In Perfect Diapason
(A musical and architectural adventure)

by Martin Carson

Part One

AS JUNE begins to drift towards July, the choristers of St John's College Cambridge prepare for their concert in London and three friends meet on the steps of Christ Church in Spitalfields, a Nicholas Hawksmoor baroque masterpiece where an annual festival of the arts is held. We have little doubt that we are to experience a fine performance of whatever the programme has in store for us. I always have the impression that audiences come to hear this choir as much for itself as for the music sung. This is affirmed in a public concert by the applause which inevitably greets the first small chorister who enters the hall, and lingers until the Director of Music raises his arms for the opening bars.

The first part of the concert comprises the four sections of the Missa 'Salve intemerata' by Thomas Tallis. Composed during the fiery, passionate days before the dissolution, this glorious work is simmering with tension, as the choristers weave their intricate Tudor tapestry. Even in the reflective moments between the Gloria, Credo, Sanctus/Benedictus and Agnus Dei we are not allowed to rest, for the young organist, Christopher Whitton, applies a seamless adhesive of Tallis organ music, bespattered with false relations which send a visible frisson of pleasure through both choir and audience.

The interval is an opportunity to walk in the sunny churchyard and, if the spirit moves you to do so, to speak with members of the choir. This is not a conventional English activity, however and, in any case, there are enough friends and relations to keep the singers busily engaged for the twenty minute rest.

The second half is a mélange of 20th and 21st century music of different styles with works by Walton, Leighton and the Festival's Director, Jonathan Dove. The choir gives the composers the finest performance, of course, but I am left feeling that not all the fruits of musical progress since Tallis are sweet to my taste. I do not seek solace in convention and soft sweet harmony. I can find that in Victorian excess, and little of later emulation is an improvement. I yearn for new experiences, be they soothing, exciting or disturbing and do not find any here. The first piece, "Svyati", by Tavener is typically long, dare I say tedious? It is of the 'music written today does not have to hurt your ears, nor offend your sensibilities, nor jostle your complacency' type. Four short lines of text become a protracted farewell set to thirteen lugubrious minutes of over-familiar harmony, accompanied by a solo cello. I heard this some days ago during Evensong at the College Chapel and it has gained little in the retelling. Its execution, however, is brilliant and, sitting as we are on the front row, just a couple of metres from the cellist, we can appreciate and savour every nuance of his contribution.

Graham Walker was also the cellist in the chapel service during which the canticles were sung to Tippett's thrilling setting, written for the college. The last time John's recorded these on the Nimbus CD "The Sound of St. John's", in 1992 at the end of George Guest's long and glorious reign, the boy soprano soloist in the Nunc Dimittis was the same young Walker of whom our programme today states that he:

I mention this young man specially because he is another good example of one who has developed his chorister experience to great effect. Among the members of the choir are two familiar names, Iestyn Davies, Alto, who, also as a John's Chorister, gave a beautiful rendition of "Turn thy face" by Thomas Attwood on the first Christopher Robinson recording (Lindenberg LBCD47), and George Humphreys. I wonder if he is the "George" formerly of Christ Church, Oxford whose familiar voice opened each episode of the comedy series, "The Vicar of Dibley". Perhaps, if he is, he might wish to remain anonymous, though not on grounds of quality of performance, I hasten to add.

The concert concludes with the Five Flower Songs Op. 47 by Benjamin Britten. Here the composer sets seventy-six lines of poetry to twelve minutes of delightful music in a cycle written as a wedding anniversary gift for a pair of enthusiastic botanists. The last, entirely appropriate, song of the set tells of a lazy boy who will not get up and cut broom with his father. He is finally roused when his father threatens to set fire to his bedroom and, on his way to work, is spotted by a fine lady who takes a shine to him and offers her own hand in marriage. Johnny, no fool:

This is a sizzling end to the concert - or is it? If, as well as beaming our wide smiles at the choir and their master, we maintain the wild applause, we might just get an encore and we hope it will be a Tippett spiritual arrangement again. We are not disappointed. The concert ends as it began in solemn beauty.

Try as we might, we cannot squeeze another drop of music out of the choir. A brief flash of hope rises as Christopher Robinson asks a question of the singers. They shake their heads and he shrugs and smiles. Oh dear, they do not have the music. Sorry but it is time to leave. Was it contrived I, with a smile, wonder to myself?

Certainly the choristers are exhausted. Singing music of that complexity and with such concentration, then returning home at a time when all good little boys should already be in bed, is going to take its toll, as we discover the following day.

I have persuaded my weekend guests to come with me yet again to St John's Chapel for Evensong. In the case of Mr. Hough, I suspect it is more a matter of 'just try to stop me'. The music is Walmisley in D and Britten's "Hymn to St Peter". Some of the boys are simply too tired to attend and many more have to work hard to conceal their weariness. Nevertheless, the service is well sung. I need to hear Walmisley again. It was my introduction to broadcast Choral Evensong, recorded onto 2400 feet of BASF tape at 7.5 inches per second, forty years ago. The Choir of Canterbury Cathedral, which sang it then, milked every sentimental drop out of its victorious certainty. Alas time and physics have taken their toll and much of the music became but a dusty layer of brown iron oxide, decorating ancient tape-recorders or hiding between the floorboards of a succession of forgotten rented rooms. Few sing it now, though its minor brother is as popular as ever.

Today the familiar harmonies and heart-wrenching intervals of Victorian piety have me tumbling back through the years, oscillating between the days of adolescent angst when I first came to know it and a more distant imagined age of warmth and peace when it was written. It is a harmless and temporary euphoria which it is quickly deflated by the chastening Britten which follows. I remember the inner battles of my childhood, as I attempted to extricate myself from the morass of honeyed music which appealed too much, and accept the challenge of the young, intelligent composers who had turned their backs on an undemanding and unfulfilling heritage. Graham Walker sang Tippett's canticles when he was a boy. When I was Walker's age, a not-so-young Tippett was writing those notes which, with their insistent jubilance, sought to rouse us from our perfumed dreams into a new age of church music. Though the brief reveille was heeded by a few, Tippett, apparently having no real interest in the church, its beliefs or its back-water music, wrote little else to reawaken those in the choir stalls, and the new age gave way to the New Age, once again melliferous and stupefying. We all need to wallow once in a while, I suspect, and the annual nod to the flowing away of one's life seems as good an excuse as any; but, as I fall victim to this passing fancy, I shall hark back to the harmonies of Walmisley, Ouseley and Maunderley, even Gosseley and Stainerley, for my secret lullaby of longing - and not to some contemporary copy.

The soloist in St Peter's Hymn seems to have recovered from his efforts yesterday and his beautiful voice rings clear and true, an unintended gift perhaps but gratefully received nonetheless, and I am back in the present.

After the service, a friend takes me to meet Christopher Robinson, and tells him of my collection of boy soprano recordings. Robinson confirms Edmund Lovatt's rumour of a forthcoming solo recording by one of the choristers, Oliver Lepage-Dean. This is due for release on the Naxos label and promises to be worth waiting for. Master Lepage-Dean though, it seems, is currently bidding farewell to his soprano days. I wonder if he too will return to find a niche in the back row five years hence.

I think ahead to the excitement of next week. Some like to visit the warm, dry places of the planet. Others prefer white slopes, yellow beaches or multi-coloured leisure centres. My theme park this year is to be my own country's Anglican heritage - its cathedrals and their choristers. The journey begins on Wednesday and my stalwart companion is Martin Hough but, before we leave there is just one more service to attend in Cambridge.

Today the choirs of St John's and King's are pooling their talents for a combined jamboree under the lofty stone fountains of King's Chapel. Three forum members queue for an hour alongside Henry's glorious edifice. The minutes race by as we catch up on choral gossip and soon the queue has reached the college entrance. Not unreasonably a large portion of the seating inside is reserved for members of both colleges and for choristers' parents, friends and relations. Nevertheless we find a comfortable niche not too far from the action and, despite the fact that the singers must turn away from us to watch the conductor, there are today so many in number that their sound will fill even this space, enormous for a college chapel.

(Courtesy of Martin Hough) King's College Chapel, Cambridge

We neither expect, nor are we offered sensitive psalm singing from such a throng. Stanford's chant to Psalm 150 gives the choristers a chance to shout praises. Incredibly beautiful though King's Chapel is, and a thousandfold more so than that of St John's, how I miss its organ's vulgar little zimbelstern spinning its joyful jangle alongside the 'well-tuned' and 'loud' cymbals sung by the choir.

One of Stanford's most-loved settings of the canticles is on the menu; not C, not G, not even B flat, but the setting in the key of A. Stanford was not short of inspiration and the choirs, beneath Robinson's nimble fingers, are letting this be made manifest over a masterly organ accompaniment which has rolled through the first few bars, gathering momentum. "He hath shewed strength with his arm" rises like a bar of gold, then men and boys, with strident trumpet call, "put down the mighty from their seats" before the exalted "humble and meek' hover softly between the stunning, coloured windows. Antiphonal cries in the Gloria come not from the separate choirs but from the combined decani or cantoris sections of each choir. This is real cooperation! The Nunc Dimittis opens peacefully enough but the sound swells to a great 'to be the glory', twice stated, with increasing fervour, before fading almost to silence again until the jubilant repeat of the Gloria. Such a performance as this seems to leave even the congregation breathless, let alone the choirs.

Parry's setting of Milton's "At a Solemn Music" is the anthem. Stephen Cleobury conducts the two choirs in more than ten minutes of exultant joy. The performance is majestic, in keeping with the music which is a somewhat imperial interpretation of Milton's beautiful words. Opulence, Parry, unashamed Edwardian opulence! Readers will forgive, I hope, my quoting this poem in full as I draw part one to a close.

Tomorrow Martin Carson and Martin Hough will set out on a ten cathedral, six evensong pilgrimage about our currently green and pleasant land. That we should begin the musical tour with a St. John's concert is totally unfair, one provincial Director of Music will tell us - but he is quite wrong. Under his skilful hands we will hear some of the finest Anglican chanting to be enjoyed anywhere.

Part one ends in glorious E flat major.

--
Martin Carson
Norfolk UK