Kings of yesteryear

[Guest]

Uploaded a year ago today, this is an incredible treat for me that I have only just found. Anyone who loves the old traditions will also love it - allow yourself a peaceful hour of nostalgia, not to mention the opportunity to hear a superb choir singing with consummate skill.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr6yZ-deibU

I suppose when I was a child we were at the tail end of these traditional carol services, uncontaminated by the sort of dross we hear nowadays, and there is a wonderful and comforting familiarity that I can only assume I recall almost subconsciously.

The Cornelius is absolutely sublime, with perfect balance... as is "Sing Lullaby" - surely unmatched for precision. Outstanding!

I wonder if anyone involved is around these boards now - the youngest treble will now be in his mid-sixties.

Enjoy!

Simon

[chrisjstanley]

Thanks for drawing this to our attention Simon.

Interesting to hear the Kings College Choir singing when I wasn't old enough to have appreciated it at the time. It provides an interesting snapshot, an age when vowels were clipped and Oxbridge english was the norm on the BBC. Occasionally I hear the odd snippet around my part of town, usually when shopping in Harrods but it was extinguished from the Beeb long ago. BTW was that Captain Mainwaring at about 27 minutes 45 seconds?

Thank goodness that the countertenors no longer warble the treble parts in unison singing, they could almost match the dear lady of the Stanford mag for unwanted hooting...............

Missed Shepherd's Pipe Carol though...............................and other trite and trashy recent additions to the repertoire.

bws
Chris S

[ardcarp]

I wonder if anyone involved is around these boards now - the youngest treble will now be in his mid-sixties.

Can't help you there, Simon, but one of my old (older!) friends, Derek Hetley who died 15 years ago, was a choral scholar at Kings for the very first broadcast carol service in (I think) 1928 or thereabouts. Derek was a fine bass, and kept on singing in the local (very good) parish choir right up to the end. A confirmed bachelor, he had lost both legs by then, and a gaggle of choirboys and girls used to collect him from his house in his wheelchair and shoot him downhill at frightening speed for every choir-practice and Sunday service. They also pushed him back up afterwards; and it was a source of amusement and pleasure to me that both the kids and Derek enjoyed this ritual hugely.

Derek had a great 'Kings' story. Daddy Mann was the O&C at Kings then. (He had been taught to play the organ by someone who was born in the the 18th... yes 18th... century apparently.) When the first broadcast was planned, Daddy Mann wanted to find Gauntlett's harmonisation of Once in Royal David's City but couldn't. So Derek hummed the bass-line to him starting, incorrectly, with a first inversion G major chord, i.e. on a B. This is the version now printed in Carols for Choirs and elsewhere.

Nice story. No reason to doubt it. Derek was a lawyer who had spent his working life at the BBC in their musical contracts department.

[Vile Consort]

(He had been taught to play the organ by someone who was born in the the 18th... yes 18th... century apparently.)

Indeed so: he was taught by Zechariah Buck (1798 - 1879), who was organist at Norwich cathedral from 1819 to 1877.

[Mr Stoat]

Can't help you there, Simon, but one of my old (older!) friends, Derek Hetley who died 15 years ago, was a choral scholar at Kings for the very first broadcast carol service in (I think) 1928 or thereabouts. Derek was a fine bass, and kept on singing in the local (very good) parish choir right up to the end. A confirmed bachelor, he had lost both legs by then, and a gaggle of choirboys and girls used to collect him from his house in his wheelchair and shoot him downhill at frightening speed for every choir-practice and Sunday service. They also pushed him back up afterwards; and it was a source of amusement and pleasure to me that both the kids and Derek enjoyed this ritual hugely.

Derek had a great 'Kings' story. Daddy Mann was the O&C at Kings then. (He had been taught to play the organ by someone who was born in the the 18th... yes 18th... century apparently.) When the first broadcast was planned, Daddy Mann wanted to find Gauntlett's harmonisation of Once in Royal David's City but couldn't. So Derek hummed the bass-line to him starting, incorrectly, with a first inversion G major chord, i.e. on a B. This is the version now printed in Carols for Choirs and elsewhere.

Nice story. No reason to doubt it. Derek was a lawyer who had spent his working life at the BBC in their musical contracts department.

Interesting! I had always thought the closeness of the parts in the 1st Inversion start rather effective after the v.1 solo - the harmony sort of "grew" out of the acoustic. I was sorry when SC re-introduced the Gauntlett harmonies.

[teamsaint]

Indeed so: he was taught by Zechariah Buck (1798 - 1879), who was organist at Norwich cathedral from 1819 to 1877.

I really love those little stories about dates of birth, ages etc.
They are really important in reminding us about our place in the world, time, history. The (economic) world is being whirled round ever faster.Technology rather needlessly changes before we have caught up with the last thing. Plenty of kids think that musical history begins with Michael Jackson, (if X factor is anything to go by).

When listening to turn of the C20 composers for instance, I frequently think something like, "My grandfather was alive when this was written").
His father ,my great gandfather, who i remember, must have known plenty of people born in the C18.....

Important stuff to keep in touch with...musically and otherwise.

And that is just a lovely story about Derek Hetley...Interesting story about that harmonisation for OiRDC also.