come to us.

In a culture that is no longer Christian as the default, working with others in a meaningful way to mark secular events that mean something to people outside the Church, such as International Women’s Day or Holocaust Memorial Day – and not just in the context of Choral Evensong – and helping people to make the connections between these and faith and choral music, could really help us to have more impact.

I appreciated the section on the numerical growth of Choral Evensong and cathedral services generally in recent times. But this did not really tell me anything I didn’t already know and I wonder if some of the research on this is becoming a bit outdated now, and whether more research could be done? Is it still the case that Evensong is growing, postpandemic? And who are the people watching online now? Perhaps it’s

too early to tell, but the Theos report ‘Spiritual Capital’ is more than 10 years old now and a lot has happened since then.

I found it very helpful that the report both demonstrated the progress that has already been made in terms of inclusion and also indicated how far we have to go – especially socio-economically and in terms of ethnic diversity. I was shocked to learn that only 3 of the 42 Anglican cathedrals in England have female directors of music – though, when I thought about it, not surprised. However, I do not think that this can just be because of conservative attitudes towards the role of women in the Church more generally, as the report perhaps implies to be one of the reasons. It seems that there are still many fewer female conductors of secular choirs too. How does the choral world within the Church compare with secular adult and youth choirs that are performing similar repertoire? As an adult singing in my secular LGBT+ chamber choir in London, there was definite overlap with cathedral choir repertoire; a significant number of the members, including the Director, were former choristers, but were much more imaginative about venues and open to performing this repertoire in inter-faith or secular contexts. Maybe if cathedral choirs were to do the same, we would attract a wider pool of people to consider working for or with us.

There are still, of course, issues around attitudes to women in leadership in the church, but I would not say that cathedrals are doing particularly badly in this regard in relation to clergy (although I believe the proportion of female deans may have gone down). When I first attended the annual Precentors’ Conference gatherings as a succentor of Southwark Cathedral in 2007, you could almost count on the fingers of one hand the number of

Ash Mills

women; as a precentor now at those gatherings, that is not at all the case and there is a marked difference – I would say more like half and half women and men.

Looking more specifically into the reasons why few women are becoming directors of music in cathedrals is important, not least as it may be having a knock-on effect on recruitment of other music staff. At Salisbury we still struggle to attract female candidates to apply for our organ scholarship each year; are they be put off by the fact that there are no other female staff on the music team?

Unfortunately, I think that sexism is also part of the culture not just in churches but also in schools, and maybe especially private schools. As a safeguarding governor going into our Cathedral School and speaking with choristers and non-choristers, I know that our pupils are very alive to issues of equality and inclusion around ethnicity, gender and sexuality. A recent hard-hitting Channel 4 drama, Consent, had some statistics at the end including a statistic saying that 59% of girls and young women aged 13–21 say they have experienced sexual harassment at school or college, with many prominent independent schools frequently mentioned.

Within cathedrals, we have been asked to draw up an equality, diversity and inclusion action plan, and we must make sure that our music and liturgy – including the concerns and needs of our choristers – are fully integrated into this. Inclusion of female composers, for example, needs to become less something we do for a special or big occasion, and more integrated into the everyday –every week, or even every day – as part of what we routinely do. We need to make sure that the tradition we prize is a living one, not something that has become stale.

RICHARD PARKER

Visitor guide, Coventry Cathedral; member of Coventry Cathedral Chamber Choir

I would like to pick up on two of the areas of impact raised by the More report: participation and affordability. What follows are my own opinions, which do not represent those of Coventry Cathedral or of its music department.

Participation

Thanks to our previous director of music, Kerry Beaumont (in post 2006–20), we now have girls’ and boys’ choirs of about 20 singers each, who are drawn from schools across the city. Coventry is a very multicultural city, and Kerry set up a successful bursary scheme to attract boys from more diverse backgrounds into the choir. In 2021 he was presented with the Cranmer Award for Worship for ‘outstanding service to music and worship outreach, recruitment and nurture of singers with diversity at its heart’.

Support for chorister families is key to keeping their children in the choir. Our catchment area extends even beyond the city, and it must be easy to feel isolated, especially for those families settling into a new cultural or linguistic environment. The Choir Parents’ Association helps to promote a sense of community, and is active in fundraising for tours and other projects. Each chorister receives an annual

stipend which equates roughly to one return bus fare for each attendance at the cathedral.

We had two female lay clerks for several years – we now have one. We recently appointed three new choral scholars, who have strengthened the back rows considerably.

The Cathedral Chamber Choir offers an opportunity for volunteer adult singers to take part in liturgy, especially at half term, Christmas and Easter, and at diocesan services.

Affordability

The range of funding cited by the summary report between Westminster Abbey at one end and Coventry Cathedral at the other is unhelpful. I don’t think it helps to know the gross figure spent by any organisation on its music, and in this case it doesn’t compare like with like. Such a comparison raises the unfortunate possibility that some people might think it indicates not just most to least, but best to worst. I feel that it would be better to give relative figures (i.e. the proportion of an institution’s funding which goes to support its music).

I think what is most important is to ask what you get for your money. At present our music setup is as good as I’ve known it in 20 years, with three funded posts: Director of Music, Deputy Director of Music, and Organ Scholar. The girls and boys each sing two services a week.

The Friends of Coventry Cathedral have helped over many years with financial contributions, supporting commissions of music etc. But our magnificent fourmanual Harrison & Harrison organ needs complete refurbishment, which is a cost we cannot hope to meet from current revenue. So, in the sixtieth anniversary year of our consecration, we are running a Diamond Jubilee Organ Appeal to raise £1m towards cleaning and repairs. Wish us luck!

NEWS & PREVIEWS

Archbishop of Westminster, added: ‘William Byrd’s settings for the Mass were first heard in secret, in private chapels and back rooms, attended by Catholics who risked their livelihoods and by priests who risked their lives. Yet despite the private nature of these first performances, his music is full of life and emotion and communicates the vitality of a living faith, standing strong against the difficulties of the time. Every note, every phrase, is a prayer. Our prayer today stands in continuity with his.’

BYRD 400 IN WESTMINSTER CATHEDRAL

Westminster Cathedral Choir will mark the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd by performing the entirety of his Gradualia – settings of music for Mass in its seasonal and liturgical context published in two cycles in 1605 and 1607 – alongside other works from the composer’s output at choral services at the Cathedral.

The two collections of settings of the Mass Proper that make up the Gradualia were written for clandestine use by English Catholics. The music was intended to help Catholics mark the different seasons of the Church’s year. All 109 pieces will be performed at the appropriate times in the liturgical calendar. The celebration began on Sunday 18 December 2022 at the Solemn Mass

of the Blessed Virgin Mary when the choir sang the Mass for Five Voices, Rorate caeli desuper, Tollite portas, two settings of Ave Maria and Ecce Virgo concipiet. The cycle ends with Hodie Christus natus est and Deo gratias, sung at the Solemn Second Vespers and Benediction on 25 December 2023.

Simon Johnson, Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral, said: ‘When considered as a whole, the Gradualia undoubtedly represents a monolithic masterpiece of Renaissance religious art. Yet it is at the miniature level that the composer’s desire “to adorn divine things with the highest art” is to be truly appreciated. Byrd invites us to develop a greater understanding of the intimacies of our own faith.’

Cardinal Vincent Nichols,

Fr Sławomir Witoń, administrator of Westminster Cathedral, concluded: ‘For centuries William Byrd’s compositions of music for the Mass Ordinary and the Mass Proper could only be performed in secret Masses in private homes across the country. It is, therefore, hugely significant that Westminster Cathedral Choir is able to mark the 400th anniversary of his death with performances during services in the Mother Church of Roman Catholics in England and Wales.’

Highlights include a special Requiem Mass at Westminster Cathedral at 5.30pm on Tuesday 4 July 2023: the date of Byrd’s death in 1623. The service will include the Mass for Five Voices, Miserere mei Deus, and Ave verum corpus sung by Westminster Cathedral Choir, directed by Simon Johnson.

All services are free to attend. Full details and a brochure with all the dates of the celebration can be found online.

westminstercathedral.org.uk/music/

LEFT Simon Johnson will direct Westminster Cathedral choir in all 109 pieces from Byrd’s Gradualia over a liturgical year

BYRD 400 AT LINCOLN, 30 JUNE–4 JULY

Tuesday 4 July 2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd, who was appointed when he was just 23 years old as ‘Song Master and Pulsator at the Organs’ at Lincoln Cathedral, where he would stay for nine years.

In an immersive five days of music and liturgy, today’s Cathedral Choir will lead with regular worship, to include all three Mass settings, some twenty motets and anthems, all four settings of the evening canticles and much more, often in newly researched editions.

The cathedral musicians will be joined for some events and services by the Tallis Scholars and by the Chapel Choir of Merton College, Oxford.

The Wetheringsett Early English organ, built on historic principals, will also be on loan to the cathedral throughout the festival – celebrating

Byrd’s work for keyboard – and the music for viols will be featured in a concert by Arculo.

The cathedral has commissioned a memorial stone which will be unveiled and dedicated at Evensong on Tuesday 4 July, set into the floor in the centre of Lincoln’s ancient St Hugh’s Choir, from where Byrd himself would have directed the music.

Speakers at a parallel academic symposium on Byrd’s early career, taking place on 3 and 4 July, include Professor Kerry McCarthy (author of William Byrd), Professor Magnus Williamson (editor of the Cantiones Sacrae volumes) and Professor Owen Rees of Queen’s College, Oxford.

For more information and to book for concerts or the academic symposium, visit lincolncathedral.com/byrd-400festival.

RSCM Voice for Life Digital

The Royal School of Church Music has launched a brand-new version of its vocal training scheme for choristers and singers of all ages, Voice for Life. The new digital format takes the content of the existing Voice for Life books into a new context while remaining cross-compatible with the original books. The existing Voice for Life syllabus and its levels –white, light blue, dark blue, red and yellow – remains compatible with the RSCM’s Bronze, Silver and Gold Singing Awards. For more information, visit www.rscm.org.uk/learn-with-us/vfl-digital

SALISBURY CATHEDRAL SCHOOL CREATES ORGAN SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAMME

Salisbury Cathedral School has announced the launch of a new pipe organ scholarship programme, the first in a UK preparatory school. The new Griffiths Chapel Organ Scholarships will support two organ scholars during Upper Prep, school years 7 and 8, commencing in September 2023 and/or September 2024; there will be two scholarships, one for a boy and one for a girl, in respect of the school’s ongoing commitment to parity of musical opportunity for boys and girls in the traditional realm of church music. The two scholarships are supported by the generosity of Paul Griffiths and Joanna Marsh; Marsh is an award-winning composer while her husband is a Vice-President of the Royal College of Organists (as well as being an FRCO), although his principal occupation is as chief executive of Dubai Airports Company.

Paul Griffiths commented, ‘My wife Joanna Marsh and I have been keenly devoted to cathedral music for most of our lives and are motivated to perpetuate this wonderful tradition. We are keen to support the introduction of young people to the study of the organ and its repertoire, especially as the natural pathway which most of us followed is more opaque in our increasingly secular society.’

Applications are welcomed from minimum grade 5 level keyboard players, or pupils already learning the organ, who are currently in school years 5 and 6. For more information, or to apply, please email admissions@ salisburycathedralschool.com.

ROGER FISHER: A TRIBUTE

Roger Fisher, a significant figure in the musical life of Chester Cathedral for nearly three decades, died two years ago. The cathedral’s current Director of Music remembers the many contributions he made

Roger Fisher, who died in June 2021, was for 29 years

Organist and Master of the Choristers at Chester Cathedral, as well as an international recitalist and a recording artist who featured on more than 35 albums.

Roger was born in Woodford, Essex, in 1936, and his childhood memories included watching the London docks ablaze during the Second World War. He often told the story of how his mother was so fed up with sleeping in the bomb shelter in the garden that one night she took Roger and his sister Rosemary back inside the house; the shelter was hit that night and destroyed.

Surrounded by music – both his father and grandfather were accomplished pianists – Roger took piano lessons and sang in the choir of St Mary’s, Woodford, before attending the local independent Bancroft’s School; from there, he would walk to the nearest church to practise on a Father Willis organ. His teacher encouraged him to approach Harold Darke for further study, and Roger deputised for Darke at St Michael’s Cornhill, in London; in later years he was to record Darke’s complete organ works. Gaining a place in 1957 at the Royal College of Music, he studied organ (with Darke) and piano, and also took harmony and counterpoint lessons with Herbert Howells, both of whom commended him in their reports; he also gained his FRCO and the Geoffrey Tankard prize for organ playing. The following year Roger moved to Christ Church, Oxford as organ scholar under Sydney Watson.

In 1962, Roger became Assistant Organist at Hereford Cathedral, where the music department was under the exacting leadership of Melville Cook. His time at Hereford

presented Roger with opportunities to work as accompanist and chorus master for the Three Choirs Festival, as well as conducting the Hereford String Orchestra and turning his hand to building pipe organs.

1967 brought the move to Chester, a post he was to hold until 1996, his energy and dynamism earning him the sobriquet of ‘the mighty atom’. The Dean at the time of his appointment commissioned Roger to make improvements all round, and he greatly raised the standard of the choir. Under his stewardship the cathedral’s organ – an 1867 instrument by Whiteley Bros of Chester, with a Gilbert Scott case, rebuilt in 1910 by William Hill & Son – was rebuilt by Rushworth & Dreaper in 1969/70, with some pipework made to Roger’s own design. Roger’s recordings – notably in EMI’s Great Cathedral Organs series – did much to raise the international profile of the instrument. Of the Great Cathedral Organs release, he later wrote: ‘The recording sessions progressed with almost miraculous ease and the disc was completed in an evening and a half.  The producer [Brian Culverhouse] and engineers were booked to be in Chester for four days and, on completion of the recording we all wondered what to do. When I suggested a Rheinberger disc of Sonatas 7 and 8, Brian wondered whether we should complete this in the time available, but the fates smiled on us and we completed the second disc in record time.’

Away from the cathedral, Roger was active in conducting the Chester Music Society and Orchestral Society where he could indulge in his love of orchestral music, particularly Brahms, Elgar and Mahler; he also maintained a busy schedule of

recording, teaching, examining, touring, and the occasional broadcast. Also a proficient pianist, his repertoire included concertos by Beethoven and Mozart.

After leaving Chester, Roger retired to Wales with his second wife, Gillian (my mother), though remained active as a recitalist and organ adviser, and wrote two books: the four-volume Masterclass with Roger Fisher, and Towards keyboard fluency, published by Animus. A serious stroke in 2019 brought his ability to play to an abrupt end. One heart-breaking thing I remember was a trip arranged for him to hear Evensong in Malpas Parish Church. After the service we wheeled Roger to the piano but he could only manage to play five notes with his left hand – the hand that worked. I could only bring myself to say that he had better get on and learn Ravel’s Concerto for left hand alone. Believe it or not, Roger chuckled.

Roger was a man who lived for his music and was dedicated to it all his life. He was, essentially, a shy and humble man and always hated parties, although he loved his food and wine. In 1992, for the cathedral’s ninth centenary celebrations, Roger conducted probably his favourite work, Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, with the Hallé Orchestra and Chorus together with the Cathedral Choir. In the words of the Angel, ‘Farewell, but not forever, brother dear.’

PHILIP RUSHFORTH

This tribute was first published in the September 2021 issue of Choir & Organ.

Mike Williams

RSCM ANNOUNCES ‘SING FOR THE KING’

The Royal School of Church Music has announced ‘Sing for the King’, an initiative to celebrate the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla in May.

Following the Platinum Project to commemorate the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, the RSCM is inviting choirs across the UK, the Commonwealth and beyond to join the coronation celebrations by learning and singing the RSCM Coronation Anthem, The mountains shall bring peace, commissioned from Joanna Forbes L’Estrange.

Taking words from Psalms 72 and 149, the anthem – which has two versions, one for mixed voices and organ or piano, and the other for unison voices and piano – has been conceived to be sung both by large choirs on formal occasions and smaller choirs in more intimate settings.

The accompaniments are interchangeable and those choirs not wishing to learn the full five-minute piece can still join in the project by learning the hymn-like melody of the closing section.

The work is dedicated to Professor Eric W. Nye, alumnus of Queens’ College, Cambridge, retired Professor of English at the University of Wyoming, and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

RSCM director Hugh Morris said: ‘We were delighted that in 2022

many hundreds of choirs were united in singing a piece specially written for the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.

‘Now, in 2023, we hope that even more will want to learn Joanna’s The mountains shall bring peace and join with choirs from around the world to celebrate the first British coronation in 70 years.’

Composer Joanna Forbes L’Estrange said: ‘I was keen to find words which reflected not only King Charles’s faith but also something of

his passion for the natural world and his love of the outdoors. When I think of our former Prince of Wales, I picture him walking in the Welsh mountains or in the Scottish Highlands.

‘I’m also all too aware that this coronation is taking place during a very turbulent time for our country and our planet, so I was searching for words which would in some way give us all hope for the future.

Central to the commission brief was a big, singable tune – the kind of memorable melody which anyone and everyone can enjoy singing at the tops of their voices.’

The mountains shall bring peace is available as either a downloadable music pack or as printed copies.

Full learning resources, including performance backing tracks, are available from the RSCM’s dedicated ‘Sing for the King’ website, which also includes further information about the project, a social media wall, and an interactive map showing where choirs can register their performance.

Choirs and choral groups are invited to share their rehearsals and performances on social media using the hashtag #singfortheking

For more information on how your choir can participate, or to view the scores, visit rscm.org.uk/sing-forthe-king-2.

NEW CO-CHAIR FOR SOCIETY OF WOMEN ORGANISTS

Ghislaine Reece-Trapp has stepped down after eight years as co-chair of the Society of Women Organists (SWO). Anne Marsden Thomas, who remains the other co-Chair, paid tribute to Reece-Trapp’s ‘grace, wisdom and work ethic’, declaring that ‘generations of women organists will be indebted to Ghislaine for what she started’. Formerly Assistant Organist at Christ Church, Oxford and Organ Scholar at Wells and Guildford cathedrals (as well as at Christ Church), Reece-Trapp was one of the SWO’s founders in 2015. Her successor as co-chair, Hannah Gill, is organist at St Nicholas Harpenden and was formerly Organ Scholar at the Royal Festival Hall, having studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. Gill, who has served on the SWO committee since 2018, said, ‘It’s a huge privilege to be appointed as co-chair of SWO, and I’m very grateful for all the important work that Ghislaine has done to establish and grow the Society over several years. We are very fortunate to have such energetic, talented members who share their time and expertise so generously, and I’ve been thrilled to see the positive impact of our campaigning on various issues already. I’m really excited to discover what’s next for SWO, and consider myself very lucky to be able to play a part in helping us develop an even wider audience.’

Courtesy Joanna Forbes L'estrange

ABOVE Singer and composer Joanna Forbes L’Estrange

BOARDING REQUIREMENT SCRAPPED AT CANTERBURY

The chapter of Canterbury Cathedral together with the Director of Music, David Newsholme, have announced that from September 2023 membership of the Boys’ Choir will be open to children from any school. Compulsory boarding at the Choir House in the cathedral precincts and studying at St Edmund’s School will no longer be a requirement for choir membership.

The change is part of the Cathedral’s mission to progress equality and inclusion, part of which is to ensure that both the Boys’ and Girls’ Choirs are on an equal footing, and to cement the future and quality of the choir and music-making within the cathedral. The boy choristers and girl choristers will each sing three services a week and will be able to attend any local school.

The Cathedral will continue to support financially all choristers currently studying at St Edmund’s School on a full choral scholarship until their tenure with the choir has finished.

The Very Reverend Dr David Monteith, Dean of Canterbury, said: ‘Music is an integral part of worship in which the Cathedral takes great pride. We have a united vision of Canterbury Cathedral that blesses and serves the people of Canterbury and the wider community. We believe that this announcement helps children across the area benefit from the life-changing experience that singing in a cathedral choir offers while ensuring the

continuation of the choir for generations to come. We are extremely grateful for the support and contribution [those at] St Edmund’s School have made during the past 50 years of our close partnership. We extend our sincere thanks to them and look forward to working alongside them in the years to come.’

Director of Music David Newsholme added: ‘We want music-making in our cathedral not just to survive, but to evolve and flourish, and we share the Cathedral Music Trust’s commitment to enabling children from a diverse range of backgrounds to experience the many benefits that come from being a chorister. We believe that this is the way to secure the future of the choir and we are excited to be moving forwards into this new era, building on the strengths of our two well-established and respected choirs.’

Canterbury Cathedral Choir consists of 12 adult singers (eight lay clerks and four choral scholars), 25 boy choristers aged 8-13, and 25 girl choristers aged 12-18. Choir alumni include the conductors Christopher Seaman, Mark Elder, Harry Christophers and Trevor Pinnock, as well as the singer Alfred Deller and pianist Roger Vignoles.

Harry Christophers CBE, President of Cathedral Music Trust and founder and conductor of The Sixteen, said: ‘I am very much indebted to the Choir of Canterbury Cathedral for the incredible experience it gave me as a chorister back in the 1960s. It instilled in me a passion for music, and, without doubt, I would not be where I am today without that opportunity. I came from a very humble background and without the inclusive recruitment policy that was practised during my tenure, my parents would not have had the means to fund private schooling, nor would they have wished me to board, making joining the choir an impossibility. I am very much in support of this move to enable children from a diverse range of backgrounds to experience the many benefits that come from being a chorister.’

canterbury-cathedral.org/worship/music

FEMALE COMPOSERS COME AND SING WORKSHOP

The Royal School of Church Music and Society of Women

Organists (SWO) are hosting a joint Come and Sing event, showcasing new music written by female composers, on Saturday 15 July at St Giles Cripplegate, London. The workshop is led by Katherine Dienes-Williams (Organist and Master of the Choristers at

Guildford Cathedral and SWO Patron) and accompanied on the organ by Imogen Morgan (Assistant Master of the Music at St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh and SWO committee member). Repertoire to be performed in the workshop will be suitable for the liturgical season from All Saints to Epiphany, which allows choral

directors who are keen to diversify their programming an early insight into new compositions, and will include music by Sarah MacDonald, Joanna Forbes L’Estrange, Ghislaine Reece-Trapp and Margaret Rizza. Places can be booked on the RSCM website at a cost of £10: www.rscm.org.uk/events/womancomposer-repertoire-day/

NATIONAL SCHOOLS SINGING PROGRAMME EXPANSION

The National Schools Singing Programme (NSSP), the music education initiative covering 27 of the UK’s 32 Catholic dioceses, has welcomed six Anglican cathedrals to the scheme. This expansion sees funding awarded to cathedrals in Derby, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Sheffield, as well as York Minster. These have been selected in order to reach the most deprived regions of the country, bringing a musical education to those least likely to receive it. This latest expansion, which for the first time includes nondenominational schools, means an anticipated 20,000 children will benefit from the scheme, at over 200 schools nationally.

Founded in 2021 with £4 million in funding from the Hamish Ogston Foundation, the NSSP is the UK’s most farreaching choral education programme and offers funding to employ choral directors, who deliver whole-class singing sessions in state schools every week. Its aim is to combat the declining availability of specialist music lessons at state schools, particularly those in socially marginalised and economically deprived areas, and to provide pathways for musically talented young people to go on to attend universities and conservatoires.

Music Project Director for the Hamish Ogston Foundation, Simon Toyne, said: ‘In every school in the country you will find children with great voices. The importance of the NSSP is enabling those voices to be nurtured, trained and developed by expert choral directors, empowering them to sing in well-run school choirs and connecting them to their local cathedral choir. The British choral tradition uniquely champions young people to make music at the highest level but there is a danger that it is only accessed by those who already know about it. Our aim is to enable every child in the country to participate in this remarkable living tradition.’

Ben Saunders, Director of Music at the Diocese of Leeds and Consultant for the NSSP, commented: ‘The British choral tradition is the envy of the world not just because we produce excellent music but because our way of working is unique and exceptional. We are transforming thousands of young lives every year and uniting them in the ultimate form of teamwork and community – the choir. The NSSP is key to enlarging the base of the pyramid of opportunity which is the foundation on which we secure our heritage and build for the future.’

Diocese of Leeds Girls’ and Boys’ Choir Festivals

The Leeds Cathedral Girls’ and Boys’ Choirs annual showcases will take place on Sunday 18 June and Sunday 25 June, respectively, featuring the singing of the seven Choirs of Leeds Cathedral as well as choirs from Bradford, Keighley, Huddersfield, Harrogate, Ripon, Wakefield and Pontefract. The senior choirs will sing 11 am Mass, and then all choirs will join together for a free public concert at 2.30 pm, featuring the world premiere of two commissioned pieces by Van Morrison percussionist turned classical composer, Teena Lyle.

CLERGY SUPPORT TRUST FESTIVAL

The Clergy Support Trust Festival is taking place for the 368th time on 9 May at 5pm at St Paul’s Cathedral; the world’s oldest choral festival, it is a unique event that is free to attend. The Festival is renowned for bringing together choirs from different cathedrals across the UK; this year, singers from St Paul’s Cathedral will be joined by those from Leicester and Llandaff.

The service, which first took place in 1655, is organised by Clergy Support Trust, the largest charity dedicated expressly to helping clergy and their families; in 2022, the Trust supported almost one in five of all Church of England ministers.

The Festival Service will start with a procession of the choirs, cathedral clergy, Masters of City Livery Companies and Stewards of the Festival down the central aisle of St Paul’s.

The music promises to be exceptional in line with its historic choral legacy which has seen celebrated English composers like Parry and Elgar receive commissions to write new anthems for it. Each choir performs individually, before all three combine for a anthem, always the highlight of the evening.

This year the sermon will be given by the Bishop of Gloucester, the Right Reverend Rachel Treweek, who made history when she became the first female diocesan Bishop in England, and the first female Bishop in the House of Lords.

30 years of girls at Bristol

A celebratory Evensong will be held at Bristol Cathedral on Saturday 30 September to mark 30 years since the Girls’ Choir was formed. This was a precursor to increasing equality and parity: girl choristers were introduced in the 2000s (today’s choir has equal numbers of boy and girl choristers), followed by female choral scholars and lay clerks in the early 2010s. In the meantime, the Girls’ Choir as was became the Cathedral Consort, taking on tenors and basses aged 13 to 19 (often former choristers), thus giving a wider repertoire to the consort.

BBC SINGERS GIVEN REPRIEVE

The BBC has announced a hold on its plans to disband the BBC Singers.

In a statement issued on 24 March, it said: ‘The BBC has received approaches from a number of organisations offering alternative funding models for the BBC Singers. We have agreed with the Musicians’ Union that we will suspend the proposal to close the BBC Singers, while we actively explore these options. If viable, these alternative options would secure the future of the ensemble.

‘We can also confirm the Singers will appear in this year’s BBC Proms.

‘We know that the BBC Singers are loved across the classical community and their professionalism, quality and standing has never been in question. We have said throughout these were difficult decisions.

‘Therefore, we want to fully explore the options that have been brought to us to see if there is another way forward.

‘The BBC still needs to make savings and still plans to invest more widely in the future of choral singing across the UK.

‘The BBC, as the biggest commissioner of music and one of the biggest employers of musicians in the country, recognises it has a vital role to play in supporting orchestral and choral music.

‘We will continue to engage with the Musicians’ Union and the other BBC Unions about our proposals on the BBC’s English Orchestras. We are committed to meaningful consultation and to avoiding compulsory redundancies, wherever possible.’

NEW GIRL’S CHOIR IN WESTMINSTER

St Margaret’s Church, situated next to Westminster Abbey, is to launch a new choir for girls aged eleven to seventeen. Choristers will receive free singing and music theory tuition as well as a generous scholarship; no previous experience of choral singing is necessary and applications are welcomed from girls from any school or background.

The choristers will sing alongside the professional singers of the St Margaret’s Consort at the evening service in St Margaret’s on Sundays during term-time, as well as at some Wednesday Evensong services in Westminster Abbey. There will be occasional additional services, such as at Christmas and Easter, and over time the choristers will take on other projects including concerts, tours and recordings.

The Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend Dr David Hoyle, said: ‘The worship of the Abbey is our reason for being here, and music has always been central within it. We are delighted to be taking another step in making that worship more inclusive. I look forward to hearing girls’ voices in St Margaret’s and in the Abbey.’

Greg Morris, Director of Music at St Margaret’s, said:

‘The choir will provide a fantastic opportunity for girls to enjoy singing some great choral music alongside professional musicians, receiving an excellent musical education in the process, and I’m sure the St Margaret’s choristers will lead the way in an exciting new chapter for the music of St Margaret’s.’ www.westminster-abbey.org/ st-margarets-church/musicat-st-margarets/

Patrick Allen

NORTHERN IRELAND INTERNATIONAL ORGAN COMPETITION

The 11th Northern Ireland International Organ Competition (NIIOC) will take place in Armagh from 21 to 23 August, returning to the cathedral city where it was founded for the first time since before the Covid-19 pandemic. This year’s competition jury will be chaired by the Canadian organist Isabelle Demers, who has an international reputation as a recitalist and recording artist and is Associate Professor of Organ at McGill University, Montreal. She will be joined by Daniel Moult, Head of the Organ Department at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and by regular jury member David Hill, Artistic Director of the Bach Choir, London, the Yale Schola Cantorum, Connecticut and of the Charles Wood Summer School, which runs concurrently with the organ competition. The Senior and Intermediate sections of NIIOC 2023 will take place in St Patrick’s Church of Ireland Cathedral, Armagh and the Junior Competition in St Malachy’s Roman Catholic Church, Armagh.

Full details of the prizes and recitals, and opening and closing dates for entries, can be found at www.niioc.com.

NEW EULE ORGAN FOR MAGDALEN

Magdalen College, Oxford celebrated the installation of a new organ by Eule Orgelbau at a Festal Evensong on 21 January, during which the instrument was blessed by the Bishop of Oxford.

In 2018, as the costs of a full-scale refurbishment of the previous Mander organ were proving prohibitive, Magdalen College decided that, thanks to a generous bequest, the process of replacing it should begin with tenders for a new instrument. The brief was to provide an organ to accompany the choir’s eclectic repertoire; to cover a wide range of solo repertoire; to provide sufficient support for a large congregation of 350 or more; and to be an instrument capable of providing valuable experience for young organists learning to hone their technique and broader skills during their time as undergraduates. The chosen action is a combination of mechanical – to help players learn about articulation – and electrical, to allow for a wider palette of colours.

Director of Music Mark Williams said: ‘I was particularly struck by the attention to detail that Eule showed during their visit to the chapel. They spent a long time in the building, looking at the structure of the stone screen on which the organ stands, measuring the acoustics and listening to the choir in action. After an extended period, they came up with a design that seemed to be both imaginative tonally and attractive aesthetically, and which responded to the – admittedly potentially vague

– brief. It didn’t feel like an “off-theshelf” instrument which might have been adapted from another tender, but a genuine response to the building and our needs. That it would be the company’s first major instrument in the UK (despite a long-established and highly regarded reputation on the Continent) was additionally attractive, as I felt that the instrument would be a showcase for their work.’

Magdalen, as the smallest of the five Oxbridge choral foundations, has always had the challenge that a significant proportion of a packed congregation has to be seated in the antechapel. A requisite was to offer enough organ sound there to support congregational singing while also allowing the choir to be heard over the organ in choral repertoire. Williams explained: ‘The Eule design addresses this through swell shutters on the west side of the instrument, which can be controlled separately from the shutters facing eastwards.’

Although the old organ has been entirely removed, the pre-existing case designed by Julian Bicknell was used as a basis for the new instrument. The Cottingham stone case had previously housed the Great organ, but will house a smaller Choir division for the new Eule.

Williams concluded: ‘The new organ is, inevitably, larger than its predecessor, but is still very much in proportion with the Chapel.’

www.magdalencollegechoir.com;

Abi Poe

Hugh Warwick

Isabelle Demers chairs this year’s NIIOC jury

LLANDAFF LAUNCHES MUSIC FOUNDATION

Llandaff Cathedral announced last autumn a new Music Foundation to enable as many children and young people as possible to access musicmaking, whatever their means or background. Alongside Director of Music Stephen Moore professional singer Elizabeth Atherton has been brought on board to establish a charitable foundation that will support and secure the future of the existing Music Department, whilst creating further scholarships for potential choristers and widening access for more people to be involved in music-making in Llandaff.

The Foundation will take music education into local schools to reach children who might otherwise be without provision and create more opportunities for them at the Cathedral. The vision is to put Llandaff Cathedral firmly on the map, both locally and nationally, as an arts centre of the highest calibre, in terms of musical output, reach and education, alongside its primary role as a historic place of worship.

In March, 200 schoolchildren from local primary schools descended on the Cathedral for the culmination of the Foundation’s first education project, Discover the Organ, 140 of whom had participated in workshops in school with two postgraduate vocal students from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama the previous day. All the children were then given a presentation in the Cathedral involving the workshop leaders playing some of the music games they’d played the day before with the children and a demonstration of the organ by the Cathedral’s Director and Assistant Director of Music; the day finished with a performance of Bob Chilcott’s Mr Majeika and the Magic Organ in which the children had their own singing role.

To find out more about the Foundation or offer financial support to enable more of these opportunities, please contact Elizabeth Atherton on music.foundation@llandaffcathedral.org.

BBC Radio 3 Choral Evensong

Choral Evensong is broadcast from churches, chapels and cathedrals around the country on Wednesdays at 4pm, and is usually repeated on the following Sunday at 3pm.

Should you wish to attend a live broadcast, please enquire of the venue as to details of timings and location; an asterisk (*) indicates that the service was recorded in advance.

3 May: Manchester Cathedral

10 May: Bristol Cathedral

17 May: St Martin-in-the-Fields, London

24 May: St Paul’s Cathedral

31 May: Keble College, Oxford*

7 June: venue TBC with HeartEdge Manchester Choral Scholars*

14 June: King’s College, Cambridge

21 June: Ely Cathedral

28 June: St Peter’s, Wolverhampton*

5 July: Lincoln Cathedral

12 July: St Paul’s, Knightsbridge with BBC Singers*

19 July: Chichester Cathedral during the Southern Cathedrals Festival*

26 July: Gloucester Cathedral during the Three Choirs Festival

2 August: St Alban-the-Martyr, Holborn with Genesis Sixteen*

9 August: Eton College Chapel with Rodolfus Foundation Choral Course*

16 August: St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh

23 August: Edington Priory during Edington Festival of Music within the Liturgy

30 August: Armagh Cathedral during the Charles Wood Summer School*

6 September: Rugby School

13 September: St Eustachius Church, Tavistock with the Exon Singers*

20 September: Llandaff Cathedral

27 September: St John’s College, Cambridge with Rodolfus Foundation Choral Course*

NEW EDITION OF STAINER’S CRUCIFIXION

The RSCM has published a new critical edition of Sir John Stainer’s The Crucifixion, edited by Professor Jeremy Dibble, who has made reference not only to the existing Novello editions (first published in 1887) but has also incorporated details of Stainer’s original manuscript. The new edition has comprehensive introductory, editorial and performance notes, and includes facsimile pages from Stainer’s autograph manuscript; it is compatible, page for page, with existing editions, so can be used alongside those in performance.

4 October: Old Royal Naval College

11 October: St Mary’s, Warwick

18 October: St Luke’s Church, Chelsea*

25 October: St Stephen Walbrook*

1 November: King’s College, London

8 November: venue TBC

15 November: Hereford Cathedral

22 November: Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge

29 November: Chichester Cathedral

All details are correct at time of printing but are subject to change.

Llandaff Cathedral Music Foundation

JAMES BOWMAN (1941–2023): AN APPRECIATION

How deeply we will miss James Bowman. To lose him, even at 81, is like losing music itself.

He was, and is, an exemplar, above all for the guidance, reassurance and encouragement he gave, generously and unselfishly, to so many who asked for it, or who needed it. A former chorister himself (at Ely Cathedral), he inspired, and indeed sang alongside choirmen and choristers alike.

James was an exceptional, gracious human being: ‘a matchless, matchless man’ (John Blow). He loved helping others; no request for advice was too demanding.

His warmth and kindness were as legendary as that unique, beautiful voice – intoning not just the Baroque, but the modern as well: Tippett’s exquisite Songs for Ariel; the music of Alan Ridout and Francis Grier; or Geoffrey Burgon’s Nunc Dimittis. Could anything match the haunting beauty of that? James could. The poignancy, the pathos,

and the tenderness were there in everything he sang. There was wisdom, insight, perfection.

But wisdom in the man, too. A big guy in every way, not least in heart, ever-inspired and -inspiring, James shared with us so many marvels.

One thinks of Dowland, Pergolesi, Britten, or of Andrew Gant’s Epitaph for Salomon Pavey: the star Jacobean boy actor who died heartbreakingly young (at 13): an (impounded) chorister of the Chapel Royal (where James himself latterly sang).

His inheritance from Alfred Deller of the role of Oberon in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was one of those miracles that peppered James’s career. With him, the countertenor voice came into its own in England. Unquestionably there were praiseworthy male altos in many cathedrals and colleges. But they remained that: fine, loyal choir members.

Iestyn Davies, one who did ascend fabulously to lead the field today, makes clear the huge inspiration James was to him – and, he assures us, for so many others.

How happy that we have so much of his work still to treasure. Originally with Raymond Leppard, David Munrow, Christopher Hogwood. Then, wonderfully, on Hyperion, with The King’s Consort: Handel operas (the explosive, and the lulling); Bach cantatas; Bach’s great predecessor, Kuhnau; Couperin’s unbelievably beautiful Leçons de Ténèbres; and surely above all, the sensational collection of Purcell’s sacred and secular works (also on Hyperion) – not least, his church anthems.

But Bowman also appeared and recorded with countless other eminent, even historic, choirs and ensembles, at home and abroad (France, especially), each enriched by his presence among them. For aspiring young countertenors among today’s cathedral choristers, try, and learn from, the disc Contre-ténors (Naïve V5328): seven for the price of one. Bowman and friends.

Peter Nardone, formerly at Chelmsford and Worcester cathedrals (and Croydon Minster), cherished James as ‘singer, artist, encourager, inspirer, bon viveur, fairy king, diva, friend’.

But James was a modest man, the last one to sing his own praises: a lovely man, a sharer, a mentor of genius, an enhancer, a bringer of joy; amazingly funny (‘wickedly indiscreet’), but also incredibly profound; someone to be held up as an ideal – as a peerless musician, and as an exemplary human being – to all young choristers passionate and craving to join the music profession as singers themselves.

He will be so sadly missed – but his legacy is immortal.

RODERIC DUNNETT

Mike Williams

PEOPLE & PLACES

We offer our congratulations to the following musicians, who are on the move

James Anderson-Besant, currently Assistant Director of Music at Exeter Cathedral, has been appointed Director of Music at Truro Cathedral

Matthew Breen, formerly Organ Scholar at Liverpool Cathedral, has been appointed Assistant Director of Music at St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork

Tom Daggett, currently OBE Organ Outreach Fellow at St Paul’s Cathedral, takes up the new post of Director of Music and Schools Singing Programme at Sheffield Cathedral

Paul Hughes, former Director of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the BBC Singers, has joined the board of trustees of the Three Choirs Festival; also joining is Bill Lam, currently Head of Digital at the Hallé Orchestra

Stephen Layton is stepping down from Trinity College, Cambridge after 17 years as Fellow and Director of Music to devote more time to his international guest-conducting career

James O’Donnell, former Organist and Master of the Choristers at Westminster Abbey, has been appointed Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order (LVO)

Matthew Searles has been appointed Master of the Music at Buckfast Abbey; formerly Assistant Master, he succeeds Philip Arkwright, who becomes Chief Executive Officer of the Abbey

Elizabeth Stratford has been appointed Director of Salisbury Cathedral’s Chamber Choir; she is also the Organist and Master of the Choristers at Arundel Cathedral

Jack Wilson, Graduate Organ Scholar at Ely Cathedral, has been appointed Master of Music at Belfast Cathedral

Keith Sau

Clare Clifford

Matthew Johnson

Graham Lacdao

ABRIGHTTOMORROW FORTHEMUSICYOULOVE

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LeavingagiftinyourWilltoCathedralMusicTrustisanidealwayof supportingthemusicwhichhasbroughtyoupleasureduringyour lifetime.

Legacieshaveformedthebackboneofourgrant-givingprogramme overrecentdecades.Suchactsofkindnesshaveprovidedmuchneededsupportforcathedralmusicians,helpingthispriceless heritageflourishandgrow.

Pledgingalegacywillnotcostyouanythingrightnowandwillhelpto developcathedralmusicforfuturegenerations.

TofindoutmoreaboutjoiningtheSibthorpCircleortodiscusshow youcansupporttheworkoftheTrust,pleasecontactNatashaMorris on02031516096oremaildevelopment@cathedralmusictrust.org.uk.

Weareverygratefultoallthosewhohave rememberedtheTrustinthisway.

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EVENTS

Don’t miss these opportunities to join a Cathedral Music Trust gathering near you

FRIDAY 12–SUNDAY 14 MAY

Chelmsford Cathedral national gathering, ‘A Celebration of Byrd’

Join a weekend-long exploration of William Byrd’s choral and organ music on the 400th anniversary of his death, with the opportunity to explore Ingatestone Hall and either Blackmore Church or St Mary’s Maldon. (Please note, booking for the full event is now closed, but cathedral services are open to all.)

THURSDAY 25 MAY

Alexander Armstrong: This is Your Life (In Music!)

A unique benefit evening of words and music in the chapel of St George’s, Windsor, tracing Alexander’s musical journey from Chorister to Choral Scholar to Classic FM to Quizmaster, on behalf

of Cathedral Music Trust and the National Autistic Society.

WEDNESDAY 21 JUNE

Temple Church gathering

This year’s gathering at Temple Church will include an organ recital, behind the scenes tours and talks on the music and choirs, rounded off with a service of Choral Evensong.

SUNDAY 25 JUNE

Come and Sing Evensong, Blackburn Cathedral

Start the day by attending Choral Eucharist, before talks from the cathedral organists followed by the opportunity to join the Cathedral Choir to sing Evensong.

FRIDAY 6–SUNDAY 8 OCTOBER

Wells: A Cathedral Music Celebration

Visit Wells to enjoy an exquisite celebration of everything cathedral music, including a concert, celebratory Evensong, Compline, and a sumptuous dinner at The Swan Hotel.

SATURDAY 14 OCTOBER

Ripon Cathedral gathering

The afternoon will include an organ performance, refreshments and a talk from Director of Music Dr Ronny Krippner about the past, present and future of music at Ripon Cathedral, finishing with a grand festal Evensong.

For more details, including information on how to register, visit www.cathedralmusictrust.org.uk/ events, email info@ cathedralmusictrust.org.uk, or ring 020 3151 6096 (Monday–Friday, 9am–4pm).

Chelmsford Cathedral will resound to the music of William Byrd in May

National Education Network

GRANT RECIPIENTS

IN SUPPORT OF EXCELLENCE

As a Friend or Patron of Cathedral Music Trust, the support that you give allows us to make grants to cathedrals and churches all over the UK to fund their work; in 2021 and 2022 the Trust made 68 awards totalling nearly £1 million. In a new regular feature, Cathedral Music profiles a selection of last year’s grant recipients

By ADRIAN HORSEWOOD

Carlisle Cathedral received a grant of £4,300 towards funding its organ scholarship

CARLISLE CATHEDRAL

For Harry Brown, the award given by Cathedral Music Trust to Carlisle Cathedral to support his organ scholarship has provided him with valuable experience on his career path towards full-time organ playing – not just at the console, but fully involved with all aspects of music at the cathedral.

As Mark Duthie, Director of Music at Carlisle since 2017, is at pains to point out, ‘Harry’s certainly no dogsbody! The music department at Carlisle is smaller than at many other cathedrals, and so the organ scholar plays a vital role in all that we do. In particular, I should say that Harry is a really good example of how beneficial a scholarship can be for a young organist, in terms of equipping them with a rounded set of skills.’

Harry readily agrees: ‘I hadn’t had much experience of cathedral music before I arrived here – I hadn’t even accompanied a psalm before! Now I regularly play for services, particularly for those sung by the lay clerks or the cathedral consort. I also do warm-ups with the choristers, and have got so much out of engaging with the choir.’

Once he has completed his year at Carlisle, Harry will be relocating to the Midlands to begin his organ studies at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and feels emboldened by the experience he’s gained. ‘I want to stay involved with cathedral music, and so I’m extremely grateful to the Trust for supporting me during my organ scholarship.’

St Mary-le-Tower, Ipswich received a Church Choir Award of £7,000 towards partnering with state schools in Ipswich to deliver choral singing activities

When Christopher Borrett became Director of Music at St Mary-le-Tower – Ipswich’s civic church – in 2015, his immediate priority was to recruit more members for the top line of the choir. ‘In the very early days,’ he recalls, ‘we had just a few boy trebles and one or two girl sopranos in their teens, who sang once on Sundays’. That Borrett now oversees three services on Sundays – and until the Covid-19 pandemic there was also a mid-week Evensong – is testament to the effort he has put in over the last eight years.

This success has been founded on his regularly visiting state schools all around Ipswich to give presentations and assemblies about the life of a chorister; Borrett currently works with five core state primary feeder schools in the city, and the church now enjoys three different soprano lines –boy and girl trebles, and teenage soprano choral scholars.

Now, a grant from Cathedral Music Trust is enabling Borrett to set up a series of summer workshops that will bring primary-age state-school children into St Mary-le-Tower for rehearsals, workshops and performances (quite literally – part of the grant will be directed towards providing transport for those families who might otherwise struggle to attend).

‘What we want to do is to create relaxed, out-of-school singing opportunities for as wide a spectrum of society as we can, and to show them that a space such as St Mary-leTower is for everyone, whether they attend a Church of England school or have no experience of church at all. It’s about building a rapport – with the children but also with their teachers; a parallel aspect to these school workshops will be giving music teachers the chance to work with our

choristers to improve their leadership skills.’ Under Borrett’s direction the choir is going from strength to strength; it recently sang for Sunday Worship on BBC Radio 4, and last year released a carol CD entitled The Road to Bethlehem, which was picked up by Classic FM as a ‘Discovery of the Week’ in the run-up to Christmas. Nevertheless, he isn’t content to rest on his laurels; as he puts it, ‘There’s no silver bullet for choir recruitment’, and he has further local partnerships planned to strengthen the already promising foundations he has laid.

MARY-LE-TOWER, IPSWICH

Courtesy St Mary-le-Tower, Ipswich

St Wulfram’s, Grantham received a grant of £22,300 to support a new Assistant Director of Music post and a vocal coach for choristers

By happy chance I’m able to meet up with the choir of St Wulfram’s, Grantham on home territory as they arrive in Cambridge for a joint Evensong with the choir of Selwyn College – just one of many visits and tours that this ambitious group, directed by Dr Timothy Williams, undertakes each year.

The support of Cathedral Music Trust has enabled the choir of St Wulfram’s to create the new position of Assistant Director of Music – filled by Timothy Selman, who took up his post in January – and also to appoint a vocal coach for the choristers. Selman was organ scholar at St Barnabas’s Cathedral in Nottingham during his undergraduate studies, before moving to serve as Assistant Master of Music (and, for a time, Acting Master of Music) at York Oratory.

Now settled back in the Midlands, Selman is fully involved with the busy choral schedule at St Wulfram’s: the three church choirs (boys’, girls’ and youth) rehearse separately and together on four days of the week, and sing in rota for morning and evening services

on Sundays. Selman also conducts a newly formed, non-auditioned adult choir that is designed to complement the church’s work within the local community, encouraging well-being and mental health.

Particularly notable about the choral set-up at St Wulfram’s is the age range for which it caters: the boys’ and girls’ choirs start from the age of seven, while the youth choir takes singers up to eighteen. ‘We see so many children join us at the very beginning and stay through until they leave school; our longest-serving member has been with us for ten years, and there are plenty at the seven-, eight- and nine-year marks – they also play a valuable role in sharing their experience with the younger members of the choirs.’

Williams is particularly grateful for the strengthening and widening of resources at St Wulfram’s that Cathedral Music Trust grant has brought. ‘It has allowed us more bandwidth in terms of what we as a church and as a music department can offer. I’m still as involved with all our choirs as I was before Tim arrived, but his being here means that I have more time to plan and train and educate, as well as to maintain our links with the community; our children attend eighteen different schools in and around Grantham, and there’s always work to be done in terms of attracting new choristers.’

ST WULFRAM’S, GRANTHAM

Laura Cradduck

Bangor Cathedral received a grant of £22,000 to fund the appointment of three Welsh-language choral scholars and to support the expansion of its Welshlanguage choral provision

Bangor is unique among the cathedrals in Wales (indeed, in the world) in offering regular choral services entirely in Welsh: on Sundays there is a 9.15am Welsh Eucharist, followed by an 11.00am English Eucharist; Evensong is then bilingual, with even the occasional language-swap halfway through a hymn. Weekday choral services are similarly divided up, with the first lesson and first set of responses usually in Welsh, as well as the Lord’s Prayer.

This hasn’t always been the case, as Director of Music Joe Cooper explains. ‘When I arrived there was the occasional piece in Welsh on the music list, but the biggest problem was simply that there weren’t many settings of the repeated parts of services –responses, psalms, Masses, canticles – so that was what we had to tackle first of all. Thanks to the grant from Cathedral Music Trust, we’ve commissioned new works from composers such as Paul Mealor, Gareth Glyn and Alex Mills [whose setting of Jesus’s seven last words from the cross, Saith Air y Groes, was premiered at Bangor on Good Friday], and have been able to showcase the music of composers such as Dilys Elwyn Edwards and Raymond Williams. Additionally, the SubDean, Canon Siôn Rhys Evans, who has been a committed supporter of the choir, has translated lots of service texts from English into Welsh while keeping the original wordstresses so that we can use them with existing music – which is no mean feat!’

Understandably, there have been hurdles to overcome, but also plenty of willingness to do so. ‘About a third of the choir are Welsh speakers. I’m also taking language lessons, and as a group we’ve become familiar with those parts of the liturgy that are the same from service to service; but when you’re dealing with a new text – such as the psalms or the anthem – it’s so useful to have native speakers there to guide us through it.’

This new approach is clearly paying dividends, and the reach of the choir and its dedication to Welsh-language choral singing is spreading. The choral scholars are touring to Rome in June – ‘Almost certainly the first ever Welsh-language services in Rome!’, remarks Cooper – and in August the whole choir will visit Dublin, again singing in Welsh. Cooper also notes that the make-up of the cathedral congregation is subtly different. ‘Traditionally, Welsh speakers tend to go to chapel [local non-diocesan, often nonConformist establishments] rather than come to the cathedral, so we’re very keen to show we’re no longer somewhere that they might formerly have felt less welcome or less accommodated.’

For more information on the Trust’s grant scheme and other recipients of awards, visit www.cathedralmusictrust.org.uk/grants

BANGOR CATHEDRAL

Chris Dearden

RIGHT

A NEW SONG TE LUCIS ANTE TERMINUM

In the first of a series of newly written pieces of choral or organ music for use in the liturgy, we introduce a setting of the Compline hymn by UK-based Armenian composer Kristina Arakelyan

By MATTHEW POWER

Coming to the UK as a child from her native Armenia, Kristina Arakelyan’s talent as a young musician soon won her a scholarship to the Purcell School, aged 12. ‘Being surrounded by other musical children was fantastic,’ she remembers. ‘At my previous school, I was practically the only musician in the class and not everyone shared my passion for music. So studying at the Purcell School was brilliant in that I was understood as a musician. To be honest though, I had two first studies – piano and composition – and that wasn’t easy; both were demanding. But I had access to great musicians and masterclasses, and I’m very grateful for that.’

Composition became her principal study at London’s Royal Academy of Music (RAM) and she followed that with a Master’s degree at Oxford, combined with a choral scholarship at St Peter’s College. ‘Every teacher gave me something special and unique to them. Now that I am a teacher myself, I think a lot about how we teach composition: the balance between helping your student while giving them the freedom to pursue their own creativity.’ She credits her fellow instrumental students too. ‘Just being able to message someone and ask, “does this passage work on the violin?” – that network of like-minded individuals at conservatoire was so strong.’

FINDING HER VOICE

How did she find the academic environment at Oxford compared to the conservatoire experience offered by the RAM? Was it as

easy to get her music performed? ‘There are affiliate ensembles that work with the composition department. As a Master’s student you could sign up to work with a symphony orchestra or a string quartet … and I was also able to mix with conductors and musicologists.’

Can she comment on the masterclasses she undertook with John Adams, Oliver Knussen and Peter Maxwell Davies – all quite different composers? ‘All of them allowed me a way into their world, their way of thinking about music. Listening to Oliver Knussen talk was a highlight for me. He was a wonderful conductor too, and that gave him a different insight which as a pianist I simply didn’t have. He discussed some seminal works which I thought I already knew, but he lent a completely new perspective, and it was really enlightening.’

Starting her composition studies early means that Arakelyan has written equally for genres including voice, choir, chamber and solo instruments, and several scores for full orchestra. I wonder if she has a favourite ensemble or genre. ‘I hope I won’t offend any ensembles by saying that voices, voices, voices are my favourite! The voice is the original instrument. We all have a voice and there is something profoundly beautiful about a group of human beings singing together. The soundworld has so many possibilities; I have been in love with writing for voices ever since I can remember.’

Composed in just two weeks last summer is a new chamber opera, currently a piano version, soon to be expanded to a chamber

Growing up in Armenia, Kristina Arakelyan lived side-byside with Orthodox liturgy, which has infused her music with a distinct feel

ensemble to combine with its seven singers. As well as directing rehearsals and acting as repetiteur, Arakelyan provided all the administrative support for the production, from balancing spread sheets to ironing costumes. Seven ways to wait was premiered last September as part of the Grimeborn Opera Festival, now in its 15th season, hosted by the innovative east London-based Arcola Theatre.

‘The libretto is by Helen Eastman; it’s an exploration of seven women and how they are each waiting for something to happen, and what they are doing in the meantime. Helen writes: “The opera weaves its way through Greece, Ukraine, from 5BC to 16th-century witchcraft, a 1915 suffragettes meeting and a fitness workout” – there’s a lot going on within 40 minutes of music!’

Arakelyan’s academic training and her current PhD in Composition at King’s College London enables her to write freely with the rigour to underpin a musical technique. Is she conscious of scrutinising her stylistic identity, of not straying outside the parameters she sets herself?

‘On some level, but not consciously. I don’t think of my musical language as a static entity, it’s ever-evolving. I follow where my ear leads, generally a mixture of [the] modal, tonal and dissonant.’ What about the influence of other composers?

‘I would have to start with J.S. Bach. During the first UK lockdown, I played through all the Preludes & Fugues. Of course, there are all the great composers throughout musical history; in the 20th century I particularly love the Impressionists Debussy and Ravel, also Bartók, Stravinsky, then later on Lutosławski.’

We talk about national

‘The single note on top has shifting harmonies beneath which change the quality of the top note’

MATTHEW POWER

Matthew Power works in London as a musician and writer; he is a former editor of Choir & Organ magazine.

musical traits, and I ask if her Armenian background emerges. ‘I grew up singing in an Armenian Orthodox church choir and I adore the Eastern Orthodox Christian liturgies; they are very much on my mind, as is the Anglican liturgical tradition, which is also a part of my life. Those experiences are all part of my musical DNA. Cultural backgrounds can be interesting; such a great thing about being in London is its diversity: you meet people from all over the globe.’

Compline has undergone a resurgence in popularity in recent years. The hymn she has set, ‘Te lucis ante terminum’ (Before the ending of the day), is both simple and profound and the KCL choir took to it quickly and sang it with warmth. Some passages will require singers to listen carefully for intonation. What can she say about the shifting harmonic language? ‘There are some dissonant moments and patterns

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE COPY

‘A New Song’ is a series of pieces for choir or organ by talented young composers , originally featured in Choir & Organ with support from PRS for Music. Visit

https://bit.ly/3MX6vmo to register free of charge, see video performances of the pieces, and print unlimited copies free of charge. Te lucis ante terminum is available under licence free of

within them. The idea throughout is of a single note at the top of the texture and shifting harmonies underneath and how they change the quality of that top note. For choirs, that changes the intonation of that note; the third of a chord will have to be tuned differently to a note which is the root. I find that fascinating.’ Any tips for choirs keen to get to grips with it? ‘When you are practising, isolate the melodic ideas from the accompanying ones. Because the rhythm is simple, try to hear the continuity between solo and tutti lines; look at the translation to see what is happening with the words.’

RESEARCH TO PRACTICE

Some of Arakelyan’s music is inspired by her musicological research, as with her current PhD. I am curious to know what she is researching. ‘In essence, it’s about thematicism. I’m interested in the revival of thematicism in my music. Each of the seven pieces in my portfolio is inspired by something else; some are in homage to other composers.

‘One orchestral piece takes the rondo theme from Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata and turns it into a reverse variation form, beginning with fragmented ideas and ending in a big flourish. Another piece is based on a play – The bald soprano by the FrenchRomanian playwright Eugène Ionesco –where each player in the string quartet assumes a character from the play. So I am presenting two strands: technical thematicism, and extra-musical influences.’

And once all these years of study are complete, what are her aspirations for the immediate future? ‘Teaching is part of my life, so I’d like to continue that part-time alongside being a freelance composer and pianist. I would love to continue writing for voices in particular, and a dream would be to write more operas and see them on bigger stages.’

charge until 30 June 2023, after which copies must be destroyed as copyright reverts to the composer. The score includes the composer ’s contact details for future reference.

‘There is something profoundly beautiful about a group of human beings singing together’

MUSIC AT BRITISH CORONATIONS

For centuries, music has been a vital part of the ritual crowning of Britain’s and England’s kings and queens and the coronation of Charles III will be no exception, even as the new monarch rings the changes with his own musical decisions

By MATTHIAS RANGE

Edwin Austin Abbey/Royal Collection Trust

Few occasions can vie with the pomp and splendour of a coronation – and in the realm of music, this applies especially to English coronations, which since that of George I in 1714 have been British coronations. In no other country’s coronation rites has music had such a prominent role and cast such a long shadow. Undoubtedly, this is of course much helped by the fact that, for over a century now, Britain has been the only European monarchy still to have a coronation.

In its structure, the coronation service is a communion service into which the ceremonies of the investiture of the monarch (and his or her consort) have been incorporated. Accordingly, the music consists of the liturgical pieces scheduled in the Book of Common Prayer, to which are added several anthems accentuating the investiture rites, as well as various instrumental pieces for the numerous processions.

King Charles III’s commission of twelve new (vocal and instrumental) pieces of music for his and the Queen Consort’s coronation in May points to an important circumstance. The music of the service has overall seen (or better ‘heard’) very little repetition over the years; instead, there has usually been a considerable amount of newly written music. All the same, there are at least two pieces that have become so inextricably linked with the coronation service that they could almost be said to have become a part of the liturgy.

Since the coronation of Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria in 1626, the introit sung during the monarch’s entrance into Westminster Abbey has been based on verses taken from Psalm 122, beginning ‘I was glad’. The earliest surviving coronation setting of this is that written by John Blow (or Henry Purcell – or maybe both?) for the 1685 coronation of James II and Mary of Modena, but there are also settings by Francis Pigott for Queen Anne in 1702, by William Boyce for George III and Queen Charlotte in 1761, and then a grand setting by Thomas Attwood for the coronation of George IV in 1821 (which featured a prominent and applauded quotation of the tune of ‘God save the King’). Attwood’s anthem was a particular favourite throughout the nineteenth century, printed and performed in concerts, and was repeated at the two following coronations, of William IV and Queen Adelaide in 1831 and that of Queen Victoria in 1838. However, in 1902, for the coronation of Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, Attwood’s ‘I was glad’ was replaced by a new setting. A repeat of ▷

LEFT Parry’s enduring setting of ‘I was glad’ was heard for the first time at the coronation in 1902 of Edward VII

BELOW Had it not been for William Boyce’s humility, his setting of ‘Zadok the Priest’ might have become a permanent fixture of coronation music, rather than Handel’s

Attwood’s setting had been expected and some people reportedly regretted its omission. All the same, the setting that replaced it has since become one of the prime examples of music for a grand occasion and has been repeated at numerous royal jubilees and royal weddings: Charles Hubert Hasting Parry’s ‘I was glad’ for choir, full orchestra and organ is a masterpiece of ceremonial music.

TRADITIONS NEW AND OLD

It is interesting to note that Parry had originally scheduled a smaller ‘processional choir’ to sing in the first half of the anthem, while walking in front of the monarch. This would have followed the established custom from previous coronations. However, as is well known, the 1902 coronation had to be postponed due to Edward VII’s appendicitis, and the postponed service was much

shortened and re-arranged; thus, it seems that Parry’s anthem was never actually sung by a processional choir.

While Parry set the traditional text, he omitted the Gloria Patri (‘Glory be to the Father’), which had been part of all previous coronation settings of this text. Parry did not, however, neglect to incorporate what has today become one of the anthem’s most famous features: the so-called ‘Vivats’. At coronations, the singing of the Latin ‘Vivat Regina’ and ‘Vivat Rex’, with the respective names in Latin form, had been a centuriesold, firmly established prerogative of the scholars of Westminster School. Parry incorporated these ‘Vivats’ firmly in the centre of his setting, taking them up by the actual choir and full forces. However, it is not sure whether this incorporation was altogether new in 1902: notably, the previous settings of this anthem have a clear break at the same place, some with an usual shift in harmonies. Reports of previous ceremonies also suggest that these earlier settings incorporated the ‘Vivats’. In any case, while at the 1953 coronation there was only one set of ‘Vivats’, for the reigning Queen, this year’s coronation will surely follow the precedent of previous coronations of both a king and his consort and there will be two sets of ‘Vivats’: presumably ‘Vivat Regina Camilla’ when the Queen Consort enters, followed by ‘Vivat Rex Carolus’ for the King’s entrance.

It is often said that the most significant part of the coronation service is actually the anointing – when the Archbishop of Canterbury makes the sign of the cross with holy oil on the monarch’s forehead – rather than the crowning itself. It seems therefore appropriate that the British monarch’s anointing is linked with one of the most famous pieces of any ceremonial music: Handel’s ‘Zadok the Priest’.

BREAKING NEW GROUND

The text from the first chapter of the First Book of Kings, recording the anointing of King Solomon by Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet, has been sung at all English (later British) coronations since before the Norman Conquest. The earliest surviving setting, however, is that by Henry Lawes, written for the coronation of Charles II in 1662. It appears that this setting was

‘In no other country’s coronation rites has music had such a prominent role and cast such a long shadow’

Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

repeated at the following four coronations. In 1727, however, for the coronation of George II and Queen Caroline, Handel wrote his new, now well-known setting.

Handel’s ‘Zadok the Priest’ –notwithstanding arrangement for the musical forces available – has been repeated at all following coronations. Yet, the establishment of this strong tradition for Handel’s setting at coronations may have come about almost by accident. Before the next coronation, in 1761, the composer William Boyce – who was in charge of the music – claimed that he had been ordered to set all the anthems of the service anew (although no record of this command has yet been found). As Thomas Secker, the Archbishop of Canterbury, recorded, Boyce refused to provide a new setting of the text ‘Zadok the Priest’, explaining that it ‘cannot be more properly set than it has already been by M.r Handel’. Boyce did, however, not insist that Handel’s setting should be included: on the contrary, he suggested an altogether different text that he would set instead. In response, however, Archbishop Secker informed Boyce that George III wanted ‘Zadok the Priest’ performed as at the previous coronation. Thanks to this direct royal intervention, Handel’s magnificent setting was performed, but one must wonder what would have happened if Boyce had contributed a new setting; Handel’s grand setting has since become an almost integral part of all the following coronations, not to mention its regular performance at the Royal Maundy service and other ceremonial occasions.

Parry’s and Handel’s ceremonial masterpieces aside, the coronation in May 2023 will also feature several significant innovations, especially also in the choice of the performers. The numbers will, as far as one can tell, be much smaller than in 1953 – as there will generally be only about a quarter of the people in the Abbey, and no galleries will be specially built. Some details are particularly intriguing. The participation of named soloists is noteworthy and it will be interesting to hear what they will sing. There are short soloistic passages in some seventeenth- and eighteenth-century coronation anthems (such as those by Cooke, Purcell and Handel) and also, for instance, in Vaughan Williams’s 1953 communion motet ‘O taste and see’. Never before, however, have there been actual solo pieces at a coronation.

The announced participation of a gospel choir is of course a remarkable innovation, perhaps reflecting the UK’s modern, more

diverse society and culture. At any rate, this will be the first time that there is an additional choir, as it were, a group not part of the main choir assembled for the occasion. Similarly, the prominent participation of the Prince of Wales’s harpist is unprecedented, as will be the use of Welsh for some of the liturgical sections. This is perhaps very appropriate for a monarch who, after all, was the longest serving Prince of Wales in history. The inclusion of a Greek-Orthodox piece of music has officially been identified as a nod to the King’s late father, because he had been born a Prince of Greece. Such a decided reference to a departed family member (or any family member for that matter) seems to be a new feature at a coronation. All the same, this choice perhaps also points to a more ecumenical approach to the ceremony.

Overall, it is little surprise that the music at the coronation of a music-loving monarch such as King Charles III will show so many personal ‘touches’. British monarchs have often had a love for, and interest in music –accordingly, combined with the rich musical traditions of the Anglican church, British coronations have always also been notable musical occasions.

Matthias Range is a post-doctoral researcher at Oxford; his book Music and Ceremonial at British Coronations was published this year.

Shirley Thompson (Shirley Thompson)/Stefano Broli (Debbie Wiseman)/Theo Williams (Roderick Williams)

MATTHIAS RANGE

ABOVE Shirley Thompson (top), Debbie Wiseman and Roderick Williams are among the composers whose music will be heard at the coronation of Charles III this year

RECONCILIATION THROUGH HARMONISATION

Coventry Cathedral survived war and devestation to become a beacon of hope in a fractured world. Its current Director of Music discusses the role the cathedral choir plays in furthering this mission

By ROBERT GUTHRIE

Coventry has always encountered change – something of which Rachel Mahon, Director of Music at the city’s cathedral, is acutely aware.

‘It must have been a beautiful, medieval place,’ Rachel says. ‘They lost a lot of their really old buildings, but the area around the cathedral still has some medieval ones.’

The city is on its third cathedral. The first was destroyed during the Reformation, while the second, known as the Old Cathedral, was almost entirely destroyed during the Luftwaffe’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ air raid on 14 and 15 November 1940.

Only its shell and tower remain –reminders of the ruptures of war, but also of the commitment to reconciliation about which The Revd Richard Howard, cathedral Provost at the time, appeared adamant during a Christmas broadcast from the rubble mornings later. The ruins remain visible metres beyond the New Cathedral’s west window – a defining feature of a building for which Scottish architect Basil Spence cannot take all the credit.

‘There is a maple leaf in the floor at the liturgical west end,’ Rachel says, ‘because of Canadian support after the Second World War to get the cathedral built, and funds they donated for the building of the organ.’

The Toronto-raised Rachel Mahon could not work in a more appropriate cathedral.

‘There is a nice connection with Healey Willan. He was president of the Royal Canadian College of Organists when the New Cathedral was built, and spearheaded a

fundraising drive for the organ. He went across Canada playing concerts, and gave the cheque to the cathedral’s Provost.’

The aptness of Rachel’s position owes not only to Canadian links; her career reflects the openness and partnership central to the cathedral since the destruction. ‘During university I was busy every day because I worked at three different churches,’ she says, referring to the eight or nine weekly services she played alongside organ studies with John Tuttle at the University of Toronto.

Many were spent as Bevan Organ Scholar at the University’s Trinity College. ‘I was doing Matins or Eucharist at 8am, three days per week. Twice per week we’d have Evening Prayer, and once per week it was Choral Evensong with full choir and organ.’

She played for Eucharist and Evensong as the scholar at Toronto’s St James Anglican Cathedral as well – having also spent three secondary school years there – before becoming principal organist at the United Timothy Eaton Memorial Church in her second university year. She also played for Saturday Mass with the Oratory Children’s Choir of the Holy Family Catholic Church.

Rachel was a chorister at Toronto’s Anglican Grace Church on-the-Hill, but she hadn’t pinned every hope on the organ. ‘I said “yes” to a bunch of things, and sort of fell into it. For university, I applied for music, and for maths and biology. I thought, “I’ll do either one”, but music is what I went with because I was offered a scholarship. I thought, “that’s free!” I went with the flow.’

Before becoming Coventry Cathedral’s Director of Music in September 2020, and serving as Kerry Beaumont’s assistant from 2018, Rachel was Organ Scholar at Truro Cathedral, held the William and Irene Miller scholarship at St Paul’s Cathedral, and was Chester Cathedral’s second assistant.

She has performed at Montreal’s Maison symphonique, at St Thomas’s Church on New York City’s Fifth Avenue, at London’s Temple Church, and in The Toronto Bach Festival. She was one of CBC’s top-30, under-30 Canadian musicians in 2014. And she spends some downtime writing and performing in organ-themed comedy shows as part of the Organized Crime Duo with fellow organist Sarah Svendsen.

‘I was a chorister at Grace Church, so I was used to the Anglican repertoire,’ Rachel says. ‘My favourite thing was to play a set of canticles by Howells and some Anglican chant. To come here and do it with such fantastic choirs was my thinking.’ The

intensity of services also attracted her. ‘Back in Canada, we don’t really have weekday services; that’s pretty niche. Most churches don’t do Sunday Evensong either.’

And while Canadian choirs enjoy the Anglican tradition, there are fewer choir schools. ‘There is a Catholic choir school [in Toronto, called St Michael’s], but it’s not the same model as these cathedral schools, where choirs are much smaller and choristers have rehearsals and Evensong every day. The frequency of rehearsals and performances for cathedral choirs in this country means they are at a particularly high standard when compared with other types of children’s choirs.’

For Rachel, Truro was a journey deeper into the Anglican choral tradition. ‘Christopher Gray and Luke Bond, who were there, are incredible. Not only is Luke’s improvising amazing, but his psalm accompaniments are gorgeous. I got a lot of ideas from him. He would do whatever he wanted, however the

ABOVE Toronto-born and -raised, Rachel Mahon has been Director of Music at Coventry Cathedral since September 2020

ABOVE Coventry’s girls’ and boys’ choirs share singing duties equally between them, and their members are now drawn from schools all over the city

words inspired him. The words are what you follow, whether that’s just a single melody or descant, or using the registration to portray thunder and lightning.

‘It was a huge change. I’m a city girl,’ Rachel says. ‘But you’re seeing these people every day, you’re making music with them, and you go to the pub after!’

Being scholar at St Paul’s alongside Andrew Carwood, Simon Johnson and Peter Holder brought a new service pattern and events of national significance. ‘St Paul’s was different as they did more services – eight or nine a week. Playing Herbert Howells’ St Paul’s Service in St Paul’s was a highlight. It takes the building into account; there’s a ninesecond reverberation time.’

It also meant navigating organ consoles in the nave and the choir. ‘I prefer playing from the choir there, not least because you’re behind a curtain, but you hear the playing more instantaneously because it’s just across from you.’

At Chester Cathedral, Rachel was second assistant alongside Philip Rushforth and Andrew Wyatt. ‘They did Matins every Sunday. I loved that. I also loved the Book of Common Prayer Eucharist. It was very traditional, done with the priest facing east. It didn’t deviate. I loved the formality and

ceremony of it all.’

Chester was a multifaceted operation. ‘They had boys and girls. You needed three staff members because, while Evensong happened, the other choir was rehearsing,’ Rachel says. (Truro Cathedral appointed girl choristers a year after Rachel left, and St Paul’s will welcome girls from 2025.)

Chester’s choristers come from further away. ‘It was an after-school choir,’ Rachel says. ‘I’m glad I experienced that because it’s a model I know works for setting up a choir where there’s no [choir] school.’ That must have been useful pre-Coventry, its choristers also coming from afar.

‘Outreach is built into what I do. I go to every school in Coventry and ask to do an assembly and hand out pamphlets. Auditions are open to anyone. The drawback is that, with no choir school, we don’t exactly have a hold on them.’

The boys’ choir sings Evensong on Wednesdays while the girls’ choir sings on Thursdays. They alternate between Eucharist and Evensong on Sundays, and both choirs rehearse on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

St Michael’s Church had a long musical heritage before becoming Coventry Cathedral in 1918. Choristerships through the King Henry VIII School complemented this in

the 1930s, until the Second World War. Coventry Cathedral Choral Foundation was established in 1959, allowing for ten boys to join annually, forming a choir for the New Cathedral’s consecration in 1962 – when Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem was premiered in Queen Elizabeth II’s presence.

Membership was opened to all boys in 1976, and the Cathedral’s Girls’ Choir was established in 1995, which welcomes girls aged 7 to 18. Choristerships for boys also start from seven. Rachel also conducts the Cathedral’s Chamber Choir and the Coventry Cathedral Chorus.

Rachel has already helped Coventry’s choral tradition evolve by introducing four lay clerkships. ‘We have always had great volunteer choral clerks, and I wanted to start four paid positions. I’m now hoping to expand them to six. We also have choral scholars,’ she adds. ‘Some are boys whose voices have broken but who still want to sing. Some study at the university.’

While Rachel’s life now centres on Coventry, she remains in touch with Canada. Delphian recorded her performing Canadian music by Healey Willan, Ruth Watson Henderson, Rachel Laurin and Gerald Bales on the cathedral’s organ in 2020. ‘I’d had the idea before going to Coventry. This was the perfect place to do it,’ she says.

‘Rachel Laurin’s Organ Symphony is fantastic. I want it to be better known. The Willan has been recorded many times but I am quite passionate about it. I felt I had something to say with it. The repertoire all suits the Coventry organ. It’s versatile and can do lovely romantic harmony, but also modern music, matching the architecture.’

The Cathedral is currently raising £1.5 million to refurbish its 1962 Harrison & Harrison instrument, including pipes, electrics and leather. Not only does the organ face a new era – Rachel knows wider church music does too.

‘One side of that is upholding tradition, and bringing it into the present, incorporating new commissions, and enthusing as many as possible about what we do. Church attendance is falling, but this is not only a religious treasure. I think it’s a cultural one too. We have some of the best choirs here, and that’s something we have to keep

relevant to everyone, even if they don’t attend church. It’s the same for organ music.’

Coventry’s long-term focus on partnership and understanding appears key. ‘Coventry is all about reconciliation’, Rachel says, referring to the resolve of former Provost Richard Howard. Since the 1940s, Coventry Cathedral has forged strong links with Kiel, Dresden and Berlin, as well as areas of Eastern Europe and the Middle East, through its Reconciliation Ministry and Community of the Cross of Nails.

Music has contributed. In 1963, two years after the Berlin Wall’s construction, the choir toured to East Berlin. The choristers have since visited Germany several times more. Senior choristers also visited Volgograd in Russia in 2004.

In a similar trajectory, the Cathedral Choirs joined the Deutscher Chor London for performances at Southwark Cathedral, and on home turf, of Ross McGregor’s Sophie Scholl Passion. Employing movements from J.S. Bach’s St Matthew Passion, it tells the story of the young anti-Nazi and nonviolence activist, executed in 1943. ‘We have partners with Germany and all over the world, so this partnership between The German Choir of London and our English choir was the thinking behind it.’

Coventry has other musical partnerships. The Cathedral Choirs marked five years of the Diamond Fund for Choristers – now the Cathedral Music Trust – in 2021, performing with the members of eight other cathedral choirs. The Choirs also celebrated their cathedral’s diamond jubilee last year with a Missa brevis by Matthew Martin.

Coventry was UK City of Culture in 2021, when over several nights The New and Old Cathedrals served as stages for a retelling of the city’s history in film composer Nitin Sawhney’s Ghosts in the Ruins – a contemporary response to Britten’s War Requiem. ‘It was something new for us,’ Rachel says. ‘The music wasn’t in any particular language. It was more about evoking different moods.’

That must be the point. A language of its own, music resonates in ways words cannot. What could be more relevant for a choir whose mission is reconciliation in a world where conflict still rages?

ROBERT GUTHRIE

guthrieportfolio.co.uk

‘ This is not only a religious treasure – I think it’s a cultural one too. We have some of the best choirs here, and that’s something we have to keep relevant’

Robert

CORNISH CREAM

Despite being less than 150 years old and ‘at the bottom end of a train line’, Truro Cathedral has developed a strong musical tradition that includes recordings, tours and outreach projects.

By CLARE STEVENS

Twenty-two and a half years ago, Christopher Gray graduated from Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he had been Organ Scholar, and after a further scholarship at Guildford Cathedral, took up the post of Assistant Director of Music at Truro Cathedral. In April he returned to Cambridge as Director of Music at St John’s College.

He admits that it was a wrench, and not just because he’s left behind the warmth of Cornwall, in the far south-west of England, where local daffodils were already on sale in the farmers’ market when I visited in January, for the bitter cold of East Anglia. Strong friendships have been forged during his time in Truro; and being part of the huge institution that is the University of Cambridge, leading one of several worldfamous choral foundations, will be a very different experience from running one of the few centres of professional music-making in a very large area.

The three spires of Truro Cathedral dominate the compact city, looking as though

they have soared over the narrow Georgian streets and converted warehouses that sit at the head of the Truro River estuary for centuries. In fact, Truro is a relatively new diocese, created in 1876 – Cornwall had previously come under the jurisdiction of Exeter. The cathedral was cleverly designed in Gothic Revival style by John Loughborough Pearson, on the small city-centre site of the medieval parish church, part of which was incorporated into the new building. The foundation ceremony took place in 1880 and what Pearson’s biographer Anthony Quiney describes as ‘a qualified masterpiece’ was completed in 1910.

It was for Truro that Edward Benson, the first bishop, devised the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols that inspired the famous Christmas Eve festivals at King’s College, Cambridge and so many others around the world. Benson’s main aim was to encourage the wider community to feel a connection with their new cathedral.

Christopher Gray was only the tenth Organist; the first was William Mitchell, Organist of the parish church, whose choir of boys and men formed the nucleus of the cathedral choir. Mitchell’s successor was George Robertson Sinclair, who served for nine years before moving to Hereford, where he was close friends with Elgar.

Holders of the Truro post in the early 20th century included John Dykes Bower, who ended up at St Paul’s Cathedral. It was surely on his recommendation that the London choir was evacuated to Truro for several years during the Second World War. That link is still valued, fondly remembered by former choristers of St Paul’s even if they are too young to have been evacuated themselves. Andrew Carwood, the current Director of Music at St Paul’s, is very aware of it, says Gray, to the extent that the girl choristers

BELOW The Gothic Revival-style Truro Cathedral

Lee Morriss

from Truro have had the rare privilege of singing Evensong at St Paul’s with the cathedral’s Vicars Choral several times.

Dykes Bower’s successor, Guillaume Ormond – nephew of the artist John Singer Sargent – served for 42 years, from 1929 until his death at the age of 75 in 1971. He was followed by his assistant John Charles Winter, who became Organist Emeritus on his retirement in 1989.

The recent line of succession is distinguished, with David Briggs taking over from Winter, followed by Andrew Nethsingha from 1994 to 2002, when he moved to Gloucester Cathedral and then to St John’s, Cambridge, and Robert Sharpe, who was appointed to York Minster in 2008. Briggs introduced the organ scholarship programme, graduates of which include Luke Bond, who returned as Assistant Director of Music from 2008 to 2017 and now holds the same post at St George’s Windsor; Sachin Gunga, now Sub-Organist at Portsmouth Cathedral; and Rachel Mahon, currently Director of Music at Coventry Cathedral. Nethsingha introduced choral scholarships and increased the number of sung services per week.

Christopher Gray is a native of County Down, Northern Ireland, who was brought up in the Presbyterian church but encountered

the Anglican choral tradition through the inspiring influence of Ian Hunter, his music master at Bangor Grammar School. He arrived at Truro as assistant to Nethsingha in 2000 and was promoted to Director of Music when Robert Sharpe left for York. While colleagues will cherish the memory of his fine musicianship, his warm personality and his willingness to enter into community life, Gray’s primary legacy in the history of the cathedral will be recruiting its first girl choristers, in 2015.

The full choir currently consists of up to 18 boy choristers and 18 girl choristers, who usually take it in turn to sing with the seven lay vicars and five choral scholars who make up the back rows of altos, tenors and basses. The girls are aged 13–18 and sing at the Eucharist and Evensong every other Sunday, plus Evensong on Tuesday and Thursday one week and on Thursday the next. The boys, aged eight to 13, also sing two services every other Sunday, but their fortnightly regime involves four Evensongs one week and three the next.

‘The boys need to sing more because they are younger, they need that routine of frequent activity,’ says Gray, admitting that the main drawback of having two teams of choristers is that none of them gets through as much repertoire as a single cohort did in

ABOVE Christopher Gray conducts the Choir of Truro Cathedral in a Christmas concert; it was at Truro that the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols originated

the past. But he feels the commitment for the girls is about right. ‘When they arrive with us their musical development is usually much further on, they’ve probably got good instrumental skills and have taken some theory exams, and we have to balance fulfilling their musical potential with making sure their GCSE and A-level results are enhanced and not compromised by their choral duties.’

The choristers are all educated at Truro School, where they receive 25 percent scholarships, with the possibility of supplementary bursaries of up to 100 percent in cases of need. They rehearse with the cathedral’s music staff every weekday morning.

Does Gray have to adapt his approach depending on whether he’s working with boy or girl choristers? He says that the different dynamic of each group probably arises more from the difference in age range than the difference in gender. More importantly, perhaps, he is very conscious that every child or young adult is an individual who may need to be nurtured in a different way, and that among each cohort there will be choristers with varying skills, learning styles and temperaments. ‘That’s where the joy of the job is for me, in seeing the potential and stewarding the development of each person.’

The same applies to recruitment, with children finding their way to the cathedral through a variety of different routes. ‘I think you have to cast out a lot of different lines, making sure that the opportunity is made known as widely as we can in the community. We also have to acknowledge that what we

do is now very counter-cultural. We are in an age when church attendance is in decline and it’s quite clear that the teaching of classical music is not being resourced by the government and there isn’t much music going on in schools of a kind that is remotely similar to cathedral repertoire. Only a small number of people will be interested in choristerships for their children.’

Gray was very involved in Truro’s outreach programme that was used as a model for one strand of the UK government’s 2007 Sing Up campaign to encourage singing in English primary schools. More recently, he worked with choir parent Esmé Page on two more specific community projects, in which the Truro choristers recorded specially commissioned songs and invited other schools and choirs to perform them, using downloadable resources. One song by poet Andrew Longfield and composer Philip Stopford was in aid of the charity Cornwall Hugs Grenfell, which offers respite care to families affected by the fire in a west London tower block; the other, ‘Sing2G7’, was written by Tim Rice and Peter Hobbs to mark the G7 climate summit that took place in Cornwall in 2021. The latter culminated in a massive Zoom performance involving 1,400 people from all over the world, and has inspired another recent initiative, ‘Chorister Zoom Assemblies’, open to all Cornish schools.

‘The G7 song was entirely secular, but these are Christian assemblies, albeit with a light touch,’ says Gray. ‘We send the materials out in advance, I do a video to teach the participants one of the songs, and then we have a short rehearsal at 9 o’clock on the day,

‘Gray is conscious that every child or young adult is an individual who may need nurturing differently’

ABOVE Christopher Gray rehearses the Truro choristers

LLE Photography

followed by the assembly. We use the cathedral’s live streaming equipment installed for broadcasting services during the pandemic, so it looks and sounds good and there’s an option to stay online and chat to each other. We tried it for the first time in May last year and had 800 participants, then 1,300 for the second one in November.’

Performing, commissioning and recording new music has been a hallmark of Gray’s tenure; the cathedral choir’s discography on the Regent label includes two albums of music by Philip Stopford, one of music by Gabriel Jackson featuring both a Mass setting and an evening service written for Truro; a mixed album that features works by composers such as James MacMillan, Graham Fitkin and Francis Pott; and a recording with the BBC Concert Orchestra of works by Dobrinka Tabakova, with whom the cathedral set up a very fruitful partnership to mark the arrival of the girl choristers. ‘I thought it would be nice for them to have a female role model,’ explains Gray. ‘I didn’t know her but I’d been impressed by her music so I contacted her and it was obvious from our first conversation that I’d gone to the right person.’ Most recently mezzo-soprano

Catherine Wyn-Rogers, baritone Julien van Mellaerts and the BBC National Orchestra of

Wales joined the choir in recording the Secular Requiem and other works by local composer Russell Pascoe (reviewed on page 57).

Gray says he will look back in ten years’ time and think, ‘How on earth did we do that?’, reflecting that these and other projects are important for adding ‘colour’ to the choir’s schedule. ‘One danger of being so far away at the bottom end of a train line is that we could get a bit sleepy. Recruitment is everything for a choir, not just when it comes to the boys and girls, but the back row too. People make huge sacrifices to be in this choir, and you have to keep it interesting for them, and indeed for the congregation, and have a really rewarding programme of music that complements the worship and general life of the cathedral.

‘Somehow Truro is a place where you can make things happen,’ he concludes. ‘The financial resources are not huge, but there is a great spirit and ambition in the community.’

As Gray unpacks his bags in Cambridge, that sounds like a pretty encouraging message to pass on to his successor. trurocathedral.org.uk

This article was first published in the April 2023 issue of Choir & Organ.

BELOW The Girls’ Choir rehearses

CLARE STEVENS Clare Stevens works as a writer, editor and publicist in the Welsh Marches.

LLE Photography

IT’S GREEN UP NORTH

Church and cathedral installations of solar panels suddenly seem all the rage. We head back to where it all began – Bradford Cathedral

By ADRIAN HORSEWOOD

The recent announcement by Cambridge City Council that it had approved plans for the installation of photovoltaic (solar) panels on the roof of King’s College sparked national and international outcry – all the more vitriolic in places when it emerged that the planning committee had rejected objections from Historic England and the council’s own conservation officers.

The Provost of King’s, Professor Michael Proctor, defended the decision, said that ‘the panels will have only a very minimal impact on the visual appearance of the Chapel, but will make a considerable, quantifiable difference in the process of decarbonisation.’ King’s announced that the planned installation will form one facet of the college’s strategy to completely decarbonise its operations by 2038, will meet 100% of the energy needs of the chapel and will reduce the college’s carbon emissions by more than 27 tonnes each year.

The media coverage stirred up by the news from King’s provoked many cathedrals and churches across the country to point out that they had previously gone down a similar route with comparatively little fuss; Gloucester, Portsmouth and Salisbury have done so, and York Minster has submitted a planning application.

Also among them was Chester, which earlier this year claimed to be the first cathedral in the north of England to have installed solar panels; however, it was swiftly pointed out that they had been pipped to the

post a trifling eleven years earlier. Then again, Bradford – the cathedral in question –is used to flying under the radar.

Ned Lunn, who joined the chapter at Bradford in the summer of 2022, is Canon for Intercultural Mission and the Arts, and as such the cathedral’s extensive efforts to moderate its environmental impact fall under his remit – although he credits the Dean, Andy Bowerman, with much of the drive behind the cathedral’s mission.

‘Andy isn’t your traditional cathedral Dean,’ laughs Lunn. ‘Since he arrived he’s really shaped the cathedral and its activities, and has found people to work with whom he knows will be a good fit for the tasks at hand. I was thrilled when Andy asked me to come on board – he and I share a great passion for intercultural work, and my role here is very city-focused, which includes the environmental side of things.’

In 2020 the General Synod of the Church of England committed itself to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, in line with government targets, but Bradford can pride itself on having been at the forefront of eco-friendly progress for over a decade. ‘The thing that Bradford Cathedral has going for it,’ explains Lunn, ‘which has allowed us to be slightly quicker on the uptake than some other cathedrals, is the size of the structure; it’s not cavernous, which means that although there are always going to be difficulties for a historic, Grade I listed building in adapting to modern regulations, we’re not having to operate at as large a scale.

ABOVE Canon Ned Lunn’s role at Bradford encompasses the cathedral’s environmental initiatives

Katie Glover

‘Also, being a smaller cathedral means that we haven’t historically been too concerned with the “airs and graces”, shall we say, of cathedral life – not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, but being gritty northerners we don’t much like pomp and circumstance. Both Bradford cathedral and the city itself have a strong sense of being overlooked historically – for good and ill –and therefore there’s a real spirit of just getting on and doing things!’

Lunn contends that this spirit means that those who work at and care for the cathedral have a more informal and intimate relationship with it as an institution, and so are much more focused on its present and future rather than preserving it as some kind of relic. ‘I think that explains why there was so little pushback when it was decided back in 2010 to install the solar panels.’

While Bradford’s environmental efforts are deserving of much praise – the cathedral is on its way to securing accreditation as an Eco Church by the Environmental Issues Network of Churches Together, the highest level attainable – it’s clear that Lunn views all of the achievements so far as just one part of a larger picture.

‘For me, a big question is how we ensure that all of these initiatives relate to the cathedral’s music and liturgy – it’s one that we’re not even close to answering completely, but we’ve made huge strides in the right direction. It’s crucial to involve everyone in the decisions we make – clergy, staff, congregation, choristers and their families –and when asking ourselves what contributions we can all make.

‘For example, we can start with small things such as how we travel to and from the cathedral – are we doing enough to encourage people away from using their cars? To that end, we’ve installed more bicycle racks, as well as charging points for electric vehicles – but that then leads onto the question of how best to help our staff to access them.

‘We can also help to draw more people to the cathedral and its precincts by creating an attractive, green area all around; our gardeners have replanted much of the grounds, we’ve hosted sessions on World Environment Day where people can come and create bug hotels that promote the growth of insect life, and we launched a Woodland Project in 2015 to plant trees to offset the paper that we use at the cathedral. So even if not everyone who uses the space decides to set foot inside the cathedral, they all understand that it is a welcoming space for all, regardless of their background or personal faith.’

Lunn has also spearheaded interfaith projects across Bradford, seeking to build on what he and the staff and volunteers at the cathedral have learnt through their own efforts; during this year’s Ramadan the cathedral hosted an open iftar (the ceremonial breaking of the fast for Muslims at sunset) and worked in collaboration with the local non-profit organisation Green Street to make it a sustainable event.

‘This is something we talk about a lot as part of our faith – are there things in our faiths or in our scriptures that address how we should treat the world around us?’

ABOVE Bradford’s pioneering solar panels were installed in 2011 and contribute to the cathedral’s Eco Congregation status

‘There’s a real spirit of just getting on and doing things’

Hewitt & Walker

HARRY CHRISTOPHERS

DIRECTOR, THE SIXTEEN AND PRESIDENT, CATHEDRAL MUSIC TRUST

David Hill: Favourite beverages? Harry Christophers: Beer! You’ve got to remember I was born in a pub.

DH: Were you?

HC: Yes, In the middle of Kent. It’s a Shepherd Neame pub now but in those days it was Fremlin’s, which doesn’t exist anymore. So good, nice hoppy ale is my preference. The beauty of a ‘Sixteen’ pilgrimage is being able to savour the different types of ales around the country.

DH: Byrd or Purcell, given we’d want both but you’d have to choose just one?

HC: Purcell. I remember the various anthems [I sang] as a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral with Allan Wicks, who said, ‘I knew he was good, but I didn’t really know why.’ He’s one of the composers that the period movement has really brought to the fore. We no longer look at a chord and all the figures and think it can’t be possible. We actually believe in it and embrace his genius. I’ve recorded so much of it, but every time I come to a Welcome Ode – some of it not great poetry – somehow Purcell creates something magical.

DH: Interesting. I programmed quite a lot of this music when I was at Winchester Cathedral, partly because the verse anthems allowed the men of the choir opportunities for solos, but most of all because it took very little time to teach the boys the chorus moments. Clearly, Purcell was incredibly imaginative as well as practical. Haydn or Mozart?

HC: Haydn. Having been at the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston, it’s they who have introduced me to Haydn, as I hadn’t done many symphonies before. I’ve now recorded all the Paris and just embarked on the London symphonies and some of the earlier ones, and

as a result I’ve become a bit of a Haydn nut now! I find his music absolutely phenomenal. Mozart’s operas are of course amazing, but he doesn’t get anywhere near Haydn in his settings of the Mass. I recently conducted Haydn’s ‘Theresa’ Mass and it’s incredible music – a total revelation. And having just conducted The Creation with the LSO recently, it allowed me to talk about the music pictorially which then allowed them to play the music with imagery in mind. They really got into it and it was very stylish.

DH: Favourite cuisine?

HC: If you mean cookbooks, then it’s Ottolenghi. If someone had said five or six

ABOVE Harry Christophers: ‘Being a chorister is not just about the musical experience, but how to work with other people’

Marco Borggreve

DAVID HILL IN CONVERSATION WITH ...

years ago, ‘Harry, you’ll be cooking his food in a few years,’ I would have run a mile, as my spice cupboard had only tarragon, basil, oregano – all the basics, not sumac, fennel seeds, cumin or turmeric. They certainly didn’t feature, as I don’t like mega-spicy food. That’s why The Sixteen laugh at me, as I don’t do curries! I never got into them.  Give me Ottolenghi, where you can add a little of this and that, and I’m very happy. I have all seven of his books. However, if it’s a restaurant cuisine, then it’s good old-fashioned French which I just love.

DH: Any pet hates?

HC: On a short Tube journey recently I wrote down some of the phrases I really don’t like: ‘No worries’ – what does that mean? And young people perpetually saying ‘like’. Also, when someone says ‘good job’ at the end of a concert. What does that mean? Of course we know, but it is an odd way of describing the process of making music!

DH: The Sixteen is a world-famous group which you founded. How did it begin?

HC: A bunch of friends simply getting together in Oxford. I remember being asked by a guy who came to Evensong at Magdalen to put on a concert. I did, and I drew on people I’d known at Canterbury, Oxford, Cambridge, actually from all over – older, younger, same age. It was a way of carrying on singing this wonderful 16th-century music and in a way I wanted to do it: really paying attention to the words, which I felt was not a priority in those days – it seemed to be all about sound, and little meaning textually. So, it was 16 singers singing 16th-century music: hence the name The Sixteen. Our 40th anniversary was in 2019.

DH: And going strong!

HC: Hopefully!

DH: And how is it, re-emerging after the Covid-19 pandemic?

HC: Yes, it’s interesting. We noticed before Christmas how different the attitudes were to returning to hear live music in the various areas, and the understandable anxieties for many. We had a concert in Oxford which was packed out, and two in Cadogan Hall in London, again both sold out, but 100-150

no-shows. But hopefully now people are eager for it again.

Interestingly, it’s much worse in the US. The Handel and Haydn society put on the Bach Brandenburg Concertos fairly recently, and whereas they would normally sell out, the audience was poor by their standards. But I’m pleased to say things are now on the up.

Then followed an exchange about the use of masks with regard to singing, playing and performing. There was agreement that it’s far from ideal, nor is it necessary or fair to expect musicians to perform with masks, let alone audiences having to understand texts and nuances of performance.

DH: You are president of Cathedral Music Trust. What does that involve?

HC: It’s very much a figurehead role. The Trust has incorporated what was Friends of Cathedral Music, and paying total respect to the many volunteers who previously gave –and continue to give – of their time and expertise, the new organisation has a real handle on things and is doing really good things across the sector.

Obviously, the pandemic has hit cathedrals very hard financially. The Trust is there to help preserve the younger choristers’ opportunities and education, but also, and very importantly, the back rows of altos, tenors and basses. This has been the big emphasis in the last couple of years. The Trust is very forward-thinking, with a lot of younger ex-choristers working with it on specific projects. Alexander Armstrong is an Ambassador for the Trust and he’s been doing amazing things up and down the country. We know how important this whole tradition is and how easy it would be for it to be destroyed.

My real wish is that all cathedral choirs will have access for children to be able to be day choristers and that we should rely less on boarding, not least because of the cost. We know that the experience of being a chorister is incredibly enriching in so many ways and, particularly, for later life. It’s not just about the musical education experience but how to work with other people alongside the lifelong friendships which are made. The discipline and work ethic of having to be professional as

‘ We know how important the cathedral tradition is, and it would be easy for it to be destroyed’

a young singer is invaluable. And to parents, I would say the idea of embracing such opportunities for their children should be grasped as positives.

DH: Of course. My comment would be, I hope the cathedral chapters are listening and consulting with their musicians and Cathedral Music Trust about the difficult decisions many are having to make. Moving on, the landscape is changing, given that St John’s College [Cambridge] is now admitting girl choristers and others are now following.

HC: I think it’s wonderful that St John’s has done that. If there’s a place that can make it work, it’s there. What a message they can send.

Singing is on a real high in my view. It has survived the pandemic as we have all had to come to terms with things like Zoom; and there have been some amazing things, such as the creating of virtual choirs and other areas. All that has been great and should continue. We do a lot of singing workshops on our annual pilgrimage, and it’s interesting to see the different reactions to those and where there are shining stars. Truro and Peterborough cathedrals, and Leeds Diocese with Benjamin Saunders and Tom Leech in particular, are all achieving incredible things.

DH: Are there works or composers you’d like to single out?

HC: There are just so many: I couldn’t live without Sheppard’s In media vita … and come to think of it, Libera nos would be my desert island disc. Purcell’s The Fairy Queen – what an amazing work. James MacMillan’s Stabat Mater, [and] his Miserere, which I think is probably his finest unaccompanied piece. Whenever The Sixteen perform these works, they just wow the audience. The music digs deep into their emotions. Handel’s Saul and Monteverdi’s Vespers are high on my very long list!

DH: What’s coming up?

HC: Well, we’re starting the Pilgrimage, as I said, and the repertoire is based around Parry’s Songs of Farewell. We recorded them last November but I’d never done them before apart from the first one, My soul, there is a country. I didn’t know the rest. We’ve put some medieval carols in the programme, Howells’s Take him, Earth, for cherishing and a bit of Campion for some light relief.

DH: I remember broadcasting the Songs of Farewell on the day of Brexit! Harry, it’s been lovely to chat, and good luck with all your work for our choral image in this country.

This article was first published in the July/ August 2022 issue of Choir & Organ.

ABOVE Harry Christophers conducts The Sixteen and Britten Sinfonia in the world premiere of Sir James MacMillan’s Stabat Mater (Sistine Chapel, Rome, 2018)

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CDS

single movement to which more were added later and this can occasionally lead to a rather ‘bitty’ structure of five or so very short movements, but both choirs are on splendid form, more than equal to Peat’s often challenging writing, and they successfully sustain our interest throughout.

Faces in the Mist: Choral Music

by Richard Peat

Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge, Girl Choristers of Ely Cathedral, Adam McDonagh (pf), Michel Sedgwick (tpt), Aaron Shilson (org), Anne Denholm (harp) / Sarah MacDonald (dir)

Regent REGCD554 [75:50]

Selwyn Chapel Choir and the Ely Girl Choristers directed by Sarah MacDonald continue their commendable series of CDs devoted to a single living composer with a name new to me: Richard Peat – a composer with an interesting and individual musical voice, indebted to Britten perhaps, but with a more astringent harmonic palette at times. Several of the secular mini-cantatas on this CD seem to have begun as a

There is usually a strong ‘idea’ behind each of these compositions; for instance Sanctorum Cantuarienses, in which some of the melodic writing is indebted to plainsong, is a set of three effective, if disparate, pieces inspired by St Augustine, the murder of Thomas Becket, and St Anselm. Folksong also appears as an influence, as in Winter Landscape, inspired by Caspar David Friedrich’s painting, a strong piece for the JAM (John Armitage Memorial) scoring of brass (here, trumpet – a winning contribution from Michel Sedgwick), organ and upper voices, the latter contributing a haunting refrain: five unchanged verses of the carol ‘Down in yon Forest’. However, other than these influences, the melodic invention is sometimes not especially memorable.

As always with CDs devoted to a

single composer, a certain sameness can creep in, and this is not avoided here with much relatively slow music for upper voices. Also, a few stylistic traits – semitones between the upper voices, for instance – threaten to become something of a mannerism. But there is no doubting the commitment and professionalism of both choirs, and Peat’s distinctive compositional voice is exceptionally well-served here with excellent performances all round.

MARK BELLIS

Pedro de Cristo: Magnificat, Marian Antiphons and Salve

Regina

Cupertinos / Luís Toscano (dir) Hyperion CDA68393 [75:06]

This CD continues Hyperion’s commendable exploration of the byways of Renaissance repertoire with the rather elusive Portuguese composer Pedro de Cristo (c.1550–1618) who worked in Coimbra and Lisbon. Remarkably, and unlike his better-known contemporaries such as Lobo, none of his music was published and so this project is clearly something of a labour of love for the choir’s director (and one of the two tenors) Luís Toscano, who has edited and transcribed some of the manuscripts.

The ten professional voices of Cupertinos sound glorious in the atmospherically resonant acoustics of the Basilica do Bom Jesus in Braga. The main work is de Cristo’s only known Mass setting, the Missa Salve Regina; right from the start – indeed,

CHORAL CD s

Richard Peat finds inspiration in diverse sources on his latest disc

throughout the CD – immaculate tuning and ensemble are evident, and the exquisitely coloured vowel sounds (for instance in the Gloria) to differentiate separate sections are a delight. The other Marian motets are equally rewarding, each inhabiting a successfully realised individual soundworld, from the glowing richness of the eight-voice Magnificat and Ave Maria and the joyful Alleluias of Regina Caeli to the low-voiced sonorities of Beata Dei genitrix.

The recording (by producer Adrian Peacock and engineer Dave Rowell) gives us an exciting sense of the huge acoustical space of the basilica while ensuring the clarity of each vocal line – a joy!

MARK BELLIS

Edward Nesbit: Sacred Choral Works

Choir of King’s College London, Ruby Hughes (sop), Joshua Simões (org) / Joseph Fort (dir)

Delphian DCD 34256 [66:40]

The reputation of composer Edward Nesbit (b.1986) has grown rapidly: he has had prestigious performances of several concertos and this first CD of choral music points to a dynamic and inventive musical mind. A former chorister at Tewkesbury Abbey, his music has absorbed many influences from a whole range of sources, ancient and modern. Listening to his superb Mass with its organ ostinati I was reminded of Giles Swayne’s Riff-raff and the choral writing at times evokes James MacMillan and Stravinsky (possibly the Canticum Sacrum) but there are many surprises and unusual turns. The Fanfares and Rounds for organ solo is a notable addition to the repertoire with a most powerful conclusion, bringing to mind Malcolm

Williamson and Alan Ridout. Nesbit also sets five psalms, all in different ways and perhaps highlighted by a remarkable and dramatic Psalm 59, ‘Deliver me from mine enemies, O God’. There is some very interesting and challenging music here, and the choir are very competent but this ‘socially distanced’ recording sometimes suffers from indistinctness of diction and loss of ensemble quality. But this is not to detract: I think we will hear more of this young composer and the sweep of his musical imagination is considerable.

BRET JOHNSON

Russell Pascoe: Secular Requiem, A Sequence for Remembrance, Threnody for Jowan

Truro Cathedral Choir, Catherine Wyn Rogers (alto), Julien Van Mellaerts (bar), BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Christopher Gray (dir) Regent REGCD 549 [71:37]

The unusual Requiem comprises settings of poems by, inter alia, Dylan Thomas, Rabindranath Tagore, Walt

Whitman and John Donne. As the title implies, it seeks to commemorate death through non-liturgical texts, though it is by no means the first example of its kind: Bliss, John Foulds and Vaughan Williams wrote works in a similar vein. Russell Pascoe’s (b.1959) work is quite securely cast in the English oratorio mode, with distinct musical echoes of Britten, Gerald Finzi and Patrick Hadley at various points. Pascoe has had a long association with Truro Cathedral and several works for the choir have already appeared on disc. He has also written opera, and although a non-believer himself he seeks through his music to find a synthesis of expression to accommodate those with religious faith. The choice of settings is crucial to the coherence of such a work, and the composer worked closely with a distinguished academic medic and poet on this project. I think it is a successful collaboration, and it is certainly a fine performance and recording by renowned soloists, orchestra and choir in the cathedral’s generous acoustics. Even more appealing is the Sequence for Remembrance for choir with interludes for string orchestra, which demonstrated a breadth of imagination and creative skill maybe to a greater degree than the Requiem, and of itself justifies a warm welcome to this release.

BRET JOHNSON

The Choir of King’s College London present a wide selection of Edward Nesbit’s music

Foxbrush Films

Bob Chilcott: Canticles of Light

NFM Choir, Instrumentalists of the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic / Agnieszka Franków-Želazny (dir)

NFM 81 / Signum SIGCD729 [60:26]

The most substantial work on this impressive album is Bob Chilcott’s poignant sequence of Wilfred Owen settings, written for performance on the November 2018 centenary of the poet’s death by massed choirs in his home town of Shrewsbury. In their second recording featuring Chilcott’s music, this Polish choir and players from their associated orchestra are persuasive advocates for a very powerful piece. Intense shorter works on similar themes of remembrance, hope and redemption by Francis Pott, Cecilia McDowall and James MacMillan are equally well performed, as are the three effective settings of Latin texts from Compline and the morning service of Lauds that comprise the title work, and the concluding Sing the colour of peace, written by Chilcott for the NFM choir and setting a beautiful poem by Charles Bennett. The album was recorded in 2019 but its themes gain additional resonance with its release earlier this year in a very different world.

The title track is the premiere recording of a piece by Jonathan Dove commissioned for the tricentenary of the Lord Crewe Charity, which is associated with Lincoln College. While the performances of this and two other works by Dove are excellent, the raison d’être of this post-pandemic project is the marriage between the venue and two French Masses –Duruflé’s Requiem and the monumental Messe Salve Regina by Yves Castagnet. Unable to travel abroad, the choir’s (undergraduate) director took them to L’Église Notre-Dame-de-France, off London’s Leicester Square, where the large circular space and the 1868 organ originally built by Auguste Gern, a former employee of Cavaillé-Coll, allowed them to explore repertoire unsuited to the intimate scale of Lincoln College Chapel and its 15-stop William Drake organ. The singers and organists audibly relished the opportunity, and I found much to love in these performances, particularly the choir’s warm, blended sound, the long legato lines and the ethereal effect achieved in moments such as the Benedictus of the Castagnet Mass.

CLARE STEVENS*

Vaughan Williams: Rupert Gough sculpts glowing vocal harmonies to emphasise the work’s stress on light rather than darkness, with the Southern Sinfonia’s cossetting strings providing a solid bedrock and Maxim Calver’s lugubrious cello movingly personifying the departing soul. Similar landscapes of the heart are found in seven accompanying pieces, not least the sparse textures and dreamlike reverie of And I Saw a New Heaven, a Magnificat in which jubilant folk-like melodies give way to meditative choral polyphony, and a Gloria underpinned by a majestic organ toccata.

Trésors de Paradis

Choir of Lincoln College Oxford, Daniel Mathieson (org), William Foster (org) / Matthew Foster (dir) Prima Facie PFCD196 (2CDs) [95:43]

Matthew Coleridge: Requiem

Choir of Royal Holloway, Karin Dahlberg (sop), Andrew Thompson (b-bar), Maxim Calver (vc), Southern Sinfonia, Simon Earl and George Nicholls (org) / Rupert Gough (dir) Convivium CR081 [64:03]

Substituting understated transcendency for fire and brimstone drama (the Dies Irae conspicuously absent), Matthew Coleridge’s beautiful Requiem receives lyrical advocacy from the Choir of Royal Holloway. It’s Ockeghem out of

Simon Mold: Passiontide

Knighton Consort, Helen Bailey (sop), Philip Leech (ten), Stephen Cooper (bar), Jeremy Leaman (b-bar), David Cowen (org) / Roxanne Gull (dir) Divine Art DDA 25238 [77:58]

There are pluses and minuses to this first recording of Simon Mold’s approachable Lenten cantata, Passiontide. With deftly woven musical influences drawing on Baroque Passion settings and pieces by John Stainer and J.H. Maunder, Mold’s self-assembled patchwork text brings agreeable accessibility to a fabled, oft-told story.

The Knighton Consort (curiously absent from the booklet) provide ardent if occasionally unintelligible advocacy under Roxanne Gull’s direction, with David Cowen’s organ accompaniment (on the organ of Mountsorrel Methodist Church, Leicestershire) providing secure underpinning. More problematic, regrettably, are solo voices that fall short of the music’s demands and the narrative’s majesty and drama, although Jeremy Leaman’s Pilate has the makings of a fine interpretation.

MICHAEL QUINN*

CLARE STEVENS*

The uneven recorded sound doesn’t help.

MICHAEL QUINN*

Caritas: Music of love, hope, charity and consolation

Choir of Bath Abbey, Olly Chubb (tpt), Shean Bowers (org & pf) / Huw Williams (dir)

Regent REGCD569 [79:07]

This beautifully planned and executed programme eloquently documents many significant events of the past decade. One highlight is Judith Bingham’s very fine The Sleeping Soul, celebrating the 20th anniversaries in 2017 of both Bath Abbey Girls’ Choir, who sing magnificently in all their contributions to the disc, and the ministry of women in the Church of England. John Scott, with whom conductor Huw Williams worked at St Paul’s Cathedral, is commemorated by the inclusion of his lovely arrangement of How can I keep from singing? and his descant to the hymn tune ‘St Clement’. The Abbey’s boy choristers join the lay clerks for contemplative pieces such as Purcell’s Thou knowest, Lord and – with several soloists – the Walford Davies setting of Psalm 121. We also hear girls, boys and adults singing splendidly together in works including Tavener’s Song for Athene and Ireland’s Greater love. Photos from the recording sessions in February 2022 reveal that they were able to do so without social distancing; the primary, most poignant thread running through the whole album is the effect of the pandemic. Caritas is an expression of all that was paused or lost during that period, encapsulated in another fine new work, Williams’s own Lord, you have been my dwelling place, written for performance by a small

group of singers in March 2021 at a service marking the anniversary of the first UK lockdown. I expected to like this disc; reader, I loved it.

CLARE STEVENS*

music which calls on the choir to show considerable respect to the language of the text, delivered in ancient chant and modern idiom, often to a point where conventional musicality is suspended. It’s a brave device, and is precariously but successfully sustained by Sigvards Kļava and his always impressive choir.

BRIAN MORTON*

Alfred Momotenko: Creator of Angels – Choral Works

Latvian Radio Choir / Sigvards Kl ,ava (dir)

Ondine ODE1413-2 [63:07]

Like Alfred Schnittke, Alfred Momotenko-Levitsky has managed to pair ancient forms with modernism while neither concealing nor drawing attention to the contrast. The Ukrainian composer has not previously been recorded, though he originally moved to the west in 1990, when the political situation at home became volatile. The major works here are Na strastnoy, a meditation on the Passion intended to be paired with Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil; the recent Three Sacred Hymns (interesting to compare with compatriot Valentin Silvestrov); and the newly created Angelov tvorche,

A la lumière: Saint-Saëns and Hahn

Accentus, Eloïse Bella Kohn (pf) / Christoph Grapperon (dir) Alpha Classics/Outhere Music, Alpha 864 [53:23]

This charming CD of choral music from the Belle Époque presents music by two well-known figures, Saint-Saëns and Hahn. Both wrote celebrated vocal music, including operas and operettas, but this recording concentrates on a far lesser-known area of their respective outputs: secular choral music, written for the Orphéons, that amateur music movement in France

The Choir of Bath Abbey under Huw Williams looks back over the last decade

that emerged among the middle and, to an extent, working classes in the 19th century. With two world premiere recordings of pieces by Hahn (including the album’s title track), the disc will lead many of us into new territory. While the original performers would never have achieved the polish of Accentus under Christoph Grapperon, the whole enterprise is valuable and musically rewarding.

Paweł Łukaszewski: Sacred Choral Works

State Choir Latvija / Ma¯ris Sirmais (dir)

Ondine ODE 1406 2 [58:30]

Joachim Raff: Choral Music for Mixed Choir A Cappella

Basler Madrigalisten / Raphael Immoos (dir)

Capriccio C5501 [57:00]

This complete recording of Raff’s unaccompanied choral music makes a timely appearance to mark the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth in Lachen, on the shores of Lake Zurich. The repertoire consists of a mix of the sacred and secular: the four Marian Antiphons plus a few other religious pieces; and the substantial Ten Songs for Mixed Choir, which for the first time focus on a single poet. The Basler Madrigalisten make short work of the expressive aspects of these settings, some of which show a folk influence. They are equally at home in the more sober sacred music, in which Raff points the way towards later figures such as Rheinberger and Reger. Throughout, the Basler Madrigalisten under their current artistic director, Raphael Immoos, present a clean vocal projection, excellent diction and reliable intonation. Now and then a tad more warmth in the choral blend would have been welcome, but that is to quibble in what is, taken as a whole, an enjoyable programme.

PHILIP REED*

Like his older compatriot Wojciech Kilar, Paweł Łukaszewski has been profoundly affected by the spiritual atmosphere of his native Częstochowa, home of the famous Black Madonna painting. The younger man’s choral music, though, is always profoundly concerned with text rather than more abstract musical concerns. Whether he is drawing on the Bible, Apocrypha, the Liber Usualis, the words are always paramount and they’re delivered here with almost visionary clarity by the Latvian choir. Conductor Māris Sirmais is also a communicator, as their extraordinary 2014 release Amber Vein bore out. This is a more sombre work but shot through with intimations of grace and consolation.

BRIAN MORTON*

anniversary collection of well-loved pieces from the Anglican tradition. As ever, the Vasari Singers are confident advocates for repertoire they and their conductor know very well, scrupulously adhering to every musical detail and editorial mark. In the larger-scale, more robust works, such as Elgar’s Give unto the Lord and John Cameron’s choral setting of ‘Nimrod’ as Lux aeterna, their precision sometimes has a jarring effect, perhaps because of their relatively small forces. I enjoyed Harold Darke’s rarely heard O Gladsome Light and Holst’s imaginative setting of Psalm 148 to the German melody normally used for All Creatures of our God and King, but the stand-out choral performances for me are the reflective anthems at the heart of the programme: Wesley’s Wash me throughly and Vaughan Williams’s O taste and see.

CLARE STEVENS*

Vaughan Williams: Five Mystical Songs and other choral anthems Vasari Singers, Julia Smith (sop), Elizabeth Limb (sop), Rachel Limb (sop), Kate Jurka (sop), Roderick Williams (bar), Martin Ford (org) / Jeremy Backhouse (dir) Naxos 8.574416 [76:14]

An exquisite performance of The Call by Roderick Williams and Martin Ford (the organ accompaniment suiting the piece so well) is a highlight of this Vaughan Williams

All Angels: Choral Works by George Arthur Choir of Royal Holloway, London, Cecily Beer (harp) / Rupert Gough (dir)

Convivium CR078 560 (2 CDs) [86:23]

George Arthur [Richford] is a multiaward-winning composer based in Hampshire, published by Universal Editions, Music Sales, Shorterhouse and the Guild of Church Musicians. His music has been broadcast by BBC Radios 3 & 4 and BBC Television, most notably on the occasion of the Commonwealth Commemoration Service live from Glasgow Cathedral. This is an impressive recording in many ways, yet a curious one. All the music is credited with a time span extending over the course of a five-year period. It is distinguished by outstanding singing, the great

PHILIP REED*

majority of it unaccompanied. Where the singing is accompanied, it is to the glorious playing of harpist Cecily Beer, a specialist in the art of combining in such ensemble work and, on the evidence of this recording, a player of real distinction and discernment; it comes as no surprise to learn from her biographical note that she is also a professional singer.

The styles range from the simplicity of an Evensong canticle setting to a much more elaborate Mass, with carols alongside numerous motets. With the exceptions of the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis and a few carol settings, including Tomorrow shall be my dancing day, a detailed preliminary study of the helpful programme note is strongly recommended before embarking on tackling the multisegmented works. At almost an hour and a half’s duration, over two CDs totalling 25 tracks, this is emphatically a recording not to be devoured all at one go to achieve a positive listening experience!

SIMON LINDLEY

Stephen Shellard’s highly effectual direction, tackle the task with evident relish, affection even.

The composer’s modest, selfeffacing notes on the music provide an endearing insight into Paul Fisher’s outlook on life. He is very well known and highly regarded throughout Yorkshire as well as in his home diocese of Worcester, where he spent many of his valued formative years.

There are 16 works in this enjoyable recital, five of them for organ and 11 for the choir. Of the latter corpus are deeply felt movements from Black Light – A Requiem for times of war and destruction. Fisher shows himself highly adept at the business of selecting texts with which he has, clearly, an intimate affinity. Indeed, it’s clear that words are immensely important to him – and he’s not above contributing his own text if the need is deeply felt – as in God, you’re misbehavin’, which he describes as a Psalm of Protest in American Spiritual style.

The text for the eponymous track, The Mystery of Things, is a deeply felt setting of words from King Lear. This recording is evidently only the second such venture undertaken by the finely blended Proteus group. It will be well received, not least on account of some fine solo contributions from within the ranks.

SIMON LINDLEY

The Mystery of Things: Choral and Organ works by Paul Fisher Proteus Ensemble, Hannah Grove (sop), Jennifer Walker (sop), Catherine Perfect (alto), Nicholas Drew (ten), William Gee (bass), Richard Cook (org), Gabrielle Bullock (reader) / Stephen Shellard (dir) Regent REGCD520 [59:58]

The focuses of Paul Fisher’s life and work are happily combined with this fine recording made in the superb surroundings of Worcester Cathedral, with the wonderful sonorities of its magnificent Kenneth Tickell organ superbly handled by Richard Cook in an accompanimental role as well as a soloistic resource. The Proteus Ensemble, under

In London Town

Ben Sheen, Dobson ‘Op. 93’ organ, St Thomas’s Church, Fifth Avenue, New York

CRD crd3541 [77:36]

Ben Sheen, one of our brightest young organists, recently appointed Director of Music at Jesus College, Cambridge, was a chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral under the late John Scott, and later served as his Assistant Director of Music at St Thomas’s, Fifth Avenue in New York. On this, his first CD, we have not only an affectionate tribute to Scott, but a colourful postcard of English music from New York.

The organ, which Scott sadly did not live to see to completion, is the extraordinary, virtually all new Dobson (2018) in St Thomas’s and Sheen gives us a dazzling, kaleidoscopic tour of its breathtaking range, and, to my ears, its uniquely American sound. One really gets the feeling of a performer entirely at one with the instrument.

The thoughtfully designed

Ben Sheen is ‘entirely at one’ with the remarkable Dobson organ of St Thomas, Fifth Avenue in New York

Ben Sheen

programme features touching tributes to Scott such as Andrew Carter’s hauntingly beautiful Lacrimae, and a fair number of arrangements – all thrown off with great musicality and panache. For instance, Elgar’s Cockaigne Overture, in a new arrangement by the performer’s bassoonist father, certainly shows off the instrument’s ever-changing, vivid colours to great effect – the chorus reeds and the ebullient chamade trumpet will pin you to the back of your seat – while Ireland’s Elegy features an exquisite wash of quiet string sounds which seems the exact aural equivalent of Monet’s impressionistic view of Westminster which graces the booklet cover.

Howells’s Master Tallis’s Testament is persuasively done, with each variation inhabiting its own distinctive soundworld and the late Simon Preston’s famous, Messiaen-ic Alleluyas is quite brilliantly projected – a gripping highlight.

The recording quality is excellent, giving a real sense of this remarkable instrument in the generous acoustic space of St Thomas’s. In all, this view of London from a distinctly American viewpoint is a very personal document, quite brilliant performed, and a hugely convincing debut from this very talented performer. Highly recommended.

MARK BELLIS

organ scholar, St Matthew’s, Northampton – a church not only with a proud history of commissions, thanks to Walter Hussey, but also the possessor of a fine Walker organ which seems a perfect match for Alger’s programme of Bairstow and Elgar (indeed, the latter’s Sonata no. 1 dates from exactly the same year as the organ, 1895).

The Elgar Sonata is very effectively done, exploring a wealth of different registrations on an instrument which the performer clearly knows well and is entirely at home with. And Bairstow’s splendid three movement Sonata in E flat (1937) again is hugely convincing – its virtuosic, central scherzo-like (but actually more weighty than that term implies) Allegro giocoso is terrifically projected – a real highlight.

from this outstandingly talented young organist.

MARK BELLIS

Arnold Cooke: Organ Works

Tom Winpenny, Harrison organ of St Albans Abbey

Toccata Classics TOCC0659 [80:47]

Maestoso

Callum Alger, Walker organ, St Matthew’s Church, Northampton Regent REGCD572 [62:13]

Callum Alger, Director of Music at St Peter’s Collegiate Church, Wolverhampton (the recipient of Catheral Music Trust’s Edington Festival Award last year), returns to a church at which he was previously

The minor shorter pieces also have their charms; for instance, Elgar’s Cantique, arranged from his own Wind Quintet, and Bairstow’s familiar Evening Song, originally for cello and piano, are both sensitively done and played with great musicality.

Overall, the recording is very clear, and if there is relatively little acoustic resonance, at least one can certainly hear all the notes, which in this late Romantic repertoire (e.g. the rather thickly scored Elgar Sonata) is as welcome as it is unusual. In summary, a very impressive recital

Arnold Cooke (1906–2005) composed music of an agreeable and wellcrafted quality over a period of nearly 70 years. A native Yorkshireman, he spent many years as an academic musician in Manchester and London, and his influence on many composers from Kenneth Leighton to William Mathias and John Joubert cannot be underestimated.

His study with Paul Hindemith in Berlin is widely regarded as the key to his musical persona but his music draws on elements of the English pastoral tradition, with frequent homage paid to baroque and neoclassical forms. Much of Cooke’s organ music was a product of his

Imogen Morgan makes a persuasive argument for re-evaluating the organ music of Robin Milford

Imogen Morgan

mature years. If, like me, you know and love the Hindemith Organ Sonatas you will find many rewarding parallels in this music, for example in the striking Suite in G (1989), his last organ work, notable for a beautiful and serene Andante. The arresting Toccata and Aria (1966) is a study of contrasts. Modal writing abounds, and a wide range of expressive quality and variety can be found at all levels.

I found this to be a very satisfying recording of music by a composer who deserves greater recognition. He has found a persuasive advocate in Tom Winpenny’s masterful playing, which adds to his ever growing catalogue of organ music by 20th-century British composers. The versatility of the St Albans organ and Tom Winpenny’s skilful registration combine to justify a warm recommendation.

BRET JOHNSON

manner. That is not to say that all the music is straightforward. By the late 1930s, with war approaching, his style underwent quite a dramatic change and became much more intense, as is evident in the Easter Meditations (1943) and especially the Two Autumn Meditations (1947), which, albeit short and compressed, are works of passion and anguish, both in a classic ‘arch’ shape. The Easter Meditations display even greater expressive power and rhapsodic searching. Milford’s life turned darker in the 1950s with increasing bouts of mental illness, leading eventually to his suicide in 1959. This is an enjoyable compilation on a fine instrument by the enterprising young organist Imogen Morgan. There is a website and Trust devoted to Milford’s life and his wider activities as a composer with several interesting articles (robinmilfordtrust.org.uk). He is worthy of exploration and appraisal.

BRET JOHNSON

Via Crucis was recorded in Guildford Cathedral in July 2022 by Richard Moore, now at Christ Church, Oxford, but until Easter 2023 Sub Organist at Guildford. The compelling interpretative skill and superb organ management of the Surrey cathedral instrument has been produced in the wake of the removal of the infamous original roof tiling that had prevailed for so very long.

How one’s heart rejoices in the richness of the resultant voicing and enhanced regulation of this fine instrument in its wonderfully rejuvenated state! The Guildford foundation will be justified in being the inheritors of a fine recording from their noble building set to music by their second Organist and Choimaster since the consecration in 1961.

The Milner-White devotional texts are expressively spoken by The Reverend Dr Barry Orford, whose memorably enhanced tone of voice is an absolutely ideal vehicle for Milner-White’s stanzas. The composer’s notes on this lovely music pinpoint an ingenuity in terms at once lucid and logical, indicating how much is thematically derived during its course.

Robin Milford: Organ works

Imogen Morgan, Organ of St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh Priory PRCD 1246 [77:30]

Robin Milford (1903–59) – like his contemporaries Herbert Murrill, Percy Whitlock, Herbert Howells, and Thomas Armstrong – was a trained organist who composed both for the instrument and for larger forces. Milford has suffered the fate of so many composers who after many years writing ‘user-friendly’ music fall into posthumous oblivion. Yet a fair amount of his organ music was published in his lifetime, and it follows a path never too distant from those named above, nor from his friend Gerald Finzi (1901–56). Milford wrote many epigrammatic sketches and paraphrases on well-known folk tunes, hymns and carols in an attractive and easily approachable

Philip Moore: Via Crucis

The Revd Dr Barry Orford (narrator), Richard Moore (org) Convivium CR079 [59:11]

Philip Moore’s processional work Via Crucis is a wholesome and glorious concept. It is inspired by A Procession of Passion Prayers, produced to universal acclaim almost exactly three-quarters of a century ago, in 1950, by Eric Milner-White, Dean of York. Dr Moore’s musical commentaries on Milner-White’s texts are wholly remarkable, burning as they do with the white heat of inspiration ‘full clear on every page’, to quote the famous initial verse of E.H. Plumptre’s notable and greatly loved hymn Thy hand, O God, has guided.

The hymn melody Rockingham – universally sung to Isaac Watts’s When I survey the wondrous cross – is the most moving finale, entitled The Crown, to the sequence of words and music. A masterstroke and a real summation of everything that has gone before, it serves, in the composer’s own words, ‘… to anchor worshippers into a familiar world of words and music associated with Holy Week.’

Warm congratulations to all involved in a superb recording of this remarkable work. The splendid momentum achieved both in space and silence displays a rarely found sensitivity from the recording team of Adaq Khan, George Arthur Richford, Mike Cooter and Adrian Green, who have really served the player, speaker, librettist and composer well in an exemplary manner.

SIMON LINDLEY

BOOKS

Cathedral’s girl choristers. She also works independently as a conductor organist, pianist and composer.

Cathedrals, Chapels, Organs, Choirs: A Personal View

Sarah MacDonald

August Press

ISBN 979-8-218-04214-1

Paperback; 379 pages plus prelims and appendices. RRP £26.99

As many readers will know, Sarah MacDonald is currently Fellow and Director of Music at Selwyn College Cambridge, appointed in 1999 as the first woman to hold such a post in an Oxbridge college, and Director of Ely

This book is an anthology of the articles she wrote for The American Organist magazine between 2009 and 2020. They are arranged by topic rather than chronologically and include sections on choral and organ scholarships (outlining the application and audition processes from the perspective of both candidates and directors of music); the differing traditions of Oxford and Cambridge, and the differences between working in collegiate and cathedral settings; training boy and girl choristers; maintaining the vocal health of your singers; choosing service music; sourcing and commissioning music by women composers; broadcasting and making recordings; working with other choirs and more.

There are touching memorial tributes to figures of international significance such as Sir David Willcocks and John Scott and those

whose reputation is perhaps less widely known such as the distinguished organ teacher David Sanger who nurtured the careers of so many gifted players, and Brian Jordan, proprietor of a legendary Cambridge music shop. John Rutter provides a Foreword and there is a small but varied selection of guest columns by other church musicians. Recent history is vividly documented by a section on the pandemic. MacDonald was born and brought up in a family of church musicians in Canada, where she originally undertook conservatoire training as a pianist, conductor and organist before moving to the UK as Organ Scholar of Robinson College Cambridge. This gives her a very interesting transatlantic perspective and she is good at identifying and explaining some some of the terminology and rituals that may mystify her American readers and indeed anyone unfamiliar with Oxbridge or with the Anglican choral world. She is a gifted photographer, and the anthology could be described as an album of verbal snapshots of her busy days, which usually begin at the crack of dawn with a chilly journey by train and bike from Cambridge to Ely in time for pre-school rehearsals with her choristers.

The drawback of the book’s format and its completeness is that the scene-setting for each column can be somewhat repetitive, as the landmarks of the academic terms reappear in random order, making it quite tiring to read from cover to cover. But it is packed full of genuinely helpful information and insights.

CLARE STEVENS

LEFT Sarah MacDonald recounts a lifetime in the Anglican choral tradition in her new book

SHEET MUSIC

James MacMillan: Who Shall Separate Us?

SSAATTBB unaccompanied

Boosey & Hawkes 9790060140310, £2.75 print, £2.20 digital download

Alison Willis: Like the Dove SATB & organ

Encore Publications, £2.50

Gerald Near: The Call SATB & organ

MorningStar AE175, US$2.25

Judith Bingham: The Sleeping Soul SATB (div) & organ

Peters Edition 9790577022932, £3.50

Which composer can claim an audience of around four billion for the premiere of an a cappella choral piece? Step forward James MacMillan (pictured), whose anthem Who Shall Separate Us? was written for the funeral of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. It impressed me on that first hearing, and further study has consolidated that opinion. Aspiring composers of choral music, please note two things: the basic idea behind this anthem is beautifully simple; and – there is a basic idea. MacMillan has absorbed the natural rhythm of the text, and allowed the implication of that rhythm – an anacrusis of quavers leading to a longer note for the next natural stress – to permeate his piece. Melody and harmony strongly feature the interval of a third, which is excitingly stretched at the words ‘nor any other creature…’ The longest notes are reserved for references to the Deity. A final ‘Alleluia’ section has greater ecstatic movement in which thirds again dominate. (An alternative text is provided for occasions and seasons when ‘alleluia’ is inappropriate.) Every vocal line is frequently subdivided. This consideration apart, the anthem falls within the capabilities of a wide variety of choirs, and is suitable for general

use. Having said that, I do think this is a special piece of music.

Alison Willis relies almost entirely on an engagingly lucid melody for her anthem Like the Dove. Here is another piece that could be sung at any time of the year, but would be particularly useful at Whitsuntide. The accompaniment is for organ with or without pedals, and is almost completely chordal. Above it, we hear what is effectively a three-verse song in which the final phrase of each strophe is more lavish than its predecessor. There is a quiet radiance about the whole composition which is most attractive.

Another three-verse anthem for choir and organ is Gerald Near’s setting of George Herbert’s famous poem The Call (‘Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life’). The main melody has strength and direction. It is heard in unison at the beginning, and in a similar but slightly embellished version at the end. The second verse is a meditation on the original tune. All this is supported by organ harmonies that are often unexpected but never unwelcome. (The part is conceived for church organ with a pedalboard.) The composer’s only problem is that his setting of Herbert’s words joins a growing list of attractive alternatives!

Judith Bingham wrote The Sleeping Soul (the marvellous words are by

the 13th-century St Mechthild of Magdeburg) in 2017, but this fine composition has only recently been published. The text is quite long, and there are few repetitions in Bingham’s setting. The words are sensitively set, and the composer never argues with their natural rhythm. Here is another piece in which the interval of a third, major and minor (and their inversions) have a part to play in the construction of the whole. The accumulations of that interval allow the music to move off in many harmonic directions; we are taken on a colourful, purposeful journey. The organ (manuals and pedal) part sits well on the instrument and is generally helpful to the choir. It contains at the outset some staccato chords like little shafts of light. I wondered if we might encounter these again towards the end, and was slightly disappointed to find that we don’t. The whole composition is a compelling musical essay by a highly accomplished composer. Turning the pages for the first time, some may see only difficulties; but Bingham’s experience as a singer ensures that all the lines are very singable. Experienced choirs looking for an extended work that really has something to say should give this piece serious consideration.

JEREMY JACKMAN*

What is your earliest memory of performing in church?

I was incredibly lucky. I went to a prep school in Northumberland where the headmaster’s wife was an inspirational musician, adored by one and all. She ran a four-part choir which she drilled impeccably, so the standard was extraordinarily high. We performed carol services around Northumberland every Christmas. That was my first experience of performance in a church. It gave us all such a buzz to be part of something we all knew was exceptionally good. Joining that choir – for me and all the others – started a lifelong relationship with music. Heartbreakingly, I came back one Easter term (and wouldn’t it be an Easter term) to discover that this wonderful woman had left her headmaster husband and moved on. My world, which had come to revolve around singing in this fabulous choir, rather collapsed. My parents did some research and discovered the choir school at St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh. I was despatched to audition for Dennis Townhill forthwith and subsequently became a chorister there. My first ever performance at St Mary’s was Bach’s St John Passion. I remember it being like a dream – it was the first time I’d sung with an orchestra.

NEXT

Interview by ADRIAN HORSEWOOD

Is there a cathedral or church that’s especially close to your heart?

St Mary’s Cathedral and the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge will always be special, having sung many services in each. But the truth is all choir stalls are redolent of one another – the smell of the wood polish, the clang of the glass candle guards. I could stand in any choir stalls in the country and feel a comforting familiarity.

Figures indicate that the number of churchgoers in the UK has been slowly, but steadily, declining for decades, yet cathedrals report ever-growing congregations for choral services, particularly Evensong. What does this say about music in cathedral worship today?

I think music is one of the great unassailable treasures of the Church. It makes no demands of the listener, who can take it on his or her own terms. It offers an intensely personal form of spiritual participation, which means it can work its magic on everyone, whether they’re ‘religious’ or not. Evensong is another of the Church’s gems. It takes place at that most poetic time of day, the point of balance – the ‘evening’ – between day and night. Candlelit in December, brightly sunlit in June. It’s also a short service – 45 minutes usually – so you can sit and enjoy having your mind

transported by Cranmer’s ancient and mysterious liturgy and some of the best music ever composed.

Which piece would you use to introduce a newcomer to the world of cathedral music?

Libera nos by John Sheppard, in the recording by the Cambridge Singers and John Rutter.

What is your role as an Ambassador for Cathedral Music Trust?

To raise awareness of our wonderful choirs. I want everyone to know what amazing music is to be heard daily in our cathedrals, and that it’s open to all. You don’t have to do anything but turn up. I also want to make sure that everyone knows that their choirs audition seven-year-olds every year to fill the chorister places. I owe my entire career to my time as a chorister – there is nothing that comes close to it. Our public life is full of high-achieving ex-choristers from Ed Sheeran to Keith Richards to Harry Christophers to Alastair Cook to Jon Snow … the list is quite extraordinary. You don’t have to be religious, you don’t have to be a boy, you don’t have to be posh – it’s open to everyone who’s prepared to work and enjoy being part of an exceptional musical ensemble.

‘I think music is one of the great unassailable treasures of the Church’

ISSUE Andrew Nethsingha reveals how he prepared the music for the coronation of King Charles III / Sheffield Cathedral appoints a new Director of Music / Kenneth Leighton’s choral music receives a new recording

John Cairns

WHATJOYSOTRUE

THOMASWEELKES:ANTHEMS, CANTICLES,CONSORTMUSIC

TheChoirofChichesterCathedral

TheRoseConsortofViols directedbyCharlesHarrison

Markingthe400thanniversaryofthedeathofThomasWeelkes(15761623)thisisavariedandwide-rangingcollectionofanthems,services, organvoluntaries,andworksforviolsfromtheChoirofChichester Cathedral–whereWeelkeswasOrganistfrom1601/2untilhisdeath–andtheRoseConsortofViols,directedbyCharlesHarrison.

FRANKMARTIN: MESSEPOUR DOUBLECHOEUR MAURICEDURUFLÉ: REQUIEM

LaMâitrisedeToulouse ConservatoiredeToulouse directedbyMarkOpstad

TheextraordinaryMassforDoubleChoirbytheSwisscomposerFrank MartiniscoupledwiththefirstrecordingofDuruflé’sRequiembya Frenchchildren’schoir.

‘…commendableclarity,musicalityandexpressiveenthusiasmfromthe complexitiesoftheCredothroughtothatsublimeAngusDei.’ AndrewMcGregor,BBCRadio3RecordReview

‘Oneofthefinestreleasessofarthisyear. ’ @ChimeoartsFebruary2023

‘Attentiontodetailisexemplary,tuningimmaculate,andtheirfresh,youthful soundisimmenselyappealing’ ★★★★★ ChoirandOrganMay2023

LOVEILLUMINATES

TheChapelChoirofSelwynCollege, Cambridge

MariaMarchant(piano),EmmaDenton (cello),MattDenton(violin), AdamField(organ) directedbySarahMacDonald

Thedebutalbumofmusicbyprize-winningScottishComposerJoanna Gillwho,afterstudyingundercomposer,PaulMealormovedtoLondon andhashadhermusicperformedbytheBBCSingers,onRadio3,and prestigiousvenuesincludingTheRoyalAlbertHall.RecordedinEly Cathedral.

REGENTRECORDS,POBox528,Wolverhampton,WV39YW 01902424377www.regentrecords.com(withsecureonlineordering). RetaildistributionbyRSKEntertainmentLtd,Tel:01488608900, info@rskentertainment.co.uk.AvailableintheUSAfromtheOrganHistorical Societywww.ohscatalog.org.ScanQRcodetosignuptoourmailinglist

The Prayer Book Society

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REGCD574

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