6 minute read
Music
As everybody says, it has been a year — and continues to be a year — like no other. There have again been a large number of concerts — not quite as many as usual, of course, but many, nonetheless. The first two terms were unaffected by the pandemic so that the musicians had the opportunity for the usual round of instrumental and vocal recitals every Friday lunchtime in Cheap Street Church, Carol Services and choral concerts ranging from the Chamber Choir being joined by a broadcasting boys’ choir from Norway (the Sølvguttene), a Choral Society (formerly MusSoc) performance of Mozart’s Requiem in the Abbey, to the twice-weekly school services; a few Prep School workshop days involving Shirburnians getting to grips with the coaching of younger instrumentalists for a ‘grand finale’ at tea-time; instrumental competitions and masterclasses on Sundays with external adjudicators and leaders; and a plethora of grade exams with a handful of impressive diplomas. The last two live performances before everything stopped in March were given by the Sherborne Schools’ Symphony Orchestra in St John’s Smith Square, London and the Chamber Choir in a full Festal Evensong in the School Chapel on the Eve of the Annunciation (a service followed by the annual dinner for Chamber Choir singers and their parents in the OSR) just a matter of days before the School closed and the first Lockdown started.
And so, began the entirely new era of remote virtual music. There is no doubt whatsoever that Shirburnians have risen to the challenge with admirable enthusiasm. It had been important to find a solution to our world-wide musical problem that would give the young an ability to be part of ensemble musicmaking one way or another — and to see their friends whilst doing so — at the same time recreating that strong sense of team that being in a 104-strong Choir and 60 plus Wind Band (not to mention the many other slightly smaller ensembles) had been engendering on a weekly basis in Sherborne. Remember that, for the many who enjoy musicmaking these days, being without can be as difficult as is a lack of exercise.
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As with so many other aspects of life, the solution presented itself in Zoom before Teams video caught up. Whilst the Prime Minister spoke to us just hours after returning from hospital, on Zoom, after his own spell of COVID-19, the Abbey choristers were already meeting on Zoom prior to making solo recordings to be compiled on the wondrous Apple software ‘Logic Pro X’ — think of it as electronic Sellotape for sticking together a limitless number of recording tracks — to appear weekly on YouTube (as they still do). Once the Trinity Term had begun, in its remote form, individual instrumental music lessons for Shirburnians were quickly discovered to be highly effective: the latency, which rapidly improved as Zoom was regularly upgraded, together with the occasional Internet glitches, didn’t prohibit pupil enjoyment of music taught online, and indeed it continues this term in the Music School practice/teaching rooms as pupils attend their lessons with a device and an instrument while their teachers remain at home. The smaller rooms are not big enough for social distancing.
Ensembles and large choirs were altogether more complicated because, for all its virtues, Zoom cannot successfully enable more than one voice or instrument at a time — at its heart it is conference software for situations in which you do not want more than one person to speak at a time! But overnight, therefore, Shirburnians became accustomed to the idea that they were to be ‘recording stars’ by virtue of the ‘Voice Memo’ app on their mobile phones. There is nonetheless a vast difference between rehearsing in a Wind Band with sixty-four of your friends and instead then having to meet on Zoom for about ten minutes social interaction before recording your own musical part to be submitted by email to the conductor! It is possible, too, that family members didn’t always enjoy having to listen to the second, third, fourth and fifth recording attempts! Some young musicians thought that they were wise to the fact that, in effect, the weekly recordings were starting to act as re-auditions but in reality the recording tracks genuinely weren’t auditions: the process of compiling recordings involved a fair degree of editing and there simply wasn’t time to ‘judge’ the individual performance or to worry about whether or not it was as ‘good’ as it could have been. In any case, for most of them it was all about ‘taking part’ and then being able to listen to their performances later — and it was in this spirited commitment that they most excelled. If it is the case that the pupils became overnight –
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recording stars, the music staff certainly became overnight record producers — and classical Music Technology became, by necessity, every music teacher’s new specialism.
Probably the biggest issue arose with those boys who — whether ordinarily playing an instrument at near beginner level, or perhaps singing happily amongst eighty or so other singers, suddenly found themselves without anybody else to lead and encourage them, and therefore became initially reluctant to record. The solution was to provide ‘Guide Tracks’ — fresh recordings of the music by the teacher-conductor, with the pupil’s instrumental or vocal part played onto the recording at an audibly greater volume. And then there were also the ‘conducting videos‘: short videos made by the music staff of themselves conducting the recordings — so that the pupils were able to follow the beat and get one step closer to the real experience (yet with the ability to rewind several times and several attempts at recording the music). That process became faster for the teachers every bit as much as it did for the pupils but, certainly in the earliest days, making a video that involved animatedly conducting an empty space at home was certainly extraordinary — and the number of re-takes and renewed attempts at the videos (again, all on the mobile phone) probably reflected the identical number of re-takes that the pupils were creating on their instrument or voice!
Countless hours went into the production of remote ‘virtual’ performances for the annual Gala Concert at Commem by the Chamber Orchestra, Swing Band, chamber music trios, Wind Band, Barbershop and Close Harmony — all of which started and ended their performances at home, individually, and probably in their third or fourth version when emailed. These performances, and the many others made that term, are still available on the website and by searching ‘Sherborne School’ on YouTube.
Remote music, at least for the time being, has been replaced by ‘socially distanced music’. All ensembles continue as before March, with special Music Lunches in the Music School within its new one-way system and regimented times for collecting food according to bubbles (to be eaten in the Perspexscreened rehearsal rooms) with maximum rehearsal time limits following government guidelines. It is quite remarkable how quickly Shirburnians have adapted, again, and how keen they are to make music happen — which isn’t to say that they don’t look forward to the return of normality!
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