THERE was a moment in York Minster on Saturday morning when, after a triumphant, full-bodied, unrehearsed rendition of the Magnificat (Stanford in C) and Zadok the Priest, this august gathering of church-music practitioners persuaded the organist to point out his face.
The face appeared, barely bashful and smiling broadly, from the eyrie of an organ loft that appeared carved out of a forest of slender, soaring pinnacles. It was a type of metaphor.
Here was an assembly of individuals with a shared commitment to finding practical ways to encourage heavenly music in cathedrals and parish churches across the land; and, queuing for tea in a Regency constructing suffused in light and sweetness, a dean, a precentor, or a director of music had the identical mission and purpose as someone running a church choir that may need dwindled to single figures, but that remained a cherished expression of the divine.
The Archbishop of York put his finger on it. He was upbeat, urging his listeners never to take with no consideration the “precious and exquisite treasure” that was church music. He declared, in a chat, “Tuning Forks and Orchestras”, that he didn’t personally take up the offer of a tuning fork when leading responses — “I prefer to decide on a note myself” — scary from this assembly a mock intake of breath.
But his point was that the unifying single note of the tuning fork was the need of God. Those assembled were his orchestra. And whether or not they played trombone or kazoo, violin or spoons, they were called to sing God’s praise “for our own day . . . our own churches . . . our own communities”. The Church was seeing a renaissance of music-making in all its diversity, he suggested, thus demonstrating the gospel to be “good and true but in addition beautiful”.
He revealed that he each day picked up the guitar he had toyed with since he was ten. He loves the decision and answer of the Responses, the benefit and ease of singing rounds, and the rising popularity of community choirs: he speculated happily that he might head for one in all these when he retired. There were many things, he suggested, from which the Church could learn.
How respectful a gathering this was! In some other setting, a session, “So what makes for good worship?” that began with the Dean of York, the Very Revd Dominic Barrington, asking what makes bad worship would have provoked some shuddering recollections. I’d reel mine off with relish.
But he asked it of Carl Jackson, director of music on the Chapel Royal, Hampton Court; the Revd Peter Gunstone, recently Interim Precentor of Bradford Cathedral; the Director of Music of Peterborough Cathedral, Tansy Castledine; and the Revd Dr Victoria Johnson, Dean of St John’s College, Cambridge.
And, as a substitute, it prompted fruitful discussion that wandered into the realms of silence before worship, reference to God, intentionality, responding to the charge of exclusivity or elitism, transcendence versus immanence, the recognition of sung compline (revealed to be “an incredible mission opportunity with young people”).
Great sacred music didn’t must be sung in church. This was demonstrated by the Ebor Singers, in a performance led by Dr Andrew Earis, directed by Dr Paul Gameson, and designed to “speak to heart, head and soul” in its alternative of great classical music of the country’s religious heritage.
They stilled a lecture room with the wonder and quality of a 35-minute programme that included Philip Moore’s setting of Caedmon of Whitby’s first hymn; Holst’s Nunc Dimittis; Lucy Walker’s “I saw Eternity”; Kate Rusby’s “Underneath the Stars”; and, most moving of all, Rani Arbo’s pure and exquisite setting of Tennyson’s poem, “Crossing the Bar”.
And they got to sing about eternity, too — “Lord of the boundless curves of space” and “How shall I sing that majesty Which angels do admire?”. “Those previous few lines . . .” reflected the person seated next to me, almost lost for words. She quoted: “Thou art a sea with out a shore, A sun with out a sphere; Thy time is now and evermore, Thy place is in every single place.”
Dr Gameson founded the vocal ensemble while studying on a postgraduate course on the University of York and singing within the choir of York Minster. Twenty years on, a choral director, workshop leader, academic, and singing teacher, he still sings in that choir. Knowing that background gave much more impetus to the query posed of others in one other session: “What did a church choir ever do for me?”
It was asked of the tenor James Gilchrist and the soprano Hannah Davey. For Mr Gilchrist, who began as a boy chorister, aged ten, after his primary-school teacher encouraged his voice, and who emphatically never thought for a moment that he would make a profession in music, it was “a hugely necessary a part of what made me who I’m”. For Ms Davey, who didn’t have that background, it was a consciousness of what she had missed. She loved the collaborative nature of choral singing, a spot “where I feel connected to other people”.
Accompanied by Hugh Morris, director of the RSCM, they sang together and individually within the early-evening light and the tremendous acoustic of the Minster’s Lady chapel.
When Mr Gilchrist began to sing the Salve Regina, which is the antiphon for compline from Trinity to Advent, it was as if he had reached out a hand and seamlessly caught something divine passing on the breeze. So it was when Davey soared effortlessly to the heights in “I do know that my redeemer liveth”.
Here was the ability of sacred music. But the weekend wasn’t only in regards to the mountaintops. It was in regards to the valleys, too: the easy power of music to bring back something lost. In the serenity and ease of little St Helen’s Church, on bustling Stonegate, Adrian Bawtree, co-director of Kent Arts and Wellbeing, sat within the aisle on the centre of the group gathered for his workshop “Not Forgotten: Music and Dementia”.
With no introduction, no agenda, no music, no copies, he simply sang: “All things brilliant and exquisite”. We all joined in, and all of us sang several verses, because we had known it since childhood, as we had “Happy birthday to you”, or “My bonnie lies over the ocean”. Any lone church singer with a mind to share their musical gifts and produce back remembered things to people combating words could do it. There was no result and even progression searched for, suggested the music therapist Dr Alison Barrington: “Just people joining in.”
In York, plainly they will’t get enough of choral evensong: they queue to get into it. And the sung eucharist on Sunday morning, set against the golden background and wealthy history of the choir screen, sporting a parade of kings from William the Conqueror to Henry VI, is pure sacred theatre. The congregation responds with fervour.
The choir goes out to Psalm 150 — mostly sung out of sight and fading in the space — during which even to take breath seems like an interruption. It is the very embodiment of religion and music.
Read more on this story on this week’s Leader comment
Recordings of talks were made through the festival and will probably be made available in coming weeks. For information, see: faithandmusic.hymnsam.co.uk
