!! Latest schedule changes !!

[teamsaint]

The living, working tradition of the cathedrals and particularly their choirs in UK is a marvel in progress, and I 'd like to put a cautionary tale to those who resent CE twice a week.

[a] until very recently, CE was very nearly the only regular, year round TRULY LIVE piece of music making on R3.
[b] The choirs are anab initio training ground for musicians of all manner of stripes from rock to jazz to classical.
[c] the music can provide a lab for young composers to learn the tricky trade of setting pieces for voices in protected and expert sujrroundings
BUT, and here's the cautionary tale:
Over the last few years I have travelled a lot in Europe, notably to France and Spain, and a distressing number of the fabulous cathedrals of those two nations are sadly empty mausolea.

They have wondrous choir spaces, majestic organ facilities, some have awesome libraries of MS, and have been homes to some of the finest musicians / composers in the European tradition. Not any more. The working choirs that led worship, adorned services, raised the spirit in more senses than one, have largely gone, many incredibly by archepiscopal diktat in pursuit of a laicising democratisation of music making - which in effect usually means a microphone, an electronic keybpard, a quavering nun or hubristic and self-deceiving wannabe singer priest, crucifyingly banal music sometimes on Sundays but rarely at other times, to pitifully small congregations.

Walking round, on weekdays, you can certainly hear discreet 'holy music' piped via a PA system. And you know what? The choirs you hear haloing the beautiful spaces on these systems are almost exclusively ENGLISH catheral choirs on CD. How ironic is that? Many guides do not know that Victoria or Guerrero or Morales, or whoever learnt his stuff in these very choir stalls. An act of supreme musical vandalism has happened over the last 50 years. Once the resource of a dcecently trained choir goes, the beating heart of a great church and the culture that always accumulates round our great churhes goes with it.

So before we get too high on the usual crowings about the demise of CE, just think through a few of the ramifications of that hollow battle cry. You may be atheist, and hate religion on radio etc, and I would not for a minute deny you a chance to shout / celebrate that, BUT think what that church, that cathedral and its hard working muscial community are doing for their town, city etc.
AND
if the oxygen of publicity afforded by BBC R3's CE is cut off, the place/ the music / the centre of excellence will slowly die, at first imperceptible, but accelerating, and with it the entire coral reef of musical and cultural excellence that any cathedral accretes. Make cathedral choirs less rewarded by offering us an occasional oportunity to eavesdrop on their excellence, and kids will stop singing there and that creative cycle will thin and deplete, and that will slowly rot the cultural fabric of major cities.

Saddened rant over.

Much of what you say I agree with.
However, I would be much happier to enthusiastically support the cathedral choirs if they really were centres of excellence, instead of, for very many people, a short cut for their kids to scholarships to good public schools.

I would love to see choirs allowing other keen and talented singers to train and sing with them for a week or two. To take music making excellence out into the local community much more often. To stop the glamorous tours abroad in favour of working with people who really need it.
Excellence does not have to mean exclusivity.(especially in the church).
Its such a shame seeing such incredible standards being shared so thinly.

oh, and I REALLY hope today's choirs don't suffer the quite ludicrous schedule that choristers did back in the day....absolute nonsense and NOT good for personal development !!