From: wilcox@vax.oxford.ac.uk
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: re : recommendations for choral music
Date: 9 Sep 92 11:21:59 GMT
Organization: Oxford University VAX 6620

In article <8SEP199220025974@eccles.caltech.edu>, inr@eccles.caltech.edu (I. Neill Reid) writes:
> as a follow-up to wilcox@vax.oxford etc etc etc
> 
>  1) I think the original poster meant the Westminster Choir (as in
>  opposite Princeton) - not the Westminster Cathedral Choir. They're
>  pretty fine
> 
Fair enough: it's not a choir which is known over here.
> 
>  3) Although there _is_ a lot of overlap between the Taverner Consort,
>  Consort of Musicke, Tallis Scholars etc, there is a substantial
>  difference in the direction of the performances because of the 
>  different directors (and the different styles of music).
> 
I couldn't agree more---but I do sometimes wonder whether they couldn't be even
better if these choirs did stick to one set of singers with one conductor, even
at the price of losing a few of the top singers who have independent careers.
In my (not excessively wide) experience a choir performs at its best if the
singers work together regularly with a single conductor. A change of conductor
throws choirs off track better than anything else I know. I suppose it could be
different for top-flight professionals as compared to very good young amateurs
but I doubt it.

>  4) Frankly, if the Cambridge singers represent the best of English
>  choral music (I don't agree), then it's pretty damning of the whole
>  gendre - they give very _nice_, twee, uninvolved performances. Blah.
>  (& that probably reflects Rutterdom).
> 
You mistake me. The Cambridge Singers are easily the best of the English Choral
Tradition, not of British choral music as a whole. They are the pinnacle of
that niceness, that detachedness which is the fashion in the English Cathedral
and Oxbridge College circuit. If you like, they out-Kings Kings. As such they
are excellent for English Choral Tradition Music: the Tallises and Byrds, the
Stanfords and Wesleys, the Elgars and Howellses. They are also extremely
accurate, blend perfectly and respond precisely to Rutter. That is what makes a
good choir. I have already been called a heretic for saying this by a fellow
Oxonian, so you are not alone in your criticism of me.

Unfortunately it does not, as you say, make for interesting listening. They'd
probably do better without Rutter, too. (The posters for a recent concert of
theirs in Oxford had JOHN RUTTER emblazoned in large letters across the centre,
with The Creation and Haydn in small letters above, but I digress.) The
trouble is that the same is true of much of British Choral Music: many pro 
singers are Oxbridge-trained so are similarly bland and uninteresting. The best
ones are the ones who can break out of that and get involved with the music.

>  Other fine groups that sprang to mind later - the Huelgas ensemble under
> Paul van Nevel (I think - try their Brumel Et ecce terrae Mass), 
Aah! Magnificent! (I heard part of it last night for the first time)

> the Deller
> Consort (particularly with Alfred Deller - best Byrd masses), 
Yet more hooting counter-tenors

> David
> Hills with either the Westminster Cathedral or Winchester Cathedral choirs
> (yes, boys on top (um, maybe should re-phrase that) but fine performances
> in that gendre). 
But their genre is not English Choral Tradition but a much more European style:
boys with balls as it were. It wrecks the voices but by golly it sounds pretty
good in doing so. Magdalen College, Oxford are the same under their new
conductor, but he hasn't released anything yet.
-- 

Stephen Wilcox             |   Remember what happened to the dinosaurs!
wilcox@maths.oxford.ac.uk  |    I did---and look what happened to me.