Introduction
The noblest heritage of English art *
It is Christmas. Amidst the Gothic splendour of King's College Chapel, Cambridge, a surpliced choir of men and boys waits quietly. Every available space in the Chapel is occupied and millions throughout the world have turned on their radios and televisions to listen to the famous Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. The director of music approaches one of the boys. Only then does he know he has been chosen to sing the opening verse of the first carol. A sign is given him and, on an instant, the air is pierced with a sound so angelic one fears to breathe. It soars into the fan vaulting and seems to hover there: "Once in Royal David's city stood a lowly cattle shed, where a mother laid her baby in a manger for his bed ..." A moment later, the rest of the choir joins in the carol and enters the brightly illuminated chapel. The notes of men and boys rise aloft, hurrying slowly after one another -pure, silvery. For many in England and around the world, it is only at this moment that Christmas truly begins.
Imagine now a very different scene. We are in an ancient cathedral somewhere in the English provinces. It is five o'clock on a cold February afternoon. The organ begins playing. Outside, it is raining and already getting dark. The sparse congregation which has slipped into the cathedral for Evensong rises to its feet as the cathedral choir of men and boys processes into the choir stalls. The service begins. The ancient formularies of the Prayer Book seem to bind all those there together: "Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O, Lord and by Thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night ....". The gloom from the surrounding Close seeps through the high lancet windows and presses in on the dimly lit choir stalls. After some moments, the quiet reflective prayers cease and the choir stands. In an instant, the air is charged with music, the voices of the boys ascending, chaste and true, mingling in melody with the lower registers of the men. Now and then an alto voice detaches itself, leaping out in delicate ornamentation, or the basses descend, their lower notes resonating in vibrant contrast to the treble notes ranging high above them. There are more prayers and there are psalms chanted to perfection, and towards the end of the service an anthem of terrifying complexity rings out. And yet, it is as though singing it were the easiest thing in the world for the lay clerks and little choristers.
And then, almost as suddenly as it began, the service has ended. It has lasted no more than about forty minutes, and now the men are on their way back home. The boys, however, are getting ready for evening prep – half an hour of maths home work to complete and a French translation. For them, this is all very much in a day's work.
At about this same time, Vespers are under way at Westminster Cathedral. "Deus, in adiutorium meum intende (Oh, God come to my aid)", the priest intones and is at once answered by the men and boys of the choir: "Domine ad adiuvandum me festina ( O, Lord, hasten to help me)". In the course of the next half hour, the ancient prayers of the Church are prayed and passages from Scripture read. There is also an intense outpouring of psalms, canticles and antiphons. They are rendered with stunning skill and evident devotional effect on the congregation gathered there. And again, it is the voices of men and young boys which create such seemingly effortless beauty. Present on such an occasion, we might well believe, like Jacob, we witness "heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending".
The scenes just sketched barely begin to suggest the rich inheritance to which the British Isles and more particularly England are heirs. The King's Carol Service and the Cathedral Evensong or Vespers are no mere occasional events or concerts. On the contrary, they are part of a tradition which has seen choirs of men and boys singing in our cathedrals and chapels, almost without interruption, for more than a thousand years. Choirs such as these once flourished throughout Christendom. Today, there are but remnants left. The winds of political and religious change have swept them away – except in Britain. Here, over seventy of them still provide a regular round of magnificent and moving worship. Altos, tenors and basses – all contribute to the rich sonority of the music. However, it is the evanescent beauty of the boy's voice which is able to touch our minds and hearts as perhaps nothing else can. For a few precious years, day in day out, come rain, come shine, come large congregation or none, the choristers enchant with graceful mastery, singing music which few adults would ever dare to attempt. Then it is all over, and a new generation of boys must take their place. That such a practice should have endured so long is remarkable enough in itself, but that it should have developed and flourished to become the sublime spiritual and cultural asset it is, is nothing less than astonishing. Contemplating such an inheritance, we are humbled and struck dumb.
Whence is that goodly fragrance flowing? **
The English choral tradition did not appear out of nowhere. It has a lineage at once ancient and distinguished. And though no claim can be made for a literal connection with anything in the Gospels, it is transparently clear that it drew its inspiration and example from early Christian practice - indeed, from the Saviour Himself. The roots are easily traceable, and references to music in the New Testament are not infrequent and often of great significance. Thus, St Matthew concludes his account of the Last Supper with the following words:
"When they had sung a hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives"
Here is Christ, surrounded by his disciples and only hours away from his passion and death. The picture is moving and instantly memorable. They have had their final meal together and now they sing the Great Hallel psalms which were always sung at the close of the Passover. Some thirty-three years earlier, there had also been a hymn, when the heavenly host appeared, singing Glory to God in the Highest. And at one time during His ministry on earth, we read of Jesus reciting the lesson from Isaiah in the synagogue at Nazareth; it is thought he would have intoned it as was then the custom. Later on, in the Acts of the Apostles and in St Paul's letters, there is further allusion to the singing of psalms, hymns and spiritual song. However, it is in Revelations, with St John's vision of incessant praise sung before the throne of God, that the centrality of music in Christian worship is made most manifest.
As for the Old Testament, although in the earliest periods it is clear that there was a general unease with regards to music, once King David had introduced sung psalmody into worship, music came to occupy an important place in Jewish religious devotion. So much so was this the case that, after the reconstruction of the Temple by King Herod, a choir was established to provide for the daily chanting of the psalms. It consisted of at least twelve Levite men, with provision also made for Levite choirboys. Their role was to "add sweetness to the melody". Again, although we are without solid proof, it is reasonable to surmise that the Song Schools which were a feature of early Christianity owed at least their inspiration to the Temple tradition. The conjecture is further reinforced by the Bible itself, which tells us that the first followers of Christ initially continued worshipping in the synagogues. From such beginnings then, and after the two religions had finally gone their separate ways, the musical life of the Christian Church began to expand – but slowly, at first, since for many early Christians music had come to be associated with the pagan world. However, with the conversion of Emperor Constantine in 312 and the publication a year later of the Edict of Milan, which legalised Christian worship, the Church was at last free to develop its liturgies. Over time, there emerged from the Judeo-Christian sung ritual, which had been the norm hitherto, other forms of liturgy whose choral elements were conditioned by local usage but which preserved the traditional antiphony of Hebrew psalmody.
In the early Christian era, the greatest influence on church music had been exercised by St Ambrose of Milan, who is known as the "Father of Church Song", but it was with the election of Gregory the Great in the sixth century that the musical life of the Church took wing. Under his guidance, scholae cantorum (song schools) were instituted as vehicles for the development of a musical liturgy throughout Christendom. Charlemagne established several such schools in his empire, and slowly, as the Church grew in confidence, prosperity and ambition, it began to build churches and basilicas which would worthily accommodate the new liturgies.
In 597, St Augustine landed at Ebbsfleet in Thanet – perhaps, these days, better known as a station for the Eurostar train. He carried with him an express remit from Pope Gregory to convert King Aethelbert of Kent and his people. (This was the same pope who, some twenty years previously, on enquiring after some children being sold as slaves in Rome and being told they were English, had exclaimed: "Non angli sed angeli" – "Not Angles, but angels"). As part of his general mission, Augustine founded a schola of men and boys both to serve the Church's liturgical needs and to provide a source of clergy for the evangelisation of England. The boys were received and admitted into the lower grades of the ministry and joined the choir from the tender age of seven, singing the daily offices as soon as they were able. Although they were not known as 'choristers' in those early days, that is what they were in fact. The efforts of the Apostle to the English, as St Augustine became known, quickly bore fruit, and a mere 25 years after his death in 604, the Venerable Bede tells us: "the knowledge of sacred music, hitherto limited to Kent, now began to spread to all the churches of the English".
In Anglo-Saxon times, quite young boys were given by their parents to be raised as oblates within monastic communities. There, they would receive an elementary education and be brought up to take part in the religious life of the community. Some places, however, were not monastic foundations but instead were staffed by regular canons who came directly under the control of the local bishop. Yet, in whichever type of foundation a boy oblate found himself, his primary duty was exactly the same, namely to take part with the men in singing the Offices. As for the young girls who were donated to the nunneries, it appears that they sang in like fashion with the nuns. To modern minds, the disposal of children in this manner is incomprehensible, but they were different times. For Christians of those days, the oblation of a child was seen as giving him or her the very best start in life. Even so, by the middle of the 12th century, the boy oblates had disappeared from monastic houses. In the secular cathedrals (those unconnected with a monastery), however, although the boy oblate as such had disappeared, boys were still singing. As Alan Mould, in The English Chorister, comments: "It might be wondered why the secular cathedrals had boys who were certainly not oblates in their communities at all. There was more than one reason. In the first place, they were there because boys had always been part of the scheme of things in western Christendom, and in England back at least to the time when Canterbury had been a secular cathedral under Augustine. Secondly, they were irreplaceable: the sound of young choristers was deemed to resemble the pure sound of the angels".
Century after century, year in year out, men and boys in their thousands, their names now known to none but God, sang the daily Offices of the Church in both cathedral and monastery. And so it might have continued had not the Reformation intervened. After the break with Rome, the monasteries and abbeys were emptied of religious on the entirely fictitious pretext that they were unredeemably corrupt, and the buildings pulled down. The choral foundations attached to them ceased to exist and, within the space of a few months, the rich historical legacy of plainsong and other traditional music was brutally disposed of. Indeed, the masses and motets and all the other Latin settings became on an instant illegal.
This rude and savage blow might well have spelt the end of that rich stream of sacred music which had attained such eminence after the arrival of St Augustine. However, such is the unknowable way of things, the replacement in 1549 of the ancient Hours of the Church with Morning and Evening Prayer in fact gave a new impetus to the musical life of the Church. Cranmer's beautiful Offices of Matins and Evensong were to become the glory of the liturgy of the Church of England, and during the course of the following centuries, composers both major and minor would write music for them.
After the turmoil of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, stability might seem to have at last descended upon the Church. But then came the execution of Charles I and the rise of Cromwell and the Commonwealth. The severe Puritans who came to power would have none of music. For them, it reeked of sin. Organs were hacked to pieces and choirs disbanded. As Kenneth Long in The Music of the English Church says: "The disbanding of the choirs ... had far-reaching effects on the development of English music. ...Choirs are not pieces of furniture to be scrapped and replaced at will; not only does it take years of expert training to produce a good one but choirs develop their own styles, traditions and loyalties, which are jealously guarded. Furthermore, tradition plays an important part in the training of choirboys: once established it is self-perpetuating, little boys learning from seniors, accepting, conforming, and eventually passing on to others the tone, style and customs peculiar to their choir." Happily, come the Restoration of the monarchy, the arduous process of recreating these choirs was begun with enthusiasm. Yet, already by the start of the nineteenth century, cathedral choirs had declined to such an extent that it was touch and go whether they might disappear for good. To quote Kenneth Long again, "A great tradition had turned into a rut and from a rut into a groove". This was also a time when choristers were shamelessly taken advantage of, made to do menial jobs and hired out for the pecuniary advantage of their choirmasters. Yet, somehow, fate intervened and the tradition not only survived but went on to prosper.
While it may generally be true that advance and triumph in any sphere of life are the product of great endeavour and commitment or else of relentless plotting and planning, there are many instances where the determining factors of success have been more those of revolt, inertia or even neglect. This is particularly true for the English choral tradition. What we have today is not the result of a simple, logical progression. Rather, it is the outcome over the course of the centuries of changes both slow and incremental and rapid and revolutionary. In its long history, the English Church choir has often found itself betwixt and between the two sets of influences – favoured by care and intelligence at one moment or abandoned to the vicissitudes of fate at another. Good fortune more than good judgement has been its saviour.
It is all too human to take things for granted, to presume that what is here today will be here tomorrow. Alas, nothing is ever certain in life! Given the pressures of all kinds now bearing down on them, our cathedral choirs are no exceptions in this regard. Should we ever lose them, it is almost inconceivable that they could be resurrected, for, as the late and distinguished choirmaster, George Guest, said: "It is easy to dispense with a tradition; it is enormously difficult to resurrect it again". The loss in particular of the singing boy from our cathedrals would be a cultural and spiritual calamity of incalculable proportions. Sir Sydney Nicholson, founder of the Royal School of Church Music, understood this well. In an address to the Musical Association in 1944, he said: "Shortly before the war musical critics from all parts of Europe were invited to this country to see and hear what we had to show them. They heard the work of our chief composers, our soloists vocal and instrumental, our choruses, our orchestras, our opera. But when it was over and they were asked what most impressed them as the outstanding contribution of England to the music of the world, the answer was the singing of English choirboys."
The mission of Campaign for the Traditional Cathedral Choir is to support and encourage to the full all those whose task it is to maintain this sacred legacy. Our traditional Cathedral Choirs of men and boys have been handed on by our forebears – in trust. We are but their temporary custodians. It is for us to cherish them, and to pass them on, a living, unblemished and vibrant inheritance to those who come after us.
** Quelle est cette odeur agréable? Traditional French Carol