From the age of about seven I’d sung in the little church choir my Mum ran. When she told me about a choir down in Leeds that sang every day, I told her that I wanted to try and join. Not unreasonably, she pointed out that it took all her efforts to get me to sing on one day a week, let alone on six. But however warily, she still took me to audition, and once I was in, I never needed persuading to go. (Hm… it’s just possible that I’m an nothing-or-all kind of guy.) In time I became the main treble soloist, which acclimatised me not just to the choir stall, but to the stage, microphone and camera. My head was turned – sadly away from the piano, which was neglected during those years. I imagined that once my voice broke I would enjoy continuing success as a singer. Not so. As an adult I’ve always sung, but never as well as I want. Oddly enough, the man who auditioned me as a treble was Donald Hunt who, 20 years on, would audition me as a bass to join Worcester Cathedral Choir. The fact that I was successful again owes more to Donald’s sense of loyalty than to my vocal talents.
So I’d always sung in choirs, but I’d never for one moment considered directing one. Towards the end of my second year at Aberystwyth, though, Aneirin Hughes began a rehearsal of the university’s extra-mural chamber choir by announcing that he could only stay for 10 minutes, after which I would be in charge. Believe me, if he’d given me prior warning I would have made a run for it. Suffice it to say that I learnt more about conducting in the next 10 minutes than I’d learnt in 10 years. When Aneirin left Aberystwyth properly, a few months later, I took over ‘Mads’ for good. I quickly realised that although my fingers always let me down as a pianist, and my larynx as a singer, conducting was one thing I could do: I could hear, I could feel, I could think, and I could talk. I was very much learning on the job, though. And if I learnt from my mistakes, then there was much to learn from. Over the next two years I made every error in the book, and a few more wholly original ones. Mistakes were my only mark of originality: musically my work might have been passionate, but it was derivative and often inept. I suspect that if they came across my later work with Musica Contexta, the singers I conducted in Mads would find it difficult to believe that the director was the person they knew. To those individuals I offer my thanks – and apologies.
Having an elder brother emigrate to New Zealand was a happy happenstance for me. After university, in December 1985 I went out to visit him. I arrived in Wellington on a Tuesday, and by the Friday I found myself conducting some of New Zealand’s best young singers. Strange, but true. I’d met them the previous evening at a Wellington Cathedral Choir practice, and they’d invited me to join them carol singing for charity. Well, the following lunchtime I was the only one to turn up in town with a tuning fork and any experience of directing a choir. So off we went. Those singers were the nucleus of The Tudor Consort. Although it was the first specialist early music choir in New Zealand, I freely admit that my initial conception wasn’t at all original: it was heavily influenced by the Clerkes of Oxenford, whose director, David Wulstan, had been my professor at university. As time went on other contemporary influences entered the mix – particularly the liturgical reconstructions of Andrew Parrott with his Taverner Choir. Much of what I did with the Tudor Consort, then, was imitative and (in more ways than one) deeply inauthentic. And yet the choir was an overnight success – thanks not just to the special music were singing, but to some special singers and an equally special audience: a wonderful chemistry. We worked with period instrumentalists, musicologists and New Zealand composers. Whatever we did, whether performing in Wellington, touring, recording or broadcasting, it always felt dynamic. For those interested in what we did then, and the outstanding choir they are now, the The Tudor Consort webpage is worth a visit. One recording I made with the choir of music by Giovanni Animuccia, can be heard here.
One of my reasons for returning to Britain was the frustration I felt in seeing young New Zealand singers head off for Europe as soon as they’d reached a professional standard. No surprise, then, that when I set up Musica Contexta in 1991, it should include a fair number of Tudor Consort alumni (and a couple from my Mads years). By then I’d become convinced that the most engaging way to present Renaissance music was in context: all our early concerts and recordings were liturgical reconstructions. I’d also become surer about what voice types had sung in 16th century choirs: so when we sang English music we had no falsettists, but there was a place for them on the soprano line in Palestrina. For about 15 years, through a series of recordings on the Chandos label, , that was how things were. All knowledge is contingent, though, and by the time we came to record Byrd’s Great Service in 2011, the ground was starting to shift beneath my feet. To the best of my knowledge our Elizabethan pronunciation, pitch, vocal scoring, instrumentation and temperament all got a tick in the authenticist’s book. More importantly, my emotional commitment to the music was authentic. But I knew that many aspects of what we (and almost every early music choir) were doing was fundamentally anachronistic. Whereas the workings of Renaissance choirs were spontaneous, improvised and corporate, ours were rehearsed, literal and directed. However beautiful the products of our existing formula might have been, as a ‘historically informed’ group I wanted us to move the game on: we did experiment with more genuinely historical choral practices, but I was asking middle-aged dogs (self included) to learn new tricks. Not easy. So, on my 50th birthday, in October 2012, we gave our final concert. A happy and memorable occasion, but not one that has left me with any regrets.
Apart from a 30th anniversary concert with the Tudor Consort in 2016 (including a performance of my Op. 1) I haven’t really conducted in the last 10 years. Since I believe that the role of the conductor / director is one the chief anachronisms of the way early music is now commonly presented, putting my semaphore flags down has come as no great penance – even if it was the one thing I could do to any real standard. Something I can’t do to a standard I’m happy with is to improvise vocally. In the Renaissance the mixed arts of improvisation, memorisation and reading were taught to choristers from a young age, and I’d give my eye teeth to have that multi-layered musical background. Yes, there are groups experimenting with ‘singing off the book’ and I applaud their efforts: but I’ve yet to hear anything which tallies with the dizzying polyphonic improvisations one reads about in Renaissance sources. Then again, perhaps Renaissance musicians would trade their skills to be able to play a piano duet arrangement of Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll with a brilliant pupil. But they can no sooner turn forward the clock than I can turn it back.