Hoolies I have known ...

This startling photo was taken by Karen Brodie last Saturday as the participants in the Festal Evensong that had just celebrated 140 years of the Cathedral of The Isles poured out in a swish of red and gold onto the steps and stopped to pose. Small people to the front, they said, and some of us obliged. Far be it from me to lurk in the shadow of a mitre ...

It's been a long time since my first posing on these steps as part of an ecclesiastical extravaganza - the picture below was taken in the summer of 1973, when I have to say I felt as if I had a bit part in a Fellini film. It wasn't long after that that I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church, and another 6 months would see me uprooting myself from Glasgow and moving to Dunoon on the back of an invitation from the priest whose institution as priest-in-charge of Cumbrae as well as of Holy Trinity Dunoon was the occasion for that bit of finery. You can see that in those days we were soberly dressed in black (I think they were our MA gowns, and cassocks for the boys) whereas nowadays we are more Whoopie Goldbergish in red (donated by an American church). The red gowns used to have dreadful white polyester scarves, but we managed over time to lose these ...

And if you look closely at the two photos, you should recognise one constant - or rather, four constants: the four members of the St Maura Singers, a relatively new group back then; a somewhat older one now. Two men, two women. We (the women) were both pregnant in the first photo; decidedly not so last weekend. So it's been a while, and we've seen a great many hoolies in this lovely place.

There's nothing quite like a full house to boost the spirits; nothing quite like a good choir to sing with to make the spirits soar. I reckon I've been lucky to have my faith journey as well as a chunk of my musical life linked into the Cathedral on Cumbrae - or the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, or the Cathedral of The Isles, if you prefer - for it remains special, full of benevolent spirits and still numinous in the incense-remembering silence of an evening alone in the Butterfield building. I've shared it with musicians, with retreat groups, with a Cursillo weekend, with a preaching workshop, and simply with our friend Alastair who is the organist there. But no matter when I go or with whom, this is my place* - which may explain why I look so pleased with myself in Saturday's photo.

That said, it was a crazy weekend. Many of us who made up the choir had arrived on the Friday for dinner and had rehearsed until 10pm; the following day we began at 10am and went on till 1pm with a 15 minute break; the Evensong - an enormous sing - took up the afternoon; we rehearsed till 10pm in the evening. On Sunday, we began at 9.45am to practise for the Eucharist (a Mass setting we'd never seen before); when that was over and we'd grabbed a salad it was back to get ready for a concert at 3pm. I haven't worked so hard in years, and neither has my voice.

I attribute its surprising resilience to a summer spent singing along to Leonard Cohen, actually - it's fair ironed out the break around Middle C that used to cause me such bother, and in a summer of builders and no choir it's been good to have something to sing with. How long, O Lord ...?

A final thought: I have no idea what anyone not involved in this kind of thing makes of it. It's clearly formed a big part of my life, and I've had a lot of fun. But normal? I don't think so ...


*This is not strictly true, you understand: there are probably hundreds of people who'd say the same, but ...

Peirles Paramour...A journey into our past

Fragment from text of document 

I've been singing again. Back to where, in a way, it all began - and the time when the text on the left was at once wondrously strange and increasingly familiar. If you sat Higher Music in Scotland in 1964, it may well seem familiar to you too - for that year one of our set works for study was a group of pieces from Musica Britannica Vol XV - Music of Scotland 1500-1700, edited by Kenneth Elliott. I have a clear memory of standing round the piano in the Music Room (Room 16) of Hillhead High School with a group of friends, singing our way through this particular song as best we could, the sight-reading of music and language taxing our brains and leading to much hilarity - before we started again, determined to get it right.

After I left school I met Kenneth Elliott at Glasgow University, not because I studied music (though I did, for one year, to make up the so-called "science" subject in an Arts degree) but because I sang with a small group who actually performed this music he'd spent so much work on. We were invited to his house for evenings of singing and wine; we stiffened the ranks of various University choirs as they struggled to meet his demands. I've been singing it, on and off, ever since.

And this is why, a couple of days ago, I found myself singing this music of a Scotland that few really know about - singing it with the St Maura Singers, the quartet that has been a thread through my life since the late 60s, rehearsing for a memorial concert for Kenneth Elliott which will take place in the original home of the St Mauras, The Cathedral of The Isles on Cumbrae. We're doing a whole programme of this music, almost all of it for four voices, and one of the pieces is Support Your Servand - which in fact we've never performed. I was eighteen again, suddenly - and it was as if we were seeing it for the first time.

Read the words again. Read them aloud. How are you pronouncing them? How, gentle reader, will we pronounce them? This is a discussion we have every time we perform any of these pieces. Are the "oi" sounds as in "hoy!" or simply the modern "sore"? And we listen to recorded performances - much lauded - in which the accent is so ... Scottish? ancient? ... as to be incomprehensible, and we wonder if anyone in the audience will have a clue. And then we found what Kenneth himself had to say about it, and it was wonderful.

I would once again urge singers to pronounce the Scots texts as naturally as possible, without recourse to the extremes of local dialect: these text are related to the courtly tradition of Scots poetry, written by sophisticated Scots of burgh, song- or Grammar-school and university, in touch with, if not even part of castle and, ultimately, court culture, rather than the rustic precursors of bothy balladeers, kailyard confectioners or Doric dropouts.

I can hear Kenneth's voice here - and a degree of exasperation (I would once again urge..) Obviously he's had this conversation before. So we will not roll our 'r's more than normally, nor will we sound like The Corries on a culture trip. The music - in all its complexity or its deceptive simplicity - will speak as well as we can achieve. And despite all the people who have sung it since, we will know that we were there very early on in the performing of it.

And somewhere, I think Kenneth will be smiling.

Still singing after all these years ...

Are we all ready?
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Readers of this blog will know that I sing a bit. Yesterday the group with which I have done more singing than any other came to Dunoon to perform in Holy Trinity - my church. It is something that rarely happens - we do most of our performing in the Cathedral of The Isles - and it meant a great deal to me. To make "our" music in "our" place, at last, felt as if a story was being completed.

The story began 42 years ago - and that horrifies me, when I write it. In 1969 the St Maura Singers formed and sang Evensong, as I mentioned in my last post, and we've been at it ever since. Our soprano - wearing a purple jacket in the pic - moved away and mutated into an alto; her place was taken by a teenager just out of school (dark green jacket). Yesterday we were all together, along with another bass (white beard) and an instrumental ensemble, giving a re-run of our 40th birthday programme.

It was a lovely afternoon. The weather was perfect, the afternoon tea on the lawn unsurpassable, the audience a good size - and mostly drawn from outwith the HT congregation, which was healthy for the coffers. The church itself proved what we who worship there have always known: it has a superb acoustic and a wonderful atmosphere, peeling paintwork notwithstanding. It doesn't suffer from the curse of wealthier churches - thick pile carpeting and cushioned seats - and the hassocks had all been piled away to increase resonance.

Personally, I was soaring on adrenaline. A combination of singing first alto in "When David Heard" and making a decent job of John McIntosh's* settings of Dave Whyte songs left me wrung out after it was over - and starving. I was as high as the proverbial kite, and as always found myself wondering how long we'll be able to do this.

At 65, I realise it can't be much longer. Our soprano is the only one not in that age range. But what a privilege still to be performing like this - I only hope I'll know myself when it's time to give up!

*OK - he's Mr B. But he has another life ...

Of plain chant, coal heavers and feathers...

I've referred recently to singing plainsong - though the singing of the example on this Wiki page wouldn't encourage anyone, I fear - which possibly gives me more sense of completeness that any other music, at least in the church setting of much of my own singing. The accompanying illustration comes from the modern setting of Compline, and shows the traditional notation in a clear modern typeface.

I was first drawn to this music in my impressionable youth - before I had anything to do with church other than as a musician. In the late 60s, there was not much of it around, certainly not on the Third Programme, but when I turned up in the summer of 1969 to sing Evensong in The Cathedral of The Isles with the newly-formed St Maura Singers, we had to learn quickly - a new psalm or two, the Magnificat to Tonus Peregrinus - and I had my first go at deciphering neums and four-line staves.

All this was a long time ago, I remember ... anyway, I've sung the psalms and Compline to plain chant over the years since then, and have discovered a thing or two. The first was that I found it easy to read once I had the hang of it, and to work out where the semitones fell (always the pitfall if you don't) and the implications of the interesting groupings of notes (that last link, by the way, gives considerably more detail). But after that, the biggest discovery was the wonderful sense of control, of the line conveying the words without the need for any irritating "interpretation" on my part, of the flexibility when a trained group (or a solo cantor) is able to give slightly different emphasis to one word by lingering infinitesimally on it - all this seemed to me to allow for meditation actually to take place without getting in the way. The pause at the central colon in the psalms turned out to be just right for the breath required for the second half, and the antiphonal singing allowed for the smooth flow from one verse to the next, without worry, without the need for any mnemonic. It felt relaxed and prayerful.

It isn't always thus. People can sing this stuff without any feeling for it at all and ruin the effect. Sometimes I've heard plainchant that might as well be someone selling coal in the street (they don't, any more, but I recall the cry of "coaaaaaal briquettes" from my youth). However, the same goes for any music, and there are murderous performances to be heard on the internet any day of the week. But if you're lucky enough to find yourself in a position where you can enjoy the feather on the breath of God that is eloquent plain chant, or better still to take part in making it happen, you'll know what music you'll hear in at least one of the many mansions of heaven.

More forties

Choir stalls
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Another of those days when there seems to be a kink in time. I have sat in these choir stalls, in the Cathedral of The Holy Spirit, Cumbrae, more times than I can count - rehearsing, participating in services, waiting to be confirmed - or as today, listening to the music of my fellow-musicians in a concert.

Today saw the culmination of 41 years of singing with the St Maura Singers - we had intended it as a 40th anniversary concert, but illness meant cancellation last Autumn and today we resurrected that programme, having managed to reassemble with the two extra singers required by some of the music. During those 41 years of singing together, the quartet has frequently performed the early Scottish music arranged by Kenneth Elliott, who is now 81 but was 40 when we were discovering this music. So it was forty years that vanished into the fold of memory as I listened to the string ensemble play, and to the ravishing Lamento della Ninfa of Monteverdi, and I was at once young again and wondering how many more times I would be able to experience this particular joy.

Most of the music this afternoon came from the 16th century, but two notable exceptions were the very new arrangements by John McIntosh (aka Mr B) of folk songs - The Broken Brook and Nancy - originally commissioned by Cappella Nova. The shifting, folk-based syncopations of Nancy had caused our augmented group more problems than we might care to admit, and we were thrilled that it actually came together - proof of which was that wonderful sigh from the audience in the moment before the applause began.

The other high point for me was that at last we got to perform the Tomkins When David Heard. I've gone on about this before on the blog; this afternoon's performance became somehow electric so that we balanced on a fine wire between emotion and perfection and ended in a silence that seemed eternal.

If this afternoon's performance were to turn out to be the last time the voice held out, the last time I would have the privilege of singing this stuff, I would be content. Not so content, however, that I don't hope we can do it again ...

Singing grief

I was involved in one of our all-too-infrequent rehearsals with the St Maura Singers yesterday - an expanded SMS, with two extra singers to make it possible to sing some new music. It was salutary that we had to spend an hour on a new piece that lasts all of 3.50 minutes - the slightly jazzy, displaced rhythms of Mr B's beautiful setting of Nancy had experienced musicians fumbling for the groove (so to speak, in my jazzy sort of mood ...)

But what struck me yet again was the incomparable beauty of Tomkins' When David Heard. I sing first alto in this, and found myself, on the first run-through, almost unable to continue. David's reaction to the news of Absalom's death goes from from the heart-broken repetitions of Absalom my son, over and over, over and over, to the words every parent can recognise: would God I had died for thee. It starts simply, bleakly almost, but then becomes more insistent - and then we're back with Absalom, my son, quietly, dying into the final cadence, as if David has no more energy to express the grief that has overcome him.

As I grow older - or simply old - I find this harder and harder to sing with the detachment I was able to enjoy when I first encountered the piece in my 20s. And yet the music is ruined by gusty, emotional lines or operatic emoting - for it is the music itself that paints the words, and the music needs every ounce of concentration to let it speak. By the end of a performance I am exhausted, and yet it lasts only five minutes.

The performance I've linked to is a tad slow for my taste - just a fraction - but lets the music work. If you've never heard it, go and listen.

Recollected in tranquillity

I've spent the last two hours singing the most beautiful music, practising for a gig on Sunday when the St Maura Singers celebrate their 40th year of singing together. The concert is part of the Music for a Summer Afternoon (summer!) series in the Cathedral of The Isles on Cumbrae, where we first sang together, and we shall be revisiting some of the music we sang then as well as two new pieces - new to us, and fairly recently composed for Cappella Nova - by John McIntosh. These last, in 5 parts, are possible because our current quartet will be joined by our original soprano, as well as an extra bass who goes back to our University Chapel Choir days, so it should be quite a reunion.

But all that is by way of introducing what actually drove me to post this, for two of the pieces brought home to me how much I have changed in my reaction, not to the music, but to the words. I could barely get through Tomkins' When David Heard - these repeated "Oh my son, my son" lines can never be the same, I think, to anyone who has a son. It took all my willpower to focus on purity of line and phrasing, the need to express the abandonment of grief by the greatest of control - that paradox of the performer, really. And Lassus' Justorum Animae made me think of Ruby, a lovely lady, a Cursillista who died last week and whose funeral is tomorrow. I wish we could be singing these words over her, for although the Latin uses the masculine form throughout, surely if anyone's soul is in the hand of God Ruby's is.

Iustorum animae in manu Dei sunt, et non tanget illos tormentum mortis. Visi sunt oculis insipientium mori: illi autem sunt in pace.

Flying high

Being someone's mother can be a real pain. Right now, thinking of Edublogger, Mrs E and Baby E travelling to New Zealand, I am acutely aware of how much of a pain. However, I'm relieved to see their plane heading serenely and on time over the Pacific, 238 miles from Los Angeles with just over 6,000 miles still to go. Thanks to Flight stats, a nifty site which reminds me of my own trip to NZ, I can follow their progress, know if they're going to land on time, know that they took off 6 minutes late. (On Emirates airlines, we followed the map of our progress all night over the Indian Ocean. Nightmare) I feel strangely reassured - but glad that I at least was not compelled to check the computer at 4am ...

On another tack entirely, I'm off to the Cathedral of the Isles again, to sing Scottish music from the time of James 4th to the present day with the St Maura Singers. This quartet has been on the go since 1968, though purists will be glad to hear that our current soprano is of the generation below ours. In fact, the combination of the quartet and the Cathedral is largely responsible for my being a Piskie - even for my being a Christian. God the Musician?

I like that idea.