Music Matters: Christmas in the Fens, 22.xii.2018

[Quilisma]

I'm not sure if anybody here listened to the latest issue of Music Matters (last Saturday), and in the mad pre-Christmas rush it may well have been overlooked, but parts of it could possibly be of interest.

The first item was an interview with Paul Trepte about music at Ely Cathedral (this having been his final Christmas before retirement on Easter Day), with regard to both the historical legacy and the way forward. There was then an item about song-writing and another about folk music and Morris dancing, which may be of less interest to readers here, but the fourth and fifth items returned to the choral theme. First, there was an interview with Timothy Day, author of the new book about the development and continuous evolution of "an English style" with particular reference to the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. (And yes, it's all very much more recent and very much more varied and more malleable than some people love to maintain.) Then there was a feature by the wonderfully sensible Anna Lapwood (Director of Music at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and founder of the Pembroke College Girls' Choir), in partnership with Edward Wickham (Director of Music at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and founder of the St Catharine's College Girls' Choir).

The heartening thing was that there was a great deal of fundamental agreement between Trepte, Day, Lapwood and Wickham on "that topic", despite the presenter perhaps trying to suggest that there might not be! Journalists, eh?!?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0001psl

I trust everyone is having a wonderful Christmastide!

[ardcarp]

I haven't heard it yet (so much to catch up on) but I treasure the Amner CD made by Ely a little while ago.

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dw.asp?dc=W1

All the more keen to listen now I realise it's not presented by Tom Service.

[hmvman]

Yes, I heard it on Saturday while driving. I found the item about the 'English Style' and KCC very interesting and will listen again soon.

[Alison]

Thanks for this, I love Ely and Paul Trepte so will take a listen.

[Quilisma]

Nice to see ardcarp mentioning the 1994 Amner album on Hyperion, which is indeed a good recording. Incidentally, the excerpts of Tye Masses featured in the programme were taken from the 1998 recording on the ASV Gaudeamus label, which is also good.

Alison, it's great to hear you saying this! A couple more vintage Ely things have appeared on the YouTube channel of the Archive of Recorded Church Music recently, namely an Anglia TV documentary about the choir from 1986 and the live televised Midnight Mass from Christmas 1992. Especially in light of the recent television programme about King's College Choir, it was fascinating to see what things are still very familiar today and what things have changed very radically. I have to say that between 1986 and 1992 the choir's singing seems to have improved a very great deal. PT can surely take a lot of the credit for that. We should remember that there is in fact more than one highly esteemed long-serving choral director in Cambridgeshire who is soon to retire and has just presided for his final Christmas in post...

Following on again from what Lesley Garrett has been saying recently, the presenter seemed somewhat keen to imply that PT might be, or might have been, resistant to girl choristers; but nothing could be further from the truth. PT was resolute in only saying what he meant to say. In the event, it was pleasing to hear that what PT said about the topic was fully compatible (and in full agreement) with what Timothy Day, Edward Wickham and Anna Lapwood said later on in the programme.

[oddoneout]

Following on again from what Lesley Garrett has been saying recently, the presenter seemed somewhat keen to imply that PT might be, or might have been, resistant to girl choristers;

Didn't he go back to an all-male choir at St Edmondsbury, which might have had something to do with the presenter taking that line?

[ardcarp]

I've heard the programme now..and I have to say Kate M. wasn't much of an improvement on TS...i.e. asking questions on her 'list' almost regardless of the answers given. As you say Quilisma, all the DOMs interviewed gave very sensible answers! I'm not quite sure that Christmas in the Fens was a relevant title to the programme...apart from the King's broadcast thing which 'was the beginning of a tradition'. Erm. Timothy Day in 'I Saw Eternity the Other Night' rather overstates the case I fear. There have been boys' choirs singing in churches, cathedrals and colleges for a very long time. We know from 18th/19th century writings that standards were not always good...especially from the singing men (e.g. playing bowls in the choir stalls and turning up drunk.) S.S. Wesley was often faced with performing his anthems...at the many carthedrals with which he was associated ...with 'one man and his dog', so to speak. However, it was not King's College that put proper robed choirs on the map, save for the fact of the happy combination of Christmastide and Broadcasting. The Oxford Reform Movement, IMHO, was responsible for renewing the 'lost tradition' of church music as well as the ceremonial aspects of worship. Whilst much of the Victorian repertoire that went along with it is not to our taste today...and maybe just not very good...at least it was designed with a head-voice treble part in mind. One also thinks of the reformers of repertoire such as R.R. Terry and Edmund Fellowes whose editions were sung by 'traditional choirs' way before the King's thing. Some of us are old enough to have known ex-choristers, now long dead, who sang in such choirs. Let us also remember that some Parish Church music was also very good, and many a cathedral organist was appointed from Parish Churches (A.H.Mann for one) to cathedrals and colleges.

On one point I partly agree with Timothy Day, and that is the importance of David Wulstan's Clerkes of Oxenford in introducing young women to sing with pure head voices. I slightly disagree however that the many fine ensembles (Tenebrae, Voce 8, Polyphony, etc, etc) try to imitate boy trebles. They don't! They have their own special quality which can be heard a mile off, and which is just BRILLIANT. And that trend (of women's new style of choral singing) was developing when I was a student. As a founder member of Ex Cathedra, I can vouch for the fact that nobody ever suggested the sopranos should 'sing like boys' !

[DracoM]

Wasn't Edwin Drood [erm........fiction!!] a lay-clerk or similar in a boy-top cathedral choir?

And yes, IME, David Wulstan completely changed how I listened to the repertoire.
Have to say George Guest did as well.

[Quilisma]

Didn't he go back to an all-male choir at St Edmondsbury, which might have had something to do with the presenter taking that line?

If I have understood correctly, that decision had already been taken unilaterally, and enforced, by the Provost of St Edmundsbury at the time, which is what had led to Harrison Oxley's resignation. It could be argued that accepting a particular job implies agreeing with the brief and owning the policy, but, with the course already set, the task was to get the very best out of the raw materials one was permitted to recruit and use.

Likewise, in Ely, it would not have been possible to consider starting a Girls' Choir until there was a Dean who was in favour of it, and certainly between 1991 and 2003 it would have been off the agenda and out of the question. The only remaining obstacle after that point was money, but in the event King's Ely were only too happy to agree to pay for and staff the Girls' Choir themselves, so when it finally got going in 2006 that was the situation: de facto a full part of the Cathedral Choir, but de jure under the jurisdiction of the school. In recent years the various different possibilities of all the different combinations (boys only, girls only, adults only, boys and girls, boys and adults, girls and adults, boys and girls and adults) have come to be fully exploited. It has turned out very well.

Incidentally, back at that time the self-styled Campaign for the Traditional Cathedral Choir posted a short but distinctly inaccurate piece, having decided (deliberately?) to misinterpret the press release about the decision to found three new choirs at Ely Cathedral (the future Ely Cathedral Girls' Choir, the future Ely Imps and the future Ely Cathedral Octagon Singers) as evidence of a deplorable agenda to undermine, sideline, mothball or maybe even abolish the pre-existing Cathedral Choir of boy choristers and lay clerks. That has NEVER been the plan and it NEVER will be. On the contrary, ECGC, the Imps and ECOS have greatly enriched and enhanced the musical life of the Cathedral, and will continue to do so, and to anyone assuming that the boys and men would suffer, arguably the opposite has been the case. If I were being a bit mischievous I might suggest that exciting the righteous but misplaced indignation of the CTCC is something of a badge of honour! Oddly enough, I can no longer find their piece expressing disapproval of Ely for allegedly deciding to turn against the CTCC's specific exclusive blueprint for the Cathedral Choir tradition. (I presume it was from about 2004.) In any case, they were, and are, wrong.