Sing, choirs of angels

Afilm called Les Choristes is fast achieving cult status. Set in a reform school in rural France in 1949, it tells how a gifted music teacher transforms the lives of a group of ne’er-do-wells by starting a choir. Music brings discipline and a sense of achievement to their lives and taps into their better nature in a way that the punitive school regime has previously failed to do.
Nearly nine million people have watched the film – the soundtrack has sold 1.3 million copies – and it has resulted in a reawakening of interest in school choirs and choral societies, with new initiatives for choirs springing up in churches and communities everywhere. The appeal of this heartwarming film is surely that it contains many elements of truth. One of these is that music in schools now, as then, is to a great extent the preserve of the amateur, if that word is understood in its arcane, positive sense to mean someone who loves what they do and does it for its own reward.
State schools in England and Wales are required to teach music to pupils up to the age of 14 but music remained a compulsory element in the National Curriculum precisely because it had some passionate supporters – big guns like Sir Simon Rattle – defending its territory when the strategy was put in place.
Yet, despite the prescription of the National Curriculum, the future of musicmaking in state schools – and therefore ultimately in our churches and communities – is by no means universally assured.
There are very few music specialists in primary schools, which makes the delivery of an effective curriculum difficult. As a result, children entering secondary schools present a vast disparity in terms of their musical skills and achievements. This spectrum of ability, perhaps more broad than in any other subject area, immediately presents the teacher with further difficulties. (In Les Choristes, the hero solves just such a problem by making one tone-deaf boy act as his music stand – not a learning outcome recognised by Ofsted.) The variation in a child’s musical ability has nothing to do with overall academic ability, though state pupils often continue to be set or banded by the latter criterion. Once again the disparity makes for difficulties in the delivery of an appropriate curriculum. Among these pupils there will of course be amateurs – those who have been having instrumental tuition or have managed to gain a place at one of the many music schemes run by their LEA. But these schemes are themselves a contentious among music teachers who question whether the considerable resources allocated at borough level wouldn’t be more effectively deployed in funding a greater number of specialist teachers in schools.
What all this points to is the existence of what might be called “parallel curricula”. A huge amount of musicmaking and learning takes place outside formal classroom time in what is, ostensibly, free time for staff and indeed pupils. Choirs, orchestras, bands and ensembles all tend to be extracurricular activities and as such depend to a huge extent on the goodwill and dedication of staff and pupils alike. You need to be a real amateur to teach one curriculum in the classroom and then a second one in your lunch hour and out of school hours. The drive towards allimportant results for the league tables means there is a huge pressure on teachers to concentrate on the formal, classroom curriculum only.
Pupils are feeling the pres sure too. Many educationalists bemoan the effect that AS levels have had on sixth form studies, which effectively reduce the sixth form to four terms. Gone is the halcyon lower sixth year when pupils basked in their new-found freedoms and could indulge themselves in formation, not immediately related to the passing of exams.
The net result of this is that the concerts, carol services and beautiful school Masses beloved of Catholic parents and governors, and by which they judge the musical standards and health of a school, are the result of dedication on the part of staff and pupils and often little to do with music’s official status on the National Curriculum. Mindful of some of the problems, the Government has declared its intention to encourage every secondary school to become a specialist school. To achieve specialist music status is one option which can benefit a school where there is a high standard of teaching and music-making.
One leading Catholic school in London has decided to pursue just that route. The Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School in Kensington has already earned specialist status for its teaching of maths and information technology. Named after the great Herbert Vaughan, builder of Westminster Cathedral and founder of the choir school, the Vaughan has a long and distinguished musical tradition and is funding new purpose-built accommodation for the music department.
Hitherto, while plenty of resources have been devoted to music, the music department has been located in the bowels of the original Victorian building in what headmaster Michael Gormally jokingly refers to as a “Hell’s Kitchen.” Its apotheosis could not be more spectacular.
The new music wing is being built atop the school’s existing main building. Centred around a rehearsal hall large enough to hold a symphony orchestra,will be two classrooms, a songschool and nine practice rooms.
Those whose musical education stopped more than 10 years ago might be surprised to see the extent to which technology plays a part in the modern music curriculum. The new department at the Vaughan will also contain a dedicated music technology room equipped with state-of the-art music software and the sine qua non of the modern music department – a digital recording studio.
Director of music Scott Price has been at the school for 10 years, joining after reading music at Oxford University. He is understandably delighted that after struggling with cramped classrooms and rehearsal facilities for so long, modern rooms, natural light and fresh air are to replace his subterranean facilities. “This is a fantastic time for the school and its music-making,” he enthuses.
“In practical terms it will mean we can have eight string quartets rehearsing and not just one; that the school orchestra can rehearse as the same time as the sixth form choir, or that pupils could be recording pop music in one room while the Schola Cantorum is singing Gregorian chant in another. It will also mean that we won’t have to spend hours each week moving chairs and music stands.” The building project is the mother of all loft-conversions. On top of an existing, functioning school building a whole new layer has to be built with as many as 80 builders working above the studying pupils.
The music centre has been at least five years in the planning as Government approval and funding were sought. The outcome of a successful planning application was threatened by new building regulations regard ing noise pollution and sound proofing, necessitating a redesign of the proposed facilities. Now the new storey will “float” above the rest of the school and each of its rooms will be acoustically isolated by double walls.
Mr Gormally says music has made an incredibly positive contribution to the school’s ethos. “It has a civilising effect on pupils, teaching them motivation and selfdiscipline,” he says. “It is something the governors and I are very aware of.” Music also plays a central part in the school’s liturgical life. The Schola Cantorum – numbering some 40 boys – acts as a robed liturgical choir for school Masses and services and has sung in various London churches, most recently Westminster Cathedral and the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street, where they gave a concert in aid of The Passage. They have just returned from a tour to Rome and Assisi for a trip which was half concert tour and half pilgrimage.
They sang Mass in St Peter’s, a concert in San Ignazio and then, later in the week, provided the choir for the pilgrims’ Mass at the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi.
The music staff hope that by performing church music in appropriate and beautiful settings something of its deeper resonance as an expression of faith will stay with the children and enrich their lives. There is no doubt that many of the pupils already take the musical skills and knowledge they gain at the school back to their parishes.
The next major concert is a gala performance of Bach’s sublime St John Passion at the Cadogan Hall in Chelsea on March 14. The school choir and orchestra will be joined by international soloists who are giving their services to help raise £500,000 – the amount the school has to find towards the cost of the new music centre. An ambitious undertaking even by the Vaughan’s standards.
A hundred years after his death the great builder and supporter of church music Cardinal Herbert Vaughan would surely be justly proud of the school which honours his name.
If music be indeed the food of a special kind of love – of beauty and dedication – then his motto, Amare et Servire, and his memory have clearly not fallen on deaf ears.
Tickets for the St John Passion are available from the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School 020 7603 8478 or the Cadogan Hall 020 7730 4500