It’s the season of All Souls (I sang Fauré’s Requiem at a service), and sadly my thoughts turn to several people whom I got to know through music who have died in the last year. I suppose this will happen more often from now on. I’ll commemorate them and their part in my musical life here (N.B. this does not mean I have forgotten the others who have died recently whom I met in other ways).
- William Wingate. A long standing member of the Cathedral Chamber Choir, who was a capable choral conductor. I recall one occasion where our organist failed to turn up for a Sunday Cathedral evensong (!); our conductor played the organ, and William stepped up to conduct, including Howells’ Westminster Canticles. It’s hoped to have a memorial concert for him in the New Year.
- Janet McMullin. I was sorry not to be able to make it to her funeral a few days ago. She was part of a group of people who regularly sang concerts and services together when we were students. With them I encountered many great anthems and canticles for the first time, and some are indelibly associated with Janet because she sang the solos in them. I have some of the Oxford Camerata Naxos recordings of Tudor repertoire on which she sang.
- Ronald Frost. Organist of St Ann’s Manchester when I sang there. He seemed quite tireless and gave an organ recital there almost every week. He had the rare quality of being completely fair in his allocation of solos, giving everyone who could do one something appropriate to their ability. He and William Wingate had a rather similar taste in church music. I’ll end with a selection of some of his bons mots in rehearsal:
- Don’t dawdle on the little carpet-slipper words
- It’s very important in this piece to know who your friends are
- We don’t have Christmas-tide any more; it’s Rutter-tide
- You sound like an inebriated lamp-post
- It’s four in a bar; you sound as if four of you have been in a bar!
- In music, never own up to having made a mistake
- I listen to evensong broadcasts every week and no one sings psalms as well as you. However…
- The composer of this drank himself to death, you know
- I’m clicking away here like a demented budgie
- You sound like a Methodist women’s … no, I’d better not go on!
- I shall commit murder if anyone breathes in that bar
- If one of my theory students gave me harmony like this, I would mark it wrong
- [when the choir was paid by a shopping centre to sing carols there] Don’t think of the notes; think of the banknotes!