Catterwall

“The English choral tradition, with its reliance upon young voices and its tinge of Protestant Englishness, turns the memories and dreams of a social class into sound”.[1] Thirty years later, this passage from Christopher Page’s missive on musical meritocracy at Oxford and Cambridge is just as pertinent as ever. Page’s article is not intended as a cultural hit-piece, and it may have skirted around making overt political claims, but its inference is clear. Since the rediscovery of Tudor music in the 1920s, the repertoire has been saturated with all the custom, convention, and cliché of the elite social order that stumbled upon it. This was, of course, no accident; only affiliates of the most prestigious institutions in the country had access to the archives in which the precious manuscripts were stored.

Contrary to common belief, the antiquity of the English choral tradition is not quite as ubiquitous as many have asserted. Before the Oxford revival of the 1830s, Anglican church singers seem to have been less than competent, and the robed and cassocked parish choirs stood as lost relics of England’s Catholic past.[2] In the 18^th century, Charles Burney lamented ‘ill performed’ Anglican church music, blaming singers that were “so barbarous as to ruin the best Compositions of our own or of any Country on the Globe”. By the 19^th century, Edmund Fellowes felt that the standard of performance had been “allowed to degenerate to a deplorable extent”.[3] Even King’s College, Cambridge – itself experiencing significant fluctuation in quality – favoured the work of Victorian composers and did not perform Tudor music until the 1920s.[4]

In the present-day, the early music scene in England is dominated by small consorts comprised of ex-Oxbridge choral scholars. Not only do they often cultivate a relatively similar sound, but most seem to approach early music in more or less the same manner as any other repertoire. One need only scour through the booklet notes of recent professional recordings to see that even specialist groups in Britain consist mostly of the same classically-trained singers shuffled around on different parts. The notion that Renaissance singers were rigorously trained to the modern standard using universal pedagogical methods must be outright rejected. Does it not seem likely that early musicians simply embraced the natural heterogeneity of vocal timbres, as is the case in popular music today? Many of the pillars of the classical bel canto vocal pedagogy did not emerge in written sources until the 19^th century, and do not seem to have been a unanimous standard even in early audio recordings. Performance conventions during the Renaissance are known to have varied widely even from village-to-village. To quote Tim Braithwaite, “I wonder if HIP singing in the UK would be done a huge favour if the sound and style of the English cathedral/collegiate choir were not quite so synonymous with HIP practices”.[5]

The diversity and flexibility of voices in the past were likely comparable to the broad range found among different music genres today. From the dawn of its revival, however, early music has been neatly packaged and sold to classical music listeners through homogenous black-tie events, and swathes of ostentatiously programmed CDs. In contemporary terms, this could epitomise the definition of ‘cultural appropriation’, even if the culture itself is long since dead. By the 1990s, the English sound also permeated historical performance practice on the continent and in North America. Fabrice Fitch noted that “the ubiquity of English choirs and ensembles in the current discography has undoubtedly coloured our perception of what Franco-Flemish music ought to sound like”.[6] Early music found itself firmly caged within the confines of highbrow concert culture, and Classical music reviewers were anything but kind to the few groups that dared to break the mould. Fitch was addressing perhaps the most notorious of all: Marcel Pérès’ Ensemble Organum.

Ensemble Organum approached medieval repertoire with a fresh cross-cultural and ethnomusicological perspective. A 1997 review in Early Music warned listeners that Ensemble Organum’s interpretations were “unequal in conception, with the eastern element becoming progressively more pronounced”, and accused the group of a lack of vocal refinement.[7] I would be intrigued to learn how the reviewer determined what the notion of ‘refinement’ meant to a medieval singer. Given that the disc consisted of music from the 14^th century – 300 years after the great schism between the eastern and western churches (rather than nearly 900 today) – surely a nod to Eastern ecclesiastical practice is the result of conspicuous musicological thought? It can hardly be construed as “unequal in conception”. Or perhaps these ‘eastern’ elements were what the reviewer felt to be un-refined? Indeed, Andrew Kirkman noted that the group’s style was “as rough and rustic-sounding as Oxford Camerata’s is refined and reserved”.[8] You may not be surprised to learn that Kirkman is a graduate of Oxford.

Manifestly orientalist attitudes proved to be commonplace, with the work of Ensemble Organum receiving nicknames such as ‘Corsican Goatherds’[9] and ‘the Arab hypothesis’.[10] Kirkman contended that the group’s ‘exotic’ approach to ornamentation “smacks more of the bazaar than the rarefied sound-world which most listeners will have come to associate with the performance of 14^th-century western polyphony”.[11] In criticism of Pérès’ approach, he insisted that oral traditions around the world cannot be taken as ‘evidence’ of vocal quality in medieval music, but surely he realises that his own group The Binchois Consort is happy to take the 20^th-century Oxbridge tradition as just that?

Björn Schmelzer’s ensemble Graindelavoix, something of a successor to the aforementioned group, faced similar levels of disdain from the early music ‘establishment’. Another Oxford graduate Noel O’Regan declared that Graindelavoix’s ornamentation style, inspired by “Corsican improvised harmonization and open-throated Bulgarian women”, seemed “at odds with the high courtly art that this music represents”. In fact, the reviewer would have preferred “to be able to hear the original rather than have it encrusted with so much ornamentation and sung in rather rough style”.[12] On the contrary, one would prefer to read a review less encrusted with ideological assumptions that are completely contrary to the tenets of historically informed performance. In this case, author did not care to justify what exactly he meant by ‘the original’.

These reviews consistently identify Western music with ostentatious ‘high art’, and contrast it with the perceptually ‘rough’ quality of Eastern music. In a sterilised choral world that is artificially uniform, many directors seem to be uncomfortable with the feeling of ‘otherness’ resulting from interpretations that do not conform to their traditional constraints or expectations. Richard Taruskin famously condemned performance practice as nothing more than a reflection of modern taste,[13] but in the case of choral music, he might perhaps have more aptly characterised it as a reflection of modern class. A colleague in music education recently presumed that vocal performance practice was epitomised by the maxim ‘the less we know, the more room for experimentation’, and was rather shocked to discover that this was not generally the case. Instead, perpetual defeatist attitudes such ‘there is no way of knowing’ are cited as generic excuses to avoid compromising the director’s preordained aesthetic ideals (ironically this is incompatible with the simultaneously held view that there is one superior way to approach the music). As recently as last year, Peter Phillips asserted that historical descriptions of earlier singing “fall short of telling us anything precise”,[14] in spite of the plentiful evidence on physiological characteristics such as laryngeal height and jaw position from the 16th-century onward.[15]

Graindelavoix, in the face of adversity, has remained resolutely committed to their marmite approach. Fitch admitted that “listeners who regard the sound of early polyphony as synonymous with the English choral tradition will find this hard going”, and in what can only be a gross exaggeration, claimed that the group stretches his own notions of what is ‘bearable’.[16] More recently, he labelled Graindelavoix’s vocal production as “distinctively nasal”.[17] This evokes Elizabeth Leach’s review of Oni Wyars Ensemble, noting that the “beautiful ‘angelic’ singing” of Ensemble Ars Choralis Coeln was “joined by a more nasal singing style that typifies Mediterranean traditional musics”.[18] It seems evident that many listeners are so accustomed to a style which deliberately separates the mechanisms used for singing and speaking, that anything utilising a more neutral configuration of the vocal tract appears contentious and foreign to their ears.[19]

Voice timbre is not the only parameter that has been subject to elitist commentary; accent and pronunciation are also heavily rooted in the class system. David Wulstan, a key figure in the Oxford early music revival, is known to have had strong views on the ‘decline’ of the ‘proper’ use of English. Oxford graduate John Morehen criticised the alternative pronunciation used by Red Byrd in their Elizabethan anthem recordings as “coarse to a degree seemingly appropriate more to the dialect of […] street vendors in settings of London Cries”, questioning whether it is “relevant to a sophisticated repertory”.[20] The reviewer accused the group of cultivating “vowel sounds which choral directors spend a lifetime trying to eradicate”. Morehen’s judgment here is guided not by evidence, of course, but by his own artistic prejudices. It is perfectly normal to sing madrigals in 20^th-century Received Pronunciation (RP), but to switch to a non-descript regional accent to caricature the peasant street-sellers of Cries of London. This has nothing to do with historical practice, but relies on the modern association of South-Eastern prestige with the classical music market to achieve its desired effect.

Brian Wilson, another Oxford graduate, found fault with Red Byrd’s “Mummerset dialect with a touch of Dick van Dyke’s attempts at cockney in Mary Poppins”, considering it detrimental to his enjoyment of the singing. He instead cited the ‘lack of evidence’ as a reason to avoid textual reconstructions altogether.[21] Composer Robert Hugill insinuates that the chosen accents were less than acceptable, going so far as to suggest that hearing the sound of RP was a ‘relief’.[22] Composer Gary Higginson felt the same way about I Fagiolini’s use of historical pronunciation, asserting that “the unfamiliar use of vowels […] takes away the beauty of the actual notes”.[23] How is a non-RP speaker supposed to feel when they are told that elements of their regional accent are simply not compatible with beautiful singing?

Oxford graduate James Ross chided The Baltimore Consort for their “rather uncomfortable ‘home counties’ pronunciation”, further noting that the “archly ‘mummerset’ grave-digger is equally uncomfortable to listen to”.[24] In renditions of Purcell’s semi-opera King Arthur, predominantly set in Cornwall, singers typically reserve West-Country accents for the number Your hay it is mow’d. Donning flat caps and cracking open the scrumpy, performers jump at the opportunity do their best roistering farmer impressions. The use of a regional dialect would not usually be deemed admissible for the remainder of the production, which is rendered in RP. Critics resort to words such as ‘folky’ and ‘rustic’ to distinguish these attributes from the ‘distilled’ and ‘polished’ qualities of classical singing. Alexandra Coghlan, an ex-Cambridge choral scholar, described the psalms in a recording by The City Musick as sung “in the dull-vowelled, strongly accented folk style of a Thomas Hardy adaptation”.[25] This highlights the need for awareness that RP is not simply the absence of an accent; it is a distinct dialect with its own mannerisms, spoken by a relatively small percentage of the British population.

A friend recently delivered a presentation on composing for instruments from cultures other than his own. He shared the thought-provoking observation that his initial instinct was to assume the role of custodian for a musical tradition that never belonged him. It required conscious mental effort to remind himself that it was not his right to decide which elements needed to be preserved, but instead to consult the experience of the players. This struck me as earnestly self-aware, and led to the realisation that early music is similarly held cultural hostage. When we reclaim a tradition from the past that never belonged to us, it is certainly important to be respectful in our approach, but it is not our place to decide what early musicians considered to be important. Remaining attentive only to the concerns expressed in historical sources, we ought to embrace a spirit of openness to novel and inventive approaches. Elitism, conformity, and homogeneity can only hinder our aspiration to rediscover the sounds of the past.

---

Footnotes

---