Let the Peoples Sing

[Gabriel Jackson]

I'm not writing anybody off but I do have some experience of this, and in my view amateur choral singing in this country is, sadly, not as good as it could be, or ought to be. There are some excelllent choirs, of course, but the average standard in Northern and Eastern Europe is much higher (Southern Europe is an altogether different matter, regrettably). A lot of this has to do with education, or the lack of it. If you are fortunate enough to be a cathedral chorister you receive a fanatstic musical education and choral training for a few years until you are 13 or so and after that - nothing. There are some very good choirs in public schools and Mike Brewer and his colleagues do fantastic work with the National Youth Choir but that is only three times a year. And all of these things have to be paid for. Also, there is no mechanism for training choral conductors properly in this country either, unlike the USA or many mainland European countries.

[rauschwerk]

I have little idea whether my area is typical of the UK, but since moving here 35 years ago I have rubbed up against quite a few choral directors, either by singing in their choirs or accompanying them. I have experienced those (professional singers included) who give no instruction in voice production, those who cannot detect obvious wrong notes and rhythms, those who make no attempt to correct mistuning, etc. etc. Even fundamental things like posture and holding the copy in the correct place are rarely addressed. All this makes me very sad and sometimes angry.

[ardcarp]

GJ. There are some very good UK choirs which are sort of amateur but really ought to class as semi-pro. Typically they will NOT meet every Wednesday evening, but will have a date for a concert and then do two to four rehearsals beforehand, depending on the difficulty of the repertoire. Usually memebership is by invitation, and the members will be experienced singers, either ex- or current lay clerks/choral scholars. They will make a very good fist of what they do, but are not up for the exhaustive rehearsals or indeed the repertoire for choral competitions. This is in my opinion a shame. I expect many readers of this post will recognise the sort of choir I refer to; and this sort of very good choir which can sight-read well and fly by the seat of its pants is something of a UK phenomenon, and prbably not found on the continent...definitely not in France!

[DracoM]

And given a lot of the repertoire that seems de rigeur these days, I imagine that such choirs ardarp speaks of probably think they are well out of it.

[Magnificat]

GJ. There are some very good UK choirs which are sort of amateur but really ought to class as semi-pro. Typically they will NOT meet every Wednesday evening, but will have a date for a concert and then do two to four rehearsals beforehand, depending on the difficulty of the repertoire. Usually memebership is by invitation, and the members will be experienced singers, either ex- or current lay clerks/choral scholars. They will make a very good fist of what they do, but are not up for the exhaustive rehearsals or indeed the repertoire for choral competitions. This is in my opinion a shame. I expect many readers of this post will recognise the sort of choir I refer to; and this sort of very good choir which can sight-read well and fly by the seat of its pants is something of a UK phenomenon, and prbably not found on the continent...definitely not in France!

ardcarp

There is a choir based in St Albans called Mosaic made up of men and women with more or less the status and routine you describe above which a respected local critic considers as good as any of the similarly constituted top professional ensembles.

There was some discussion on a recent thread about the latter taking over from our cathedral/college choirs of boys and men in the performance and recording of early music and whether they could ever be matched by them. Unfortunately I don't think they can be because of the obvious lack of similar technical capability in young boys. But they can be matched by the sort of local choir you describe which can correctly be described as amateur even though very experienced.

VCC

[Oldcrofter]

The most successful British choir that I know of is the Cantamus Girls' Choir from Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. Between 1971 and 2010, they have been awarded 26 first prizes and gold medals, plus 6 second places in 27 international festivals and competitions such as the Sainsbury's Choir of the Year, Riva del Garda, Llangollen, four gold medals in the World Choir Olympics etc.

Founded by Pamela Cook in 1968, they still sing under her excellent direction. I heard them most recently at the ABCD (Association of British Choral Directors) Gala Evening concert in Birmingham Town Hall, (together with Mike Brewer and the National Youth Choir).

The girls come from a wide variety of local schools, rehearse once a week in a local school hall - just like most amateur choirs in this country. They have always raised their own funds for touring and competitions around the world.

I don't know if they entered "Let The Peoples Sing" . However, they have competed most successfully at the highest level and toured widely throughout the world from China, Japan and Malaysia to The USA and Canada, Israel and many European countries.

As Gabriel Jackson points out, of course choirs in Scandinavia and the Baltic make (judicious) use of vibrato. Relatively few British choirs, youth or adult, attend major international competitions abroad, but it will be most interesting to hear of other choirs who have achieved competitive success.

[Oldcrofter]

I would just add that Cantamus perform all their music from memory and sing in 13 different languages.

[mopsus]

I do rather sadly have to agree with the observation that the tradition of large-scale choral societies has inhibited the flourishing of chamber choirs, at least in some parts of the country. In the 1990s I lived in Manchester and was horrified at how few small concert-giving choirs there were there. I only knew of two or three in the entire city that performed regularly, and once singers had a place in one of them they tended to cling on it, which made vacancies infrequent. However, others must have noticed this too, because around the turn of the millennium at least three new chamber choirs appeared in Manchester. So perhaps things are looking up in some places.

(The opposite situation - where too many choirs are trawling in the same limited pool of singers - is also not unknown, and occurred in Bristol a few years ago).