Angelic Voices: The Choristers of Salisbury Cathedral on BBC 4

[Magnificat]

The only problem for me, as I've said, is that the musical education is tied up with religion. That doesn't seem quite fair to all the children who have a different faith or none. I want ALL talented children to have the opportunities - a hopeless dream, I know.

Mary,

Religion, in this case the good old CofE, has been pretty good at education generally for many years. There are plenty of children of different faiths and none whose parents want them to benefit from the ethos of a church school and have no problem getting them in ( indeed in some of our Northern towns church schools are sometimes as much as 90% Muslim ) and as far as I am aware cathedral choirs are open to any child whose parents are looking for the musical training provided and their child has the necessary singing ability.

VCC

[Gabriel Jackson]

The only problem for me, as I've said, is that the musical education is tied up with religion. That doesn't seem quite fair to all the children who have a different faith or none. I want ALL talented children to have the opportunities - a hopeless dream, I know.

The musical education exists in order to furnish children to sing in the cathedral choir, not the other way round. To object to the education being bound up with religion is to misunderstand the purpose of cathedral choirs.

[Mary Chambers]

The musical education exists in order to furnish children to sing in the cathedral choir, not the other way round. To object to the education being bound up with religion is to misunderstand the purpose of cathedral choirs.

Yes, I do realise that, but I would like talented children to be taught the same skills - the sight reading, the pure tone, the excellent tuning - without being tied to the church. I suppose I despair at what children think of as 'singing' now, because of the commercial pop world, and television programmes like the laughably named 'The Voice'.

I think I feel strongly about it because one of my children had the sort of musical ability that choirboys have, but at the time (1970s) the only opening for his ability was the local cathedral choir. I didn't want him to be so steeped in the church at such a young age, so as a result he never really used his ability. School choirs were mediocre, and there were no youth choirs. If we had lived in Manchester, there would have been the Manchester Boys' Choir.

Many, probably most, of the singers in symphony orchestra choirs started in church choirs. Many of our leading English singers developed through the same route. I just wish there was some other way of acquiring the experience needed. Some schools provide it, but the majority don't.

[DracoM]

But in the end, Mary - and I absolutely echo many of your thoughts - children become adults and are perfectly able to make up their own mind about their commitment to or rejection of 'church values' in due time.

The musical skills are those that again they can either use or not. All adults i/c kids can do is seek to take the best available routes to what those adults perceive as desirable ends and then let the child navigate a modus operandi as they grow older.

If it was a choice between the intense commitment to music at Salisbury with an awful lot of 'church' thrown in and not, I know what I'd choose for a boy or girl of mine!

[Mary Chambers]

If it was a choice between the intense commitment to music at Salisbury with an awful lot of 'church' thrown in and not, I know what I'd choose for a boy or girl of mine!

You're probably right - but it seemed hypocritical to me at the time. Also he was a very questioning child, and would probably have been in trouble for subversion!

[MrGongGong]

as a person completely detached from the world of education, how would I know I was in a "church school", as opposed to any other sort, if I walked into one ?

Try looking at the sign outside ?

like this

http://www.woodcockswell.ik.org/img/Woodcocks_Well_Sign.jpg

for example

[secret squirrel]

But there's only one woodcock in the picture...



ss

[mercia]

Try looking at the sign outside

how childish.

[AscribeUntoTheLad]

The girls were indeed engaging, enthusiastic, musically sound, and the adults managing the situation credible and keen, but for quite long stretches of that film you might be forgiven for forgetting that there were even boys singing in that cathedral.

To be fair, there were equally long stretches where the girls weren't on camera...

[MrGongGong]

To be fair, there were equally long stretches where the girls weren't on camera...

I'd take no notice of drogo on this as he seems to see armies of girls in cassocks invading the choir stalls at every opportunity. For long stretches of that film you could be forgiven that the second half of the twentieth century never happened.......

[Norfolk Born]

As I pointed out earlier, a fair amount of time was devoted to the process leading to the choice of soloist in the 'Stanford Mag' (as Lady Mary insisted on calling it).

[terratogen]

Ash Mills, who seems to be responsible for quite a lot of Salisbury's promotional and recruitment material, has posted two pieces of what seems to be another documentary on the Salisbury choristers. It may or may not be that these clips belong to his The Choristers of Salisbury Cathedral documentary that Draco alluded to earlier in this thread, but while I had seen the 'Day in the Life of a Chorister' and 'Sanctus' / 'Behold the Tabernacle of God' performances from said documentary, I had never seen these particular sequences before today.

The shorter (~9 minute) of the two new clips is a fairly straightforward bit of recruitment media that talks about the Be a Chorister for a Day event and the chorister audition process. We also get a look at the 'bumping' ceremonies for new choristers.

The longer (~21 minute) clip is more musical. We hear and see excerpts from the Boy Bishop service, the Marian Procession, Salisbury's (stunning) Darkness to Light service for Advent, a very little bit of Christmas, and a slightly closer look at another very moving Leaver's Service. Before a very brief clip of an Ash Wednesday service, we also see the probationers giddily flipping pancakes and burning palm crosses for ash. Interesting to see some of the more senior/featured choristers from this past weekend's documentary as even smaller people.

[Miles Coverdale]

I remember seeing a programme around the time that Salisbury started the girls' choir where Richard Seal described the difference between a boy's voice and a girl's voice as being like that between a Nuits-St-Georges and a Chablis. Not, perhaps, the best analogy to use if you want to dispel the notion that being a chorister is a rather middle-class thing to do.

[Keraulophone]

the difference between a boy's voice and a girl's voice as being like that between a Nuits-St-Georges and a Chablis

Someone remarked how similar Richard Seal's boys and girls sounded, so it seems rather surprising that he should compare them to two such different wines. Or perhaps he was thinking that the pinot noir is a very fussy grape, and much more difficult to cultivate than chardonnay. On the other hand, if he was thinking of creamy white Nuits-St-Georges, I would have coupled this with the girls' sound and the fresher Chablis with the boys.

[MrGongGong]

This is a question that i've asked before but it does seem relevant to this thread so here goes
why is it that the people who are enthusiasts for English church music are so unwilling to discuss the music that they are most enthusiastic about in ways other than "wonderful top line" , "I thought the men were a bit blurred" etc etc
It is as if this music and it's culture are in total isolation to the rest of the universe ! To anyone who has studied the basics of ethnomusicology this is a fascinating subculture but those involved seem unable to see their world in a wider context.
Is it because there is a feeling that the hoardes are outside the walls threatening to destroy everything ? or that the church music enthusiasts are completely unaware of the rest of music and culture ? (I know that the latter isn't true of everyone involved as I have spent many hours in the pub with some eminent church musicians who seem well aware of the rest of humanity)..... A good friend of mine teaches music in a university department, many of his students arrive with only an awareness of popular culture so a big part of the course in the first year is a series of lectures on ethnomusicological methodology and thought. What they find is that students use these skills to understand things about the music that they practice, seems a good strategy to me, opening ears and minds.

When i've raised these kinds of things before its always been a "keep off our garden" response and seen as "off topic" yet if i joined in with the endless "soaring top line, must be the boys" stuff then this would be seen as "on topic" ....... puzzling indeed