Tudor church music in trying times

Yesterday, I had the privilege of spending one glorious hour singing Tudor church music with four other excellent singers/sight readers. The a cappella music of Tallis, Tye, Byrd, Gibbons, Merbecke, Parsons, Taverner and others is not for the faint of heart or reading ability. I am rusty and had to keep a beat going against the side of my leg so as not to get too far off, but I was proud that I still have a strong, clear, bell-like alto that pretty much stays on key. The other singers were sensitive and musical; this genre of music requires an extremely high level of skill and awareness of the other voices. We had never sung together before, and I think all of us left thinking, wow, that wasn't bad at all.

As I was thinking about it last night, thinking about how this music (and modern English church music) is the music of my soul, I realized something. I wonder if there is, deep in me, almost a "Pandora" radio station on at all times, kind of a streaming thread of the Tudor greats through Purcell and on into the glorious 19th century giants of Parry and Stanford and Elgar, then Howells, Walton, Ireland, Britten, Leighton, Tavener and beyond, and then looping back to the beginning. There is a quality of beauty and clarity in this music that is my touchstone, my backbone, and for whatever reason, other musical genres barely move me. Singing it, as I did last night, I felt like myself for the first time in months, plugged in to the electric current of the Universe. I suddenly saw it as the "horizon" image that I worked with in painting for several years, an energetic ribbon moving through my own inner landscape. Things in my life that haven't reflected that musicality and resonance -- from jobs to people to places -- haven't lasted long because they were not an energetic match. Arguably I haven't been quote-unquote "successful" in the wider world because of this impossibly exquisite musical standard always flowing through my core. That's not a good thing (!!) but I think it explains a lot.

Renaissance/Tudor choral singing requires cooperation. Love. Sensitivity. An appreciation of beauty. Hard work. Intuition. Inner-centeredness/outer awareness. What it is not is competitive, hateful, self-righteous, cynical, outward-lashing or individualistic. At this exceedingly challenging moment in the world, this music has much to teach us. As I headed to the rehearsal yesterday, I had to convince myself that singing for an hour was even remotely relevant. Now, on some level, I understand that perhaps nothing else is.

More Evensongs

When you have a "thing" about choral evensong, the great thing about the UK is the variety of venues, choirs and services.  Because of the timing of this trip, during the Easter holiday, I haven't been able to attend quite as many services as I would have liked, but I'm grateful nonetheless for, so far, three very different experiences.

At King's College, Cambridge, I attended Maundy Thursday Eucharist, Good Friday Evensong, and Easter Festal Evensong.  As a teenager, I listened to every recording from King's I could get my hands on, and the chapel's four-second reverberation became (unfairly, of course!) my standard for the men and boys' choir sound.  What always astonishes me when I attend a service there is that the reverberation is real.  Quite literally, you hear the choir's sound heading up to the (fan-vaulted) heavens.  You never quite know when you are in line for the service where you will be able to sit, but if it is anywhere near the choir (in the parallel stalls facing each other across the chapel's center aisle), there is a unique sense of belonging that you don't get in churches where the "congregation" is in the center and the choir is singing from the front, the side, or a choir loft.  I suspect that quite apart from the King's choir's excellence, this will always be my favorite place to attend evensong.

After my "encounter" with Julian two weeks ago, I headed over to Norwich Cathedral for evensong.  On this occasion, I found myself seated right behind the visiting choir's bass section, and I was the one reverberating! This was a big mixed choir and they did a fine job of some very big music, the Blair in B minor and the Naylor Vox Dicentes. 

And then yesterday, in London, I attended evensong at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, on Trafalgar Square, which is an 18th century building in a more traditional church style, without parallel choir stalls.  Their choral scholars, arrayed in a semi-circle up front, sang a gloriously beautiful service -- the two young women sopranos had perhaps the purest voices I've ever heard anywhere.  After evensong at a college chapel or cathedral, you usually exit into the quiet confines of a quadrangle or close.  What was interesting at St. Martin was exiting to the absolute pandemonium of Trafalgar Square, which must be one of the busiest few acres in London. That contrast between the peace of the service and the bustle outside was acute.

In Norwich, I sat next to a man who must have been well into his 90's, and I noticed during the psalms that he was silently lip-synching with the choir (something I have to force myself not to do.)  After the service, I asked if he had been in a choir and he said yes, as a boy.  He said he still wishes he could sing.  Yesterday, there was a twenty-something man doing the same thing a row ahead of me.  How many services are attended by former choristers who almost cannot not sing along to the music they love?  From what I gather (and from video clips I've seen from the 1950's and early 1960's), the standard of singing continues to get higher and higher over time; perhaps the "inner" sound of retired singers is adding to that spiritual intensity and musical excellence.

Portals

There is something about staking a claim to a dream that earlier in my life would have seemed rather off-putting, but I have since grown to expect, even love.  It's the imperfection of it all. 

When it's no longer enough to do those smaller, symbolic acts (listening to webcasts of the music you love, carving out of small "retreat" moments at the coffee shop, the beach chair in the snow, borrowing a little red car -- even visualizing a good job or healing), it is so tempting to hope for perfection on the next step of the journey.  We've all worked hard and deserve a little perfection.  And yet this is the earth plane.  The next step is bound to be delightfully, messily, imperfect.

This visit to England has started in Cambridge, and it was such good fortune that King's College's services extended through Easter (most of the college chapels are on break.) Yes, I was truly in Liz heaven, with three evening services in four days.  To get good seats required arriving quite early to queue up and -- two of the days -- being pelted by penetrating cold rain and wind, from which I am still warming up.  Then at one of the services, I ended up sitting near a couple who decided to get into a sotto voce argument during the singing of the canticles.  I mean, really?  You are within feet of one of the best choirs in the world, and you are missing out and distracting everyone around you? Despite a barrage of pointed looks from one and all, they continued whispering for a few more minutes.  I think when I was younger, I might have gone away dissatisfied that these people had "ruined" the whole experience.  But the joy of 60 is, hey, you're just glad to be there.  You're glad to be anywhere, period.  In the end, what I focused on were the miracles: hearing this choir again in person, meeting an American student as enthusiastic about choral evensong as I am (and with whom I have a number of friends in common) and, probably, most memorably, the fact that after Easter evensong they opened the enormous West doors of the chapel for people to exit from.  The rain had stopped, and an ethereal pale yellow light suffused the door and the glorious stained glass window above. Walking toward and through this towering portal left me quite breathless.  For about five minutes, I took in the misty "Backs," feeling almost like I was having an out-of-body experience.  Eventually, there was nothing to be done but to walk around the front court, out the gate, and into the cacophonous Cambridge streets. I had been through a portal all right, but I'm just not sure yet what it all means.

When life gives you the opportunity to make a dream just a little more real, go for it, even if there is great imperfection mixed in with the perfection, even if it is in a brief or limited way.  In a world that sometimes seems to have too few miracles, whatever step you take toward your dream is a miracle. And it's important to see how the world looks from that new "place" on the other side of the portal.

Choral Evensong

I guess it is time that I at least try to describe this service, for readers who have never heard of it.  Choral evensong is the “flagship” service of the Church of England, being sung daily or almost daily, at every English cathedral and at Cambridge, Oxford and other university chapels.  Based on medieval services, and sung each late afternoon since the 16^th century, it is almost entirely choral, that is, sung by the choir, interspersed with readings or prayers by clergy.  The congregation does not play an active role in the service, except for singing perhaps one or two hymns and reciting the creed. But because in most cathedrals the “congregation” sits in choir stalls near the choir, there is a unique immediacy for those in attendance.

I have tried to figure out how to articulate the hold this service has on me, but without success.  Even though the church of my upbringing had an English-style men and boys’ choir, evensong was not sung.  So my exposure to the music of the service came higgledy-piggledy style, listening to records by King’s College Cambridge, St. John’s College Cambridge, Westminster Abbey, and others.  The Psalms of David  (recorded in, I believe, 1968 by King's College choir) taught me how to sing Anglican chant, and recordings of the evensong canticles (Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis) composed by Howells, Stanford and others familiarized me with words that would soon become as near to me as the beating of my own heart.  When did I first hear an evensong service in person? I think it must have been in 1978 or 1979, when I made my first pilgrimage to England, stepped off the plane at Heathrow and made my way immediately to Cambridge, so I would be in line at King’s for four o’clock evensong.  I remember being astonished that I was shown to a choir stall literally across the aisle from the famous choir of men and boys.  I had come home.  The next year, I attended the St. Thomas (NY) Choirmaster’s Conference which David Willcocks directed, and by late 1980, I was singing daily morning and weekly evensong services in the mixed men and women’s choir at Royal Holloway College/University of London.  We also sang evensong at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor and sang for a week as the choir-in-residence at Lincoln Cathedral.

From the moment the words “Oh Lord, open Thou our lips” is sung, it’s like I click into a spiritual place that is a direct line to the Divine.  I have tried for decades to convince myself that (my own personal spiritual beliefs being more “New Thought”/”New Age”) this is just some bizarre holdover from another lifetime, or that it’s irrelevant on a host of levels.  In the American context, of course, a case could be made that it is.  A handful of American Episcopal churches and cathedrals sing evensong, but these beautiful services are rather like drops of oil in the water – a totally different “animal” from the culture and society around them.  I’ve even had clergy in our country tell me that this service and its music are irrelevant, and that my passion for them is misguided. But despite all the discouragement, I had the immense privilege of singing many evensong services when I was in the choir of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, under the direction of Bruce Neswick.  

The fact is that, while the tradition is no doubt struggling even in England, it is born out of that soil and is part of a historical stream of spiritual and musical energy there.  Most of the music's composers are English; somehow, there is a quality to the sound and the setting which seems to send your own roots down into the soil, much as happens when I listen to the music of Elgar or Vaughan Williams. It is an odd sensation, perhaps attributable to my own English heritage. You can find occasional evensong services even in smaller parish churches, a challenge for non-professional choirs because the music of the tradition requires an extremely high level of musical skill.  Yet it is the perfect way to end a day, and singers of evensong give everything they have.

Evensong's beauty transcends time and “relevance” and takes those who resonate with it, home.  There are increasing opportunities for women to sing evensong these days, and I want to live where I can take regular part in some of those opportunities.  But just to show up at a cathedral in the late afternoon light – and sit quietly in the choir stalls above or to the side of the choir as they start singing the “Preces” – is my chosen way of “shewing forth” praise of the Divine.