A musical performance is strikingly akin to an act of commemoration. It is the job of musicians to commune with composers who, more often than not, are long dead.
The musical score occupies that mysterious, liminal space where a composer’s original vision meets the performers’ attempts to understand and interpret that vision. Only in performance is the vision – or a single, unique, momentary version of it – brought into existence.
And when it comes to breathing life into the strange hieroglyphics of musical notation, the all-important role must necessarily be given to intuition. Going further, we might say that, the older the music, the more important intuition becomes. Take, for example, Gregorian chant.
Despite the apparent simplicity of its notation, we cannot today be sure how to interpret certain specific signs, particularly with regard to rhythm. How would these melodies have actually sounded in, say, 12th-century Paris? And how different might that have been to how they sounded in 12th-century Rome or Canterbury?
We’ve no idea, but common sense dictates that local traditions developed along strongly independent lines. In any case, the notation itself allows for or even <em>invites</em> a huge freedom of interpretation.
At St Birinus Church in Dorchester-on-Thames, the Davey Consort has been singing the chant Propers each Sunday since 2018. All of the consort’s members had at least some previous experience of performing chant; some a great deal. But a collective, satisfactory approach has only emerged over time, following much trial and error.
Above all, chant forces us to listen to our colleagues in a much more acutely attentive way. It teaches us how to be flexible, how to remain in control of the long melodic contours, to be attuned to our breathing and the breathing of those around us. And when it comes to commemoration, no other music gives the performer a deeper awareness of those who have gone before.
This is music enacting the slow, seasonal rhythms of the Church year, <em>ad infinitum</em>. Singing Gregorian chant certainly makes us better musicians. Perhaps it also makes us better human beings. Regardless, it is my firm belief that more people, and especially children, should have it in their lives.
Allhallowtide – the triduum of All Hallows Eve, All Saints and All Souls – is the Church’s great festival of commemoration, and so it proves a beautifully apt time of year to be celebrating our second St Birinus Music Festival, running between 31 October and 3rd November.
As at last year’s successful launch, most of the events take place in the glorious nave of Dorchester Abbey, with the occasional retreat to the exquisitely intimate St Birinus Church, just a short walk away, in Dorchester on Thames, to the southeast of Oxford in South East England.
The festival seeks to fundraise for, and ensure the survival of the Davey Consort. We are the only professional choir in the country devoted solely to providing music for the Traditional Latin Mass, and I am proud that our endeavours have gained the patronage and support of my colleagues Sir James MacMillan and Sir Stephen Hough.
The Davey Consort <a href="https://thedaveyconsort.co.uk/pages/about-us"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">takes its name</mark></a> from John Davey who, in 1849, commissioned the building of the beautiful Catholic Church of St Birinus in Dorchester-on-Thames, where the consort is based.
The Davey Consort was founded to promote greater knowledge of, and wider access to the performance of Gregorian chant and sacred music of the 16th and 17th centuries, both in concert and within the context of the Catholic liturgy.
That said, the group was formed not only to promote Gregorian chant. The sublime polyphonic riches of the Church’s musical heritage – much of it being heard for the first time in centuries – have been lovingly transcribed and edited from the original sources by our brilliant archivist/librarian/alto Francis Bevan.
They are then sung, Sunday upon Sunday, in the belief that this life-enhancing music deserves to be experienced in its proper context.
<a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/britains-cathedral-choirs-and-choral-legacy-endangered-by-vat-on-private-schools/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color"><strong><em>RELATED: Britain’s cathedral choirs and choral legacy endangered by VAT on private schools</em></strong></mark></a>
<em>Photo: Image accompanying Requiem Mass for All Souls' Day 2024 at <a href="https://thedaveyconsort.co.uk/products/requiem-for-all-souls-day-2024"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">thedaveyconsort.co.uk</mark></a>.</em>
<strong>A full list of festival events as well as more information on the Davey Consort is available <a href="https://thedaveyconsort.co.uk/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">here</mark></a>. </strong>
