Not so bel canto
From J.L.A. Hartley
Sir: Peter Phillips (Arts, 7 May) wonders why there should be such a gap between the standards of the Sistine Chapel choir and the average English cathedral or collegiate choir. I agree, with qualifications, that there is such a gap when it comes to the repertory and also when it comes to the actual execution of that repertory. And I think I can explain it.
English cathedrals and collegiate churches of all sorts, including Oxbridge colleges, have endowments that permit them to command the best talent — a word not unknown to sacred Scripture. Since the French Revolution and Bonaparte’s incursion into the rest of Europe, the continental Church has been shorn of her endowments. In France the piety of centuries was annihilated within weeks by Talleyrand’s Assignats. Hence that tragic French phenomenon, les cathèdrales silencieuses.
J.L.A. Hartley
London W8
Previous page
