Finding the connection
Stephen Pettitt on how London’s churches add to the musical life of the capital
It’s often said — if mainly by Londoners — that London is the musical capital of the world. In spite of the city’s lack of a state-of-the-art, bang-up-to-the-minute large concert hall with finely engineered acoustics, in spite of the bedraggled state and long drawn-out overhaul of the South Bank Centre and the dwindling number of classical concerts there since my youth, in spite of notoriously underpaid and underrehearsed musicians, the boast retains an element of truth. It’s a boast that would be emptier were it not for one strand of music-making that has been a feature of the capital’s cultural life since public concerts were invented, an activity that depends not upon political winds blowing in the right direction, nor upon handouts from state, industry or the indecently rich. I refer to the music-making offered either at festivals or, week in, week out, by many of our loveliest London churches. Listening to music at some of these venues admittedly entails suffering hard wooden pews, inadequate toilet facilities, intrusive traffic noise and no half-time bar, but there’s handsome compensation in finding oneself in a beautiful, spiritually uplifting space.
A couple of churches — Thomas Archer’s St John’s, Smith Square, aka ‘Queen Anne’s Footstool’, and Hawksmoor’s masterpiece, St Luke’s in Old Street, formerly a complete wreck but now the well-appointed base for the London Symphony Orchestra and venue for prestigious chamber concerts — no longer function as churches. Of those that do, there’s Wren’s St Anne and St Agnes in Gresham Street, now a Lutheran church with its own kantor and over 100 concerts each year. There’s Hawksmoor’s impressive Christ Church in Spitalfields, beautifully restored, which stages two important annual festivals and has become the base for the Gabrieli Consort. Archer’s St Paul, Deptford — another recent restoration following a fire in 2000 — is the home of St Paul’s Sinfonia, which offers monthly concerts. Many city churches are used as venues for the City of London Festival in June, while the church of St Giles, Cripplegate, just across the artificial lake from the Barbican, houses many Barbicanassociated chamber and choral concerts through the year. And there are three important musical churches which have associations with Handel: St George’s, Hanover Square, designed by Wren’s assistant John James and the base for the annual London Handel Festival, which runs from the middle of March to the middle of May; Wren’s own church of St James’s, Piccadilly; and James Gibbs’s St Martin-inthe-Fields, in Trafalgar Square. St James’s and St Martin’s present themselves almost as rivals, offering a wide range of concerts given by professionals prominent and not so prominent, together with an invigorating diet of free lunchtime events, including student recitals. At St James’s, the London Festival Orchestra is resident, and the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields reinforces its link with St Martin’s with the occasional event there.
But are churches really meant to function as busy concert halls? Doesn’t the staging of as many as half a dozen concerts each week in a place intended for worship distract from the primary purpose? It’s a question I put to Nicholas Holtam, vicar of St Martin’s. ‘You have to think, what’s the connection between the cultural and the religious? Particularly in the context of a building like this. You sit there listening to a concert or a rehearsal, and it can make your heart soar. Even something as well known as Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. We were doing it here the other day. There were about 50 or 60 people sitting there listening to free music in a church that was open, where there were lots of signals as to what the building is about. And what percentage of classical music has come out of a religious milieu? But, yes, I’d own up to there being times when we feel a bit too much of a concert hall. You’ve got to start wondering when Americans ask, “Gee, is this place a church as well as a concert venue?” But there are still at least 21 services a week, so the religious bit isn’t exactly being short-changed. Broadly, I think they sit together bloody well.’ Most of Holtam’s programmes — overseen by a full-time concerts manager cater unashamedly for the sort of listener who might like the odd spot of Classic FM but probably steers clear of anything that might be defined as esoteric. Much trade is gathered from the massed throng of visitors who find themselves wandering in from Trafalgar Square. There’s much of the Eine kleine Nachtmusik and Albinoni Adagio ilk, and lots by candlelight. But a complacent music critic can always find something a touch more esoteric. A world music series is scheduled for May, there’s a series of Bach cantatas from August to October, audience-educating profiles of Bach, Mozart and Vivaldi in October, and a Bach weekend at the end of November.
And young musicians and students invariably offer a wide spectrum of repertoire. What’s more, the operation even makes a modest profit. With funds always stretched, it can’t be allowed, ever, to turn in a loss of even a sou.
At the moment, backstage facilities for St Martin’s musical operations are grim. Musicians change in an old burial vault. Washing facilities are limited to one sink. Toilets are probably better left unexplored. All that is about to change. As part of St Martin’s £30 million-plus ambitious redevelopment plan, due for completion in about two and a half years and involving also wholesale modernisation of the church’s renowned facilities for the homeless, proper showers, dressing rooms and rehearsal facilities — this last capable of coping with a small orchestra and of being hired out — will be built in the vast space beneath the church. In tandem with this advance, Holtam looks forward to exciting developments in the music programming. Currently he’s seeking a sponsor for a competition for trios, called ‘Classical 3s’. And he explains the choice of that particular configuration by reminding me that three is ‘a good religious number’. That religion business is never very far away.
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