British choirs lead the world – and it is due to Evensong – Michael White in today’s Daily Telegraph.
He writes:
British choirs lead the world, and now is the time to join one, as the perfect refuge from a world in crisis.
That choirs are in the news these days, thanks to belated government initiatives in schools and Gareth Malone with soldiers’ wives, reminds me of a choral survey which Gramophone magazine published last year in the run-up to Christmas. Its findings were in some respects perverse, but the broad outcome was something no one could quarrel with. And the broad outcome was that British choirs lead the world – largely thanks to the Church of England, which struggles in almost every other respect to keep its show on the road, and gets in a lather about things that long ago stopped bothering most sentient beings such as the sexuality and gender of its priests, but still (hurrah) maintains an excellence in singing.
Choral evensong – freely available at a cathedral, abbey or collegiate church near you – is an experience not to be found in any of the other leading music nations. Only here. And it’s the perfect refuge from a world in crisis. Anyone who feels assaulted by the weight of economic doom that hits you from the moment you wake up to Evan Davis listing all the things that went from bad to worse during the night (memo to self: I need to change the channel on the bedside radio), should try an hour of Gibbons, Byrd or Herbert Howells with a decent choir. It’s calming, therapeutic, healthier than drugs and might just put you on the path to righteousness.
Calm apart, what choral evensong achieves – aside from pleasing God, which figures somewhere in the rationale – is to declare the Church of England’s role as one of the great vocal factories of all time. Since the Reformation, but particularly since the early 20th century, it’s produced a singing culture like no other. And the explosion of superlative, small-scale, professional English choirs that dominate the market these days, largely manned (or womanned) by ex-choral scholars in the Oxbridge Anglican chapel system, is the proof.
Polyphony, The Monteverdi Choir, The Sixteen, Tenebrae, The Tallis Scholars, The Cardinall’s Musick, The Gabrieli Consort, I Fagiolini… it’s a super-charged elite as worthy of gold medals as Olympic runners. And where do the voices in these dazzling small choirs come from? A time-honoured process that will probably have started (for the men) as trebles in an Anglican church, then seen them through to the chapel of some public school or other (since the state system fails so badly when it comes to vocal training), and on to Oxbridge. Where the stakes get higher.
For the remainder of a fascinating article see:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/8931649/Lift-up-your-voices-in-praise-of-our-brilliant-British-choirs.html