This
post is so wrongheaded that I initially had no idea how to
start, so I thought about it until I did. I’m going to start with
the misstatements of fact, and then procede to the wrongheaded
opinions.
- Mr. White states that The Oxford Movement “booted this old
nonsense out of [Church of England] liturgical practice”, which
is true and “cleared the way for the ‘high’ choral evensong that
remains Anglicanism’s greatest gift to the world.” It was not
the Oxford movement that invented choral evensong, but the great
16th
century polyphonists (Byrd, Morley, Gibbons…) who are also the
people who wrote the first psalm settings from which the West
Gallery tradition arose. And the Melstock Band in “Under the
Greenwood Tree” was not succeeded by organs and surpliced
choirboys but by a harmonium, with a music-box like mechanism
allowing anybody who can turn the crank to play an “approved”
version of an “approved” hymn. - He quotes a Hardy poem in which the Vicar refuses to bury
the old choirmaster as he had requested because the viols
wouldn’t be able to play in bad weather. Mr. White claims to
see the vicar’s point and claims that Hardy did not. Of course,
the vicar is a character written by Hardy, so he would not have
been able to make a point had Hardy not been able to see
it. He may well have disagreed after he saw it, but I’m sure he
had more experience listening to viols played in the rain than
Mr. White does. - Mr. White isn’t responsible for this, but a commenter with
the clearly pseudonymous name of Esmeralda Weatherwax, who may never have
heard West Gallery music, equates it with the “worship band”
with guitar, keyboard, and drums and banal choruses. The
guitar, keyboard and drums may well be in the West Gallery
tradition of using the musical talent available in the
congregation, but West Gallery music for generations used only
the Old and New versions of the metrical psalms, which are
anything but banal. I know Francis Roads, one of the founders
of the London West Gallery Quire whose performance prompted this post, and
he is explicitly trying to use West Gallery music in
contemporary liturgical settings to drive the “happy, clappy
stuff” out. - When welcoming the demise of West Gallery music, Mr. White
says, “I can’t be in a minority there because viols and their
like are indeed long gone from Anglican worship.” This is a
total non-sequitur — nobody ever claimed that the 19th century
Church of England was a democracy, so the disappearance of
choirs accompanied by bands of instruments may well have been
imposed by a numerical minority.
And now to the matters of opinion:
- Mr. White’s brief review of the performance he heard was,
“They turned up with a batch of 18th-century-style wind and
brass (serpent included), and a lot of lusty voices; and I can’t
deny that it was fun, sort of. But spiritual, no.” I can’t
dispute this view of this particular performance, since
Mr. White was there and I wasn’t. But I challenge anyone to
listen to “Egypt” or “Poole” and not have a spiritual experience
overlaying the dread of death, and the joy embodied in Gibralter
surely transcends “fun”. - I see no point in arguing with Mr. White about whether the
West Gallery tradition is better or worse than the high choral
evensong tradition. If a church has a congregation that wants
to praise God with music, the church may well be better off using the
musical talents actually available to it than trying to ape a
church with a larger budget, a better organ, and a different
population of singers. Mr. White and Ms Weatherwax want to
dismiss the musical and liturgical value of what the rural
churches came up with and I don’t. - Mr. White says, “Let’s face it, the 18th and early 19th
centuries were not the church’s finest moment in this country,
and the West Gallery tradition sums up everything that was
wrong.” I agree that the Church of England, even prodded by the
best of the Dissenting tradition, performed badly in a lot of
the crises of that time. But I doubt that more little boys in
surplices who could sing unaccompanied would have helped.
LayMusic.org 