6.30 Sept 11th The Choir 'Back to School'

[DracoM]

I have to confess to feeling a tad conned.

" As schools and universities re-open for business, Aled examines the training options for budding professional choristers"

I see the title 'Back to School' and see the short prompt that the programme will be talking about the way forward for budding professional choristers.
THEN
I read the programme list, and a weary smile comes:
The Sixteen, The Rodolfus Choir, Trinity College, Cardinall's Musick, Vocalessence, Voces Cantabils.
Guests: two from The Sixteen, plus Ralph Allwood, Director of the Rodolfus Choir and late Director of Music @ Eton College.

Now, maybe I am being over-cynical, but this sounds very much like the London charmed magic circle Chris Watson was talking about on these threads very recently. Both The Sixteen and Rodolfus have initiatives towards garnering 18+ singers to publicise, the Rodolfus Ch a new CD of the Back B Minor Mass to
publicise, the Eton Courses are predominantly [ RA's own words] proving grounds for choristers for Oxbridge colleges, who provide singers for.....The Sixteen. One of the other choirs featured conducted by Ronald Corp are a hybrid from WAbbey and the Millennium Choir.

I waited: training of young choristers, I thought. Maybe Schools? Cathedral choirs that provide trajectories for aspiring singers?

Not a chance.

Remind me where this programme is produced? Cardiff. Indeed. Across the water is Wells Cathedral - choir [ a winner of prestigious competitions ] , highly regarded music school? Past conductor Malcolm Archer late of Wells, late of St Paul's, currently at Winchester College. A man of possibly more experience in training young voices to a level much admired for years. Did we hear from such an expert? No. Just down the road is Gloucester, Worcester, and a little further off Hereford. All drawing their young choristers from a wide variety of provenances and taking them on to 18+.

So, not a programme about the training of 'young choristers' . Young singers, yes, young Oxbridge singers scrambling for jobs, indeed. Guests anxious to promote their wares, yes indeed.

Training.....? Erm?




And, by the way, did Aled Jones say that next week's The Choir would be at 5 p.m. - following on from Choral Evensong?
So if CE starts at 3.30, how long is it now going to go on - 90 minutes?

[Simon]

A pleasure to agree with you wholeheartedly Draco.

You'll recall me being chided on several occasions during the past few years for having the temerity to rock the boat by commenting on the relationships between employees or contractors of the BBC and a few privileged people who make money from classical and choral music.** But rocking the boat is what I like to do, as you know. Especially when it annoys the pretentious, the condescending and the up-themselves.

That's not to say the favoured few don't make music well - they generally do. But it is to say in my opinion that it's unfair on those who aren't within the charmed circle.

I remember, on the R3 boards, naming a few names with a note of who had been where and taught whom etc. The interconnected threads were plain to see.


** I didn't call it corruption, of course, as clearly that is difficult to prove in many circumstances and therefore would have been unjustified and actionable, had I done so, without such proof.

[french frank]

And, by the way, did Aled Jones say that next week's The Choir would be at 5 p.m. - following on from Choral Evensong?
So if CE starts at 3.30, how long is it now going to go on - 90 minutes?

The Sunday repeat of CE, I believe, will start at 4pm. The Wednesday live broadcast is at 3.30pm.

[Simon]

The Sunday repeat of CE, I believe, will start at 4pm.

Your belief is correct. Therefore, after an hour of CE, The Choir will start at 5pm.

[ardcarp]

Didn't hear The Choir, but can sympathise with your frustration.

However (yes it's London, but) this advert from the Temple Church is a breath of fresh air:


Chorister Scolarships for dayboys in London

The Temple Church offers generous scholarships...which are tenable at any school. Choristers also receive individual tuition in singing, theory and other musical skills.

[DracoM]

Am always impressed by Temple's whole nurturing strategy where their chorister intake is concerned - the children, their parents, their schools.

Pity The Choir team did not ask a few pertinent questions about the trajectory choristers travel even to get to the Rodolfus, Trinity Coll Camb, The Sixteen in our schools, and cathedrals. Was that not a relevant subject to be pursued? Even more at the front line, in that if there are no boys / girls nurtured in such places, then goodbye Rodolfus, The Sixteen, Tenebrae, Polyphony, the Tallis Scholars, the Monteverdi Choir et al et al.

But not even a mention of that, not a cathedral choir featured in the programme, it was as if these pro choirs leapt like Pallas Athene fully armed, ready to sing.

Given AJ is himself en ex-chorister, did no-one think to even to make a passing reference to the seed grounds?

[decantor]

Well, Draco, for what it's worth I share every ounce of your cynicism, and could add a hundredweight of my own. Conspiracy theories are, of course, no more than speculation, but, on the evidence of output alone, I would suggest that the BBC has its own agenda with regard to those "seed grounds". Setting aside the weekly CE (a not inconsiderable concession, even if granted reluctantly), the Beeb has no regard for cathedral choirs, and it is not hard to imagine why, given its political and PC stance; the only nod in that direction from The Choir was a brief introduction to the Chapel Royal a few years back. The choirs which operate daily to good effect, and for which UK is globally famous, and which launched AJ into his career, constitute an inconvenient success story for those dedicated to an at-all-costs egalitarianism.

Cathedrals and colleges are not alone in training Year 8s and below to sing - many prep schools provide fine choral opportunities (whatever happened to Bramdean?), which are continued into their secondary education (viz the Eton Chapel choir et al); and young musicians in the state sector regularly find a way of realising their ambitions by sheer importunity. But choristers achieve daily what their peers often have to fight for, and yet are somehow written out of the programme. Harry Christophers has agreed to distribute FCM leaflets at Sixteen concerts: perhaps he and other directors could go a stage further and actively campaign for parents to commit their children to singing. Since even the government's secular Sing Up! experiment depends partly on chorister outreach, the time seems ripe to promote rather than ignore the part played by choristerships. Wider recognition of what youngsters can achieve, and what opportunities and satisfactions are opened up for them, would surely aid recruitment. But the Beeb will wash its hands of any of this: it is embarrassed that Keenleyside and Goodman, or even Purcell and Boyce, learned their trade as choristers.

And that is one reason among many why I resent the licence fee, despite my addictive dependence on Radio 3. Politics (and maybe the odd cartel or two) prevail over the realities of music-making. That's how I see it, based on flimsy evidence. I await the flaming.

[Dilbert]

I suspect laziness and/or ignorance are/is to blame.

"Anybody have any topical ideas for the September 11th prog?" (A no-brainer, perhaps)

"Sven/Gloria, be a love and call the usual numbers".

It's quicker and easier, and therefore cheaper, than digging a little deeper. Oh and there's the advantage that the new escapee listener from Classic FM may well have heard of the contributors. Sorted.

(I'm feeling very cynical today. What should have been TTN turned out to be Smooth Breakfast and people tweeting with the local weather. Another nail in the coffin.)

[Magnificat]

Didn't hear The Choir, but can sympathise with your frustration.

However (yes it's London, but) this advert from the Temple Church is a breath of fresh air:


Chorister Scolarships for dayboys in London

The Temple Church offers generous scholarships...which are tenable at any school. Choristers also receive individual tuition in singing, theory and other musical skills.

ardcarp

I hope a lot more cathedrals will open up to all potential choristers in their areas and not just restrict entry to those who go to the associated school wherever this is at all practicable. With recruitment of boys as difficult as it is they cannot afford to restrict their sources.There must be vast amounts of untapped talent out there.

the Temple are absolutely right to do this.

VCC

[french frank]

They might have done quite a bit of the programme on the 'new' Bristol Cathedral Choir School. I wouldn't much have liked it to be used a bit of flag-waving for academies in general, but the old BCC did switch from being a fee-paying school to an academy specialising in music in order to reach out wider for new recruits for the cathedral choir and safeguard its future. A look at how that had been working might have been the kind of feature the programme promised.

[DracoM]

How the heck do the BBC think young singers start being interested in singing? Home >> School and for some >> cathedrals etc. Why no coverage?

And these days, how 'elitist' are such foundations? Those with no attached choir schools have to fight tooth and nail to trawl, offer incentives, rely on teachers, and astonishingly self-sacrificing parents who trek back and forth N times a week to practices much as high-achieving swimming and football-loving kids' parents do. Are such children like champion diver Tom Daley or the young Wayne Rooney looked upon as 'elitist' because they went through as much early cossetting and training? Singers from age 8 or 9 onwards are talent-spotted just as much as local footballing kids, and get launched into a far, far more insecure and far less well-paid profession than the touchline parents' kids.

That programme did not so much as mention a cathedral / school which famously nurtures singers apart form Eton College!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry, but I am still reeling from the barefaced audacity of that 'The Choir' programme.

[DracoM]

And is it not interesting that there is no attached email address on the programme's web page by which to relay feedback?

So much for 'your' BBC.

[french frank]

Actually, there is, Dracs - get out the virtual green ink!

[DracoM]

Thanks.
Green ink missive winging.

[inquires]

When you look back at the BBC's huge output of radio documentaries on choirs, cathedral music and choristers, together with frequent broadcasts from a wide range of cathedral and collegiate choirs, which they once broadcast, it is obvious they have an agenda. The evidence is not so flimsy.