The Richard Marlow Double Descants as sung by the Trinity Choir (Oxbridge)
I don’t remember ever being critical of The superb Trinity College Choir at the University of Cambridge (Oxbridge), so this is a first for me. And in this case I’m only being critical of their soprano section. Or is it even that?
I’m really disagreeing with the Director of Music, Steven Grahl, and his way of doing descants with the soprano section, since he’s ultimately responsible for the descants. Any other time, I think Steven does an excellent job, especially his discreet conducting style — he doesn’t make it all about himself as some conductors do and have in the past — and I like his interpretation of the canticle settings of Herbert Howells.
BUT: What happened to the stellar Trinity Choir during their double descant on the final verse of the processional hymn in the Choral Evensong above? It was not sung to their usual standards.
My choral friend said it sounded “podunk.” Yes, it did sound amateurish, and these are University Choral Scholars, and amateurish is not what one expects from them. You can hear what I’m talking about beginning at the final verse of the hymn starting at 42.10 in the video above. It especially sounded bad from 42.36 on.
The Choir performs the Richard Marlow descants on a regular basis at Trinity, and this was one of them. Update: I was linking to a site for you to learn about Richard Marlow but like many things on the internet that are being ruined, that page now requires a subscription — so screw that! — so put his name in your search engine and see what you come up with. Here’s one source, for the time being.
My experience with descants:
1. When you have an excellent soprano section as does The Trinity Choir, please don’t use solo voices for a descant. Why would anyone do that? A descant is not meant to be a solo for a piece. Use the entire soprano section, as intended. That’s what descants are written for.
2. See #1. Please don’t use duets or two sopranos for double descants. Use the entire soprano section divided up equally between the two descants.
3. Please have the descant(s) float above the melody line and harmonies of the hymn it’s being sung with.
Why would descants be sung any other way by a credible, renowned choral ensemble of Choral Scholars which consistently performs with the highest standards of choral excellence?
As a brief aside: I have heard descants sung with an excellent tenor section joining the soprano section in singing the descant. The tenors sang the descant in their register, meaning an octave lower than the sopranos. That worked beautifully and makes a lot of sense when you think about it. That was done by an Anglican parish in Manhattan. On one verse or two of the hymn, it might be interesting to have just the tenors sing the descant (in their register of course) before both the tenors and sopranos join and sing the descant on the final verse. This approach could work for any descants, not just the Marlow descants.
As for the Marlow descants at Trinity Chapel, they don’t do them as Richard Marlow intended they be done, I’ve learned.
The way the Marlow descants are supposed to be done is the following:
Richard wrote two harmonised descants for a hymn — they are called double descants — so that there would be two descants sung at separate times during the hymn. For example, one descant sung on the second verse of a hymn and the other descant sung on the fourth verse. On the last verse of the hymn both of the previously sung descants would be sung together. So you would have a total of three verses of the hymn with descants, which would of course make any hymn much more interesting. But Trinity does not do that; they don’t follow Marlow’s wishes. They never sing two descants during the hymn.
Hymns need all the help they can get these days because with hardly few exceptions, organists — regardless of where you go/look — are playing hymns “by the book” one verse after the other resulting in boring and uninteresting organ playing. And that is what my choral friend means by “all hymns sound the same.” In that context, he’s correct. Until I understood what he meant, I fought him on the “all hymns sound the same” thinking. I hear no imagination used in playing hymns these days regardless of whether it’s a cathedral or parish church. I hear no High Church or elaborate interludes between verses, which gives the congregation a brief break and spices up the hymn. There may be, may be a more elaborate intro to the hymn but that too is pretty rare.
I couldn’t play hymns the way I hear them played today as I would find it so utterly boring. Even some parishes or collegiate chapels with sopranos/trebles capable of singing descants, the Choirmaster doesn’t use descants, or very rarely.
When I was Organist/Choirmaster in Anglican parishes, I made sure my hymn playing was unpredictable. I used High Church interludes, fanfare introductions and brisk tempi, amongst other things. And often members of the congregation would come to me after the Liturgy and say to me, “thank you for the joyful music this morning” which was very nice of them. So they appreciated it.
But this is a very different time. I guess the music these days is not supposed to be “joyful” and frankly I don’t hear much “joyful” music regardless of where I got. The closest thing to that would be the Howells’s canticle settings or a French Organ Voluntary.
But the hymns? BORING. Dry as dust. No creativity or imagination what-so-ever. An amateur could play the hymns the way I hear professional organists/Organ Scholars play hymns these days. “By the book.” Well who wants to hear that? One can hear that anywhere. There’s nothing special about that, and how many other people say what my choral friend says, “All hymns sound the same?”
And when they sing the double descants on the final verse in Trinity Chapel — which is the only time one hears a descant — it sounds like a soloist (a single soprano) is singing one of the descants and another soloist is singing the other. The double descants sound very, very thin. They sound like a duet between two soprano soloists rather than the full and lush soprano section. Why is the soprano section not singing these descants? I’ve read nothing about that being how Marlow wanted them to be sung.
I once asked about this in the comments at Trinity, under one of their Choral Evensong videos, but my comment went unanswered.
In this Evensong featured at the top of this page, the sopranos didn’t sound any better really at the end of the Magnificat of the Dyson canticles. They sounded thin and “off” in that as well, as if perhaps they were having a bad day. Someone might say: “Perhaps they were sight-reading.” No, they were not sight-reading because the Dyson is part of their repertoire of canticle settings.
I’m a descant person, but not the way Trinity does descants where they always sound thin, rather than full and lush, so I’ve come to not get too excited when I see Steven Grahl, the Choirmaster, move to the podium to conduct the descant.
And I have a question about that too: Since he doesn’t conduct the psalm/the Anglican Chant nor does he need to, why does he need to conduct the descant(s). Do soprano soloists need to be conducted on a hymn? I. Don’t. Think. So.*
I read this about Richard Marlow’s Double Descants:
“He performed similar feats in the descants he wrote, bringing to the medium a new style whereby two descants are used during the hymn and then performed together during the last verse. It was ingenious and highly effective.”
But again, unfortunately that’s not how Trinity does them, so they’re not adhering to Marlow’s wishes by only singing the two descants on the final verse and — with, again, what sounds like — soprano soloists, rather than all of the sopranos. The soprano section on the Epistle side should sing one descant and the sopranos on the Gospel side should sing the other descant.
I know what the full soprano section sounds like because one hears them on the canticle settings and in the anthem. That sound is not what one hears on the descants at all.
Until I started watching Trinity’s liturgies, I’ve never heard descants sung by a single voice.
I don’t know who thinks that sound good with solo voices, although they do have a couple of people in the comments who could best be described as the Choir’s cultists, although one of those persons said nothing about the descants I’m writing about at that Choral Evensong. Any other time, he would have, so maybe he noticed this as well. I did see some people in the Chapel looking around during the descants as if to say, “something sounds wrong; it doesn’t sound good here.” No, it did not. It was embarrassing.
And it didn’t sound good. I played it for my choral friend and he said, “That’s not their usual quality level.”
As I said, I’m a descant person, but the way Trinity does descants, I’d rather they not do them at all since/if they’re going to use solo voices on them.
From my choral experience — both Liturgical and Orchestra Chorus, descants were sung by the entire, soaring, soprano section: The trebles of the Cathedral Choir, or the soprano section of the Choral Arts Society of Washington or the University of Maryland Chorus. I don’t remember the San Francisco Symphony Chorus performing any pieces with a descant.
Below is how descants should sound:
Saint Paul’s Cathedral (Church of England/Anglican):
The combined Choirs of St Paul’s Cathedral (Church of England/Anglican) and Her Majesty’s Chapel Royal: The descant begins at 2.25 in the video below. Kate and William looked like they really enjoyed it (they also chose descants for all of the hymns in their wedding). The Queen looked like she couldn’t be bothered.
Below: Westminster Abbey (Church of England/Anglican):
The Choir of Her Majesty’s Chapel Royal & The Choir of Westminster Abbey: The descant begins at 2.20 in the video below:
And here’s (below) a descant on the second verse of the Willcocks’ arrangement of the National Anthem “God Save The Queen” which was specifically written for the wedding of Charles and Diana in Saint Paul’s Anglican Cathedral (Church of England). It’s a rarely used arrangement because of the large musical forces required to perform it. In this performance it was a full orchestra, The Bach Choir, the State Trumpeters and the Cathedral Choir (Men and Boys) of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, and the Cathedral’s Great Organ. Despite it being the first time this arrangement was heard, The Queen looks a bit sour, if not utterly bored.
Reading the comments under the video, most people seem to know nothing about this version. They seem to think that this arrangement always existed when it was Sir David Willcocks who was commissioned to write this arrangement specifically for the Wedding of Charles and Diana. One commenter wrote, “I can see why they went with this arrangement” implying it wasn’t new. Don’t people research anything?
Stupid is in: On Reddit someone was asking: Is this arrangement not performed often because the Queen died? (How do some people get through the day?) Again, they know nothing about music or this very elaborate arrangement. I’m not registered to comment on Reddit to tell this fool that the Willcocks’ arrangement is not performed often because of the large musical forces it requires to perform it. It has nothing to do with the gender of the Head of State. You just change the word Queen to King. Doh. The piece is best performed in a large Anglican Cathedral since it was composed for that. It could be performed in a concert hall but it would not sound the same because of carpeting and “dry” acoustics.
Someone wrote in the comments, “One of the slowest versions I’ve heard…” That was deliberate per the Willcocks’ arrangement, with a packed Cathedral and to accommodate the Cathedral acoustics. The echo/reverberation time at St. Paul’s is 11-13 seconds. If one looks closely in the Choir area, there is a chorister on the second row within camera view very precisely conducting (beating time). You had the Cathedral Choir in the Quire area and the Bach Choir and Orchestra in another part of the Cathedral and the State Trumpeters in another part up on essentially the second story, and the organ console is up above the Quire area also on the second story. Sir David Willcocks was chosen as Director of Music for the Royal Wedding. He conducted the massed Choirs (which included the Bach Choir) and the Philharmonia Orchestra, Barry Rose conducted the St. Paul’s Cathedral Choir, and Colin Davis conducted the Royal Opera House Orchestra alongside Willcocks.
“God Save The Queen/King” is a far better National Anthem — much better written; it is in hymn style and much easier to sing — than the tacky “Stars Spangled Banner” (which I can’t stand) that the US has which celebrates war (“bombs bursting in air) and other rubbish. It’s difficult to sing because it’s all over the musical scale, and out of the range of most people’s voices.
By the way, the US stole the British National Anthem to come up with that equally tacky piece they named “America” (text: “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”).
Of course the Cathedral and the Abbey are a much larger space than Trinity Chapel, but nevertheless the descants should still sound full and lush in a Chapel and not thin, shrill and/or sung by one or two sopranos. That’s not the way descants are done.
For those who know nothing about music or who don’t have an ear for music, or a musically-trained ear, they would likely hear absolutely nothing wrong with the “Trinity descants.” And there’s nothing one can do about people like that. It’s the same as one cannot fix stupid so don’t waste your time trying. Someone did comment in their chat, “Beautiful descant.” You thought that was beautiful, did you? And where did you train?
So at Trinity, when may we hear three descants per hymn that the Marlow descants are used for? (Not holding my breath). I don’t think Richard would be too happy that his wishes are not being honoured especially at “his” Chapel where he founded The Trinity Choir. Interestingly: “He received letters from BBC Radio 3 Choral Evensong listeners congratulating him on the quality of the boys’ voices.” They were not boys’ voices. They were female sopranos.
The Oxbridge collegiate chapels have what’s called a “Leaver’s Evensong” which is where the graduating Choral Scholars choose the repertoire. Trinity Chapel refuses to/does not broadcast the Leaver’s Evensong claiming that it’s a “personal and family occasion.” (eye roll) That seems outdated and a bit silly to me in this digital age. Don’t the families go on YT and watch most or all of their liturgies from Trinity Chapel each week and see their son at the organ or their son or daughter in the Choir? I should think so. So how is this one any different than all the rest? Just because the graduating choristers chose the repertoire? Well what’s the big deal about that? One of the cultists literally begged them last June to record the Leaver’s Evensong, but they refused. Despite the “personal and family occasion” excuse, I don’t know what the big deal is about broadcasting it as they do all the others. But the cultist, as expected, said he understood the reason they don’t. (Well I don’t). Being a cultist, he can’t speak one word of criticism or disagreement with any decisions they make about the Choir aspects. He reminds me of the “maga” cultists. It’s the same cult mindset.
Whereas, the last time I looked, The Queen’s College and New College (both at the University of Oxford) are broadcasting their Leaver’s Choral Evensong.
The same cultist of Trinity asked the Senior Organ Scholar what repertoire the Choral Scholars had chosen. After the response, the cultist wrote gushingly about “the brilliant choices” of repertoire for the Leaver’s Evensong. Brilliant? Isn’t that a bit much to describe the choice of repertoire no matter what it is? Then he wanted to know who wrote the “stunning” descant for the final hymn sung yesterday. I thought: Well I have to hear that! So I listened to the descant expecting it to “wow” me — although I’m not easily “wow’ed” — and to me it was rather ordinary. I certainly would not have called it “stunning.” I think this cultist uses words for which he does not know the meaning. Why does he have to hype everything? The descant that he called “stunning” still didn’t sound like all of the sopranos were singing it, but it didn’t sound quite as thin as the descants I’ve written about on this page.