win when you're singing

SO where will you be on Christmas Eve? Out partying? At home? Or, perhaps, in church? For Westminster Cathedral Choir, Christmas means hard work, and this year the members will find themselves with an anticipated television audience of more than one million. Acknowledged as one of the finest of its kind in the world, the choir is made up of boy choristers, who all board at Westminster Cathedral Choir School, and part-time lay clerks.

This year the choir will be singing Midnight Mass at Westminster Cathedral under the gaze of BBC cameras, and the performance will be broadcast live to the nation.

"We sing traditional Roman Catholic music, which goes back to plainsong," explains Martin Baker, 34, who has the unique distinction of having also held the same post (WHAT POST IS THAT?) at St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. "Most of what we sing is Latin, but we do sing in English, German and French."

During the run-up to Christmas the choir will sing at three major concerts: the National Trust Carol Concert and the Christmas Celebration at Westminster Cathedral, and The Story of Christmas at St George's, Hanover Square. Singing first vespers, Midnight Mass, Christmas morning Mass and second vespers all within 24 hours is a tall order, he admits.

"The boys sing the treble and alto parts and the lay clerks sing the alto, tenor and bass parts," says Baker.

"When people come to church they want something that might make their spines tingle, and Westminster Cathedral is a very mystical place. People often come wanting the familiar and what we want to do is open up parts of the unfamiliar.

"The sound of the choir comes from the building and the music. We want to hear the enthusiasm of the children in the playground coming through when they sing.

I want them to be as vivacious as when they are playing football."

And what about the pressure of performing for such a large audience? Baker says: "I'm used to dealing with pressure. I played the organ for the funeral of Princess Diana when there were two billion people watching. I'm invisible to the congregation because I'm behind a large marble slab, which we call a tombstone. A lot of cathedral choirs stand close to the congregation.

Ours doesn't and this allows the boys to be more relaxed."

Ben Foulds, 12, whose father is the headmaster of Westminster Cathedral Choir school, is one of the 26 choristers who will go to bed at 6.30pm on Christmas Eve, then get up at 10pm for a rehearsal and snack before making his way to the vestry at 11.30am to put on his purple cassock, white cotta (a short version of the loose robe called a surplice), collar and black tie.

So how does he feel about it? "I will be excited but also a bit nervous.

It's not like a recording when you will have lots of takes. It must be perfect first time. I remember looking at my watch during the homily at last year's Midnight Mass and realising it was the next day."

HE says he enjoys being a chorister and that he has all the usual interests of boys his age.

"It's a great privilege. Sometimes I get to miss lessons when we are on radio or TV.

Being a chorister is a way of life. We sing every day apart from Wednesdays. It's hard but it's good singing in front of so many different people.

But I also like playing cricket and football. We recently beat Westminster Abbey 8-0."

Lay clerk Clifford Lister, 43, quit a career in the lucrative world of banking and finance to devote himself to music fulltime. A former chorister at Winchester Cathedral and a student of the Royal Academy, he is one of four tenors in the choir and is employed for around 10 hours a week. The rest of the time he works as a soloist,teacher and conductor.

"I like the standard of music," he says. "It's exceptional and the repertoire is wonderful. I have regular lessons to keep my voice working. As a singer you always need someone to point out what's going wrong."

With a worldwide reputation, the choir is sometimes invited to perform overseas, such as in October when it undertook a tour of the US.

"The tour to America was heightened emotionally because of what happened on 11 September," says Lister.

"In Washington National Cathedral, for example, we played to 1,600 people.

At the end of each concert we received a standing ovation."

OVERSEEING the BBC camera crews and lighting technicians will be cathedral manager Barry Palmer, 56. A former bank manager, he reveals that the cathedral costs 100 an hour to run and 65,000 votive candles are burned each month. "If we are going to put on a concert, I become the front-of-house manager. When Cardinal Hume died we had to accommodate 3,000 people."

As administrator of Westminster Cathedral, Father Mark Langham, 40, is responsible for maintaining the sacredness of the building.

"I have to ensure that it remains a spiritual moment for those in the cathedral and also that the broadcast reflects the sacred nature of what's going on, so that we are not performing for the camera and we don't find ourselves restricted or changing what we do just because we are on TV," he explains.

"The cathedral is never empty over the Christmas period. There's always a queue of children and families to see the crib and to soak up the atmosphere.

"The music is an essential part of the worship of our cathedral, the atmosphere of prayer and the sense of holiness and beauty. It really affects everything we do.

Music creates an atmosphere of sacredness that really underlines what the cathedral is all about."

Copyright 2001
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