bumper christmas issue upbeat dec2016.pdf · and yes, most sprightly – pieces, joseph key’s...
TRANSCRIPT
Upbeat No.15 December 2016
Doctor’s Notes….. by Francis Roads
On 17th July I attended an evening concert at St
Peter’s Church, Vauxhall. It was given by two
members of London Gallery Quire, Jo Lewis and
Kathryn Rose, and non-member Clive Richards. They
sang unaccompanied, except for the occasional
support from Kathryn’s serpent or Jo’s recorder. The
programme, which was built around the theme of
pilgrimage, included two of Kathryn’s compositions;
a mediaeval hymn; three songs by John Dowland;
five West Gallery pieces, four more from the
American Shape note repertoire, and a poem. Some
of the West Gallery pieces were from London Gallery
Quire’s repertoire. And some of the others, which
had clearly been downloaded from the three–part
section of my website, I heard performed live for the
first time.
I can hardly write too favourably about the standard
of performance. Their intonation, ensemble and
diction were all faultless. They made a pure vibrato-
free blend of sound, which was highly suitable for
their chosen repertoire. I have heard professional
singers sing this sort of music in a less appropriate
style, with their vibrato and “produced” voices,
which for me don’t make the right kind of sound for
such music.
And what also pleased me so much was that this was
an ordinary, mainstream concert which happened to
include some West Gallery music. This represents the
goal towards which I have been striving for two
decades or more. A few mainstream church choirs,
choral societies, and even congregations have taken
up the idea of using the West Gallery music as part of
their general repertoire. But only a few. Honourable
mention goes to the Hayes Philharmonic Choir, who
now usually include a couple of West Gallery pieces
in their concert programmes.
In some churches I encounter what I call “sniffy
organist syndrome”. “This isn’t what we are used
to,” they say, when I show them a rousing metrical
psalm setting by Thomas Clark or someone similar.
Nobody said that it was. But so many church choirs
nowadays attempt music which is really rather too
challenging for them, often because the choir leader
is a cathedral organist manqué. If only they would
sing this music which was specifically composed for
amateur choirs, and does not present the technical
challenges of cathedral music!
So, well done Jo, Kathryn and Clive. Let’s have more
of the same!
Continued page 2
The Newsletter of the London Gallery Quire
The Thomas Hardy Tree
at St. Pancras Old Church by Alan Franks
Talking of Thomas Hardy, as often happens in
West Gallery circles, have you seen his tree in the
grounds of St. Pancras Old Church? Although I had
heard about it, I had never set eyes on it until the
LGQ sang at the church, now an astonishingly cool
concert venue, on the hottest day of last year.
Although it is common knowledge that Thomas
came from an intensely musical Wessex family and
played the fiddle excellently from a young age, the
time he spent in London during his twenties is less
well-known. One reason for this is that he had yet
to make his name as a novelist and poet. But here
he was, working as an assistant architect for the
practice of Arthur Blomfield.
In the mid-1860s he was given responsibility for
the excavation of a section of the church’s
graveyard. Given the recent controversy a few
hundred yards to the west over the possible
removal of some 30,000 graves from the eighteenth
century burial ground of St. James’ Gardens to
make way for the proposed HS2 rail link, this
chapter in Hardy’s life acquires a thoroughly
modern relevance. It was a period of enormous
railway expansion, with land-hungry lines carving
a passage through country and town alike. From the
proximity of the Old Church’s grounds to the line
out of Kings Cross, you can still sense the tight,
grudging neighbourliness of the ancient church and
the modern means of travel as the new Midland
Company forged ahead.
BUMPER CHRISTMAS ISSUE
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Hardy’s job was to oversee the relocation
of the human remains beneath a young ash
tree close to the church. More than a century
and a half later you can see the legacy of his
labours, and very dramatic it is too. The
gravestones have been reassembled as tight
as playing cards. The tree’s roots have
gnarled their way among them and the
whole strange scene has the look of a frozen
congregation huddled together – a little late
– for safety. There is also a memorial aspect
to it as the site is encircled by a well-kept
and rather formal hedge with barred gates.
What would Hardy have made of it all? It is
tempting, as always, to find evidence of the
life’s experience in the work. In this case it
may not be entirely fanciful to find clues to
his famous lugubriousness in the trauma of
this early task. Perhaps he is even signalling
us in this direction with an early poem, The
Levelled Churchyard, clearly inspired by
what happened here:
O passenger, pray list and catch
Our sighs and piteous groans,
Half stifled in this jumbled patch
Of wrenched memorial stones!
We late-lamented, resting here,
Are mixed to human jam,
And each to each exclaims in fear,
‘I know not which I am!’
Review: Rotherhithe Continued
Reviews: Barn Church, Kew Saturday 1st October
By Alan Franks
There were grounds for anxiety over this
LGQ engagement. Here are some of them,
listed at random. First, the building, a
gloriously unusual transplant from a Surrey
farm in 1929. As a barn, it had not been
constructed with the audibility of hymns as
a main priority. In fact, when the LGQ
founder and director made a reconnaissance
trip there earlier in the year, his view was
that the Quire might struggle to make itself
heard properly.
This is not a common prognosis from Dr.
Roads, who pronounced The Barn “pretty
dead, actually.” This could not have been
acoustically further from the Quire’s
previous performance, in the ringing spaces
of St. George’s Bloomsbury, the LGQ’s fourth
and final stop on a memorable Church Crawl. We
could still hear those echoes in our heads.
Second, weekend public transport to the far
western reaches of the London Overground and
ever-trundling District Line cannot be taken for
granted.
Third – and this is personal – I was due to a read a
poem of mine about the posthumous return of
Thomas Hardy, as keen a Wessex fiddler as a
fiction writer, on hearing the sound of a West
Gallery Quire from outside a church. I had never
read it in anything resembling public, so I was
looking at nothing less than a world premiere.
Fourth, this was my wife Ruth’s first appearance
with the Quire as a clarinettist, and what she
lacked in the way of anxiety I more than made up
for with tiresome inquiries about her nerves.
Needless ones too, as she blew her way fluently
through a programme of great variety as if not a
day had passed between Grade Five and the
present.
What’s more, the recital was a well attended one,
far in excess of expectations, given its timing in
the middle of a Saturday afternoon. A barn of a
place? No, the cliché would have been inaccurate.
The majority of the audience – even the musically
literate – admitted to an almost perfect ignorance
about West Gallery music. You could see it
drawing them in with that sprightly humanity
which never seems to fail.
We kicked off with one of the Quire’s earliest –
and yes, most sprightly – pieces, Joseph Key’s
Jubilate, followed by the gentler ruminations of
James Leach’s Lord, Hear My Supplicating
Voice, from Psalm 119. The rest of the
programme included a setting of Samuel
Crossman’s My Life’s A Shade, by William
Knapp, one of the LGQ’s most popular
composers; Samuel Chapple’s irresistible I’ll
Wash My Hands in Innocency; two sets of words
to Anon’s Rineton, conducted by Phil Price;
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One of the (many) things I enjoy
about singing with LGQ is that we perform at
beautiful and fascinating churches that I would
otherwise never have visited. All Saints’, West
Ham - like St Mary Magdalene’s, East Ham
where we sang evensong in the summer - has the
feel of a large country church which has been
surrounded by the city as London has expanded.
That’s exactly what it is. The church once
belonged to Stratford Langthorne Abbey, one of
the largest Cistercian abbeys in England before
the reformation and the keystone of the abbey’s
charnel house door, depicting five skulls, is
displayed on the church wall, near the entrance.
LGQ arrived in drizzly November darkness – in
my case, via an East-end-atmospheric walk past
blue flashing lights, a high brick wall separating
housing from the main road, and a boarded-up
pub – to a large church and a churchyard full of
damp fallen leaves. We found the front door. The
church was spacious, light (and warm and dry)
and Francis was at the door.
Reviews: All Saints, West Ham
Saturday 12th November By Joanna Lewis
The performance itself had its shaky moments
and one or two moderately good starts, but we
conveyed the energetic spirit of West Gallery,
and the appeal of its distinctive style, well.
Some highlights included a tempestuous mood
to match the words of Psalm 107 (LGQ 197;
They that in ships) as well as the weather
outside; the alto solo in I will bless the Lord
(LGQ 151); the good contrast in texture
between sections in The heavens declare thy
glory, Lord (LGQ 46); and the lightness of the
duet sections of How beautiful upon the
mountains (LGQ 113).
The audience were very appreciative (as well as
encouragingly numerous): there was a special
round of applause for Jon Cullen, who was
manning the door, for his tune to Ye servants of
God (LGQ 537), and the excellent reading of
Hardy’s Absentmindedness in the Parish Choir
by David Bidwell raised several laughs.
A few shape note singers in the audience will I
hope have enjoyed our interpretation of All Hail
the Power of Jesus’ Name to Green Street
(LGQ 169), which appears in the Sacred Harp.
The joyful chorus of O all you nations, praise
the Lord (LGQ 536) made a strong end,
followed by generous applause and a rare
encore.
To summarise the evening, in the words of a
member of the alto section, “Good audience,
good tea and good loos: what more can you ask
for?”
William Croft’s enigmatic setting of Like As
The Hart Desireth The Waterbrooks, written
in the earliest years of West Gallery; and our
deputy director Kathryn Rose’s elegantly
melancholy setting of William Cooper’s The
Contrite Heart.
As for the poem about Thomas Hardy, well,
it happened. For this I am eternally grateful to
the famous novelist, who turned up and spoke,
in rhyme, and I could not have done any of
these things without the declamatory skills of
my fellow tenor David Bidwell.
We have more in common, the Barn and our
music, than we may have known. It was busy
and much used in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, before a period of
neglect and subsequent renaissance. With its
beams believed to have been taken from
ships’ timbers, it too knows all about the fresh
use of traditional material.
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Read Alan’s poem in full at the back of Upbeat
From this…. ...to this.
Barry Lloyd, Quire
singer, player and
musical instrument
maker, explains
how.
When I first started making musical instruments, I was told
"It's quite simple: you just take a piece of wood and remove all the
bits that don't look like a recorder". This is almost true of early re-
corders or flutes where there are only two pieces of wood, slightly
less true of baroque recorders or bassoons (3 or 4 pieces and some
metal too) and certainly not true of the violin where there 40 or so
pieces of wood. As for modern instruments, bristling with keys, the
amount of metalworking makes it a job for specialists.
Going back to the recorder, first, take a piece of wood, per-
haps maple (A). The first job (B) it to put it on a lathe, and make it
round – although, if you haven't got a lathe, don't despair – I once
made a recorder from a Sainsbury's rolling pin. Next, we need a hole
down the middle, using a long drill. It's possible to do this in the
normal way, but if the hole is not to be too far off-centre when the
drill comes our (or comes out of the side!) it is better to have the
wood in the lathe and go in with a stationary drill (C). Then turn the
outside to get it the right size (D).
Now we have a nice wooden tube. Mark where the window
is going and drill a few holes and then with a scalpel, chisel, small
files and sandpaper remove the rest of the unwanted bits (E, F, G).
The top end of the tube will be plugged and then cut into a
comfortable shape for blowing into (H), but first a special cutter is
used to scrape away a channel in the inside of the tube, making a
windway for the air to go in (I).
Then drill some fingerholes (J) (the picture is actually of a
tabor pipe, with only three – for a recorder there seven). That's about
it really, though there's a bit of work to remove wispy bits and
smooth the surfaces. It's wise to check the tuning and make any ad-
justments: and then seal it with oil. Linseed is fine though it takes
ages to dry, but there are modern oils with additives to speed drying
if you are impatient to get playing.
Next time we'll look at the instrument that no West Gallery
band should be without – the fiddle.
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The rehearsal dates for next term will be:-
January 4 & 18 February 1 & 15 March 1, 15 & 29 April 12
For your 2017 Diary:
Epiphany Party Afternoon Sunday 8th January—venue tbc
Accession service Evensong St Mary's Rotherhithe 5th February
Evensong Stapleford Abbotts 30th April
Evensong St Mary's Bromley 21st May
Summer Concert St George's Ailie Street Wed 7th June
We are likely to be recording our second CD, or at least rehearsing for it, during the first half
of 2017, and this may require some additional rehearsals pus probably two Saturdays for
the actual recording sessions. Details will be announced in due course!
LGQ Christmas Anagram Challenge
Here is a list of twelve of our most popular West Gallery composers and
authors. However, due to one of the legendary LGQ ‘computer errors’, the letters seem to have become rather
jumbled. Can you sort them out?
Joky Sheep
Nice holy phone
Cellar sees why
Awaits cats
Smack harlot
Pain Walk Limp
Finds Car Oars
Somewhat hit
Nth Jew Noon
Arch Email Jerk
Job Dip re Horn
Clip evil humours
From All Saints West Ham
Church, place of our last con-
cert on Saturday 12th Novem-
ber 2016
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TOM HARDY’S REPRISE By Alan Franks
Memorably Performed by Alan Franks and David Bidwell at the Barn Church on Saturday1st October
The strangest thing occurred last night
Though it was no more strange than true;
Thomas Hardy came to light
Beside the spreading churchyard yew.
I saw him with my own eyes there,
He wished me happy Eastertide,
Inclined his head and cupped his ear
To hear the music from inside,
Which caused his face to light with joy
For sure it was a merry noise,
But since I am a Surrey boy
I shan’t attempt to do his voice.
“Unless I’m fearful wrong,” said he,
“I recognise the melody.
“I’d say they’re using Tate and Brady
“And they’re playing in the gallery.”
It was that dusking, insect hour
When doors and thresholds seem to stand
Upon the air and bear us through –
Travellers in a time-drawn land.
A flute was winging up the score
Above the cello’s mellow tone,
Then, like a ghost beneath the floor,
The serpent dancing all a-drone.
His weight began to shift, I swear,
From toe to heel and heel to toe,
And then, as if to play the air,
His bowing arm began to bow,
And notes all strung and slung as if
Beneath a gaily rising kite
Contrived to make the measures lift
Into the rosin-scented night.
The gladsome strain, progressing further,
Quickly thickened with another.
Sure enough, there stood his father,
Next to him his father’s brother.
“Be not afraid of us,” says Tom,
“Least of all at Eastertide
“When hearts and minds so dwell upon
“A native son returned to bide.”
The old ones tutted him for shame
As if perceiving disrespect,
But Thomas, doubtful of his blame,
Said “ ‘Tis the hymns we resurrect.
“Now mind you all how we despaired
“To see the organ ushered in
“And how we trudgingly repaired
“Down to the ale-house for our sins.
“And mind you well and once again
“The passing of our last Amen
“And how we all were cast out then
“By sombre Oxford clergymen
“Unhomely in their Romeliness
“And caring less for tune than tone,
“Who loathed our lack of seemliness
“And liked us best when we were gone.”
On ran rhythm, through the reverance,
Old hymns cradling in the new,
Moonlike in their round of revenance,
Burnished by the LGQ
Whose creator, Dr. Roads,
Did both rescue tunes and write them
Till he saw the number grow
To more than half a thousand items.
LGQ Upbeat—The Newsletter of the London Gallery Quire Edited by Phil Price
If you have news, a viewpoint, or an interesting musical activity or story, your contribution is very welcome.
[email protected]. Non electronic submissions also welcome on paper at any rehearsal.
TOM HARDY’S REPRISE (continued)
While hours – or were they ages? – went
Between the last light and the lark,
Their repertoire remained unspent –
The William Knapp, the Thomas Clark,
Both Broderips and Joseph Key
And sundry craftsmen, on and on,
The long mislaid identity
Of those who ghost the great Anon,
And grace his all-embracing name
With variety which at best
Well earns his composite acclaim
And matches whole scores of the rest,
Until, with breaking day, they seemed
To fade as fast as they’d appeared,
As much a day-dismantled dream
As flesh and blood late-passing there.
So I can’t say which one of us
Had strayed into the other’s year
And frankly I don’t give a cuss
For I saw Thomas Hardy here.
Alan Franks
Anagram Answers 1. Joseph Key 2.Phocion Henley 3.Charles Wesley 4.Isaac Watts 5. Thomas Clark 6.William Knapp 7.Francis Roads 8.Thomas White 9.John Newton 10.Jeremiah Clark 11. John Broderip 12. Melchior Vulpius
More pictures of Hardy’s tree
at St Pancras Old Church
The Quire in action in the impressive nave
of All Saints West Ham.
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