Great leap forward
Peter Phillips The news that Andrew Carwood has just been appointed 'Organist' of St Paul's Cathedral is some of the brightest to come out of the Anglican choral world in a very long time. Imaginative, mould-breaking appointments like this are not the norm around our cathedral closes and no doubt there will be a backlash from those who perceive their special interests to be threatened. I know Carwood to be exactly the man for a job which combines expertise in several different musical disciplines while requiring quite exceptional powers of diplomacy (I would lay some emphasis on those words); yet super-qualified as he is, in some people's minds this post still really only requires one accomplishment, the ability to play the organ. This Carwood cannot do, nor has he ever claimed that he could. He was appointed despite this.
The confraternity of Cathedral Organists in this country is a small one: there are not many jobs to be had and those that are available, or may become available in time, are eyed with longing and calculation. St Paul's, which is said to maintain the largest musical establishment devoted to performing liturgical music in the world, is obviously one of the picks. In fact, the round of sung services there is so insistent, day by day and week by week, that the place has been referred to as a 'music factory'. Not only does St Paul's host all the usual daily services of a cathedral, it also has more extra full-dress occasions than any other equivalent foundation in the country.
All the more surprising then that the person in charge of 40 choristers, 18 layclerks and all this choral music is supposed in the first instance to be an organist. True, there are some competent organists who have made talented choral directors — good musicianship will out — but in the end someone who thinks as an organist, who has the kind of introverted mind which is capable of controlling a vast mechanical monster that requires its player to do four things at once, is unlikely to have the outward-going qualities which a group of singers will respond to. And anyway the role of the organ in all these services is becoming less and less important as unaccompanied singing gains in acceptance and popularity.
This assumption that the person in charge of cathedral music should be an organist is a hangover from how the candidates were trained many decades ago and any thought of change has been undertaken at a snail's pace. I know this because in 1978 I was commissioned to interview all the leading organists in the country — the tapes of these 25 or so conversations are now in the National Sound Archive; the results were published in Early Music magazine in 1980 — asking them how they saw their profession. Two big problems were on their horizon: the possibility of girl choristers, and the opportunity to divide the posts of Organist and Assistant Organist into Organist and Choirmaster respectively. At that time only Liverpool Cathedral employed two men on an equal footing in this way. St Paul's was experimenting with the idea but soon gave it up, possibly because it was too expensive, possibly because the lines of authority clashed. In fact, the person ultimately in charge remained the Organist, Christopher De arnley.
Barry Rose, the St Paul's choirmaster in question, said to me at the time that 'specialist choir-trainers are hard to find within the cathedral system because that system is not geared to encouraging them. However, there are a good number outside it, with no interest in playing the organ, who could so well inject new spirit into the choirs, but are thus excluded from the cathedrals. It is surprising that members of our Chapters, who process away after service, never hearing an organ voluntary, require from their organists expertise as players, rather than proven competence in handling their choirs to which they, the clergy, are obliged to listen for many hours every week.' And no one thought to mention that the educational side of all these countless hours the boys spend singing would be greatly enhanced if the conductor knew what he was doing.
It has taken nearly 30 more years for these underlying assumptions to be properly challenged. This time it has been done in such a way and at such an institution that there will be no going back. Carwood's special qualifications to do this job (he still has to be called Organist by statute) will not appeal to some traditionalists, but his appointment is a massive leap forward for those who, like me, love sacred choral music and the tradition in this country which keeps it alive. When girls are singing alongside the boys I shall be even happier; but for now I am prepared to go one step at a time.
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