In a previous post I described what happened when I tried to join a chamber choir in Manchester in the mid-1990’s. To summarise, there seemed to be a great shortage of places in such choirs, at least for sopranos. Now I’ll describe what happened when I looked at church choirs.
During my time in Manchester I was told that the RSCM estimated only a handful of church choirs in the diocese sang regularly in four parts. I sang in what I believed to be the best of them; we had a fixed repertoire of a few communion settings, and a weekly evensong (using a canticle setting once a month). The repertoire was mostly familiar to me, though there were some pieces, such as anthems by Eric Thiman, Arnold in A and Wood’s St. Mark Passion, which I’ve never sung before or since.
We gave occasional concerts, visited cathedrals and other churches and did radio broadcasts (for these last we were usually joined by students from the RNCM, and a couple sang with the choir regularly). Our conductor would ensure that if you were capable of doing a solo you would get something appropriate to your ability from time to time. I did occasionally also sing elsewhere, such as in the choir that performed on feast days at the Roman Catholic church of the Holy Name.
As in Bath, there seemed to be almost no overlap between parish and chamber choirs (as far as I could tell from my very limited contact with the latter). There were signs that the church music scene had once been more active; visiting other churches I would find choir stalls in churches with no choir, or a library containing music which was now too difficult for the choir there. I’ve recently heard about a group of streets in Longsight named after church composers.
I used to look enviously at the newspaper listings for churches in London in which there was a different programme of interesting communion and evensong settings each week, or hear about the choirs in these churches from university friends who sang in them or attended their churches. Now I realise that there is a much larger number of singers to choose from in London, and probably a certain minimum of population is needed in order to recruit such a choir, but is that minimum really larger than the population of Manchester? Given that Londoners are (I assume) not more religious than Mancunians, why was there such a big difference?
I’m not sure that it’s because many London churches pay singers in their choirs, as I know of at least one choir which is unpaid and yet of a standard to have done a Radio 3 evensong broadcast. Maybe it has more to do with the fact that at the highest level the choirs contain aspiring professional singers and this creates a culture more generally in which there is a place for demanding repertoire to be well performed.
The existence of so many choirs implies a stock of hundreds of singers in London who are willing to devote time to rehearsing and performing music for services. This stock is regularly replenished with people who’ve learnt the repertoire in chapel choirs at university or, when younger, in cathedral choirs. Do all such people who want to carry on performing in services, but don’t aspire to singing professionally, gravitate to London as a matter of course? Were there really not enough of us in Manchester to make a choir? Or were there actually enough, just no obvious place for us to go?
[July 2013: There are now more options for women – the Manchester Cathedral voluntary choir went mixed a few years ago. The choir of St George’s Stockport has also started using sopranos since the 1990s.]
I’d a similar experience – moved to M/cr after being in a university chapel choir. I went to hear all the mixed-voice church choirs I could find but to join any would have been a great drop in standard and repertoire from what I was used to.
I didn’t think anyone still did Arnold M/ND in A! A dreary little setting – there are so many better ones around.
But if you wanted to carry on singing church music at that level you should have gone to London rather than Manchester where the choirs are more like what you’d expect in a large village.
Hi I’m probably tooo late to be posting here but it was out of curiosity I typed into google… The Manchester youth Choir and this popped up… I was in this choir with Ron Davies being our Choir leader… I was trained by Mr Davies wife to sing. I would love to get back into chorister life and have lessons again… I remember singing at the Free Trade hall when I was 16 (now 36). If this choir is still going and anyone happens to get this message, I would be grateful of a reply 🙂 thanks
Kim
As a member of the manchester Youth choir from around 1984-1987 under Ron Davies I would love to see some photos of the events we did, the tour of malta and the rendition of the wheel of fortune with 400 choiristers with a full orchestra was a sound to be believed, it was one of those rare occassions I would have died to be in the audience!
With no offence meant to Mr Davies ( I loved him to death) as other posters have mentioned elsewhere, he did have his own agenda (musically) to push which eventually forced my hand and encouraged me to distance myself from this choir unfortunately.
Yours Sincerely
Adrian
(Soprano-contra alto – alto – tenor – barritone – bass (in 4 years!!!))
I know it’s not Manchester, but Warrington is less than 20 minutes away. At St. Mary’s Church there is a thriving musical tradition. An adult choir, of 25, mix of students, experienced amateurs and professionals, a Junior choir, and a community choir.
Sung High Mass each week with a repertoire of over 90 Masses, from Byrd, Palestrina and the like to Mozart, Haydn – Britten, Stravinsky and Berkeley, and too many motets in the library to count! There are also at least 5 other sung Masses a week, sung by various of the choirs, or cantors, and regular concerts, and cathedral visits.
We would be delighted to hear from anyone who is interested in joining, especially a soprano, alto or bass. Good readers for the Adult choir: Enthusiastic and willing singers for the community choir, and anyone between 6 and 16 for the Junior choir!
Email me for details… music@stmaryswarrington.org.uk
Good to know that there is something in the area, though it wouldn’t have been much use to me as I didn’t have a car. I believe there was an Anglo-Catholic church somewhere in Manchester that had a semi-pro choir, but I never found out the details.
The Manchester Bach Choir was founded in Manchester in 1932 and celebrated its 80th year in existence in the Manchester area last year. It has had several locations over that time and now rehearses in Stockport. Singing some of the great choral works in SATB parts, the choir rehearses on Tuesday eves, hard working, aiming for high standards and presenting 3 or 4 concerts a year. More information and some idea of what we do can be found on the website http://www.Manchesterbachchoir.com.
I suspect that I assumed this choir was larger than it was. (I don’t actually remember seeing posters for it). I notice that it is unauditioned so probably wouldn’t have been the sort of thing I was looking for. And this still doesn’t answer the question – where were the church choirs?
Just out of interest, which church choir was it that you sang with?
I’m not an amazing singer but miss singing with a church choir, which i did for years as a teenager
I was at St. Ann’s – the only Anglican church in the city centre other than the Cathedral. It doesn’t promote itself as a BCP church any more; I notice it now has some Taizé services and uses Common Praise, but it still has the same organist as when I was there!