Resumption of sung services in cathedrals

[DracoM]

[Andrew Butler]

The most depressing aspect of all this is that mankind has only itself to blame. Our current, very severe, environmental and climatic problems are entirely due to our selfish, blinkered outlook—our attitude that we can exploit the world's resources with impunity and that nature and its inhabitants are of no consequence in the quest for wealth and comfort. Nature has been telling us otherwise for a few decades now, but no one took any notice. I am frankly amazed at how many of the people I know have no real interest in nature. Indifference of this sort is the root of the problem. Governments are now showing signs of waking up—even the perhaps Chinese—but it may already be too late. David Attenborough had sensible advice and I feel much the same about Covid: "I don't despair because, what would you go and do? Just go and hide in a corner, crying in a corner and forgetting it all and giving up? I mean, we have a responsibility, and if there's only a fragment of hope left you have a responsibility to do something about it." It is heartening to see the various ways in which musicians are managing to overcome the problem of Covid, even if it is profoundly saddening to think that things may never be the same again.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/scienc...nment-54319449

I can quite see this. It's simply that I really enjoyed what I've done for 50 odd years, and simply don't want to be part of - indeed feel totally incapable of playing any useful part whatever in - a "New Normal"

[Vox Humana]

I can quite see this. It's simply that I really enjoyed what I've done for 50 odd years, and simply don't want to be part of - indeed feel totally incapable of playing any useful part whatever in - a "New Normal"

Well, I can sympathise. I've been feeling very much the same for a good part of my life—though my problem has nothing to do with Covid.

[Quilisma]

I apologise if any of you find this comment objectionable, but readers might be interested to listen to this interview with Edmund Aldhouse, the Director of Music here at Ely Cathedral, on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire early this Sunday morning. Beginning at about one hour and twenty four minutes in: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08s2jk3.

Since Sunday 6th September we have been determinedly and unashamedly back in what is remarkably close to our full regular pattern of work as a a choir, albeit currently without the involvement of the pool of extra adult singers. The six lay clerks are very strictly socially distancing from each other and from everybody else at all times, while the two sets of choristers each constitute their own residential bubble. The Lady Chapel is functioning as a makeshift Acting Song School for most rehearsals, complete with suboptimal seven-second reverb (!), and all services are in the Octagon, with the stalls arranged almost in a straight line, at least two metres between each adult, and at least two metres between the front and back rows. It is becoming ever more obvious just how fortunate we are to be able to do all of this. We are incredibly lucky to have a massive building which provides several cavernous and excellently ventilated spaces, and there has been huge determination to find workable solutions, which, through painstaking attention to detail at all stages in assessing risks and drawing up exhaustive yet practical strategies and protocols which are then rigorously adhered to all times by everybody involved, have allowed us to proceed in a fully compliant and maximally COVID-19-secure way. We are all being hypervigilant, because we all know how colossal our individual responsibility is. But the critical thing in all of this has been to discover that it can be done, and we believe that it ought to be done so long as it is safely possible. It also helps that Ely and the immediate surrounding area currently has a low infection rate compared with some other parts of the country: what is currently OK here might not be OK somewhere else, or of course in a smaller and less well ventilated space. We know that in several other cathedrals and colleges and the like the full return of the choir has not yet become feasible, and of course we commiserate with all our comrades who are not yet able to sing again.

I have understandably become a keen and committed advocate for, and defender of, those of us who have found ways to resume safely. There have been a few people who have made their disapproval plain, some of them citing prohibited guidelines which were subsequently updated months ago, or wondering out loud whether the ban on singing had yet been lifted in Wales, presumably believing that Ely Cathedral is in Ely, Glamorgan... Obviously one really does not under any circumstances want to become infected and then perhaps inadvertently end up being responsible for others being infected too. Having said that, personally I have absolute confidence that those responsible for modelling hypothetical scenarios and developing practical strategies and protocols will have been ultra-cautious, ultra-rigorous, ultra-thorough and ultra-responsible before suggesting anything as a possible option. Nothing is ever absolutely 100% safe, but if anything were deemed not to be COVID-19-secure, we would not do it, because it would be irresponsible. Although from some people's perspectives ANY type of collective singing at the moment might seem wrong, inappropriate and perhaps even disrespectful, what we are doing here is emphatically none of those things.

Although the lay clerks were on furlough, and so were not able to be involved in Cathedral Choir activities except on a strictly social basis, our choristers did a lot of remote work last term during lockdown, which revealed both the advantages and disadvantages of Zoom as a tool! They did a couple of experimental EvenZooms (!), with each of them taking turns to unmute themselves and sing a solo line over relatively static held chords: a case of trial and error. There were some group rehearsals, with one singer unmuted at a time, but there were were also a lot of individual sessions. (There were also at least a couple of lockdown recording projects, in which each person records and films themselves singing to a guide track through earphones. This has now become a common strategy, but editing it all together is a massive undertaking and very difficult to do well.) Despite all the difficulties inherent in the process, the choristers seem to have learned quite a lot of new music that way over the last few months, not least a big chunk of Friday Afternoons and of Jonathan Dove's sequel cycle Seasons and Charms, and hearing them put it all together "in real life" has been very inspiring. Individual Zoom sessions have tended to reinforce a degree of self-reliance, ironically further boosted by now having to rehearse in a space where it is relatively difficult to hear clearly the details of what is going on! The concert which Edmund Aldhouse mentions in his interview, this coming Friday evening, features this music. I am looking forward to it!

Incidentally, because many people are still not able to attend services in person, YouTube live-streaming of Sunday morning Eucharists and certain other events is continuing for the time being, as an integral part of our service rather than for any narcissistic reason. Some other establishments abandoned streaming immediately after it was permitted again for people to attend services in person, and this was very disappointing for those people who had benefited from being able to tune in to streamed services during lockdown but who could not possibly hope to attend in person any time soon for whatever reason, even if now theoretically permitted to do so. We are very keen not to leave our congregations feeling abandoned.

I should add that we lay clerks are acutely aware of how privileged all of us musicians are to have the sincerely committed and unqualified support of all the relevant authorities, which is by no means necessarily the case in every other foundation. It has been a huge relief to avoid redundancy, and with the possibility of the situation getting worse again at some point (especially if there is a major outbreak down the road in Cambridge) we are keeping all our fingers and toes crossed for that to remain the case if we do have to shut down again. All six of us were individually happy to volunteer for the Cathedral Music Trust's Lay Clerks' Virtual Compline recording and filming project, because it is a very worthy cause and one from which all of us will benefit; there have been a number of delays, but we trust that it will be appearing soon. Meanwhile, the underlying principle here throughout has been to focus on determining what WOULD be possible, safe and permitted at any given time rather than fixate on what we cannot currently do. Hence, as soon as the guidelines allowed for a solo cantor, our DoM and Assistant found an ingenious solution which allowed them both simultaneously to be working each Sunday morning, and for them to alternate playing and singing between them while the lay clerks were still furloughed, and when one or other of them was going to be away a lay clerk would be temporarily defurloughed just for that one day in order to do the solo cantoring; there was also a series of three lunchtime organ meditations per week in August. The solo cantor format was revived for the seven Diocesan Ordination services at the end of September, shared between three of us. One thing is certain: there are a lot of unfamiliar challenges at the moment, but what must be must be, and we are treating it all as an intensive learning and team-building experience.

[oddoneout]

Nothing objectionable as far as I'm concerned. As you say Ely does have advantages not available to all, and it's good to see the efforts being made to make the most of that situation. I see that recruitment for the next tranche of choristers started in August?
That is a good point about continuing virtual access to services. Regardless of the current situation there will always be those who, for whatever reason, cannot attend in person and this could be something good to come out of the crisis - wider availability and awareness of online alternatives.

[Vox Humana]

[DracoM]

Thx for taking such trouble to post this from Ely sources.

[Quilisma]

Nothing objectionable as far as I'm concerned. As you say Ely does have advantages not available to all, and it's good to see the efforts being made to make the most of that situation. I see that recruitment for the next tranche of choristers started in August?
That is a good point about continuing virtual access to services. Regardless of the current situation there will always be those who, for whatever reason, cannot attend in person and this could be something good to come out of the crisis - wider availability and awareness of online alternatives.

You're right about chorister recruitment efforts, although to be honest it's an ongoing process, particularly when we can't host "Chorister Experience" days. After all, for various reasons some very promising people might end up not pursuing a chorister place, so the onus is on us, as it were. We were relatively lucky to have almost no change of personnel over the gap between March and September, but we are due an unusually big exodus before next September, and by September 2022 more than half of the current team will have left and there will be a major changing of the guard. The task at the moment is to try to ensure that there is maximal continuity, and that means we need to boost and nurture the younger end as much as possible so that they can rise to the challenge unfazed beyond September 2022. One always needs to think at least a couple of years ahead and invest in the future, and there are all sorts of variables which can intervene. But my observation is that progress among younger choristers tends to be very rapid whenever the emphasis is on learning and teamwork rather than allowing senior "leaders" to dominate and do all the work themselves while the rest are passengers. Luckily we are very keen to emphasise learning and teamwork, so with any luck the transition in September 2022 will be relatively smooth. But we will need to have recruited quite a lot of new people by then!

[Quilisma]

Thx for taking such trouble to post this from Ely sources.

It's a pleasure, Draco!

[Quilisma]

I think what I really wanted to say is that, hugely disappointing though it undoubtedly is that there are still several "flagship" places where the choir has not yet been able to return to normal service, or where it is not yet possible for members of the general public to attend in person, there will always (or at least usually) be a very good reason for this. There is no general conspiracy to deprive people of their beloved liturgical music; after all, we the practitioners ourselves are the most keen to get back to what we love to do. The constant loud protestations of an outraged few, insensed that the suspension of public liturgies, the lockdown and the almost total barring of access to places of worship (and specifically the organs in them) should apply to them just as much as it did to everybody else in the country, did no favours at all to the rest of us in the profession, who had just as much if not more to lose. Certain choir-and-organ-related groups on Facebook became a toxic domain of a few usual suspects pontificating and grandstanding about how they ought to have been considered a special case and an exception to the restrictions on the grounds that, as organists, they were "essential and highly skilled key workers in the literal sense" (!!!), and suggesting that anyone who did not concede this point was basically "an agent of the leftist PC-fascist COVID-19 conspiracy". I can't help wondering why some people are so awful online, but perhaps some of them are no better "in real life"! It's interesting to note that this was a mirror image of the people who kept citing a couple of anecdotal cases out of context as supposed evidence that singing is tantamount to murder and that anybody not advocating a complete permanent ban is profoundly irresponsible... In any case, I hope people can take heart from the fact that many of us are all doing everything we possibly can to find ways to do what we do which will be both safe and permissible.

Those who believe that liturgical music-making has been progressively going to the dogs over the past couple of decades will naturally be inclined to despair of us all; we have come to expect that sort of thing. Il faut cultiver le jardin. Those who are particularly affronted by the lack of a physical public congregation at this year's King's College Cambridge Christmas services (which will nevertheless be broadcast as always, of course) might like to take at least some solace from the fact that other choral foundations exist as well, and that some of those foundations (currently including Ely: fingers crossed...) WILL be able to welcome members of the public to their equivalent Advent and Christmas events. Not the same? No, of course not; no foundation is the same as any other foundation, and that it fine: we are all in this together, as the saying goes. Meanwhile, you can watch and listen to all sorts of livestreams from various places through YouTube. We are beginning to get used to this now, and it's worth point out that it's not in the same category as broadcasts and recordings but is just a fly on the wall with a purely mission-related purpose. Our Sunday morning Eucharists are now available for a week (or a little more) before being removed.

[Pulcinella]

Incidentally, because many people are still not able to attend services in person, YouTube live-streaming of Sunday morning Eucharists and certain other events is continuing for the time being, as an integral part of our service rather than for any narcissistic reason. Some other establishments abandoned streaming immediately after it was permitted again for people to attend services in person, and this was very disappointing for those people who had benefited from being able to tune in to streamed services during lockdown but who could not possibly hope to attend in person any time soon for whatever reason, even if now theoretically permitted to do so. We are very keen not to leave our congregations feeling abandoned.

I think that that is a very important aspect.
My partner, a Quaker, was very much involved in setting up Zoom sessions for the local Meeting House, covering not just Sunday and midweek meetings, but Coffee Mornings too.
Once access to the Meeting House was permitted, a few Friends went there, and they are currently holding so-called 'blended' meetings, with one of the 'participants' being the Meeting House itself (albeit portrayed as a fairly empty room with a laptop on a central desk).
The concept of a Zoom Quaker Meeting might seem strange, but the sense of community, even in silence, was palpable (I was a guinea pig for one of the first blended sessions, logging in from home), and of course there is the opportunity for the usual ministry and notices to keep members informed.
I think that this format will continue.
One of the unexpected advantages is that, after the meeting (normally ending with an announcement by one of the elders and shaking of hands), the attendees have been split up into 'chat rooms', and many say that they have got to know other members much better, as a consequence.

Not quite Sung Eucharist in a cathedral, but I hope not too off topic for this thread.

[oddoneout]

Thank you Quilisma for these thoughtful, interesting and informed posts.

[DracoM]

I note that St Thomas Fifth Ave NYC also has NO choral singing - which, given their exalted place at the very top of the singing firmament on the east coast and maybe further in USA, is a great sadness.
BUT
they have moved the choir school out of NYC en bloc, and have re-started and hope to get back.

https://www.saintthomaschurch.org/2020/08/17/choir-school-news/

[Andrew Butler]

......and permissible.....

Ye gods - what HAVE we come to?

[teamsaint]

Ye gods - what HAVE we come to?

A very good question.

Far too many good questions being posed right now, I fear, and I most definitely include the top brass in the CoE in that .