CE Winchester College 15.xii.X

[Finzi4ever]

I wonder if any organophiles would care to comment on the Winchester College organ...and in particular its sounds in the Howells?

While I've not been much of a fan of the '95 Mander, I have to admit to being surprised how well it sounded even in the Howells: I thought the full swell moments and occasional solo theme were quite rich considering. Obviously there were times when more was needed (final chords for example), but the instrument is the right size and (debatably) voicing for the building.

[Magnificat]

[QUOTE=Lizzie;14467]I really enjoyed the whole service on LA in the library and found it very personal and spiritual in content and sound. Perhaps because it IS a smaller acoustic than I'm used to.



I see that King's are doing it next Friday.

The larger acoustic won't make much difference in my view. In fact, unless you are sitting right next to the choir or have exceptionally acute hearing if some distance away a lot of the humming will be inaudible and any effect it may have will be lost ( the small chapel at Winchester College was in fact probably a better place to hear it ).

Whenever I hear this piece I am waiting for the choir to break into that glorious tune and it never comes and then the piece ends so abruptly that it leaves you in mid air still waiting for something to happen as it were.

[Lizzie]

Ah well, I enjoyed it anyway! Each to their own... All the best. Liz

[decantor]

I see that King's are doing it next Friday.

The larger acoustic won't make much difference in my view. In fact, unless you are sitting right next to the choir or have exceptionally acute hearing if some distance away a lot of the humming will be inaudible and any effect it may have will be lost ( the small chapel at Winchester College was in fact probably a better place to hear it ).

Whenever I hear this piece I am waiting for the choir to break into that glorious tune and it never comes and then the piece ends so abruptly that it leaves you in mid air still waiting for something to happen as it were.

.......which makes it a good Advent piece. I enjoyed the Sandstrom from Winchester Coll because the smaller acoustic allowed me to hear nuts and bolts that had been obscured in previous listenings. But I imagine the composer intended his clusters to hang in the air, with that "glorious tune" wafting in and out on the breeze - as, no doubt, we'll hear next Friday.

Indeed, I enjoyed the whole service. As someone has said, Coll Reg is a sort of distillation of the best of Howells' canticle settings, though the real good fortune is that so many exist. I still prefer the genuinely 'live' broadcast - I wonder if the priest blushed when introducing us to Advent in early November - but this was as fine a substitute as we could hope for.

[Contre Bombarde]

While I've not been much of a fan of the '95 Mander, I have to admit to being surprised how well it sounded even in the Howells: I thought the full swell moments and occasional solo theme were quite rich considering. Obviously there were times when more was needed (final chords for example), but the instrument is the right size and (debatably) voicing for the building.

I quite agree. It's a fine instrument with plenty of brightness from mutations, essential for the accompaniment of repertoire such as the Howells, and with sufficient power for the building. The full swell coming through the great principal chorus is a very pleasant sound. It has an effective 16p Trombone on the Pedal Organ which along with the stopped 32p subbass and 4 rks pedal mixture give it a good solid bass. This was well demonstrated in the JSB voluntary where the pedal cornet from the mixture just about gave the impression of a small 32p reed on the final chord.

[Lizzie]

Listened to the repeat this afternoon and liked the Sandstrom even more than I did the first time round! Quite beautiful. Thank you again. Bws. Liz

[DracoM]

Lizzie

King's are doing in on Christmas Eve on R4.

[Lizzie]

Hello Draco. Yes I know but I shall be in the Cathedral so will miss it. Then I shall be at Lunch with my neighbours on Christmas Day and will miss it again! Will try to hear the LA when the library reopens on 29th. I enjoyed it so much and it touched me deeply. Liz

[Quilisma]

Quilisma has finally landed! I meant to comment on this ages ago but we have had broadband problems, which seem to be in remission for now. I've been glad to see that this broadcast got a generally favourable reception from people here, and I know that MDA is delighted. Win Coll has not had a broadcast for at least eight years. One can only surmise as to why they were removed from the list, but although the musical standards were always reliably high there was perhaps back then a certain clinical detachment in the liturgy which would not have come over well on the radio. Yet things have changed a great deal in that respect over the last few years. Tuesday evensongs are well attended, as are Thursday evening eucharists with the Quiristers, and the congregation is made to feel very welcome. MDA has convinced the choir (and, I daresay, the congregation) that accuracy and generous expressiveness are by no means mutually exclusive, and his singers greatly enjoy singing for him...

A few points. On the matter of "as live", yes, this service was recorded on 9th November. But when you have spent the past few years hoping for a BBC broadcast, if they offer you a date that your choir can't do, and there are no alternative slots, you try to make it happen anyway. It WAS "as live" in the sense that what was recorded on the day was simply stored, without any editing whatsoever, and transmitted exactly in that form at a later date. There were no retakes or anything: for the purposes of all present it was a live broadcast, but it didn't go out on air until 15th December.

On the matter of personnel, VCC (or Magnificat, as he now is) implied that he was sceptical about what MDA would be able to get out of the back row on the grounds that most of them are teenagers. Yes, but they are not any old teenagers: many are former choristers (or indeed Quiristers) from top-notch cathedrals or colleges, so what some of them may lack in maturity of their adult voices they more than make up for in knowing what they are doing, both musically and vocally. Most apply for choral or organ scholarships when the time comes. There are in fact two back rows: most who are new to the choir (age 15/16) sing only on Sundays, while an inner core (the older and/or most experienced people) forms the back row for Tuesdays and other occasional services. So numbers range from maybe 16:4:4:4 on a particularly sparse Tuesday to maybe 16:8:8:12 on a particularly bloated Sunday. (There is also a separate large parish-style choir for those aged 13/14 and 14/15.) There are always at least two adults in the back row; in recent years there have typically been three or four, and I was privileged to be one of them between 2007 and 2009. However, the adults aren't there for official reasons or because the teenagers need help: they are considered their equals within the team. The teenagers appreciate and enjoy this, and so do the adults. (I have actually seen it from both sides, because I was also a teenage member of the choir from 1993 to 1996!)

It probably won't surprise many of you that I did indeed go back to sing for this broadcast. I was very grateful to be asked! It was a time of year when there were lots of illnesses flying around, not to mention other commitments which some were not being excused from, so a few of the singers were not available. As far as I remember, the numbers were approximately 16:6:6:8. I'm interested to hear the acoustics described as "intimate". Once more, the sound as broadcast was slightly surprising, owing to close-up microphones with the levels turned down. On first hearing it seemed strangely muffled to me, with diction dampened and a lot of the "life" of the acoustic removed. This also seemed to favour the tenors slightly, while the basses were in an acoustic shadow. All I can say is that it didn't sound quite like that in the chapel! If you can imagine the broadcast sound with extra brightness, warmth, ring and clarity, and a more distinct bass (but I daresay just as intimate overall!), that is what it REALLY sounded like...

On the matter of the organ, someone on this thread described it as a 1995 Mander. I hate to correct you, but unless I'm very much mistaken it's a 1984 Mander with seven pedal stops inherited from the previous organ, a mighty 1908 Norman and Beard. By all accounts there was nothing particularly wrong with the old instrument. It was commissioned by the then College Organist and first ever official Master of Music, Edward Thomas Sweeting (formerly of St John's), and it amply served his successors George Dyson (1924-1937), Sydney Watson (1938-1945), Henry Havergal (1946-1953), Christopher Cowan (1953-1969) and Raymond Humphrey (1970-1979). Julian Smith became Director of Chapel Music in 1979 with Christopher Tolley as College Organist. (JJHS held the post until 1992, and CJT was himself Director of Chapel Music from 1992 to 2007.) The latter felt that the situation of an organ loft on the north side of the chapel operating an organ at the west end was suboptimal. (The pre-1908 organ, which was apparently very poor and which S.S. Wesley would have known all too well, was on the north side, and there is still an organ there, although I have no idea whether it retains parts of the earlier instrument.) So the west-end organ was taken out and rebuilt by Mander in 1984 to provide an instrument with mechanical action (better for people to learn on, apparently) and more ideally suited to accompanying mostly nineteenth-century choral music in a fairly small chapel. In creative hands, and with thoughtful registration, it can do the job very nicely, but its palette and dynamic range is not quite as wide as would be ideal in some (particularly French) repertoire, so perhaps it tends to lack the wow factor. It goes without saying, though, that it has had a consummate master as its advocate in David Newsholme, and in Paul Provost before him. (By the way, very best wishes to David as he now heads to the seat of the Primate of the Southern Province.)

I'm sorry to see that some of you don't like the Sandström arrangement of Praetorius. I'm not going to claim it's the best piece of music ever written, and I'm sure he would agree. But I do find it very effective in the right setting. It could have done with spacial separation of the quartet grouping from the ambient hums; this wasn't possible. And I daresay the acoustic as broadcast didn't help. But I must echo Draco's commendation of the stratospheric treble supertonic: that last chord just shows what a supremely adaptable conductor can achieve when duty calls. The Quiristers (and indeed the back rows) have lost some very strong singers over the past few months, but the only sensible response is just to get on with it, which is what they have done, and the team is all the stronger because of it. With all this ambient doubt of standards among "the youth of today", I just think of some of the shining beacons of selfless professionalism and feel sure that hope remains for us all.

Coll Reg is always worth an outing, and when one is allowed to sing it in an unapologetic manner it flies off the page. The music does it all for you, but you have to let it: it's not in inverted commas. As one of my great choral gurus would say, "commit yourselves".

What do people think of the Stanford Benedictus? I have to admit I used to hate it, but when it's performed with joy and without surliness it can really come alive, and I'm now a fan. I particularly like the music-hall treble aria with offstage "oh yes, rather, I do quite agree" interjections. How can you not smile at that? I'm sure Stanford did. Serious doesn't have to mean solemn, after all.

Does anyone have any general comments about voice production, by the way? VCC/Magnificat, I trust you didn't find it too raucous or rough for your approval...

[DracoM]

Treb tone is NOT raucous at all. MDA here, as at Wells, and as he did at St P's, makes boys sound like proper boys - eg yes bags of top, but some fine chest register stuff in the Sandstrom arrangement was evident. It does go down pretty low for some of the trebs and I think in this perf, it was trebles singing down there?

I like the urgent but controlled top: i.e. if you are accurate there is always a 'hole' in the texture for your note. It does not need blasting, it needs placing, and MDA has always been excellent at giving space to sometimes less well-developed voices to find that 'hole' and slip their key in the lock, and as you say, insisting on accuracy.

Their sound is very much of today, just beginning to edge maybe towards the Hereford Cath sound Geraint Bowen gets, and on the path to NCO/Higginbottom although with less edge and overt power. EH has that very dead acoustic in NCO and in such a DoM surely cannot let the boys simply 'hang' the notes up in the spaces and let the stones do the work, can he? Ditto CCC Oxf.

Very helpful inside track posting, Q'ma!! Delighted you could join us.

[ardcarp]

Draco said:

and on the path to NCO/Higginbottom although with less edge and overt power.

Only a little way down the path, I think!

Quilisma (welcome!) wrote:

With all this ambient doubt of standards among "the youth of today", I just think of some of the shining beacons of selfless professionalism and feel sure that hope remains for us all.

Hmmm. What about that wealth of talent out there whose parents haven't got a hope of £20,000 p.a. to tap it?

[Magnificat]

Does anyone have any general comments about voice production, by the way? VCC/Magnificat, I trust you didn't find it too raucous or rough for your approval...

Hello Q, how are you getting on?

I wasn't sceptical about the back row apart from the fact that it was bound to lack maturity. I had no doubt that MA would get a good sound from them.

I've always been a fan of MA's boys' sound, he is easily one of the best trainers of boys voices around.

Apart from the Sandstrom, which gets on my nerves ( however well sung ) I enjoyed the service immensely.

VCC

[DracoM]

Ah, but, ardcarp, that much loot certainly needed if kids are at a choir school.

There are a number of foundations where that is not the case, surely, yet they / parents etc truck in and out X times a week to do their stuff. I wonder if Q'ma is referring to them as well?

[Quilisma]

Draco, yes, indeed I was. But more on that later...

First, that was a fascinating analysis of the Quiristers' sound, Draco! Although I'm no huge expert, I think I concur. Their sound varies subtly from year to year and month to month, of course, but there is perhaps more body, depth and warmth than in some equivalent choirs. Any occasional hardness comes from muscularity and spin rather than squawking and blasting; it's just healthy committed expressive singing. I'd suggest that in concept it's not a million miles from the sound-world of St John's, particularly under George Guest and David Hill. (Of course, I'm more than happy to be overruled on that: choral comparisons aren't my forte!) There have been a succession of very fine solo voices among the Quiristers over the past few years, and indeed before that, but, whereas in some choirs these people would tend to stick out or dominate by force, MDA manages to get the others come up to meet them: good blend achieved through teamwork with everyone pulling their weight, not through shutting people up and making them tentative, and not through insisting that every individual's voice should sound unnaturally identical.

I do agree about different buildings needing different types of singing. From bitter experience, what fills a small and vocally benevolent chapel might carry no more than a few feet in an less favourable acoustic. Buildings where the sound seems to be sucked up vertically and disappear are a particular challenge. One such place is the choir stalls of Westminster Abbey. In such places, what may seem completely absurd, exaggerated and ugly to the singer where he or she is will simply sound normal a few feet away. It's not always necessary or desirable to try to fill an entire building with sound, but a shrugging "you get what you're given" approach certainly doesn't carry much ice with a congregation or audience who can't hear anything and can just see a choir of po-faced people looking bored. Singing in an acoustically unfavourable space or in a large concert hall, and/or with an orchestra, often requires a far more energised, projected and (from the point of view of the singer) blatantly unsubtle vocal delivery than would seem normal. Strident edge becomes simply audibility, cavernous woof becomes simply tone. Within reason, in such conditions "shrill but plummy" just gives you singing the congregation or audience can hear. And that means employing natural resonance to the maximum even at the lowest volumes. Those who only ever have to sing in favourable acoustics should count themselves very fortunate!

VCC/Magnificat, I'm very pleased you enjoyed it. And I wholeheartedly agree about MDA being one of the best around. Win Coll are very lucky...

...as ardcarp highlights. And I ought to comment on this too, although I don't really want to.

This last topic is a rather painful one for me, having been a Wykehamist myself back in the 1990s. The fees were very high back then too, although nowhere near today's values. However, the college went out of its way to enable those who were not fabulously wealthy to study there if it was felt that they would greatly benefit from the opportunity. Scholarships were very generous indeed. Even with a very generous scholarship it was a struggle for my family, and I don't mean the sort of "struggle" that some relatively wealthy middle-class families like to complain about. But we thought it was worth every penny. Most of my friends there were also on generous academic and/or music scholarships, and many were from relatively modest backgrounds, as I was. At the time when my parents were considering school options, they were advised that Win Coll didn't have any of the socio-economic snobbery that affects some equivalent schools: that it was a school passionately committed to nurturing intellectual and artistic talent and curiosity, that they didn't care two hoots who your parents were, and that they went out of their way to help financially where necessary without making a song and dance out of it.

But alas, the charities commission has made things rather difficult. By law, scholarships now may not carry an automatic reduction in fees, and all bursaries are means-tested. In theory, it should be no harder for someone from a not particularly well-off background to go than it was before, because if the college considers that that person should get a place they will be offered a discretionary reduction in fees according to means testing. In a sense, it is a fairer system, because generous fee reductions will no longer be given to those who could easily pay full fees simply because their son has won a scholarship. But I do fear that the consequence will be that many from not particularly well-off backgrounds will no longer consider applying because they will feel awkward about having to ask for help with the fees, and as means-tested bursaries are discretionary they might not want to apply in case they were refused. I believe this legislation is affecting all schools with charitable status, so Win Coll is by no means alone in facing this problem and the lack of an ideal solution is shared by all institutions in a comparable situation.

The character of the foundation sits rather uneasily with what it has (at least on the surface) become over the past century or so, since it was officially categorised as a Public School in 1868. But that is arguably its great strength, which makes it subtly different from similar schools. William of Wykeham's original vision for the place was very much in the radically anti-feudal human-universalist benevolent-meritocratic spirit that had been given added impetus in the aftermath of the Black Death and which started the Renaissance. He explicitly intended the pupils/students to be recruited from among the poor, reflecting his own origins as a rural peasant who went to the town to seek an education from the monks and did very well indeed (he rose to the highest offices in the land, both in church and state, on merit alone). To paraphrase his all-too-oft-quoted (and all-too-oft-misunderstood) slogan Manners Makyth Man, your identity isn't to be found in your background but in what you're like and in what you can do; not where you've come from but where you are going. The motto does NOT mean "to earn respect you must affect genteel, refined etiquette"!

I suppose the problem is that William of Wykeham merely designed the place and let others run it. I quote some CD notes written by my offline twin: "The foundation consisted of a Warden, ten Fellows in holy orders, seventy scholars, two schoolmasters, three chaplains, three lay clerks and sixteen Quiristers. William of Wykeham wished the scholars to be elected from among the poor. However, he also allowed for up to ten extra Gentlemen Commoners, of less humble means, to be given board, lodging and education in his College for payment." But the college failed to cap the number of fee-paying students at ten, and therefore they kept welcoming more and more, which meant that more and more people had to be accommodated and catered for, and the expectations of a decent level of education kept rising too, and more staff had to be employed to teach them. There was a vicious circle of more and more fee-paying students being needed to fund the facilities for an ever expanding and ever more demanding school: more students, more costs, more fees needed, more students, more costs, etc. (And for much of their history, particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Quiristers hardly ever sang and were used mostly as child labour.) There are still only seventy academic scholars, but the number of "commoners" has risen from ten to over six hundred.

So, to bring this round to your point, ardcarp: the fact that Win Coll has very high fees does not in any way mean they are comfortable with that fact, let alone happy about it. It is quite possible that a number of those whom I described as "shining beacons of professionalism" are on very significant fee reductions: that's for them alone to know. I agree that there is a huge amount of untapped talent out there among people who wouldn't have a hope of raising that type of money, and that those at Win Coll and similar places have opportunities to realise their talents which are beyond the wildest dreams of many: they are extremely privileged to have this, but by and large they are appreciative and grateful to the point of extreme embarrassment about it. (Although I must remind you that discretionary means-tested bursaries are always available: it has been known for some to pay no fees at all.) To me the scandal is not that they have these wonderful opportunities, but that so many others don't. Lack of resources are of course a large factor, but lack of vision in the responsible bodies is the real killer. I'm a strong supporter of projects like Sing Up and those run by Gareth Malone, which get people involved who have all too often been told what they can't do and what's not for them and what they shouldn't be interested in and how low their horizons and expectations should be. That is what I meant about it being good to remind ourselves that young people are not all useless good-for-nothings: the fact that these useful good-for-somethings happen to be very fortunate doesn't in any way detract from their talent. After all, to paraphrase William of Wykeham once again, it doesn't matter what one's position in society may be, what family or faction one may belong to, or how rich or powerful one may be; it's one's natural qualities, talents and actions as a human being, and the very fact of being human, that matters above all.

Disclaimer: I'm speaking entirely on my own behalf here. I no longer work at or for Win Coll, and am not beholden to them in any way except as an alumnus, which carries with it no obligations. Any errors are mine alone, and I take full responsibility for them.

[ardcarp]

Q. I hope I didn't come over as a raving lefty or a leveller down. The opportunities (musical and otherwise) that kids have at good independent schools are not begrudged by me at all. There are some state schools that try to achieve excellence, but alas they are few and far between, and I regret to say that at many primary schools there is not only a lack of expectation but a culture of discouraging individuals to stand out in any way. Mrs Ardcarp and I have seen the full spectrum of opportunity through our own family and through our work as musicians. We have seen kids' lives turned around by the realisation that they can do something well, I'm not expressing myself well, so I'll shut up. Catching the plane tomorrow to egalitarian but achieving Norway!