Compositions sung at the year’s royal Wedding and for the military wives’ choir – Paul Mealor’s sacred music illuminates both our past and our future, writes St Paul’s Cathedral’s Michael Hampel, Residentiary Canon and Precentor.
Writing in The Guardian :
It takes a royal wedding to remind us that what is known – not always accurately – as the Anglican choral tradition is in cultural terms blockbuster stuff, but it’s important that we’ve been reminded of that fact. In England’s cathedrals and greater churches, there is an almost unbroken link between the early days of the monastery, with monks singing “in quire”, and the professional choirs of today, in most cases the same buildings, who sing repertoire which spans nearly 10 centuries. And it is excellent news that Paul Mealor – whose motet Ubi Caritas was performed at Prince William and Catherine Middleton’s wedding – has taken his place within that living tradition.
Mealor was born in the Welsh cathedral town of St Asaph, and spent much of his childhood on the island of Anglesey. From an early age, he sang in local choirs and played in brass bands and orchestras, learning the trombone at the same time as his father – an amateur musician – learned to play tuba.
Now aged 35, Mealor has a strong sense of place, and, unlike other composers who are characterised by an idiosyncratic style, his work is marked by something outside of himself that is beautifully spatial and evocative of landscape. His music breathes. It breathes in the salt sea air of this island nation’s dramatic and diverse coastal landscape, and it breathes out a soulful response to the poetry of words. But that’s what “inspiring” is all about.
Like all good composers, Mealor has exposed himself to diverse influences and put himself through a rigorous process of self-examination. Initially self-taught, he worked with William Mathias (another royal wedding composer), and then John Pickard and Nicola LeFanu enlarged his experience. Equally important to the process of development was Mealor’s exploration of ethno-musical traditions such as Javanese gamelan and the sitar.
More at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/dec/01/paul-mealor-st-pauls-choral?newsfeed=true