An excellent English Literature teacher at my school sometimes gives me a tip for a good read, especially near the start of a holiday. Her latest recommendation was The Road by Cormac Mc Carthy and I was not disappointed with her suggestion, polishing it off in virtually one sitting during the half-term break. This winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2007 tells a story of Biblical proportions about a father and son who have survived some unspecified cataclysmic event that has reduced America and possibly most of the world to little more than dust and ashes. We soon discover that within this shrivelled landscape, human society has been stripped of any veneer of civilization and thus sinister gangs of cannibals roam the scorched woods and wasted cities. The freezing winter is beginning to bite, and father and son must move south to the sea to have any chance of survival. Their life on the road becomes a primal quest for food, shelter, and personal safety, though beyond this they both hunger for hope and search for meaning to sustain them. The boy constantly seeks for reassurance that they will ultimately be met by goodness, and tries to internalize the mantra his father has taught him that they must ‘carry the fire.’ On this level, the story is universal, but it has touched a particular nerve today as the notion of a ruined earth, either through nuclear annihilation or global warming, increasingly haunts us. Indeed British environmental campaigner, George Monbiot was so struck by the book that he declared that Cormac Mc Carthy was one of fifty people who could yet, save the planet. He went onto praise the book with words which affirm the power of the arts to transform our society:
“It contains no graphs, no tables, no facts, figures, warnings, predictions or even arguments. Nor does it carry a single dreary sentence, which, sadly, distinguishes it from most environmental literature. It is a novel, first published a year ago, and it will change the way you see the world."
It has now been released as a feature film, which will hopefully ensure that Mc Carthy’s dystopian vision challenges a wide audience on both sides of the Atlantic, although inevitably much of the savage beauty of the writer’s prose will inevitably be lost in the screen version. Disturbing images have become such common currency for most of us today in our media culture that perhaps we need more than ever the power of language to open our eyes to see the world afresh and shake us out of our complacency. I wonder if any cinematic shot will evoke the horror of post-acopaclyptic cities and their inhabitants quite like this description:
“The long concrete sweeps of the interstate exchanges like the ruins of a vast funhouse against the distant murk….The mummied dead everywhere. The flesh cloven along the bones, the ligaments dried to tug and taut as wires. Shriveled and drawn like latterday bog-folk, their faces of boiled sheeting, the yellowed palings of their teeth. They were discalced to a man like pilgrims of some common order for all their shoes were long since stolen.”
Global Warming and the environment is the burning (sorry!) issue of the day and thankfully, the Church has begun to speak urgently about the problem along with many others. Archbishop Rowan Williams has surely one of the more resonant voices for this and many other contemporary debates and he spoke powerfully at a lecture in Southwark Cathedral recently. Like Mc McCarthy, Williams sees the connection between the gradual destruction of our planet and the increasing degradation of our humanity, but rather than pressing the panic button he urges us to consider what we have lost in our reckless plundering of the earth’s resources and how we can work to restore it:
“Many of the things which have moved us to towards ecological disaster have been distortions in our sense of who and what we are, and their overall effect has been to isolate us more and more from the reality we are part of. Our response to the crisis needs to be a reality check, a rediscovery of our responsibility for the material world. And this is why the apparently small scale action that changes personal habits and local possibilities is so crucial”
I’m sure Williams is right but as Monbiot has implied it may take the artist in the first instance, rather than the campaigners or clergy, to galvanize us to make that change.
Saturday, 31 October 2009
Friday, 23 October 2009
Whisper of God
It’s half-term for children and teachers up and down the country. After seven weeks of assemblies, classes, and extra-curricula activities it’s time for a break. In the drama department of my school, fifty or so sixth-formers will feel they’ve most certainly earned one. At the start of term these A’ Level Theatre Studies students were put into groups of between three to six and set the task of devising an original piece of drama from whatever stimulus their particular teacher chose to give them. Although the pieces were to be short, (the exam board stipulates around five minutes per candidate) this in some ways makes it harder since live theatre generally requires sufficient stage-time for a plot to be teased out or characters to be fully developed if it is to have an impact on an audience. Moreover, the project requires the students to work collaboratively with minimal intervention from the teacher. For both teachers and students this part of the drama syllabus feels designed to drive us all bananas or at least turn us against each other for evermore. The teacher is supposed to merely facilitate, acting as ‘a critical friend.’ In effect this role is akin to parenting stroppy teenagers; the students resent your intrusion when they think they’re working well, and then expect you to bail them out at the last minute when it all goes pear-shaped. Nonetheless it is fascinating to observe the group dynamics of each creative family as the problems of any and every community inevitably surface in each tiny microcosmic unit. There are the pushy leaders who try to seize control from the start, the passive ‘passengers’ who seem indifferent to any kind of creative vision and the earnest negotiators seeking to keep all on board. Having seen both the process and product of this kind of project for the best part of twenty years, I have noticed many common traps the students are ensnared by. Perhaps the most typical is the drive to be wildly experimental above all else. Any kind of conventional scene such as two characters interacting with one another in a recognizable setting is thrown out in favour of the weird and wacky. While one wants to applaud this attempt at originality, such innovation often leave an audience bewildered and thus ultimately disengaged. Moreover, the students obsession with style can mean a lack of substance and the teacher inevitably ends up asking them: ‘yes, but what’s it all supposed to be about?’ As their teacher, you long for them to find and trust their own creative voice rather than pretend to be cleverer than they are.
However, once in a while a group manages to really gel and create a piece of theatre which resonates profoundly with an audience of their peers, parents and the staff. This year two attractive girls and a strapping lad all wearing orange jump suits faced their audience and welcomed them to their unit three devised piece. They then went on to explain their mission:
“It’s not really a play; we haven’t got a set or scenes…it’s just things we think and feel, and things you think and feel.’
Now of course this approach could have been disastrous leaving the audience squirming in their seats at such embarrassing self-indulgence. However, in the ensuing twenty minutes one could sense that strange many-headed monster which fills up an auditorium becoming increaingly inspired and moved by the group's raw honesty expressed through profound and witty visual metaphors together with some fresh and unpretentious dialogue. One of the girls, Jess, pedalled furiously on an exercise bike on the right of the stage observed intently by Max who stood near by. As she pedals she explains:
“ I want to be one of the fishes in the pond…not necessarily a big fish, maybe just a different colour…a lighter colour..no..a brighter colour one with a stripe or a little…a little…a little…spot. Just something different. Because if I had that, then every body would believe in me and see that I can do this. They would look at me and say. ‘look at that fish with the bright stripe…wow!’ And I could just be this fish, you know? Just be me.”
Max then asks her how much further she has to go to get to where she’s aiming for and Jess gets off the bike and measures from the wheel to the edge of the stage and discovers to her despair that she has moved nowhere. “Oh” says Max, with evident concern for her. "Come and take a rest."
The other girl, Betsy hadn’t even scripted her part, but she brillintly improvised a series of monologues addressed to the audience in which she babbled incoherently about things she clearly hoped we would be impressed by: getting boys, bunking off school, ‘crashing’ parties and clubs. At the height of each excitble rant she would suddenly freeze, look at what she was wearing and rapidly exit in horror at her inadequate choice of clothing. The audience found this hysterical, due to Betsy’s delivery and timing and perhaps because we recognized a grotesque image of ourselves through the way we can fall at lightning speed from sky-high confidence to cringing vulnerability . However, by her final entrance at the end of the play, Betsy was only able to make unintelligible noises at the audience like a character from a Samuel Beckett play or The Goons. This again was both farcical and finally moving as she stared out to the auditorium and gingerly confessed, ‘I’ve got nothing to say,’ before quietly asking, ‘ Can I not just be?’ This was intensified further when the other two performers drew alongside Betsy and echoed this final question as the lights slowly faded to a blackout.
It’s always hard to analyse why a piece of art resonates with a particular audience, but in this case it may have had something to do with what I was saying earlier about the striving of so many of this group's peers (present among the audience) to devise a piece of ultra-sophisticated drama throughout the past few weeks. It may also have reflected a recognition of how hollow all our attempts at expression sometimes seem either in art or life: ‘full of sound and fury signifying nothing’ to quote Macbeth at his most despairing. I think, above all the final question 'can I not just be?' reflected a yearning we all felt to let all our strivings cease especially after such a busy few weeks. When the light had gone there was that wonderful silence in which you could feel some deep truth had dawned on us. It was a shame that the recording of a kazoo playing some jaunty circus music cut in so suddenly as I felt the audience wanted to bathe in the darkness and quiet of the theatre for longer before applauding. Nonetheless I left the auditorium exhilarated by the student’s work. All the best art leads us to the silence which brings a deeper realization of the human condition. It is a silence where we can, if we’re open, hear the whisper of God. On reflection, as I begin my half-term break, I think He may have been answering that final petition with a firm but gentle 'Yes!'
However, once in a while a group manages to really gel and create a piece of theatre which resonates profoundly with an audience of their peers, parents and the staff. This year two attractive girls and a strapping lad all wearing orange jump suits faced their audience and welcomed them to their unit three devised piece. They then went on to explain their mission:
“It’s not really a play; we haven’t got a set or scenes…it’s just things we think and feel, and things you think and feel.’
Now of course this approach could have been disastrous leaving the audience squirming in their seats at such embarrassing self-indulgence. However, in the ensuing twenty minutes one could sense that strange many-headed monster which fills up an auditorium becoming increaingly inspired and moved by the group's raw honesty expressed through profound and witty visual metaphors together with some fresh and unpretentious dialogue. One of the girls, Jess, pedalled furiously on an exercise bike on the right of the stage observed intently by Max who stood near by. As she pedals she explains:
“ I want to be one of the fishes in the pond…not necessarily a big fish, maybe just a different colour…a lighter colour..no..a brighter colour one with a stripe or a little…a little…a little…spot. Just something different. Because if I had that, then every body would believe in me and see that I can do this. They would look at me and say. ‘look at that fish with the bright stripe…wow!’ And I could just be this fish, you know? Just be me.”
Max then asks her how much further she has to go to get to where she’s aiming for and Jess gets off the bike and measures from the wheel to the edge of the stage and discovers to her despair that she has moved nowhere. “Oh” says Max, with evident concern for her. "Come and take a rest."
The other girl, Betsy hadn’t even scripted her part, but she brillintly improvised a series of monologues addressed to the audience in which she babbled incoherently about things she clearly hoped we would be impressed by: getting boys, bunking off school, ‘crashing’ parties and clubs. At the height of each excitble rant she would suddenly freeze, look at what she was wearing and rapidly exit in horror at her inadequate choice of clothing. The audience found this hysterical, due to Betsy’s delivery and timing and perhaps because we recognized a grotesque image of ourselves through the way we can fall at lightning speed from sky-high confidence to cringing vulnerability . However, by her final entrance at the end of the play, Betsy was only able to make unintelligible noises at the audience like a character from a Samuel Beckett play or The Goons. This again was both farcical and finally moving as she stared out to the auditorium and gingerly confessed, ‘I’ve got nothing to say,’ before quietly asking, ‘ Can I not just be?’ This was intensified further when the other two performers drew alongside Betsy and echoed this final question as the lights slowly faded to a blackout.
It’s always hard to analyse why a piece of art resonates with a particular audience, but in this case it may have had something to do with what I was saying earlier about the striving of so many of this group's peers (present among the audience) to devise a piece of ultra-sophisticated drama throughout the past few weeks. It may also have reflected a recognition of how hollow all our attempts at expression sometimes seem either in art or life: ‘full of sound and fury signifying nothing’ to quote Macbeth at his most despairing. I think, above all the final question 'can I not just be?' reflected a yearning we all felt to let all our strivings cease especially after such a busy few weeks. When the light had gone there was that wonderful silence in which you could feel some deep truth had dawned on us. It was a shame that the recording of a kazoo playing some jaunty circus music cut in so suddenly as I felt the audience wanted to bathe in the darkness and quiet of the theatre for longer before applauding. Nonetheless I left the auditorium exhilarated by the student’s work. All the best art leads us to the silence which brings a deeper realization of the human condition. It is a silence where we can, if we’re open, hear the whisper of God. On reflection, as I begin my half-term break, I think He may have been answering that final petition with a firm but gentle 'Yes!'
Friday, 16 October 2009
Photographic Exhibition
I was beginning to get a little anxious about how we were going to get the best use from our new community hall for the forthcoming annual arts festival at St. John’s. The new academic year was upon us and I had to get the publicity out as the festival happens in mid-October. Last year when the hall had just been completed, it became a very effective exhibition space for local artists. We installed a picture rail in the hall and adjoining meeting rooms allowing us to hang an extensive exhibition including a range of subject-matter, styles and media. This not only complimented the other events, such as the concerts and dramatic production I had directed, but helped create a very impressive foyer for these performances. It was such a success that we put in some architectural spotlights later in the year when we held a second exhibition during Lent. However exhibitions take some organizing and I do not have a long list of contacts of local artists. I decided somewhat impulsively that perhaps we should have a photographic exhibition instead. I know very little about photography, nor what an exhibition on this scale might involve. However, churches are wonderful sources for net-working and after a couple of emails I had my man! Jeremy has been on the fringes of the church for a number of years, but I have always found him to be something of a jack of all trades who has come to the rescue when we have needed help with sound or lighting for a number of shows. He is also a very gifted amateur photographer and one of those characters who makes things happen and ensures they are done with flair. It so happens that Jeremy has a very impressive website of his work including travel photography, flora and fauna and an inspiring series of more abstract work. We sat down over coffee with another mover and shaker from the church and began to plot! We discovered there were a few other excellent photographers among the congregation including a young graduate who was studying in Brighton. She had a ready-made display of fascinating portraiture to contribute from her AS photography course at the local sixth-form college. In addition, Jeremy had the idea of including a digital display projected onto a large screen in one of the meeting rooms. We decided to invite anyone from the congregation and their friends to email their best shots to Jeremy so he could create a slide-show which could loop round and round throughout the weekend. Finally, we borrowed an extensive set of screens from the local council which meant we could mount smaller prints where they could be encountered at closer proximity and which would give the hall space a sort of café atmosphere. A private view was held earlier in the week and Jeremy and the graduate Alex Best were interviewed about their work with additional questions coming from the floor.
The exhibition was enjoyed by many people from the local community including the three hundred or so folk who had come to the performances over the weekend. There were several, like me, who were drawn into the side-room to enjoy the digital display. We had put sofas and soft chairs in front of the screen creating the feel of an intimate cinema. It became, moreover, a sanctuary from the main hall with the giant images slowly and silently dissolving every five seconds or so; it also, for me at least, became a form of prayer. The loop took the best part of an hour and I was surprised that I had stayed the course, as I do not make a habit of looking at still images for any length of time. Yet I found myself to be strangely energised by the end of the show. I had been transported around the world from Sussex, to Nepal, Antarctica, the Falklands, Cape Town and many other foreign lands. I had laughed at the silly posturing of penguins, gasped at the power and majesty of landscapes, identified with the deep-set, soulful expressions of venerable Nepalese natives. As I reflected on the slide-show in the following week I was able to identify some of the elements that had contributed to the spiritual dimensions of the experience. Each image reflected in some way a moment of thoughtful response from human beings to God’s endless revelation of the fascinating complexity and diversity of life through all which surrounds us. Taking the photograph involved a slowing down and waiting, a contemplation of an image, finding an interesting angle on it and a way of framing the picture. It was also a way of remembering, appreciating, and perhaps sharing moments of significance or meaning along our pilgrimage through life. I was talking with one of the photography teachers at our school the other day and he remarked that a photograph often tells you as much about the person taking it as their subject. In that case each image was potentially a moment of self-revelation and I suppose that is partly why photography at its best is an art form capable of moving us very powerfully. Thomas Merton, one of the great mystics of the twentieth century was a very keen and expert photographer and it was central to his profound, contemplative spirituality. Although Jeremy has, as I said, been on the fringes of the Church he had taught us much through this exhibition. Perhaps it is those on the edge of things who often find the most interesting angle. That is certainly true for the photographer and the artist in general.
The exhibition was enjoyed by many people from the local community including the three hundred or so folk who had come to the performances over the weekend. There were several, like me, who were drawn into the side-room to enjoy the digital display. We had put sofas and soft chairs in front of the screen creating the feel of an intimate cinema. It became, moreover, a sanctuary from the main hall with the giant images slowly and silently dissolving every five seconds or so; it also, for me at least, became a form of prayer. The loop took the best part of an hour and I was surprised that I had stayed the course, as I do not make a habit of looking at still images for any length of time. Yet I found myself to be strangely energised by the end of the show. I had been transported around the world from Sussex, to Nepal, Antarctica, the Falklands, Cape Town and many other foreign lands. I had laughed at the silly posturing of penguins, gasped at the power and majesty of landscapes, identified with the deep-set, soulful expressions of venerable Nepalese natives. As I reflected on the slide-show in the following week I was able to identify some of the elements that had contributed to the spiritual dimensions of the experience. Each image reflected in some way a moment of thoughtful response from human beings to God’s endless revelation of the fascinating complexity and diversity of life through all which surrounds us. Taking the photograph involved a slowing down and waiting, a contemplation of an image, finding an interesting angle on it and a way of framing the picture. It was also a way of remembering, appreciating, and perhaps sharing moments of significance or meaning along our pilgrimage through life. I was talking with one of the photography teachers at our school the other day and he remarked that a photograph often tells you as much about the person taking it as their subject. In that case each image was potentially a moment of self-revelation and I suppose that is partly why photography at its best is an art form capable of moving us very powerfully. Thomas Merton, one of the great mystics of the twentieth century was a very keen and expert photographer and it was central to his profound, contemplative spirituality. Although Jeremy has, as I said, been on the fringes of the Church he had taught us much through this exhibition. Perhaps it is those on the edge of things who often find the most interesting angle. That is certainly true for the photographer and the artist in general.
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
Young Musicians Showcase
Just half an hour before the Young Musicians Showcase, the final event at our weekend arts festival, my 14 year old daughter Charlotte popped her head around the living room door. Her face was pale and her eyes were glistening: ‘Mr Head has died,’ she said. The head of History at the girl’s comprehensive had been involved in a terrible car crash earlier that week and we knew his prospects were grim. Nonetheless, it was still a horrible shock for Charlotte and her sister Katy to receive the email that confirmed their fears. I was with some new friends when she told me this news and Charlotte and Katy needed to get over to the church to tune up for the concert. I mumbled something about saying a prayer before the event started but wasn’t sure this was quite appropriate. One of the performers in the showcase had thought up a much better idea. When it was her turn to play, seventeen year old Lorna Nye took to the stage with her cello, sat down and said: ‘I’d like to dedicate this to Stephen Head.’ She then proceeded to play “Elegie” by Faure as she had rehearsed. Lorna had been a pupil at Tanbridge House School until a year ago and together with many pupils and staff from the school held him in very high regard. Like all the musicians who played that afternoon Lorna played with great technique and sensitivity, but her dedication before her piece added a whole extra dimension to the showcase.
Earlier that morning I had spoken at our thanksgiving service for the arts festival. My theme was the importance of festivals for the flourishing of a community. I read the passage from the Book of Revelation which describes all creation gathered around the throne of God singing the words which inspired one of the great choruses from Handel’s Messiah. ‘Worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing!’ I asked the congregation to consider this eschatological scene as a magnificent arts festival just like the one we had been enjoying over the weekend. I highlighted the great tradition of festivals and celebrations recorded in the Bible from the inauguration of Passover which annually marked the Israelites deliverance from slavery in Egypt, to the regular celebration of the Eucharist in the early Church. I suppose I was asserting that the language and rituals of celebration were the default position for Christians and people of faith in good times and bad. This is not to escape from grim reality or live indulgently but to remember the eternal perspective which the passage in Revelation offers: the wonder, mystery and above all sacredness of life calls forth unceasing praise and celebration from all living things over and above all else. Furthermore, I suggested that the arts are a God-given language to enable us to celebrate appropriately. From the building of the Tabernacle in the desert, and onward throughout the ages in the Judeo-Christian tradition, artists and craftsmen have used their gifts to lead their religious community in celebration and festivity or lament and mourning. We need poets, composers and performers to help us to access and release the intensity of thought and feeling within us in order to express ourselves eloquently before God especially corporately.
The other point about festivals and celebrations I made that morning was that they provided a forum for initiating younger members into the rites and traditions of the adult community. According to the book of Deuteronomy, Moses instructed the fledgling Israelite community to teach their children all the laws that the Lord God had commanded them to follow. One of the most effective ways of doing this would be through the rituals of annual festivals and celebrations. In the service that morning, the worship was led by an all-age orchestra. Lads of twelve or so stood on the rostra from last night’s performance playing brass instruments of various kinds. Girls of a similar age and younger sat in the string section next to seasoned musicians from the congregation. We are too quick to segregate children off from the adult community. There is a place for Sunday school and any other kind of schools for that matter, but we should look for opportunities for children to participate in and even lead all age community events such as this. Lorna’s gesture later that day at the concert was a perfect example of just how much they can contribute. Through her simple and seemingly spontaneous words and subsequent playing of “Elegie” Lorna dignified and magnified the Young Musicians Showcase and affirmed that even in the bleakest circumstances we may continue to celebrate. Moreover the children raised £165 from the concert which will be donated to projects in the developing world. I’m not sure what impact Lorna’s words had on my daughters or the other children at the concert, but I imagine they gave them a sense that they can ultimately respond with eloquence to whatever life throws at them. There are few lessons more important than that.
Earlier that morning I had spoken at our thanksgiving service for the arts festival. My theme was the importance of festivals for the flourishing of a community. I read the passage from the Book of Revelation which describes all creation gathered around the throne of God singing the words which inspired one of the great choruses from Handel’s Messiah. ‘Worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing!’ I asked the congregation to consider this eschatological scene as a magnificent arts festival just like the one we had been enjoying over the weekend. I highlighted the great tradition of festivals and celebrations recorded in the Bible from the inauguration of Passover which annually marked the Israelites deliverance from slavery in Egypt, to the regular celebration of the Eucharist in the early Church. I suppose I was asserting that the language and rituals of celebration were the default position for Christians and people of faith in good times and bad. This is not to escape from grim reality or live indulgently but to remember the eternal perspective which the passage in Revelation offers: the wonder, mystery and above all sacredness of life calls forth unceasing praise and celebration from all living things over and above all else. Furthermore, I suggested that the arts are a God-given language to enable us to celebrate appropriately. From the building of the Tabernacle in the desert, and onward throughout the ages in the Judeo-Christian tradition, artists and craftsmen have used their gifts to lead their religious community in celebration and festivity or lament and mourning. We need poets, composers and performers to help us to access and release the intensity of thought and feeling within us in order to express ourselves eloquently before God especially corporately.
The other point about festivals and celebrations I made that morning was that they provided a forum for initiating younger members into the rites and traditions of the adult community. According to the book of Deuteronomy, Moses instructed the fledgling Israelite community to teach their children all the laws that the Lord God had commanded them to follow. One of the most effective ways of doing this would be through the rituals of annual festivals and celebrations. In the service that morning, the worship was led by an all-age orchestra. Lads of twelve or so stood on the rostra from last night’s performance playing brass instruments of various kinds. Girls of a similar age and younger sat in the string section next to seasoned musicians from the congregation. We are too quick to segregate children off from the adult community. There is a place for Sunday school and any other kind of schools for that matter, but we should look for opportunities for children to participate in and even lead all age community events such as this. Lorna’s gesture later that day at the concert was a perfect example of just how much they can contribute. Through her simple and seemingly spontaneous words and subsequent playing of “Elegie” Lorna dignified and magnified the Young Musicians Showcase and affirmed that even in the bleakest circumstances we may continue to celebrate. Moreover the children raised £165 from the concert which will be donated to projects in the developing world. I’m not sure what impact Lorna’s words had on my daughters or the other children at the concert, but I imagine they gave them a sense that they can ultimately respond with eloquence to whatever life throws at them. There are few lessons more important than that.
Friday, 2 October 2009
The Messiah Experience
A bright-eyed ‘evangelist’ called Gareth Malone has been winning over the most unlikely devotees to the ‘gospel' of community singing over the past few years in front of TV audiences of millions. He’s ventured into a boys comprehensive in Leicestershire, a run-down estate in South Oxhey, Hertfordshire persuading the most reluctant singers to join with their peers and discover the power of choral song. It’s made compulsive viewing as the cameras have recorded Gareth’s determination to help shuffling, self-conscious school-boys find their voice as they’ve rehearsed for the big concert at the Albert Hall. In the last series it was particularly moving to witness members of his choir from South Oxhey reduced to tears of pride and joy as they listened to their recording of a Beatles song at Abbey Road studios. I suppose what these ordinary folk have discovered, is how powerfully expressive they can be when they come together as one and respond to the inspirational guidance of a great leader such as the plucky young Gareth. The people of South Oxhey had apparently felt themselves to be a pretty worthless and insignificant lot up till then, but Gareth’s idea of staging an open-air concert on their vast common, galvanized them to work together to ensure it was a success. Perhaps the series has proved so moving because a huge choir of all ages and backgrounds like this is such a potent metaphor for the potential of a community when it is governed with passion, wisdom, and sensitivity. This is made all the more poignant at a time when so many people feel increasingly alienated from a society led by politicians who fiddle their expenses, or bankers and businesses that drive the nation to the brink of economic collapse through insatiable avarice.
In our own small way we have been following Gareth’s example at St. John’s Church as we have prepared for our second annual arts festival in Broadbridge Heath, West Sussex. (A Space for the Arts). On Saturday 10th October we will present “The Messiah Experience” in the church. This will feature a selection of Handel’s music from his great Oratorio sung by a choir pulled together from the local congregation including one or two professionals who have sung at Glyndebourne alongside several, including myself, for whom the whole choral tradition with its weird vocal warm ups and endless note-bashing is still a relatively novel experience. We will be joined on the platform by a community gospel choir largely drawn from the Catholic church in nearby Horsham. They will be singing funkier contemporary settings of the classic libretto accompanied by a band formed from the local community and led by a dynamic singer from our congregation who has much experience working with community choirs of all ages. In more recent rehearsals we have warmed up together at the start of the evening and reunited at the end to perform a little of what we have been rehearsing throughout the session to one another. Its great to encounter a whole new group of people through the immediacy of song rather than the tedium of social niceties. Anglicans have fused with Catholics, classically trained musicians with Gospel singers.
I am singing bass in the three songs the classical choir are offering including the rousing “Glory to God” and triumphal “The Hallelujah Chorus.” Its been fascinating to experience such familiar pieces being deconstructed by an excellent musician from Horsham, as she’s guided each section of the choir through their parts. Aside from getting on top of the melodies and timing the entries of your part (while others are singing something totally different) there’s the challenge of forming and placing the precise vowel-sounds which create the resonance Handel was after. The process is really painstaking initially and you wonder if you will ever master it individually, let alone corporately. It’s wonderful when reinforcements arrive unexpectedly to bolster your section. In an early rehearsal three novice choristers were struggling with our bass line in “Glory to God” when Alex, a doctor, pitched up after a long day at work. This experienced and confident singer instantly transformed us as we clustered around him like tiny ducklings following mother! It’s truly magical when each section has mastered their part and you put it all together. You’re able to hold your own line and sing it with abandon whilst hearing the whole score swirling all around you as if you are caught up in the air with the angels on that first Christmas Eve.
It’s 250 years since Handel’s death. He died just five months before his Oratorio was first performed in a provincial church like ours (though considerably larger). Up till then “The Messiah” had mainly been performed in theatres and concert halls. That first performance in 1759 in a church in Leicestershire was also part of a festival organized by the local congregation. It cost five shillings and attracted two thousand people, though the rector estimated that around twenty-five thousand folk from the surrounding countryside jammed the roads into town eager to be part of the festival in some way. Accommodation over the weekend was so scarce that the Earl of Devonshire had to take a room with the local tanner. Since then The Messiah or parts of it at least have been sung by church and community choirs of varying standards all over the world proclaiming “good news” to generation after generation in “The Hallelujah Chorus.” We will do well to get 200 into our much smaller provincial church at a cost of £10 a ticket (not a bad increase considering inflation over a quarter of a millennium). All profits will be ploughed into our newly formed Space Arts Trust ensuring we can continue to pay the odd soloist from Glyndebourne and professional instrumentalists to make sure we do justice to works such as this for many years to come.
In our own small way we have been following Gareth’s example at St. John’s Church as we have prepared for our second annual arts festival in Broadbridge Heath, West Sussex. (A Space for the Arts). On Saturday 10th October we will present “The Messiah Experience” in the church. This will feature a selection of Handel’s music from his great Oratorio sung by a choir pulled together from the local congregation including one or two professionals who have sung at Glyndebourne alongside several, including myself, for whom the whole choral tradition with its weird vocal warm ups and endless note-bashing is still a relatively novel experience. We will be joined on the platform by a community gospel choir largely drawn from the Catholic church in nearby Horsham. They will be singing funkier contemporary settings of the classic libretto accompanied by a band formed from the local community and led by a dynamic singer from our congregation who has much experience working with community choirs of all ages. In more recent rehearsals we have warmed up together at the start of the evening and reunited at the end to perform a little of what we have been rehearsing throughout the session to one another. Its great to encounter a whole new group of people through the immediacy of song rather than the tedium of social niceties. Anglicans have fused with Catholics, classically trained musicians with Gospel singers.
I am singing bass in the three songs the classical choir are offering including the rousing “Glory to God” and triumphal “The Hallelujah Chorus.” Its been fascinating to experience such familiar pieces being deconstructed by an excellent musician from Horsham, as she’s guided each section of the choir through their parts. Aside from getting on top of the melodies and timing the entries of your part (while others are singing something totally different) there’s the challenge of forming and placing the precise vowel-sounds which create the resonance Handel was after. The process is really painstaking initially and you wonder if you will ever master it individually, let alone corporately. It’s wonderful when reinforcements arrive unexpectedly to bolster your section. In an early rehearsal three novice choristers were struggling with our bass line in “Glory to God” when Alex, a doctor, pitched up after a long day at work. This experienced and confident singer instantly transformed us as we clustered around him like tiny ducklings following mother! It’s truly magical when each section has mastered their part and you put it all together. You’re able to hold your own line and sing it with abandon whilst hearing the whole score swirling all around you as if you are caught up in the air with the angels on that first Christmas Eve.
It’s 250 years since Handel’s death. He died just five months before his Oratorio was first performed in a provincial church like ours (though considerably larger). Up till then “The Messiah” had mainly been performed in theatres and concert halls. That first performance in 1759 in a church in Leicestershire was also part of a festival organized by the local congregation. It cost five shillings and attracted two thousand people, though the rector estimated that around twenty-five thousand folk from the surrounding countryside jammed the roads into town eager to be part of the festival in some way. Accommodation over the weekend was so scarce that the Earl of Devonshire had to take a room with the local tanner. Since then The Messiah or parts of it at least have been sung by church and community choirs of varying standards all over the world proclaiming “good news” to generation after generation in “The Hallelujah Chorus.” We will do well to get 200 into our much smaller provincial church at a cost of £10 a ticket (not a bad increase considering inflation over a quarter of a millennium). All profits will be ploughed into our newly formed Space Arts Trust ensuring we can continue to pay the odd soloist from Glyndebourne and professional instrumentalists to make sure we do justice to works such as this for many years to come.
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