music

Barbara Pym's dowdy Anglican characters often sniffed about the popish sensibilities of certain parishes or priests in mid-20th century England. While I never think of myself as Anglo-Catholic, I could be tempted after last night.

We had a rare opportunity to hear a full-length concert by the Men and Boys Choir of St. Thomas, Fifth Avenue (New York), one of the higher and more British parishes in this country. Trinity and St. Paul's co-sponsored the choir as part of their concert series. Because neither parish is large enough for the audience, the concert was held at St Luke's United Methodist Church on the north side of Indy, a bustling congregation that comes closest to a Methodist mega-church. (The space is excellent as a concert hall, but as a friend remarked, one would have a hard time thinking about worshiping in it on a regular basis. That said, a lot of people do just that. A few minutes into the program, I wasn't reflecting on sacred architecture).

Gerre Hancock is the longtime director of the St. Thomas choir, (a professional choir and boy chorister school program). The parish is located across the street from St. Patrick's Cathedral and up a block or two on Fifth Avenue.

I've attended a few daily services there but have never heard the choir perform. Hancock is a leading Anglican musician, both conductor and composer. I believe he is retiring soon and this particular concert series represents his last for the parish and the choir school as its director.

It was a long program, but worth every moment. The twelve men and 20 or so boys (ages 8-12?) sang a little of many different types of sacred music (Bairstow -- their singing of his Let Every Mortal Flesh Keep Silent was much more ethereal and other worldly than our little parish choir's performance of it). They sang selections from Byrd, Bach, Stanford, Palestrina, Purcell, Rorem, Bruckner, African American Spirituals.

The encore was a song written Carly Simon for the movie Working Girl.
She had heard the choir sing over the years, and wrote for them her anthem Wall Street Hymn that is used as the closing of WG.

Wonderful energy, diction, moving interpretations, lovely dynamics. I've always appreciated the English male choral tradition without really embracing it. It is a pure sound, but frankly, I like to hear female voices.

St. Thomas uses male counter-tenors as altos, tenors, and basses, with the boys providing the treble or soprano line. Still, if I could hear music sung like that each Sunday, I might be a little more, well, popish.