Campaign for the Traditional Cathedral Choir

A creeping revolution, but fleetingly remarked on, has been taking place in our cathedrals of late. I refer to the introduction of girls into the choir stalls. With hardly a murmur, the ancient tradition of having only boys in our choirs is being cast aside. Yet those ill at ease with what is happening tend merely to sit tight-lipped, hoping the challenge of the girls will go away. I fear it will not, and it would be complacent to think that it might.

Although the protagonists in the battle for girls' choirs have made their position very clear, those who oppose them do little but mutter ineffectively behind timidly held shields. Surely, it is high time the issue was confronted head on.

When Salisbury (above) set off down the road of dual choirs it did so to a loud roar of approval. More importantly, the money to fund the new choir was raised with amazing ease.It seemed as though it was an idea whose time had come. Perhaps, as an opponent of girls' choirs in our cathedrals and colleges, I ought not to have worried too much. One choir more or less, what does it matter?

I am afraid I take nothing for granted. I have watched much loved, long-lived institutions, which dripped tradition and excellence, perish overnight. Tenbury Wells was just such a case. Yet in this matter, I fret quite as much over what friends and sympathisers of a great choir can contribute to its decay and collapse as over what its fiercest enemies and detractors can do. Let me speak frankly.

I find it ironic and tragic that, at a time when it is openly acknowledged, especially by those best qualified to judge, that the standard of singing in our choirs has never been higher, attempts are afoot, intentionally or unintentionally, to bring the whole magnificent edifice down about our ears. Imagine it, our cathedral music, in what has several times been referred to as its 'golden age', brought to a ruin even the Reformation never managed to achieve!

My emotions on this matter are raw, but that is because I grieve and sorrow sorely for what I know will come to pass if good, kind people, gorged on democratic instincts and misled by fine feelings for justice for the girls, fail to see what must inevitably happen in the long run when the choir stalls are opened up. How can we let this happen, coming as we do from a country where tradition lives and is knit into our bones? Boys have been singing in those cathedral choirstalls, in unbroken tradition, for hundreds and hundreds of years. Overturning it with a 'Well, it's only fair to the girls' is something I cannot accept as being other than a tragic mistake and a colossal cultural disaster.

Perhaps all this seems an inappropriate and outlandish reaction, so let me state clearly, point by point, what I see happening. First of all, despite claims now frequently appearing that both boys' and girls' voices are indistinguishable, I believe the boy's voice is something unique and utterly precious. This is pre-eminently true when the boy sings solo. Five well known soloists of recent years exemplify this magnificently: Paul Phoenix, Aled Jones, James Rainbird, Paul Miles-Kingston, and from abroad, Sepi Kronwitter of the famous Tolz choir. Can anyone seriously imagine any of these being mistaken for singing girls?

Impossible! The boy's voice has an inimitable quality which speaks to us of another world. Who would wish to destroy that? To do so would be as great a crime as pulling down the great medieval cathedrals themselves.

Now, it is precisely the destruction of the boys' choirs that I fear. The ordination of women priests in England (on which, in itself, I have no views) springs essentially from a sense of justice, democracy and (if we are to believe those involved, and I have no reason not to) from a sense of vocation. That is a powerful and highly combustible propellant. But I am convinced the movement will not stop there. The patriarchal society still reigns supreme in the Church (and I realise honest people believe, on purely theological grounds, that it should continue to do so). Yet the ladies, having won the battle for ordination (ably supported by many men, of course), will push the whole life of the Church down this new path. Yesterday's heresy quickly becomes today's orthodoxy.

How does, how can, that affect the boys'-only choirs? The process will be gradual, progressive and unstoppable. Already we see more and more women in the sanctuary. Salisbury has made its direct attempt to feminise the choir stalls. The girls' choir is up and running at great speed, and with increasing confidence. No shy, retiring, second-fiddle choir this! As a measure of their achievement we may note that they cut their first compact disk quite some time ago. And those of us who were present at the Southern Cathedrals Festival in Salisbury in 1994 will recall the panache with which the girls' choir was promoted.

At the moment (and let us take Salisbury as typical of future developments elsewhere) the girls' choir is quite separate from that of the boys' (though, an ominous sign of things to come, no doubt, they sang together with the boys on two occasions during the 1994 SCF). At the moment, they sing evensong once a week. Visiting choirs sing on another day. That leaves the boys with five days. Traditional boys' choirs normally sing six days a week, so to deprive them of even one evensong is a substantial matter. And if the girls are eventually reckoned to be 'as good as the boys', why should not they sing more frequently than once a week? That would leave two possibilities. Either they would divide the choral responsibilities evenly between the boys and girls - or they would say (especially if the new line about children's voices being indistinguishable is swallowed), it makes no sense to have two choirs singing separately (particularly, if there are financial savings to be made) and they would amalgamate them.

Co-terminous with this would undoubtedly be a move for women to join the gentlemen of the choir. And as the girls grew into women, some of them would want, quite naturally, to continue singing. Whatever the difference in sound between the voices of boys and girls, no one can say there is anything but a yawning chasm between the sound made by a choir of men and boys and that of an all-mixed choir.

These things can happen very quickly. Where are the cathedral choirs which once existed in France, for instance? Those lovely medieval buildings, in large part created for such choirs, greet the visitor with the chill of the tomb. They are silent monuments to a glorious past. Any French savant of yesteryear told that the traditional cathedral choirs would disappear one day might well have greeted you with the same benevolent scepticism sometimes evinced towards present-day fears for the English tradition. Indeed, just as we are setting out on a path which may lead to the destruction of our choirs, an attempt (brave, but how successful? And how difficult!) is being made at Caen to revive the tradition.

In truth, I wonder if such traditions can ever be successfully brought back to life. (Is the Vienna Boys' Choir, right, an exception?).

As is well known, a cathedral choir probationer learns to sing properly quite as much from listening to and copying the older boys as he does from direct instruction. And it is not only the choirs which would feel the change. Choirmasters, too, are heirs to a way of doing things. Now, whatever replaces such a tradition, it will inevitably be something very different. Something quite irrecoverable will be lost forever. That is a fact, and it should make everyone concerned for, and particularly those concerned with, our choirs, stop and think.

The new might also be something lovely (equally lovely, though I, for one, cannot believe it), but it would be utterly other. Who but a barbarian would cast away a pearl of great and immeasurable worth in the hope of replacing it with another precious stone - especially, if that stone is as yet uncut and the facets we eventually reveal display flaws and blemishes?

Why does democracy always seem to drum us down the same alley? Or should I say 'cul de sac'? The more we become 'the same', the drearier we all become. Universal pap, world-wide catering to the lowest taste and a uniformity of thought are just some of the drab and sordid results of this process. How is it that democracy, which should be a liberating force, has all too often come to mean a mindless sameness and standardisation?

We need to have a democracy which is liberating and not stultifying - casting everything in the same mould. We are all different; talents vary, and life is immeasurably more wonderful when we maintain these differences. On matters like universal suffrage we can perhaps agree, but some matters are inevitably undemocratic. Few would want to press for unisex lavatories, for instance!

But let me give you a more thoughtful example, for which I am grateful to an old friend. Once upon a time, stretches of salmon rivers all belonged to individual owners. Only the upper classes and the gentry had access to them. In recent years, however, many of them have been 'opened up'. The result has sometimes been that what formerly provided abundant fishing has become a watery desert - overfished. Along with it, the quiet beauty of the riverside has likewise been destroyed.

We have seen something similar where intrepid walkers have stalked the downs and mountain tops. In seeking to partake of nature, they have destroyed the very beauty they sought.

These are metaphors I leave you to reflect on of how I see the threat to our choirs. The danger for our choirs is that, in seeking to gain something perhaps quite desirable and even worthy, we end up losing everything.

That is not all. Have people thought about the music a girls' or mixed choir would sing? I know it can be adapted, but much of it was not written with the female voice in mind. Is that what we want, too - adaptation? Of course, boys' choirs have long sung music which was not written specifically for them. And of course, new music can be written for girls' or mixed choirs, and much already exists.

But that is not a complete answer.

And now let me make a more subtle, but more interesting point, I believe. Boys' voices have that delightful quality which, while decidedly not being feminine or grossly masculine, yet manages somehow to unite both aspects - transmuted into gold and glory. A young girl's voice, on the other hand, however lovely, is always that of a girl, and indeed, any suggestion of the masculine in it would create a sense of revulsion in most people. A most curious state of affairs; but it is so. One might also reflect on the sound produced by the castrati and the sentiments aroused in us. "Viva il cottello!" their fans used to shout, and there is indeed a strange attractiveness in their singing, but one can never forget how the sounds they achieved were brought about. There is always a frisson and a sense of sadness. But why did the Catholic Church ever use the castrati when what they probably wished to produce - an ethereal synthesis of the male and the female voice - was always available from the little boy. In a profound way, the little choirboy already represents us all and shows us at our best. The fact that the little boy's voice vanishes rather than matures, as does that of the little girl, adds a fleeting poignancy to it that is evident to anyone with ears to hear and eyes to see.

What a miserable day it will be when demands for equalisation still that heavenly sound from our choir stalls forever!

At a more down-to-earth level, the usual battle of the sexes is likely to reproduce itself in the choir stalls. All the unpleasant features of this rivalry would start to appear - the strutting choirboy and the preening vanities of the choirgirl.

As things now stand, it always amazes me how our choirboys perform so magnificently and professionally in public, and yet do so with unconscionable modesty and normality.

Boys and girls, as we know, develop physically and emotionally at different rates. In a mixed choir such subtle imbalances would inevitably become apparent. It might not be a blow to good singing, but the singing would be very different. The story of how Roy Goodman made his famous recording of Allegri's 'Miserere' says it all. He just come in off the games field after an afternoon kicking a ball around, and, as is so much the norm for boys, without any need for 'psychological re-tuning', he just stood there and produced that mind-blowing, forever definitive recording.

I have two final fears. One is that boys who were once eager to join such a choir would eventually come to feel it a cissy thing to do: something for softies only. My other fear is that the constant rehearsing of this question will give ammunition to those who see cathedral and collegiate choirs as a 'waste of spikenard', and who want to spend the considerable sums involved on 'good works'. As congregations in England dwindle the choirs will become an ever-softer target.

My point has been made, but let me not finish without saying that I fully and wholeheartedly approve of girls singing - in all-girls' or mixed choirs. Who am I to object in any case? My objection is to anything which would tend to lead to the demise, diminution or dilution of the traditional boys' choirs.

That point made, I want to say I would be delighted to see ever-growing numbers of children given a chance to sing - not merely school ditties, much less pop nonsense - but a whole range of the finest music on offer, and in parts as well as in unison.

Of course, singing in a cathedral is something very special, and I can well understand many young girls wanting to be given the opportunity to do so. It may well be the case that we should use visiting girls' choirs during the school holidays when the boys are absent. Perhaps, too, the cathedrals could be used for the girls to give their own concerts on a fairly regular basis.

Some imagination is needed to find opportunities for them to sing. But however sympathetic I am to girls and their parents - and it is the latter, I suspect, who are most often the prime movers in this business! - nothing must be done to overturn the centuries-old tradition of boys' choirs in our cathedrals and colleges.

If those who love our choirs are not prepared to fight for them, then the golden age is likely in the end to give way to one of sounding brass. The deeply spiritual and moving tone of the boy treble will be but an echo in our minds, and those who come after us will know the grim truth - that it was our generation that was responsible for its disappearance.

From 'Cathedral Music', November 1995.