Gordon and Barbara Betenbaugh are organists/choirmasters at First Presbyterian Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, as well as directors of Cantate, the Children's Choir of Central Virginia. Mrs. Betenbaugh is also chapel organist and assistant choral director at Virginia Episcopal School in Lynchburg. Last summer they completed a 13-week sabbatical in the UK, visiting Cambridge, Oxford, London and Salisbury. See previous articles from their sabbatical: "London Chats #1: Michael McCarthy," October, 2003, p. 18; "John Tavener's The Veil of the Temple," November, 2003, p. 17; and "Cambridge Chats #1: Timothy Byram-Wigfield," December, 2003, pp. 16-19.
We had a delightful interview with the charming Patrick Russill on June 24, 2003, in his office at the Royal Academy of Music, where he is Head of Choral Direction and Church Music, following a weekend of attending services and rehearsals of his choir at the London Oratory. The Oratory's weekend schedule was one of the busiest we had seen on our trip. The professional all-adult London Oratory Choir supports the Latin services (Mass and Vespers) while the Oratory Junior Choir (boys and girls aged 8 and upwards) serves the English Family Mass. In addition, the Oratory School Schola sings for the Saturday Mass. The newly released CD of Patrick's choir has recently received a favorable review in the August 2003 issue of The Diapason. Our chat began with a discussion of the various types of music programs in the UK, more specifically the Church Music program now available at the Royal Academy.
PR: You've seen for yourselves that there is now a wide range of different choirs in English church music: all-professional; adult central London church choirs (like the Oratory); the traditional, historic boys and men's choirs (in the cathedrals and at Oxford and Cambridge); and the all-choral-scholar choirs with young women and men (at Cambridge colleges such as Trinity and Clare in particular). These different types are all central to the current state of professional choral culture in this country.
GB: What about church music in the Royal Academy of Music?
PR: Well, historically, the London conservatoires always trained church musicians very often either in a gap year or a couple of gap years before students went to university or sometimes at post graduate level after university. This was nearly always through the medium of their organ courses. There would be choir training classes as well. But there was no specific vocational training, nothing in a liturgical context or with theological understanding at all. There was nothing which had a real church music label in any of the British conservatoires until 1987 when the Principal here, who had been my tutor in Oxford at New College, Sir David Lumsden, decided that he was going to have a church music course here in the Academy--and he asked me to set it up. It was to be a contextual, supporting course, predominantly for organists, but also for singers and composers, taking a broader view of church music issues and to fill in gaps. I didn't have church music students as such, and students didn't actually graduate as church music students. They'd graduate as composers, singers, organists or whatever. That was the situation for ten years. No other conservatoire was offering anything like this at all. Of course, at Oxbridge the sort of training you get in church music is entirely based on the liturgical experience of the chapel in which you're working--very often, a rather narrow perspective. I was giving students the experience of going to the local synagogue, of Orthodox music, and giving them an understanding of Catholic church music, and from that basis the European tradition in particular--in addition to the traditional Anglican experience. I was very much aided in that by the Academy's head of organ, Nicholas Danby, who'd been my organ professor when I was at Oxford. He was also organ professor at the Royal College of Music. He, like me, was Catholic but he had great love for and insight into the real essentials of the English tradition.
BB: So how did your church music career start?
PR: Well, that was thanks to Nicholas Danby. He insisted I make myself known at the London Oratory (which was where he thought I ought to work). The organist there was Nicholas's own old organ teacher, the legendary Ralph Downes, who designed the organs both at the Oratory and at the Royal Festival Hall. Downes showed interest in me and engineered that I became his assistant. He wanted to retire and shortly after I arrived he nominated me to be his successor as organist--a kind of apostolic succession! I have to say I felt very ill prepared. In retrospect I think I should've studied a year or two abroad before going into that job. I did a lot of learning on the job, and I think a lot of my work there initially was very callow.
GB: We can all say that, can't we? (laughter)
PR: Yes, true, but at age 23 going into a job like that without hardly any previous experience is quite tough. That was in 1977. I then started teaching harmony and counterpoint here at the Academy in 1982 and did some history classes. And then in 1987 I initiated the Church Music program. In 1995 the current Principal, Dr. Curtis Price, who is an American and a former professor of music at King's College, London, was appointed. He felt that we couldn't keep on running a Church Music Course without first-study students, without majors. So, we decided what we had to do was to fill a real gap in British conservatoires: choral direction. Incredibly we were the first Choral Directing Department in an English conservatoire. Things are now beginning to change. The Royal College of Music now has a Master's course for choral conducting. And I understand that there are developments at the Birmingham Conservatoire, which may well be linked with the Royal College of Organists' move to Birmingham. Paul Spicer, conductor of the Finzi Singers, is in the driving seat for this.
GB: We heard his concert at the Royal College of Music with the all-volunteer Whitehall Choir and the Brandenburg Sinfonia.
PR: We decided at the Academy that we would have to have a primary stylistic focus. So I decided to hang on to the church music context so I could define the repertoire, the stylistic base we're working from--that is, the English experience of the repertoire in English and Latin in a fairly broad-minded view, not peddling any one particular viewpoint. That understanding of style--the importance of ensemble, tuning, clarity, also the function of church music--has really got to be heard in the daily service, because that is where the culture of corporate discipline and style springs from. But even if you take church music out into the concert hall or onto CD, you need an understanding of what that's about. Rather than "church music with some choir training" the course became "choral direction, contexted within church music." Most of my students end up with a Master's degree.
GB: Is there usually a problem with an American transferring here?
PR: No. They can't bring any accreditation, but they don't need to. In the Academy as a whole we have a lot of Americans--and even an American Principal!
GB: Dr. Price studied at Southern Illinois and Harvard?
PR: Correct. He said to me, "Can you get the students?" I said, "Yes, fine. How many can I have?" They said, "two a year." Two! Actually this exactly matches the intake of the Academy's Orchestral Conducting course, which is highly sought-after and has a tremendous record. In addition to the choral direction specialists, I also work with the organists. The Head of Organ, David Titterington, and I have a very good, close working relationship. The Academy now has organ courses not just at the bachelor's level and postgraduate level, but we also have a foundation course which doesn't have large numbers, but significant individuals coming on who may be headed for an Oxford organ scholarship. They come here for a year's conservatoire experience of London professional standards, intensive solo organ training which you typically don't get at Oxbridge. The organ scholars there often haven't the time for it since they have to be so focused on the accompanimental arts. Here they get "choir training" training, which at the moment they still don't get at Cambridge, though influential figures in Cambridge such as David Hill and Timothy Byram-Wigfield (at Jesus College, and shortly to move to St. George's, Windsor) are hoping to start building a choir training course. GB: Some of the well known English choir trainers and conductors would not pass the first year conducting course at Westminster Choir College. (laughter)
PR: Was that your alma mater?
GB: Yes, I also went to Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. With many English conductors the musicianship is there, the skill and knowledge is there, but they can't communicate with their hands. The American way is big on conducting technique. PR: This is a major issue. I only started thinking about conducting technique when I started teaching the choir training class here. I learned on the job, because there had been no tradition of courses in the UK.
GB: The Choir College had 3 years of conducting classes at the undergraduate level.
PR: I was a singer for a while as a male alto. The physical contact between singing and the conducting technique was something that interested me from watching my Oratory predecessor John Hoban who also was a singer. Also from watching other people work like John Eliot Gardiner. That I found interesting, so then I started to try and quantify what I thought and felt, in terms of relating conducting to breathing and relaxation--actually opening a door for singers rather than putting them in a constricting box. New students who come here are often quite surprised by the emphasis on gestural technique-- though the Americans not so much! One of my important contacts is with the Leipzig Hochschule and their head of choral direction Roland Börger, who is a good friend. We have an ongoing formal professorial exchange arrangement. I was fascinated to see his work. His whole training had been through gestural command. He is a very elegant, economical conductor indeed. He does great work with my students here. Though we very much speak the same musical language, our strengths lie in different areas. When I've gone to work with the Leipzig students, I've had to deal much more with handling singers' morale within a group dynamic and with visual technique: mimicry, questions of enunciation, verbal color, reinforcing pulse and phrasing through the face.
GB: I worked with Helmut Rilling many years ago. Of course, he's not a choral man as such, but a wonderful conducting scholar. Basically the Germans, at least the ones I know, are not vocal colorists, are they?
PR: It depends where you look. I think they would say they are, but they use a different area of the spectrum, a darker one. My German visitors seem to find the English choirs, the boy choirs, somewhat underdeveloped as regards vocal color. There are exceptions of course. They always seem to respond to the current New College, Oxford choir. Edward Higginbottom there gets a great sense of color and relaxation. There's a wonderful freedom of not just interpretive expression but actual technical expression from the boys. He's had a great record of encouraging young men as well.
BB: Of the three different places we were in Oxford, the camaraderie between him and his boys was the best--talking back and forth, chatting with the boys about what they did that day, whereas the other two places were pretty much straightforward.
PR: Yes, he clearly has a really interesting mind. The reason why he gets such response from the boys is because he engages them intellectually. Nevertheless, in England we need a greater emphasis on the old adage: "What they (the singers) see is what you (the choral director) get."
BB: Yes, exactly.
PR: Now in the London professional church situation you actually don't have to show everything. You've got to come to an assessment of how much your singers are able to absorb visually, because they are working under severe time restrictions, very often with music they are seeing for the first time. The singers are always very helpful. The two most commonly asked questions are 1) breathing and 2) dynamics. They want to know that you've got a unified idea and can communicate the simple general shape of a piece. Once they are happy with the essentials, then the more sophisticated aspects can be conveyed by visual and eye contact once you come to the performance--there generally isn't time in the rehearsal to do more.
GB: Phrasing?
PR: If the singers know how long the breath is then they'll take the phrasing, the actual shaping, from you. They are generally extraordinarily responsive, because, let's face it, most of them are highly experienced interpretative artists in their own right. If there is a fault here, it's that the restrictions on rehearsal time can lead to a very generalized approach to interpretation--favoring choral regimentation and the development of one choral sound over interpretation. But that is the fault of the directors rather than the singers. I'm sure you've come to your own conclusions about those choirs that generally have developed one interpretation, which essentially is the unvarying choir sound, where every piece is made to fit that concept.
GB: Yes, several of the top American college choirs work that way. More choirs back in the 1960s used the technique first and then the music superimposed on the technique. However, these days more American college choirs are into correct performance practice and trying to achieve different sounds for the different periods of repertoire, especially in the last 15 to 20 years.
PR: I'm glad to hear it. In my teaching I try to encourage the students to be as creative and as quick as they can about developing appropriate sound both through gesture, using their own voices and by the different sounds that they hear from choirs in this country.
GB: What sort of students do you take at the Academy?
PR: Well, you have to bear in mind I only take postgraduates for a two-year course with two students in each year. Currently I have two Americans, one who is already active as a period instrument orchestral and choral conductor, and the other from a Midwest Lutheran college background--both men. And then there are two women, one English (she's from Oxford) and one Irish (from Dublin). And only the English student is a church musician.
GB: When your students graduate, are they going to be able to get a position or positions in this country that equals a full-time wage?
PR: It varies. Unless you are working in a cathedral you won't get a full-time post. But most students gradually build up a portfolio of freelance casual work and regular work, often combining church, secular choral and academic teaching work. Even I'm doing something similar--I'm working for the Academy in a half-time post and also working at the Oratory half-time. That suits me fine.
GB: The English church choral system seems male-dominated, at least as far as directors are concerned. Do you see that changing in our lifetime?
PR: I don't know--it'll certainly take time. But because of the expansion of opportunities for girls in the cathedral and college choirs there will inevitably be more girls coming through the choirs who have ambitions to be directors. One major factor is--how vital is the linkage between organ playing and choral directing? I am a choral director and I'm an organist, but I'm not necessarily the choral director that I am because I am an organist. And the same can also be said for so many English choral directors (though on the other hand there are English organists who direct choirs because they are organists and not because they have a gift with singers!). At the moment there are a handful of women working in the English cathedrals: Louise Marsh at Guildford (a former student of mine), Rosemary Field at Portsmouth for example, but only one director of music, and that at a small Catholic cathedral at Arundel.
GB: Patrick, I'm interested that you're holding an influential teaching post here in the English tradition but you are a Catholic. Would you comment on the ecumenical climate for church musicians in the UK?
PR: I think the students find me quite an interesting animal, because my education was certainly through the Anglican system, but my background as a child and my working venue now is Catholic. I can happily conduct an Anglican Choral Evensong if I want. The same is true of James O'Donnell (a Catholic) and David Hill (an Anglican). They will find their way around the Latin Mass with Gregorian propers and a Victoria setting as easily as an Anglican Evensong with Smith responses, a Walford Davies Psalm and Dyson in D.
BB: Sounds like what we love!
PR: That is very much the English culture at the moment--in church music at least there's a very good inter-denominational understanding. I think the thing about Catholic centers like Westminster Cathedral and the Oratory is that they are seen as being just as much part of the London church music as the Anglican places. We're regarded as quite central, largely because of the international repertoire that we perform and because there's an improved perception of Latin as part of European culture rather than as a Roman Catholic emblem. And the recovery of the Latin tradition by the Anglican choirs has had a liberating effect on choral sound, from George Guest's choir at St. John's College, Cambridge in the early 1960s onwards. There is far more emphasis now on the color of choral sound than on perfection of ensemble. Though of course a better understanding of vocal technique by conductors actually makes it easier to achieve a natural musical ensemble of course. Nevertheless, that's not a quality you will hear and see in all choral directors in England.
GB: No. At many of the places we visited there were ragged entrances, just from the fact that the culture here is not to breathe for the choir. In first year conducting at Westminster Choir College, if you couldn't breathe and bring the choir in on the downbeat, you got an F. That was the first thing to do. Of course, that was with the choir right in front of you. In a divided chancel without eye contact it's harder.
PR: But even in that situation it still works the same way though. The whole point is one should be able to bring in the choir without doing much at all with the hand. Just breathe and come in. I have to say I've not really seen much of what goes on in the States. By and large in England we're all feeling our way as to how to deliver technical teaching. Here at the Academy I do virtually all the technical teaching. Of course there are masterclasses which can be very valuable for the practicalities of how to rehearse. Stephen Cleobury did a fine class with the BBC Singers (organized by the BBC) a couple of days ago. Stephen was wonderful in saying, "What does the choir need to look at--how do we look at it--do we need to do that once more--or do you think the singers will get it right the next time anyway?"--pragmatic things rather than matters of gestural technique. James O'Donnell is also wonderful, very economical indeed. Getting people who are really expert in teaching gestural command that will always get the result, either the first time or at least the second time, is not so easy. One of the members of staff here, Jeremy Summerly (director of the Oxford Camerata), has one of the most vestigial gestural techniques I've ever seen. It's extremely small, yet, coupled with what goes on with the face and diaphragm it's totally explicit, very relaxed, very vocal, very disciplined.
GB: That's the way I was taught.
PR: Exactly--it's all done on the breath. And then you can control the horizontal melodic line at the same time as the vertical pulse. And that's essential in the polyphonic music which is the heart of the English tradition. Polyphony seems to be one area where I'm conscious of a cultural difference between the Americans and the Brits. There seems to be a different way of analyzing the score. I find that American students find it very difficult to absorb polyphonic scores, to see the wood from the trees. All the entrances are marked, they try to give every single entrance. So, of course, the gestural preparation tends to be too late. Other problems then follow on: how do I indicate the character of the lead? If many leads, which one should I give? Do I mouth each one? But the English tradition is based on the conductor presuming that his singers (even youngsters) already have an informed understanding of the polyphonic concept. People like James O'Donnell and David are very good at that: leading the singers through and trusting the singers to do it.
That leads on to another essential characteristic of the English tradition. There's a really different mind-set between chorus-mastering and choral conducting when you've actually got an instrument that already has a built-in intellectual and physical motor. You don't have to do much actually to call that forth, you've got to do other things. That can be very difficult for inexperienced students when they're presented with musical singers. At Academy auditions many candidates come in and just don't know what to do. They've been used to drumming the music into their choirs and so haven't actually started to think about the essence of interpretation. Questions of appropriate tempo, elegant articulation, verbal color and intensity--very often there has been no background in these considerations at all. Fortunately now we have singers in the Academy who are already expert choralists (many of them already working professionally), so my conducting students can experience the truth of "What they see is what you get"! I place much more emphasis on actually showing what you want and not just rehearsing what you want. The initiative needs be taken by the choral director, rather than the old English way of simply listening to the choir's performance and then making a reactive comment. Even though I only have two students a year here, I think there is a growing feeling in England that choral direction is something which can and should be taught and that naturally gifted young directors still need to learn. Of course, you can't instill talent if there's no talent in the first place, but you can help refine it and hone it with technical training. There's not been a sea-change yet in attitudes towards the choral director's training in England, but things are definitely starting to change.
GB: Super! This has been great! Would you chat about the deputy system in London?
PR: Yes, all the main London choirs with the exception of the BBC Singers are part-time or are to a greater or lesser extent ad hoc, even though conductors are always going to use their favorite singers. If, for example, you are a lay clerk at Westminster Abbey or Westminster Cathedral the job is permanent, but not full-time, even though actually it is well-paid pro rata. Even in St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey the singers will either need to do solo work or they will do consort work outside. You'll find them working with all the concert groups you've heard on CDs and others as well. The only full-time professional choir working 9 to 5, 5 days a week, is the BBC Singers (24 singers). The London singer needs to have the liberty to take on freelance work, even if he or she has got a base in the church. The work of choirs like The Monteverdi Choir, The Sixteen, The Gabrieli Consort, even the Tallis Scholars, is part-time work, paid pro rata by appearance and by rehearsal session. The only way that you can staff that sort of thing, since you're working around people's diaries, is by working with a pool. The deputy system in London is essentially this pool of professional singers whom you need to ring up to fill the balance. This happens with all choirs, particularly the church choirs since they are at the bottom of the heap because their rates are the lowest.
Nevertheless, it's surprising how many singers make great efforts to keep their contact with the church even though the rate of pay is less attractive than working with other choirs. If one of my singers is on a 3-week tour with the Monteverdi Choir or The Sixteen, then I won't see them at the Oratory and they will need to send in an approved deputy; but when they get back it's like the return of the Prodigal Son--personal relationships are very strong, and many of them go back to student days or even further. Most choral directors will have their own list of approved "deps" from which the regular singer must provide a deputy. And many of the "deps" are familiar members of the choir "family". Here's my own current list for the Oratory and you'll see I've also made additional private comments [We were shown the list.]--it's my most important tool as a choral director. If I'm away I may need to get a deputy for myself. And there are deputy organists and directors. And I have an orchestral fixer (contractor) for when we have an orchestral mass (generally 3 times a year).
BB: You do get vacation from your position at the Oratory?
PR: Theoretically, yes! We sing 52 Sundays a year. There is no actual designated holiday period at the Oratory within the year. I'm entitled to 28 days holiday a year including four Sundays.
BB: Do you take it?
PR: Just about. I don't always take my Sundays off as holidays, actually. Some of them have been when I'm in Leipzig doing my exchange work, because I have to go there once a year to teach.
GB: What are the fees for the singers?
PR: The Oratory is near the top, it appears, but it's not right at the very top. For a typical Sunday morning at the moment we pay £45, a typical Sunday afternoon £38.
GB: Even with all that outside processing around you did last Sunday afternoon? (laughter)
PR: They got £45 for that. Weddings go up to £62. The rates are higher for other major liturgical celebrations, especially over Holy Week, when we do the full Latin schedule consisting of Tenebrae on Wednesday night, Mass of the Lord's Supper on Thursday night, Tenebrae on Friday morning, Afternoon Liturgy on Friday afternoon, Tenebrae on Saturday morning, Easter Vigil on Saturday night, Sunday morning Solemn Mass, and Sunday afternoon Solemn Vespers. Those are very long services. I have to say, actually, I think the program at the Oratory is bigger than anywhere else. Generally, the quality of the music is such that the choristers are prepared to do that. Also they like the fact that the liturgy itself is enduring.
GB: Good word!
PR: It's not "here today and gone tomorrow." Whatever they may think about it theologically, I think many singers find the service to be very traditional, pastoral, cultic, and essentially eternal. It's a sort of musical and cultural bedrock for them.
GB: There was no trouble after Vatican II with the music at the Oratory?
PR: Actually the Oratory Fathers always wanted to keep it as pre-Vatican II as they can.
BB: That's wonderful!
GB: Great!
PR: I'm interested you take that view.
GB: With the altar on the back wall?
PR: Oh, they wouldn't move the altar! Interestingly, in scholarship and re-reading the original Vatican documents, you find this idea of westward-facing celebration is actually not in the original conciliar documents. It was something that was produced much later. The Oratory Fathers have never gone along with that. While they are absolutely loyal to the authority of the Pope in the modern Catholic Church, they're deeply traditional, very retentive, very consistent, quite insulated and deliberately so.
GB: That can be a good or bad problem.
PR: Well, it can make some problems for me. For example, the approach to music from the modern era is extremely cautious, but the positive aspect is that I am never asked to do anything that is less than a five-star masterpiece. I can do all the Victoria, Palestrina, Gabrieli I want, and the bigger the better. I'm not being asked to do John Rutter-- perhaps I should complain? (laughter)
BB: We enjoyed hearing the Latin Mass.
PR: Well, what I really value (and so the singers) is that I'm dealing with something that is central to the European tradition, above all at Easter. I think that the Easter services at the Oratory are the finest representation of the classic Latin liturgy you'll find anywhere in the world wherever it's available in the new rite. It's not the Tridentine rite. It's the new rite in Latin, which is actually the normative form of the new rite, though many American bishops, and even some English bishops, don't admit that. At Westminster Cathedral at 10:30 every morning there is a Latin mass. The only mass the Cathedral choir sings which is in Latin from beginning to end is Saturday morning.
BB: Martin Baker invited us to come on Saturday.
PR: You're probably going to that and then going to the boys rehearsal afterwards. That's the way my students normally dip their toes into that system.
GB: Right, this has been great. Thank you so much for visiting with us. We're late for the Mozart Requiem rehearsal.
Prior to our interview that day, Patrick gave us a tour of the Royal Academy of Music, where we also had lunch in the dining hall. Following our interview we sat in on a rehearsal with the Academy Choir and Period Instrument Orchestra as they prepared for a concert the following day of the Mozart Requiem (edition--Robert Levin) conducted by Sir Roger Norrington. Patrick had been a kind and gracious host to us for several days, and we were most appreciative of the opportunity to get a first hand peek from an insider's perspective of both the Oratory and the Royal Academy.
