126 The EconomistDecember 21st 2019
S
now seldomfalls in England at Christmas time. Yet cards ha-
bitually show woods, cottages and robins sunk deep in it, with
more star-flakes descending. For Christmas Eve—once the wrap-
ping is done, the turkey timetable worked out, the door locked for
the late-night journey to church—brings with it an enveloping
quiet that seems closest to the stillness of snow.
Traditionally this quiet is broken by carolling. It may be the lo-
cal waits, clustered under a streetlamp with gloves and torches,
but more often over the past few decades it has meant the broad-
cast service of Nine Lessons and Carols by the choir of King’s Col-
lege, Cambridge. Seamlessly, in their red and white robes in the
candlelit choir-stalls, the choristers fill listeners’ heads not only
with their favourite Victorian hymns—“Once in royal David’s city”,
“The first nowell”, “Hark! The herald”, all stirring tears with memo-
ries of Christmases past—but also with the rhythmic, driving
freshness of true carols, the dancing medieval folk tunes rescued
from the hills and lanes of Derbyshire or Sussex by Cecil Sharp and
Ralph Vaughan Williams in the early 20th century, just at the point
of disappearing.
When Stephen Cleobury took up this precious task in 1982, as
the new director of music at King’s, he was terrified. (Being given to
understatement, that was not a word he used lightly.) His training
was more than adequate: chorister at Worcester Cathedral, organ
scholar at St John’s, Cambridge, later a fearless conductor, with the
Philharmonic and the Britten Sinfonia, of new works for orchestra.
But the choir’s reputation awed him. The carol service in particu-
lar, always beginning with “Once in royal” from an unaccompa-
nied treble, always sung by men and boys in keeping with the
founding charter of 1441—was in a sense a piece of public property.
He could not radically reform it, any more than he could alter the
glorious fan vault of King’s chapel to achieve what he had to work
hardest for, greater clarity of texture.He had various ideas, though, to nourish new growth in it. He
applied them equally to the week-by-week chapel services and to
other jobs he held, such as chief conductor of the bbcSingers.
Those changes began with teaching. His own music lessons as a
chorister had been hit and miss: theory at desks set up in the cathe-
dral nave, huddling round an ancient stove, and harmony and
counterpoint in the deputy organist’s house over ten-shillings’
worth of cake. But four years spent teaching O- and A-level music at
Northampton Grammar gave him insights into dealing with
boys—how to keep them up to the mark, affirm that they were
good, without giving them any idea that they had arrived—that
proved invaluable. Though teaching was not in his contract at
King’s, he instructed the first-year students in harmony and coun-
terpoint to lay down the basics. He saw to it, too, that each choris-
ter had singing lessons. Meanwhile, to be equally strict or even
stricter with himself, he went on learning to play the organ better.
Under him the carol service became more ecumenical and
open. It had more Latin, like the weekly services, which now fea-
tured Latin masses and canticles. His Anglican suspicion of the
Roman church had been soothed, when he was really quite young,
by singing an especially wonderful melody in Verdi’s “Te Deum”,
and later by the beauty, which he thought inexpressible, of Grego-
rian chant. In 1979 he became master of music at Westminster Ca-
thedral, falling deeply in love with the rhythms of the Catholic lit-
urgy. The singing of Latin brought purer vowels into the King’s
sound, which was pleasing. So too did singing carols in other lan-
guages, including Latvian and Church Slavonic. This tested the
singers, and made them more expert musicians. It also reminded
them—if they needed reminding, with worldwide tours, frequent
recording sessions and televised broadcasts of the carol service all
over America—that their singing now spanned the globe.
Like his immediate predecessors, he wrote new descants to
freshen up the well-known hymns. His most daring innovation,
though, was to commission a new carol every year. A lot of new
church music was not of very high quality, and he wished to show
that fine composers were still willing to write for liturgical set-
tings. Lennox Berkeley, Arvo Pärt and John Tavener all wrote one,
and he regretted not asking John Adams, since no one said no.
These new pieces were often taxing: a high B for solo treble in
Thomas Adès’s “The Fayrfax Carol”, hectic stops and starts in Judith
Weir’s “Illuminare, Jerusalem”, stamping in Harrison Birtwistle’s
“The Gleam”. Quite hostile letters came into the director of music’s
office. One suggested that he should be locked up.
Countering those who objected was not too hard, though. The
new carols were actually modern versions of the old: the voices of
people of the time dancing, celebrating or reflecting, sometimes
stridently or clumsily, but with raw devotion. His choristers could
sing them with a freedom, edge and individuality they could not
show in the weightier hymns or in the anthems. In 1918 Eric Milner-
White, who had founded the service, wrote of his wish to bring in
“colour, warmth and delight”. These qualities were definitely now
back at King’s. They fitted the director’s conviction that choral
singing was the best possible use of body, brain and heart, the
whole self. Everyone should get out there and sing.
At the same time, he made sure the choir did not lose its
otherworldly sound. He treasured the thought that anyone who
heard it might find peace and consolation there. For behind music,
especially the music of Bach, lay something wondrous and beauti-
ful that could be touched. Over the years he felt increasingly uncer-
tain what to call it. But he found himself getting keener on the idea
of the Holy Spirit, something around in the air and in the silences
between the notes, as the choir sang.Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago. 7Sir Stephen Cleobury, musical director for 37 years of King’s
College, Cambridge, died on November 22nd, aged 70In the bleak midwinter
Obituary Stephen Cleobury