Author: Keith Fraser

Every so often, as a “Gentleman of the Back Row” you come accross that breed of professional musician called the “Opera Singer”. Most of them are perfectly nice, but the odd one or two seem to look down on us church musicians. I have to say, as a former Army officer, it’s not a situation I’m entirely unfamiliar with. I was commissioned into the Royal Logistic Corps, and every so often when the banter and the beer were flowing the cavalry types would pass a snarky comment on the infantry types about their superiority, and the infantry types would pass a snarky comment looking down on us combat service support types, and we’d remind the infantry types of exactly how long they’d last as cannon fodder without us (less than 5 minutes usually). And so it is in music. The opera singer who rocks up to “Panis Angelicus” his/her way through the signing of the Register at a wedding thinks we have an easy life trooping in and out of our churches and cathedrals in our cassocks doing the same thing day in and day out. Well, if you really want to see an opera type sweat, put them in a proper service where you have 20 mins to rehearse 40 mins of music and make them sight read! (Harsh, but ultimately fair!)

Now what I’m about to say comes from my persepctive as a singer utterly incapable of conducting a choir if my life depended on it. Those of you who conduct regularly may well pick holes in some of what I’m about to say and utterly debunk me. Some of you may accuse me of trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs. I hope I’m not. What I’m suggesting are a few things to consider about giving singers the experiences of what it takes to be a lay clerk in the hopes of raising your game.

The first “skill” is deportment. The “opera singer” debunks the Lay Clerk on the grounds that their singing is highly choreographed and they act/dance as well as sing. The Lay Clerk isn’t that much different actually, we process in and out and we move around Quires and Sanctuaries with the precision of a Guardsman. We have to. Some choirs sit up in lofts out of sight, but even if you do, a little precision of movement is an important thing. It reminds you of your purpose and dignity, and even subconsciously, it teaches you to move, operate, and think as a team. It used to really annoy me, 5 mins before mass, when the Brompton Oratory choir would cross the nave in a “gaggle” on their way to the choir loft. On the occasions when they would sing in front of the Lady Chapel it would take them forver to get organised because they were so used to not being seen. Precision, deportment, movement are all important. Teach your choirs to move as a body, to walk upright, to be dignified. Train them to move around the church to sing from different positions when required to do so.

The next skill is sight reading. So many choirs rely on “note bashing” and in a rehearsal devote no time to sight reading exercises. The ability to sight read is what Eric Whitacre included in his reasonsing as to why British choirs are amongst the best in the world. My sight reading ability isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t usually take too long for me to work out where a piece is going and for me to be able to predict with accuracy. A lot of amateur church choirs over here also devote time to teaching singing technique on a 1-1 or small group basis and are able to do this because they don’t have to spend hours note-bashing until the choir has memorised the piece. Like I said, if you really want to make an opera singer sweat, make them sight read. Many of the best opera singers in the world can’t do it because they are so used to memorising their roles.

Following sight singing is repertoire. A choir will have it’s own personality and with it a standard faire of repertoire that they are used to. Now I’m not suggesting that you only sing the same 5 pieces week in week out but that the chorister will feel most comfortable knowing that the majority of what he/she sings falls into a discrete category of music with the odd bit and piece that is unusual. Singing in Poscimur means the bulk of the rep is 19th and 20th Century English composers and Anglican chant. Every so often we get some Byrd or Palestrina, but the bulk of our work is Sumsion, Blow, Bairstow and the likes. It means with experience comes confidence in knowing what I’m doing when I’m with that choir. If it suddenly vered towards a choral diet of Gesualdo and Des Prez (and I frankly wouldn’t mind if it did), it would rattle the choir because it’s not the core of what we do. Having a “house style” means that you become good at what you do because you mix skill with experience.

The next skill is liturgy. It’s no good just tipping up to sing without knowing the context you are singing in. It’s worth doing joint workshops with the altar servers to learn how the liturgy goes together, what prayers are said when and why. A deep understanding of the liturgy helps you understand what’s going on when something needs to change, or when there’s a curve ball, like the sudden need to dig out a “potboiler” motet at short notice. A good Lay Clerk will understand the workings of all of the liturgies that he sings, the meaning and significance of the actions, and the way in which the prayers and readings go together.

The final one is professionalism. It’s a skill that doesn’t always translate too well in amateur terms and one that when singing with amateur choirs so many of them struggle with. When I’m paid to sing and I have a call time, I’m there 10 minutes early. When the rehearsal starts there’s quiet and we follow instructions and mark up accordingly. We sing what we are asked to sing. When the Director speaks we are quiet. In the amateur choir it’s hard when Betty and Doris start chatting away whenever the Director speaks akiing it hard for others to listen, or when Albert’s 5 minutes late and then disrupts everyone else by rumaging through his bag for the music or his pencil, or his brain! It’s annoying to hear Derek pontificate about how he did this motet with the cast of thousands in the Chipping Sodbury Choral Society and how it was so much better with the trembling voices of the countless octigenarians when he should be concentrating on the direction being given by this director of this choir. It’s hard instilling discipline on people who willingly give up their time to sing, but want to do so on their own rambling terms. I’d suggest the way to move around this is to act professionally. I sing in a choir at a church in St Albans. It doesn’t pay a fee, but the Gentlemen each have a pigeon hole with their names on it (Mr Fraser in my case, not “Keith”). Each week the music is left in the pigeon hole. In the song school the boys and girls are expected to keep silence once rehearsal starts. The adults are expected to set the example. It’s the little things like this which means that the entire choir pulls together “professionally”. In the deputising cathedral choir I sing with Cathy, the Director of Music rules with a gentle iron rod. What it achieves is a mentality that strives for excellence and a real sense of achievement at a job well done.

I don’t really have it in for opera singers by the way. I bumped into Bryn Terfel once, literally, outside of the Wigmore Hall in London where he was in the audience. Being a bit shell-shocked at having barged into the 6’6″ baritone I said to him “errr…..you’re Bryn Terfel!”. He just smiled and said “Yes, I suppose I am”.

In his earlierpost Jeff gives us a pointer to the PapalMusic YouTube channel, one I discovered a while ago. And fantastic it is too!

I wanted though to pick another piece of music from that channel that I had wished he’d selected.

Imagine this. You are the Pope. You’ve come to England and Scotland on a State as well as pastoral visit. The “Magic Circle” of liberal bishops have put together a prayer vigil in Hyde Park that looks like a combination of televangalist kitsch meets sci-fi movie set with more kum-by-ya than you can wave a pontifical crozier at. Westminster Abbey has pulled out all of the stops and threatens to be the liturgical highlight of the visit. You are saying mass at Westminster Cathedral and you want it to be the exemplar of how the Ordinary Form should be said, you want to make your point to the bishops by example. It has the potential to go quite horribly wrong.

Or does it?

At Westminster now is an ArchBishop, who in spite of his leftist leanings on social teaching is the product of his time as Cardinal Hume’s Auxilliary and has been schooled in the late Cardinal’s appreciation for dignified liturgy. Assisting him is the Administrator of the Cathedral Canon Chris Tuckwell, a former Grenadier Guards officer with an understanding of “occasion” having been involved in state occasions as a soldier. With him is a highly intelligent and orthodox Sub-Administrator Fr Slavomir Witon. The Master of Music, Martin Baker, is a fine musician with an ear for the right music in the right place. In the background of this small group is Msgr Marini the Papal Master of Ceremonies.

A decision was taken, and it was a fine decision. Before the introit would be a motet, Tu es Petrus, and it would have to set the tone for the occasion. There are many fine settings, but it was fitting and proper to commission a new setting. The Cathedral commissioned James MacMillan.

James is a committed, orthodox Catholic. He (in spite of being a world famous composer) conducts his little church choir in Glasgow. He loves this Pope. He understands liturgy, he understands that when the Pope enters the Cathedral, the Mother Church of England that his music must say something about who the Holy Father is. And so he writes his piece. As Fr Z would say, MacMillan “gets it”, he really, really “Gets It!”

Available until Wednesday 26th January, Evensong from Bath Abbey on BBC Radio 3 iPlayer juxtaposing Whitacre’s Lux Aurumque, Piccalo’s Responses, and an Atwood psalm with one of the best performances of Arvo Part’s Beatitudes I think I have ever heard.

Sheer esoteric bliss!

Following Charles’s post on the book Rock a my soul, I thought I’d share some early footage of a liturgical music workshop from the ArchDiocese of Liverpool that took place some time in the mid-1970’s.

Westminster Cathedral Music Training Day: Understanding, Discussing and Singing the Revised Missal Translation

Westminster Cathedral Hall
Ambrosden Avenue
SW1P 1QW

10.30 – 3.30pm
Directed by: Martin Baker, Fr Alexander Master, Frances Novillo, Anita Morrison and Chris Castell

Fee £10

Places are limited, so please book early to avoid disappointment.

Contact the Music Administrator to register:
020 7798 9057
music@westminstercathedral.org.uk

This is the second in a series of Diocesan Music Training Days, aimed at singers of all levels, with a particular emphasis on preparation for the introduction of the new translation of the Missal and its music.

A note from Bishop Alan Hopes:
Whenever we celebrate Mass we are invited to participate by singing the texts of the Mass not by just singing at Mass. As we look forward to the forthcoming new translation of the Missal one of the key ways we can prepare is by reflecting on our parish liturgies and in particular the music we sing. Singing the new translation will be an important way of introducing the text to the people. I hope this day will provide people an opportunity to begin to prepare themselves for this vital task.

+ Alan Hopes.

It will soon be the time when music directors begin thinking about Holy Week liturgies and the music to accompany them. One of my favourites of that time of year is the Matins of Tenebrae. Said, or sung, in the early hours of maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Saturday the Matins revolve around 9 readings and responsories, after each of which candles lighting the church on a hearse are extinguished until only darkness remains. In the monastic communities the chapel would be exited in total darkness and in total silence, the altar stripped bare and the statues covered. My enduring memory of this service was when I was at Westminster Cathedral as a student and as a server sitting in choro next to Basil Card. Hume. Rather than sit on the Cathedra in his choir dress he would sit in the choir pews in his Benedictine habit. And how wonderful it was.

Of my favourite compositional schools, I have always been drawn to the dark colours of the Spanish composers, Victoria in particular. The height of his compositional genius to me was the Responsories for Tenebrae, expertly edited in the 1950’s by Henry Washington.

The first thing of note about Victoria was that he was a priest. The very writing of this music suggests to me that he managed what so few others achieved in their writing, namely to expose the very faith in his soul in the notes on the score. Every single response adds to the drama of those 3 days, every single note is necessary and serves a purpose. Of the 18 responsories it is the 3rd of Good Friday’s Tenebrae Factae Sunt which gives us the drama of the crucifixion.

Written for 4 voices it, like all of the other responsories, is in Dmin and contrasts the hypomixolydian mode of the reading. Some directors perform the piece SATB, but to me, telling the crucifixion it absolutely must, without a shadow of a doubt, be sung TTBarB. Without the lower voices building up during the first movement with the rumbling of the bass adding colour and depth the piece just does not work. Tenebrae means darkness and the words prefix the crucifixion: Darkness filled the earth at the ninth hour and Christ exclaimed with a loud voice “my God, My God, why hast thou foresaken me?”, the latter being sung in high tessitura by the tenor “fortissimo”. The next movement is almost a serinade as Christ commends his spirit to the Father. Another basso continuo adds the texture to the concluding breath of Christ.

Victoria shies away from overly expressive counterpoint favoured by composers such as Annerio (and his 16 part Crucifixus) and the Tenebrae is largely homophonic, but there is plenty of rhytmic variety throughout the Responsories and neither is he afraid to use occasional dissonances to create tension. It is a rich, brooding piece that works well against the Augustinian lessons of the second nocturn (the Responsories of the first nocturn are much simpler in composition to accompany the Lamentations of Jermeiah which had already begun to be widely set to polyphony).

The end of the service, after such richness of chant and Response is the Strepitus, or great noise made by the slamming shut of a book or stomping of feet to mark the end of the service and to note the power of the earthquake that occurred as Christ died on the cross. For me, it is simply unsurpassable.

A reader writes to say that the full tenebrae can be heard at the Oratory, Corpus Christi Maiden Lane, and the Conventual Church of the Order of Malta at the Hospital of SS John and Elisabeth.

The choral tradition in England goes back centuries, and because of it we have a wealth of composers in both the Catholic and Anglican traditions to be grateful for. I suppose it may be easy to blame the advances of Vatican 2 for the state of choral music in some of the provincial cathedrals and most parishes, but I’m not entirely certain that that is an accurate reflection of a complex issue.

Let me just anecdotally compare the two traditions for a second, the Catholic church is strong in certain parts of the country. The north west for example has a strong Irish Catholic community where whole areas are dominated by a Catholic population. London (especially), and the south east have many wealthy and intellectually traditional parishes such as the Oratory and two cathedrals that are less than a couple of miles apart on either side of the Thames for the diocese of Westminster and Southwark. In other parts of the country the Catholic populations are smaller, the diocese more recently erected, and resources sparse. On the Anglican side of the fence you have numerous monumental cathedrals with a musical tradition going back generations with a choir of men and professional lay clerks on the back row, but dwindling congregations and spiralling costs of maintaining music departments.

So, in many ways, the problems are shared even if perhaps the causes differ, namely the money and the human resource of musicians to hold together the music for the liturgy. For reasons I don’t wish to analyse here the Anglican tradition seems to have found a way to address this issue where the Catholic Church seems not to have. I’m talking now of the “deputising choir”.

The deputising choir is as it says, it fills in the gaps when the regular choir is unable to sing because of breaks in the term (having a front row of boys means drawing from either a choir school or local schools in the diocese and that means breaks during the academic year) and the obligation of paying the lay clerks at an average cost of £400 per service. What has emerged to fill this gap is a number of choirs up and down the country that regularly deputise, and many Cathedrals and “Queens Peculiars” (large churches with a status similar to the Catholic Basillica) have come to rely on them to maintain the choral calendar.

The model for many of these choirs is similar; they draw singers from up and down the country and work on a “booking in” basis where singers commit to meeting at a cathedral for a day or a weekend to sing the rosta of services. In my case, I sing with Poscimur (pictured), which draws its name from the Latin for “we are called”. But what can we learn from this model, and how might it work?

Well firstly, there is a definite thirst for good quality liturgical music, there is no doubt about that, but to convince both people to give their time and goodwill to singing means offering them something they want to do and be part of, and the other challenge is obtaining the good will and the invitations to sing in our Cathedrals and major churches. The problem there is any choir wanting to come and sing chant and polyphony in the cathedral of my diocese is likely to be given a polite but firm “thanks, but no thanks”, but some Cathedrals would be grateful for the opportunity. It’s all about defining your purpose and what you “do”. There might be a need to model yourself as a schola for traditional masses in the area/region. There might be a need for a choir of a good quality to sing at Ordinary Form masses where a balance of the modern and the ancient would work. There might be the opportunity to deputise in some Cathedrals and basilicas and give the full cathedral experience. This will vary depending on where you are. But if you are thinking “hey, I can do this, and I want to give it a go”, then the first thing to consider is your purpose and the gap you aim to fill. Like any venture, its success or failure depends on research and also knowing who is doing what out there.

The first thing you need is a good administrator. Poscimur works on the basis of individual responsibility, in that each singer obtains their own copies of the music for a particular venue and is responsible for being familiar with it on arrival. Some of us are professional musicians (we count the Assistant Master of Music of a provincial cathedral as one of our singers, and the Head of Music at a leading independent school as another) and others are skilled and experienced amateurs. Rehearsals are usually on the day, but for particularly complex venues the Director of Music holds rehearsals in the run up to events, and you may wish to consider for choirs that draw their singers from long distances asking some of your more proficient musicians to run regional rehearsals to a schedule so everyone has the opportunity to come prepared.

Of course, with resources all over the internet, this may not be entirely necessary. I’ve rehearsed a choir unfamiliar with chant for a mass on the feast of Christ the King using the resources on Watershed, and that has worked well. Geography need not be a limiting factor these days.

The other major issues are funding and recruitment. Any choir that fails to continually recruit will eventually wither, especially if the model you are following is to book in for certain events. You may have to ask for certain levels of commitment in order for it to work initially, but as the choir grows organically you can rely on your regulars who turn up all the time as well as those who can’t be at all places you sing at. Universities can be good recruiting grounds, especially as many academics are also budding musicians, not just the student body! Don’t be afraid to contact local choirs, many people sing in more than one choir and as long as you don’t deprive other choirs of their singers at key dates they are usually more than happy to help you recruit, providing you help them out when asked. As you grow, so will the potential for funding. Most choirs will charge small fees to cover admin costs. You may also need to decide if, and when to “vest” and whether your singers will invest in buying their own cassock and if you have the resources to subsidise this, though a vested choir is more likely to be invited to sing at acts of public worship than an unvested one.

The other thing you will need is a recording. This is cheap and easy to achieve and it gives a Director of Music at a church considering your offer to sing the opportunity to judge your standards. Once you have a reputation for a particular repertoire and standard then repeat invitations should be easy to come by, but a recording will often be the substitute for an audition. It would also help to be affiliated to a musical body such as the Royal School of Church Music and its international equivalents.

What I’m hoping to achieve by sharing this is to encourage anyone who feels the same frustrations I have about the lack of supply to meet the choral demand to perhaps consider entering the market. What’s really changed in the past 5 years or so is the level of freely available resources that enables this kind of ad hoc choir to function. If the willingness is there, and the enthusiasm, then eventually even those places that have not warmed to the notion of chant, polyphony, and psalmody resounding from their quires and galleries in recent years may find it hard to say no to the occasional visit from your deputising choir and who knows what will grow from there?