maundy-thursday Dan Soper Dan Soper

Merging the Treble lines at Rochester

Do please ensure you read my disclaimer.

Yesterday, Rochester Cathedral announced their intention to introduce a mixed treble line in the Cathedral Choir. This immediately fired up a lot of emotions. After some reflection, I responded with the following tweet:

...and then followed up with the following thought about my change of career choice in 2016:

You can read more about my change of career here.

The Cathedral responded to my first tweet with some encouragement:

Much later in the day, they decided to reply to my second tweet, as follows:

Completely ignoring the fact that after years of training I had to change career because I couldn’t cope with the working environment of a Cathedral, this tweet sought instead to defend further their decision. I was not happy with this reply, and gave them the opportunity to delete it—which they declined. I decided to explore all the things I was thinking and write a post.

Backstory

The Cathedral was quite early to the Girls’ Choir scene, founding theirs in 1995. By the time I started at Rochester as Assistant Director of Music in 2006, an extra choir, the Senior Girls’ Choir had been founded, for the Girls’ Choir leavers who wished to continue singing. At this stage, the Girls sang a weekend or two each term, alongside a weekly weekday evensong. The Senior Girls sang every now and then. At this point, the Girls’ Choir was overshadowed by both the Cathedral Choir of Boys, and the Senior Girls. For the sake of equality, it was decided to increase the age range of the Girls’ Choir, disband the Senior Girls’ Choir, and increase the commitment for the Girls, so that they did roughly half the number of services that the Boys did. Consideration was given to breaking the link with King’s and have the boys and girls both recruited on equal terms from any local school, but this was considered too much of a risk. It was out of the question to force the girls to all go to King’s, and it was also considered that too much would be lost by merging into a single treble line.

Alongside these decisions, the Cathedral decided to solve the problem of lack of lay clerks by establishing a Choral Scholar scheme, and a system of Deputy Lay Clerks.

I wasn’t responsible for any of these decisions (I was a mere Assistant DofM) but I was heavily involved in drawing up budgets on how to manage the transition, and creating systems. So I was considerably invested, and a keen supporter of the changes made in 2008.

Some Success

Once the 2008 changes had settled in, things seemed to be going pretty well—both choirs went through a very strong period, and the new lay clerk system meant that choristers were supported by a wide variety of excellent singers.

But even then it was clear that the itch hadn’t gone away:

New Ideas

Graphs showing historic choir commitments for boys and girlsThe decision to merge the treble lines solves some of the above, though it introduces new problems:

There are clear advantages, some of which are detailed in their press release.

Overall, on the decision itself, I’m disappointed that the choir that I loved directing is effectively being disbanded, and I’m worried that (looking to save money) other Cathedrals will copy this decision without enough consideration. But I can see how this may well be the right next step for Rochester, and I’m sure Francesca is the right person to make it work.

First Reactions

So why was my first impression of the decision more negative than positive?

Conclusion

The changes we made in 2008 were quite revolutionary, and I’m sure there were many who were against them. Luckily there wasn’t such an opportunity for opinions on social media back then.

These new changes are again quite revolutionary, and just like in 2008 there are risks and compromises. The fact is that there is no way to run a Cathedral Choir in the 21st century without making compromises somewhere. I very much look forward to seeing the choir re-flourish under the new system.

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