Developments and incidents during the decades

After my appointment as Choirmaster in April 1981 it became obvious that certain changes would need to be made. Whilst the exsting set up worked, I needed to implement gradual changes over a period of time, paricularly as the number of singers was increasing month by month.

As I indicated earlier, I changed the pattern of rehearsals, and added Wednesday choir club.

Sung Amen after the Blessing

One of my next changes was to remove the singing of the 'Dresden Amen' which had been sung at the end of every service following the blessing. Whilst I have nothing against this item, it was usually sung slightly flat, and I felt it added nothing at all to the service... For a while the choir sang a different 'Amen' but eventually this disappeared from use too.

Processing

I also changed the way in which the choir processed out. Until now the boys had exited at the East end of the choirstalls, and moved across centrally to bow in pairs. This looked very ungainly, and took quite a long time, so I changed the way of processing to the way we do it now, with everyone bowing together, and then leaving by the central gangway.

Rehearsals

For rehearsals the piano had always been placed at the east end of the chancel. I felt it better to move this to the west end of the chancel, near the screen, for all rehearsals - to encourage choirmembers to sing towards the congregation.

The Gathering Note

In order to improve basic singing of hymns I decided to abolish the 'Gathering note' that was used at the beginning of each verse. This rather strange tradition involved the organ playing the first note of each verse slightly earlier that the singers were expected to sing. As the choir did not have a conductor (apart from the occasional unaccompanied item) no one really knew exactly when to sing the first note. I abolished the gathering note, and choirmembers (and congregation) became accustomed to the arrangement we have today - which generally involves a precise two-beat rest between verses....

Date Lists

With more boys in the choir, I found that it was helpful for parents to have more information about the times of services and rehearsals - as well as extra training sessions and outings. So I started to produce what became known as our Monthly Date List - which has continued to this day.

Pie dishes for candle holders ..

For the Christmas Carol Service in 1981 we needed some way for the choir to process with lighted candles without burning anyone, or getting wax everywhere. After a great number of prototypes Mark Sanderson and I bought 50 pie dishes from Wilko and lengths of 3/4" copper water pipe.

We cut the water pipe into 8" lengths, and with the use of a cone shaped hole cutter made holes in the middle of each pie dish. The remnants of the metal round the hole were sufficient to be able fasten the pie dish to the pipe with black insulation tape. Candles (which had been used in the chandelier) could then be inserted into the water pipe, and carried safely. We had to put tape over the bottom end of the pipe to prevent cut fingers, and the pie dish candle holders are still in use to the present day, having lasted almost 40 years ...

Vestry Re-organisation

Our choir vestry is surrounded by the mechanics of the Organ, and consists of a square room, with a smaller section to the side, going underneath some of the organ.

In the 1980s the Clergy used the smaller section as their vestry, and the choir used the larger square area. The two areas were separated by a curtain. The men's robes were on the opposite side to the boys' robes. (There were no pigeon holes at that time). As the size of the choir increased, the Clergy decided that they would re-locate their vestry to the Gleed Chapel on the North side of the church. This arrangement continued until the new Clergy Vestry and kitchen area were built with a legacy from the late Miss Barker.

Once the Clergy had re-located, it gave scope for some re-arrangement of our vestry. The men's robes were moved round into the part which the Clergy had previously used, and pigeon holes were constructed, and originally placed on the North wall, in front of the window. The pigeon holes were later moved 90 degrees - to where they are currently located.

New Piano

When Gerry German died, we bought a new rehearsal piano from Cambridge - at a cost of £2000. This was a great improvement - and is still in use today.

Hymn Boards

For a couple of decades the choir continued to use Hymn Boards in the chancel. They are still hanging in situ, but only used on rare occasions when the notice sheet is incorrect.

Cardboard numbers had to be inserted into slots - and this was quite a task - mostly undertaken by the Team Leaders. As the card numbers became more and more ragged, we decided to abolish the use of these, and used the Sunday notice sheets instead.

Introits

In Colin's time it was rare to sing a short anthem as an introit. The choir however regularly sang from a book of 34 short introits by George Thalben Ball - each one being a phrase from scripture. The book began with No.1 'Holy Holy Holy', and the choir repeated the first twelve or so introits very regularly - but the later ones were rarely sung, if at all. No. 10 sticks in my mind because of its very un-musical phrasing of the words 'In the beginning was the Word' ...

For anyone who is interested, here is a list of introits in the book, although they were not in this order ...

After the choir began to sing other short anthems as introits, the set of old introit books was put in the bin ...

Introduction of new music

We began to learn new settings of the Canticles, some different Evensong Responses (Clucas; Ayleward; Smith; Byrd), the Darke in E Communion Service, and also widened the repertoire of anthems. A great deal of money was spent on new copies, and it was decided that we also needed to replace all the old Church Anthem Books, Psalters and Chant Books. The funding of all of this was partly helped by donations at Weddings and Funerals. Stickers were placed in the front of each book, commemorating a particlar name and occasion.

Sets of Sheet Music

Before we could start the task of learning new music, we had to buy more sheet music to make up the sets that we already had - to 50 copies each, as well as buying some completely new sets of music.

So began a task that I certainly would not want to have to repeat again ... We bought hundreds of sheets of coloured card from Helpston Paper mill, and cut the card, folded it, to cover and protect each music copy. These all had to be stapled together by hand. The original idea was Blue card for responses; Green for Canticles and Orange for anthems. In reality we could not buy enough of the correct colour, so other colours had to be used. Next came the labelling.

Mark Sanderson owned a mechanical printing machine and we bought sheets of self-adhesive labels. Each music copy would need two labels - one with the name of the music (e.g. O Sing Joyfully - Batten); and the other with the singer's part (e.g. Can Treble 1, or Dec Bass 4).

The process of printing these labels involved setting up tiny individual metal blocks, each with a letter or symbol into a larger block - known as 'type-setting'. The labels were then printed in batches, and stuck on all copies.

In all I think we covered about 50 different sets of music - each with different labels (about 5,000 labels in all ...) It took many many days to complete - but most of our copies still have these labels in some form or another. How easy it would be today with the use of a computer and printer!

Changes in the Chancel

In 1981 the church had a red carpet running the full length of the chancel - right from the Screen to the Altar. A red curtain hung behind the Altar itself. When the architect decided the stone floor under the carpet was deteriorating, it was decided to remove the red carpet completely. At the same time the red curtain on the East wall behind the altar was also removed. This made a great deal of difference to the acoustics in the chancel - and made it a lot easier for the choir to sing!

The brackets that held the curtain were left in place until very recently, but have now been removed completely.

Choir Stall Lamps

Lamps were added to the choir stalls in 1998 - and more information can be found in the section The Saga of the Choir Stall Lamps.

Kneelers

The kneelers which the boys use were covered with new carpet soon after I took over in 1981. Guy and Monica Gooding paid for this, and Guy helped me with fitting the new carpet. Within the last few years this carpet covering was worn out in places, and so we have had the four kneelers re-covered again with red carpet. This was paid for from money given at the funerals of Guy and Monica Gooding.

Recruitment and Auditions

Recruitment of new members on a regular basis is particularly important with a boys choir - as boys' voices only last for a short time.

Recruitment in the early years took place from the Parish School - and only included other schools in more recent times. I have tried, where possible, to recruit annually, to attenpt to keep the number of boys above 20. The number of boys fell below 20 when the fire estinguisher episode occurred - and you can read more about that in another section... At one time we had more boys wanting to join that we had room for, and so a system of auditioning had to be arranged - to see who could sing the best! This only happened for a short time - and I actually prefer boys to join because of enthusiasm - rather that having a good voice to begin with. In 2019 with the prospect of singing in London, I visited a number of other local schools, and enlisted 12 new boys. They had to work very hard in just a few months in order to be ready to sing at St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey.

Recruitment in 2020 had just taken place when this lockdown began - so hopefully Ozzie and Jack will rejoin us again when things get back to normal ...

Introduction of pigeon holes

To help keep all the new copies of music in good condition we decided to give each singer a pigeon hole in which to keep their own set of music. Mark Sanderson and I bought the wood from Freddy Francis in Double Street, and set to work making the pigeon hole unit in the vestry. This particular arrangement worked quite well until we had more singers than sets of music, so in recent times we have used the pigeon holes just for storage..

Awards scheme and medals

The RSCM used a series of medals with different coloured ribbons, and more about the introduction of this scheme can be found in the RSCM section.

Team Leaders and Head Choristers

We also decided to appoint two Head Choristers, instead of one, and also appointed Team Leaders for each bench. Initially there was a competetive element between each 'team' but in more recent years boys have been encouraged to sit wherever they like, although we still have the system of Team Leaders to organise the younger members and to help with jobs.

New robes

With a wonderful influx of boys during 1981 and 1982 it became necessary to buy more robes (cassocks, surplices and ruffs). It proved quite tricky to obtain any robes to match the old existing ones (which were really getting quite tatty) so it was decided to buy a complete new set. The cost of this was prohibitive, until one of the choir mums - Yvonne Mossman - very generously offered to make a complete set of 60 new cassocks for just the cost of the material. This was a mammoth task and took her many months. One of our choir parents, Mr Cranmer, regularly made journeys on his ship to the Far East where he arranged to have a new set of surplices made for a fraction of the usual price. We bought a new set of ruffs for the boys to go with the new robes - and so the choir looked amazing in their new robes. The robes the choir wear today are largely the same robes from the early 1980s. Most of the linings have now disintegrated, but the cassocks and surplices have stood the test of time extremely well. There are the normal maintenance issues - buttons, hems, etc - but apart from that they still look great! Thank you to Mr Cranmer for arranging for new surplices, and to Yvonne Mossman for making the cassocks - and of course to those who maintain them to the present day!

Budget for gas usage ...

One of the churchwardens (Bernard), in the 1980s decided that the choir should not be allowed to have the church heating on for choir practices. To ensure that we hadn't used any he would come up to church on a Friday evening and read the gas meter before the practice, and then come up again afterwards to check we hadn't used any... Thankfully this practice was overturned by the PCC!

Fires in the church ...

There have been two occasions since 1981 that the church has almost caught fire - and both times were during a Friday practice. The first time we were practising in the chancel as normal, with the Nave completely in darkness. As the rehearsal progressed we smelt what seemed like bonfire smoke drifting in. Switching the lights on in the nave to investigate we found the west end of the church completely filled with smoke. One of the heaters near the North door was on fire, and the fire had travelled a short way under the wooden flooring. Having grabbed the one and only fire extinguisher nearby I pulled out the pin and squeezed the handle. The handle snapped off, and the fire extinguisher was of no use at all. Thankfully the fire brigade arrived in time to avert disaster. It is a good thing that we had the heating on during that practice, or otherwise the heater might have caught fire in the early hours of Sunday morning - when no-one would have been in church...

The second time a fire almost occurred was again during a Friday practice. In the vestry we used to have a spotlight on top of the pigeon holes lighting up the Head Choristers' board. On arriving for the practice, one of the teenagers had flung his coat up, and it was lying across the bulb ... An hour or so later the nylon coat had melted and was smouldering away causing the most dreadful smell of burning. Thankfully - apart from a hole in the coat, and a smoking light bulb - no lasting damage resulted ...

Melted school blazer

One Wednesday, in very cold weather, we decided to use the gas wall heater in the coffee lounge - something which is not usually necessary except in extremely cold weather. Everyone came in from school feeling cold, and one boy from the Grammar School stood with his back against the heater to get warm.... A few minutes later there was a very strange smell - a bit like burning toast - and when he moved away from the heater the back of his school blazer had melted, and remained stuck to the heater! I don't think his mum was best pleased - and the sillouette of the fabric can still be seen to this day on the front heater grill ...

Conductors and musicians

In recent years we have encouraged our choirmembers to have a go at conducting the choir, and a number of boys have become very proficient - and a great asset. Over the years, other choir members have used their musical training to become organists, Cathedral choristers, music teachers and composers. It is a great privilige to see musical talent developing and in many cases the initial interest has been sparked by belonging to a choir.