CE Westminster Abbey 12th October 2011

[Double Diapason]

Everyone seems to have enjoyed this broadcast, and so did I in terms of the music chosen, so I really hesitate to be at all critical but I have to say that I wasn't convinced by the choir which I thought was very good but not really a great choir.

What I criticise mainly was the lack of a consistent smoothness and musicality about the singing. To me the boys struggled a bit ( I found myself thinking quite often during the service, for example, that this was next year's choir ) and I thought I heard some odd sounds from the men at times!

It's not just WA as I find this with many of our choirs. There was at times, to me anyway, quite a lot of raggedness and, I have to disagree with comments above, a lack of polish.

Ardcarp - re Os Justi. I've heard it sung much better. The boys just did not soar and in the second phrase of meditabitur sapientiam and sustain the long line where the performance of this piece is really made in my opinion. All I can say is that if you had heard it done as I have at St Albans by BMR and, I must also say, by Andrew Lucas you would know what I mean.

Everyone knows that I have never been the greatest fan of WA under James O'Donnell so what I have written may sound like I am carping again but I have to write what I think and I am obviously in a minority of one at the moment so it must just be me but there you are. We all hear choirs differently and it will be ever thus I suppose. I'll listen to the repeat on Sunday and see if I think differently afterwards to be fair to them.

VCC

I wonder what BMR thought of it?!

This is the first time I have strongly disagreed with you VCC (in 3-4 years of reading here and on the old board) but I come from the other end of the spectrum in that I would have been favourable towards this broadcast before it ever took place. As I mentioned up thread I was there a while ago and an old friend is one of the counter tenors there. I thought the counter tenors were one of the highlights of the choir! It seems that maybe how much we listen to something our hearing may be biased from the start?
Given your comments I intend to LA and pretend its a choir I have no fondness for and see if I can find anything to criticise. I suspect I wont though and you are more biased against than I am for.
Best wishes to you

[Magnificat]

Double Diapason,

I suppose the things that people look for when listening to choirs are always going to be subjective however hard you try to be otherwise. We all have our preferred tones of voice and singing techniques etc and can be quite insistent about it. Do you remember when the Temple church broadcast recently the poster who couldn't understand how others didn't see how good the singing was ( many thought it raucous ) and considered that the men were the best in the country - they were good but the best? - a very bold statement in my opinion.

I think lovely legato singing with good vowel sounds, excellent diction, phrasing and blend along with sensitive expression of mood and word painting in the psalms by boys capable of using the full range of the treble voice and very experienced men make for a really top class cathedral/chapel choir ( in my opinion boys are quite often well trained and very good but it is the quality of the men that let the choir down ).

Many ( such as ardcarp with New College) prefer boys voices to have a lot of colour, like the boys to be allowed to do their own thing, are not too worried about voices sticking out and like an exciting sound.

I was able to compare different styles of singing live last July at this years St Albans IOF Three Choirs when the home team hosted both New College and Winchester. As the program said three of the finest liturgical choirs in the country.

The contrast but also the similarity was plain for all to hear: New College sang first - boys confident with lots of vibrato, which is their trademark, very exciting colourful sound, first rate men. Winchester sang second - big sound, boys technically excellent , very good men. Then lastly St Albans - more refined and restrained than the others, beautifully blended smooth and easy on the ear, very well trained boys, skillful men.

I certainly felt that I was in the presence of three superb choirs but as for audience preference as to their individual sound I suppose if they were singing a concert on their own it is always going to be a case of you pays your money and you takes your choice!

Ardcarp,

It's not long since St Albans broadcast CE so they won't be due another until well into next year. I went to a special evensong for the Fraternity of Friends of the Cathedral last Saturday. They sing the services on Saturdays with just the senior boys and half the men (nine boys and six men at the moment ). Locus Iste - Bruckner, Psalm 80 ( Hopkins), Howell's Coll Reg, Justorum Anime - Stanford, Shephard Responses. Tremendous sound even with such small forces. Andrew is a brilliant choirtrainer. BMR is back next Wednesday lunchtime playing the organ.

VCC

[DracoM]

What VCC's posting seems not to have taken much into consideration is that a good deal of the music that choirs sing these days is not susceptible of "lovely legato singing", or that 'word painting' sometimes requires very different kinds of vocal production than 'legato'.

DoMs these days are differently trained, have very different expectations, and they and the men and boys have proliferating and very different soundscapes in their heads drawn from a huge variety of musics now on offer in all manner of forms. Boys go into choir practices having rap, hip hop, reggae, rock and pop and all manner of other models in their heads, and modes in which they sing round the place as they go about their daily lives too. They don't sing much Purcell out of choir sessions, I can tell you! So that they bring vastly different styles of voice production gained by imitation of what they hear on CDs, iTunes, downloads and the like. The same is increasingly true of the men behind them as well, and also true with both DoMs and organists.

The entire musical landscape is shifting and old divisions and exclusivities are things of the past, whatever the professional repertoire is that they all perform. It seems to me that it is pretty well impossible to separate personal music from professional music to anything like the same degree that you could in yesteryear. All choir members carry literally in their pockets a whole different series of vocal experiences. What a 1960's boy might think of / sing as legato / smooth is very different from how a 10-12 year old might hear and experience it today. Of course, I am not saying that you cannot make boys sing with lovely legato, smooth singing head and chest voices. Of course you can. Boys can be asked to /be trained to / be forced to sing in particular ways, but in many ways you have to build on what is there in the mind's ear, and these days a boy's mind's ear can and almost certainly does contain different musical and vocal pantheons.

For me what the truly great choirs do is develop the dialectic of a piece by employing all kinds of methods, both head and chest voices to convey colours, having different ways with vowels, are intensely aware that singing is a team game, each line listening to all the others and knowing when it is 'their turn'. I am not a fan of what one might very loosely term the predominately 'London' style of strident men's voices tending to shoulder aside the boys in their desire to be heard in semi-operatic modes, thus forcing the boys to cultivate a sort of expertly controlled 'shout' to make themselves heard.

OTOH, VCC seems to be close to suggesting that a repertoire consisting mostly of pieces in which head voices, "lovely legato singing" might justifiably be major technical features eg 16th, 17th, 18th century material should be the bulk of the cathedral output? I am far from sure that the major pieces of 19th-21st century repertoires lend themselves to the style of singing he suggests should be a benchmark, and unsurprisingly those pieces now form a greater and greater part of the total repertoire of today's choirs.

I have a real affection for the GG St John's Cambridge sound. The man ran a very fine if idiosyncratic sounding choir, both boys and men had a very, very distinctive sound. Walk a hundred metres and you were in KCC, and the entire sound palate could not have been more different. But I have grown out of both to an extent and look for different things, because later DoMs have shown me what other things can be achieved. Westminster Cathedral consistently, some of the Tolzer knaben CDs, Regensburg Domspatzen, New College under EH, Hereford Cath under Geraint Bowen, Wells under Malcolm Archer, Winchester, St Thomas Fifth Avenue / John Scott, St Mary's Edinburgh under Duncan Ferguson have / do enrich the possibilities. There will be others.

But as ever and always it is quot homines tot sententiae.

[ardcarp]

Boys [and may I add girls?] go into choir practices having rap, hip hop, reggae, rock and pop and all manner of other models in their heads, and modes in which they sing round the place as they go about their daily lives too. They don't sing much Purcell out of choir sessions, I can tell you! So that they bring vastly different styles of voice production gained by imitation of what they hear on CDs, iTunes, downloads and the like. The same is increasingly true of the men behind them as well, and also true with both DoMs and organists.

I take your point, Draco, but kids are phenomenal mimics and will produce the sort of sound expected in any given situation. So young George or Georgina might skip, skip, skip to choir-practice with Olly Murs on his/her lips but will quickly slip, slip, slip into Olly Messiaen mode on entering the hallowed portal. My own g-daughter is a case in point. She can out-chorister anyone in (say) Hear my Prayer and yet do the pop stuff with all the scooping mannerisms of the moment.

In short, I don't think changing fashions in choral sound can be laid entirely at the doorstep of pop idols. After all, a couple of generations ago Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby might have been widely heard 'on the wireless' but one did not hear In the Bleak Midwinter sung with the rhythmic laxity of White Christmas.

[ardcarp]

Oops. Messaien.

[Finzi4ever]

You were right the first time, surely?! Messiaen.

[ardcarp]

Maybe I shoud have chosen Knussen.

[Finzi4ever]

yea but, no but ... the Oli Murs/Oli Mess is a great gag!

[ardcarp]

[adrianwall]

Loved Os Justi. Isn't there some dispute over its ending?

If you are referring to the plainchant Alleluia, there is no dispute; it should only be sung in 'tempore Paschali' and as we are not in Eastertide it was not used.

Not so, Simon.

The explanation is given at the back of Rutter's European Sacred Music book: Bruckner originally wrote the piece for use on St Augustine's day (28th August) and only set the text up to "In corde ipsius". When it was pointed out that, for liturgical use, the text was incomplete, he tacked on the remainder of the gradual text, then for the "Alleluia. Inveni David", he provided the simple chant Alleluia, with a unison setting with organ accompaniment for Inveni David.

Thus, the Alleluia belongs to Inveni David, not Os iusti, and if you want to perform the piece as Bruckner had originally intended it, you should also omit "et non supplantabuntur gressus eius".

[ardcarp]

Adrianwall. Thanks for that. I've got the Rutter book on my shelves so I was silly not to have noticed. However, I still love the wholly incorrect ending to Os. It has such a calming effect after those sensational suspensions.

[Simon Biazeck]

How interesting AND informative! And all I had to do was pick up that volume and become instantly enlightened! Actually you could still sing up to 'in corde ipsius' and tack on the 'chant' alleluia (in Eastertide only!) and except for the matter of the Psalm verse 'Noli aemualari' it would serve as one of the choices for introit 'ad Commune Doctorum Ecclesiae'. But it seems a shame not sing all the text Bruckner set. Still right to leave the Alleluia out on this occasion.