This article by Alex Stevens first appeared in the June 2010 issue of Music Teacher magazine:
Eton Choral Courses have developed a unique reputation as summer schools for young choral singers. Little has changed since Ralph Allwood set up the first course in 1980 aside from a gradual expansion and an ever- lengthening list of alumni. Allwood will step down from his position as Director of Music at Eton College itself in 2011, but hopes to continue running the choral courses. So why did he set them up in the first place?
‘I was aware that where I then taught, at Uppingham, they all knew about choral scholarships because they had me and several others to help them, but in other schools – where there were good, talented singers – they didn’t know, and so they needed some way of finding out. And the idea of getting together the most talented singers of about 17 or 18 years old from around the country appealed to me because we’d form a really good choir: which indeed we did.’
Tutors on the first course included many luminaries of the British choral scene, with Barry Rose, Edward Higginbottom, George Guest, Paul Spicer and Simon Preston all involved. Timothy Byram-Wigfield, currently Director of Music at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, was the first course’s student organist and is now involved in the running of the summer schools.
‘It just has a formula,’ says Allwood. ‘The first year we told the participants that in the afternoons they could all follow some jolly sporting pursuits – go swimming, play games, go running, things like that – but we found that nobody took any notice and everybody just went and sang in the music school. So the next year we organised it so that nobody would be left out of that, and introduced what we called consort groups filling up the afternoons.
‘And essentially it’s the same now: you do music which you can get to the highest possible standard, and with an emphasis on that standard. People – young people, old people – like to achieve high standards and like to feel they’re doing things well, and that’s one of the great features of the courses.’
The number of courses each year has now grown to seven, including outposts in Cheltenham, Durham, Cambridge University’s Trinity College and at The Queen’s and Merton colleges in Oxford. In 2010 all but one will be directed by Allwood himself, with regular deputy Ben Parry stepping in for course three. Peripatetic singing teachers (‘the best possible’, says Allwood) are drafted in to give one-to-one lessons to participants and visiting tutors give masterclasses or take rehearsals at each course.
Each course is balanced by two main church services – one in the middle and one towards the end, with one service on an ‘away’ trip and one ‘home’ at each course’s college chapel. The repertoire is that of the
English choral tradition, meaning Evensong services of canticles, psalms, responses and anthems: the meat and bread of the choral world that many choral course participants, whose singing might have been only in school choirs or on Sunday mornings in their parish churches, may never have experienced. It is now usual for one of the courses’ evensongs to be broadcast on Radio 3’s Choral Evensong (lucky participants in this year’s third course will have a much higher- quality recording to keep for posterity than those of the other courses).
Another opportunity which many participants might not have had, says Allwood, is ‘at last a chance to get together with other singers. Their eyes are opened and they’re amazed that there are other people who are as keen on their pursuit as they are.’ At the same time, many participants will have been fully exposed to this atmosphere: to them the courses offer simply a week of intense exposure to choral music and its teaching: ‘a way of going forward with their singing’.
‘And we have gradually and relentlessly expanded the number of schools that send boys and girls on the courses: every year the proportion of singers who come to us from state schools is larger,’ he says. Every year? ‘Every year – helped by the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Durham, which have given us lists of people to send our publicity out to.
‘What generally happens, of course, is that the vast majority of people come on the course because it’s been recommended to them either by a singing teacher or by somebody who went on the course the year before – so the more people we have from different schools, the more people from those schools we will have in future.’
While the courses might have been set up in order to bridge a gap in experience for potential Oxbridge choral scholars (‘I do like to think that most of those who become choral scholars have been on a course,’ says Allwood), that has ceased to be their sole raison d’être. Hundreds now, believes Allwood, come just to enjoy singing at a high level for an intense period: a week of rehearsals, lessons, masterclasses and services, after all, can be no bad thing.
‘I think we have hit upon a magic recipe for what goes on during the week which makes everybody determined to have a good time,’ he says. ‘Everybody leaves just full of joy and inspiration, and that comes from interaction with each other, with their singing teachers, assistant music staff, and the visitors: it all leads to their being very excited and inspired by the whole thing. Long may it continue.’
In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the first course, alumni from all courses since are invited to attend a rehearsal, dinner and celebration evensong on 30 July. repertoire is likely to be Herbert Howells’s St Paul’s Service, C.H. Parry’s Blest Pair of Sirens, and Paul Spicer’s responses.
