Eton Choral Course 1999 - St Peter's Church, Nottingham, England on-line magazine

Singing Joyfully

Alex Holland attends the Eton Choral Course 1999

At the end of May, I was fortunate enough to gain a place on one of the prestigious Eton Choral Courses. I first heard about this course through family members, one of whom attended a course a few years ago, and through Sophie Johnson-Hill who experienced the course last year. Knowing the singers would all be of such a high standard, I was a little anxious to say the least.

I set off for the week long course at Eton College on Thursday 22nd July. Having arrived early, I checked in at the Boys’ House situated at Common Lane. Once I had collected my music I started to glance through it, and it looked fairly challenging. Having met everyone, we made our way to the College Hall for supper. The food during the week was excellent and it was certainly to be welcome after all the hard work that lay ahead. That evening we had an introductory talk and a full choir rehearsal in which I sang bass. The choir consisted of 26 sopranos, 16 altos, 8 tenors and 18 basses. Also present on the course were five organists and one observer. The sound produced from the choir was simply magnificent. At ten o’clock in the evening when the singing day finished, "Tap" the School Bar opened.

The following day, we started with a warm-up at 8.45, after rising for breakfast at an early 8 o’clock! However, our voices were fairly rough after each night’s sleep and so the warm-ups were all important. Friday’s activities included sectional practices, full choir, consort sessions (groups made up of around 10 people of mixed voices), sight-reading sessions and "Alexander" sessions, all of which were fairly common for the first four or five days of the course. In addition to taking part in all of these activities, we had a talk by an "Alexander" teacher, Fran Robinson. She gave us an introduction to the highly effective and useful technique, which benefits singers and generally everyone who wishes to live a healthier life. It improved my singing tremendously and it helps me to cope with my rather long neck! In the afternoon we had a talk on the acoustics of singing, helping us to see the science behind singing. All our rehearsals took place either in the Music School, which was able to accommodate both large and small groups, or the College Chapel for full choir.

Saturday to Tuesday involved many of the same rehearsals and practices, however each day had one special event or highlight. On Saturday we were fortunate enough to sing and record onto CD a piece which was commissioned for us to sing on that date. The music was a choral arrangement of Widor’s Toccata, entitled "Sing!", composed by David Willcocks. It was absolutely fabulous and I can imagine it will sound just as stunning on CD. Sunday’s highlight was the orchestra in which everyone on the course took part. To my amazement we made a decent-sized orchestra, with possibly too many flutes and definitely too many percussionists! (All the non-instrumental players had to play some sort of percussion instrument whether it was the triangle or the xylophone). However, despite the massive and sometimes deafening noise from the back, we were able to provide a semi-decent performance at a concert later that week. Also, from Sunday onwards we had one mini-class session which enabled four people to come together and perform a solo song to each other. This enabled us to experience a smaller audience and to pick up any compliments or criticisms of our singing. A person under the stress of performing does not always realise when bad habits appear. For example, I conduct myself with my head, and my arms flapped every time I breathed in. The advice given by the group and singing teacher was extremely beneficial since I can now go and rectify these bad habits. A master-class taken by Sophie Daneman was held the following day. In the master-class three people performed in front of the entire group, and Sophie commented and suggested ideas for improvement. At the end of both Monday and Tuesday there was a concert for solo singers. I decided to perform "An Die Musik" by Schubert on the Monday night which went extremely well.

Our efforts culminated on the Wednesday which was dedicated to a Radio 3 live broadcast. This was an experience that I will never forget. The music we sang was:

Psalms 137 and 138
Byrd Responses
Sheppard’s "Libera Nos"
Gabrieli’s Magnificat
Victoria’s Nunc Dimittis
O Quanta qualia
Walton’s "The Twelve"
Naylor’s Final Responses

After the broadcast, we had an Informal Concert consisting of anyone wishing to perform either a solo or group piece of music, voice and instrumental. The quality of the concert was outstanding and I only wish it had been recorded.

On the penultimate day we travelled to Cambridge for Evensong at Trinity College Chapel conducted by Geoffrey Webber. We were to perform much the same music as the previous day, however, instead of Walton we sang Byrd’s "Sing Joyfully". For the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis we sang Weelkes arrangement. This was a thoroughly enjoyable day and once we returned to Eton we departed for a barbecue at Queen’s Eyot, an island on the Thames owned by Eton College. In between returning and departing we had a consort groups workshop. Each consort group consisted of around ten singers and we performed "Tea for Two". All groups performed similar works. Throughout the week, our organist for the recording, broadcast and Evensong was David Goode, a very accomplished musician who performed in the BBC Proms on 21st August.

After collecting our final reports from Ralph Allwood the course director, we were allowed to leave. The course was a huge success from everyone’s point of view. It was a fantastic opportunity to meet people with the same interests and make new friends, but most of all it improved my singing enormously. I am extremely grateful to the Vincent Trivett Fund for partly funding my attendance at Eton and I hope that others from St. Peters will benefit in such a way.

Alex Holland

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