I’m a Protestant, however, I absolutely love the polyphonic music that the Catholic Church and her composers wrote. It has been a huge topic of study for me in my academic life. To me this is a clear case of “you don’t know what you got til it’s gone”. A director so oblivious to the one of a kind experience and uniqueness of one of the best choirs in the world that’s sat right under his nose. I wish every church could have a choir like this, to invoke TRUE spiritual awakening in the believers heart. We are worshiping the Most High God of the universe! He deserves nothing less than the best humanity has to offer, and we’re able to offer Him the most beautiful music humans have ever created, yet because someone can’t be bothered with living arrangements the halls will fall silent. Around the world we are seeing a demise of culture, many are not interested in preserving something so rigorous. I fear you’ll hear a drum set and an electric guitar soon enough. I wish the director who’s holding this stunning choir back could realize he has something, that thousands of us can only hear on a recording, right under his nose and he couldn’t be more ungrateful. Spiritual vandalism is certainly at hand. Thanks for your video.
Notre Dame in Paris used to have a wonderful choir, which I have only heard on TH-cam. Was the choir disbanded after the fire destroyed the cathedral? What has happened to the choir?
Appalling. I live in a cathedral town and I love going into the cathedral for evensong and listening to the choir singing. If I want guitars and "happy clappy" song and dance I can go to any number of churches in town. Everything nowadays seems to be catering to the lowest common denominator. We are heading downwards instead of trying to bring those at the bottom upwards. There is, rightly, concern about young people who have not been exposed to nature never having seen native animals, insects, flowers and other things which my generation would have taken for granted and not even knowing that milk comes from cows but this is the musical equivalent. Instead of trying to "get down wiv the yoof" we should be encouraging them to aspire to the heights of the great composers. I'm not saying that ALL "high church" music is good. I'm not a Catholic but I've sung in a lot of Anglican church choirs of all sizes over the past 50 years and some of the dirges I've had to sing I wouldn't want at a funeral but choose the music wisely and there is nothing to compare with it. I once went to evensong in Lincoln cathedral and the choir sang Allegri's Miserere. We ALL cried because it was so beautiful. We have a glorious musical tradition. For many years even a small town would have several choirs and a brass band. Every school had a religious service in the mornings and music lessons every week. Now there are no school assemblies and music lessons have been scrapped because of cuts and the drive to ensure schools stay in the artificially enhanced league tables which only measure achievement in a very narrow range of subjects. Young people are not stupid. They just don't know what they're missing. Many of them would really appreciate good music - if they could ever hear it.
It’s even worse in the Anglican church Cathedrals with ever changing Chapters full of trendy views and who are culturally and musically clueless. You just have to look at the trouble at Sheffield Cathedral this year. Also my local Cathedral Rochester has abolushed both the boys choir and the very good older girls choir into a single mixed top line with an inferior sound. The boys will gradually vanish from that mark my words.
@@mattbod I heard about Sheffield. A travesty! Musical mutilation! Sorry to hear about Rochester. I didn't know about that. I live in Winchester and - so far - we're still hanging in there with both the boys' and girls' choirs. If you're in the cathedral close on a fine afternoon and the rehearsal room windows are open you can hear the choirboys practising for evensong. It's glorious. I try to get there at around that time and sit on a bench in the sunshine to listen to them.
You're absolutely correct and this applies to so much more than music/liturgical music. I am in my 20s and I always prefer high church mass to the family friendly "Kumbaya" stuff. This has been one of my greatest reticences with the CoE in particular - not only is the music trying to be family friendly/PC but so is the narrative itself. Sermons seems to focus purely on how Christ loves all no matter what, which is true, but it doesn't inspire a better understanding of the faith or how to be a better Christian. The Anglo-Catholic side of the CoE has resisted this quite well and I usually attend mass there but I'm considering converting to Catholicism anyway.
I am Armenian and am not catholic , however, being musician I love the diversity that London offers and catholic art in general made a huge contribution to spiritual world imuch needed now. It is a paradox that a catholic cathedral makes such a step , diminishing the importance of what is the integral part of its own service that is the music . I hope , like many , that this will be corrected.
Having been sent to a boarding school myself...going home for weekends is disruptive emotionally, academically and in terms of stability. When I return to the UK and attend Westminster Cathedral musically I feel one with Catholic continuity. The choir and music are unique and a treasure that is an inspiration to the world.
I was lucky enough to sing on this recording of the requiem and standards were exceptionally high. It was an honour to sing in such a fine choir. It was a golden age thanks to David Hill and James O’Donnell. Choral music at this level is surely one of the highest forms of human expression and it is a tragedy that they are diluting its potency by making these changes which will inevitably erode the quality of the sound. Thankyou for your thoughtful words and message that highlights this tragedy.
I wish I could write with depth..,all I can say this is another example of the churches failing.The Anglicans and Roman Catholics need to take politics out of Christianity. We want a sermon of how we can improve our souls, not to be preached politics? I believe they want to destroy the church.
@J W1234 Yes, it seems more to do with whether they are woke enough nowadays. No wonder congregations see through his BS and leave in droves, especially in rural areas of England.
God save us from ignorant clergy, for all their doctorates they have no knowledge, for all their pomp they have no sense of grandeur. If they slowly kill their traditions, do they not realise that they will, over time, remove their own reason d’etre? So much for the Beauty of Holiness in the world of Marxist, woke racism.
the church heirarchy would rather have some thicko playing a guitar badly, as it suits their anti elitist stance .quality,competence,excellence and eventually goodness itself will be sacrificed for the sake of virtue signalling.
Why are we so scared of excellence? Like Dr Ashenden, I was a chorister at Canterbury: Senior Chorister, in fact, under the luminous aegis of Allan Wicks. By the age of 12 I was effectively a professional musician. That took me, via music scholarships, to a school ranked ninth best - was it? something like that - in the country, and thence to Cambridge, as a Choral Scholar at Clare, under Dr. Rutter. It all began with that choristership. Yes, of COURSE it was hard work. Anything worthwhile in human experience is hard work. No, its demands may not glibly align with fashionable tenets of secularism, of diversity, of the featherbedding of a snowflake next generation. But without my fellow-choristers - Stephen Barlow, Harry Christophers, Ivor Bolton, Paul Daniels, Michael Chance, Jeremy Sams, Andrew Lyle, Matthew Best, on and on it goes - England, this half century later, would barely have a classical musical culture. Nor was it merely the music. My life was enriched, at the time when a child is most absorbent of information, by architecture, by history, by Latin and Hebrew, by poetry, by everything which civilises us, and which is, in the main, now unavailable to children raised in a correct and progressive manner. In a time such as this I have endless wells of spiritual sustenance upon which to draw. Today's kids have the Kardashians. The opportunistic greed of Westminster Cathedral's barbarians bodes ill for other English choir schools, Catholic or Anglican. Pause, dear reader, and try to quantify what the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College, Cambridge, means to you, to your family, to England, to the world. I'm not religious, but I'd ask these so-called clergymen: if man is in created in God's image, are we to imagine and to restrict God therefore merely to the playlist on a twelve-year-old's iPhone?
"Today's kids have the Kardashians." This is by now a byword for the mountainous morass of cheap and nasty, trivial and frivolous culture and entertainment in the internet, screen-age world. Kids waste their childhood playing never-ending video games that are all alike, 'connecting' with their friends and missing out on face to face communication. Technology might not be anywhere as good as it's cracked up to be.
The beautiful world of religious music is being slowly but steadily murdered by the very people who should cherish them, the clergy. In the Anglican church, we have recently seen the closure of York Minster School and the utterly disgraceful treatment of the choir at Sheffield Cathedral. This act of cultural vandalism at Westminster Cathedral is another nail in the coffin of the choral tradition ... for what reason? It must be either failed management by the senior clergy OR the unChristian ‘woke’ racism which purports to value ‘diversity’ but which is really anti-white, unChristian, Marxism. I had a choral training as a boy and it has informed and imbued my religious outlook, my knowledge and understanding of Biblical text and my own spirituality. Taking these things away from future generations fills my soul with anguish, and I fear it is being done by blind, misinformed and culturally ignorant clergy, whose views will change with the wind, whilst taking the beauty of music away from the wind. God help us, and God save us from ignorant clergy!
This is a tragedy. The technical skills that the boys learn to create this amazing music should be an aspirational example of what is best in choral music. Why degrade it?
The choral tradition at Westminster Cathedral is the finest in the Roman Church in the UK. Who can forget their singing for Benedict XVI. Perhaps only Leeds Cathedral comes anywhere close to it. But what is happening at Westminster Cathedral is only too typical of what is going on all over the Country. This is what happens when CLERGY rule in the Church and - indeed - regard themselves as the 'real' Church. The Church of England became the 'Church-of-Clergy' the moment that the clergy, alone, decided to lock the doors, to keep the saints out. It is NOT the laity who have managed to fail Our Lord, and have presented his Church as an organisation of hypocrisy and cold cruelty to (especially sexual) sinners. That has been the work of the CLERGY. Now, the clergy are stuck with empty churches, and ever-increasing costs, with no saints to meet the bills. Authority in the Church lies within the pages of our canon of scripture: and that is not the property of the clergy. It belongs to all who call on the Lord. Perhaps the Church needs to 'radicalise'; to return to its roots, with small numbers of us meeting to celebrate what God has done, in the breaking of bread, and drinking of wine: and baptising those who are new believers. With MARXISM and ISLAM in the offing, I doubt we are going to have the luxury of denominational differences.
For Westminster Cathedral Choir School to introduce weekly boarding for choirboys whose principal work is at weekends, thus disrupting their practice, is sacrilegious cultural vandalism, symptomatic of the Woke agenda which is corrupting both Anglican and Roman churches. When Basil Hume was moved from Ampleforth to Westminster he realised the Choir was central, crucial, to the life of the Cathedral, promoted it and put it on a sound financial footing. We need another Hume as Cardinal to replace the current incompetent nonentity - and an educated man (or woman) who understands and treasures the long tradition of European sacred music to replace the present PC headmaster.
@@conrad152 Thank you. I think Benedict XVI, who was right about so much that is wrong with Europe, would be horrified to learn that the singing, which he clearly relished on his visit to Westminster Cathedral, is now, again, at risk. Unfortunately this overblown pandemic plays into the hands of the church hierarchy, who are reluctant to see the return of what they have always regarded as an expensive accessory. Sacred music, after all, interferes with their 'mission' !
Reminds me of vicar villain Slope from Antony Trollope’s Barchester Chronicles who also wanted to ban music from religious ceremonies. What is going on within the Church?
100%agree with everything that was said it is a total disgrace and Cardinal Nicholls should hang his head in shame for allowing it to happen, what a sad legacy he will leave behind
Griggsy the priests and other religious who carried out those criminal acts were just that criminals. Hopefully they are either in prison or dead. This discussion is about the choir school. If you have evidence of abuse taking place there, go to the police.
I’m not a catholic, but I love church music of all sorts. I’ve always been disappointed by the awful choirs, peopled by indifferent and distracted choristers, who attend papal elections. I’d assumed that Catholicism had given up on its brilliant musical heritage and had left it to lay Protestant choirs to maintain. I’d forgotten about Westminster Cathedral, but now they seem to have destroyed their own brilliance too. Hugely sad.
They are determined to do the choir in. Why I do not know since wealthy benefactors have offered to pay the money needed to keep the full choir going and boarding full time. Unfortunately church politics is a grubby thing. Thank goodness I have my recordings from them: a glimpse of Heaven. I used to work in Westminster and would always attend Mass after work even though not Catholic and unable to communicate .It was always a profound religious experience.
@@chrisneedham5803 ah yes. I was hoping that might be a different motivation for a change. See Liz Jolly planning to wreck the British library in the name of BLM and "perceived racism". We must find a way to get these rogues out of their positions of power and quickly.
The answer lies in a country hailing from the middle east and who has sworn for centuries to destroy Christianity and Muslims. Catholics are a favorite target but any Christian will do. Miliions of Catholics including priests and bishops are calling the pope a heritic. He is.
Heard about this scandalous situation but this was a particularly fine and comprehensive analysis of what really went on! Only bit of good news is the work still being done in Leeds and now being shared with the rest of the UK’s Catholic dioceses.
I try to put myself into the position of the people who make decisions I disagree with to get a sense of their rationale, but this one has me stumped. Even the basest of human instincts don't seem to explain why they, the very custodians, decided to do what they did. It is a genuine puzzle - I don't mean this by way of criticism - I'm just perplexed. Once having made the decision, it's easy to explain an unpreparedness to back down - simple ego often does that - but getting there in the first place, that's what gets me.
Ever watched "The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers" I sometimes wonder if the fictions become fact. I can't think of any other rational explanation for the madness that's overtaken our country including the church.
I listened with interest, but by the end felt that your fears are unfounded. I am a professional musician and I grew up in the 1970s singing in what was one of the best girls’ choirs in the world, evidenced by the number of times we either won or nearly won the international BBC competition, ‘Let the People’s Sing’. We sang complex polyphonic music, too, and were chosen by leading world class composers to feature in Mahler and Britten choral symphonies because we were renowned for our tone quality. We did all this on four hours’ rehearsal per week. When I was in my mid teens, our conductor, Sheila Mossman MBE, developed a brain tumour and passed away. After that we continued with four hours per week but our success went up and down depending on which conductor was training us. We had a very good one who kept us at the top of our game; but she moved on and the choir’s fortunes were precarious. It finally faded and died a few years later. My point is that if the person training the choir is highly talented, giving the boys a home life for a few hours per week is not going to ruin the choir. And one day those boys will be men and will very likely have to find a different occupation from which to make a living. How will they feel in their forties when only a distant memory of their choir days is there to compensate them for their lack of career success because of a skimpy academic grounding, coupled with a lack of emotional solidity because in their formative years they were denied the foundation of a good family life? So, if the choir deteriorates, it is more likely to be because a lesser replacement has been found for their conductor.
Perhaps your line of argument is the one Mr Chips of Goodbye Mr Chips fame would have made. So perhaps all will be well that ends well. The importance of family has been highlighted this year during the pandemic. Because of the pandemic.
I was at a baptism there where the priest preached that there were no such people as Adam and Eve ~ I was compelled by the Holy Ghost to stop him . . .
Westminster Cathedral Choir is not unique in the Catholic World - check out St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney - they also have choir school and ( at least before Covid ) daily sung Mass and Vespers
Whilst I am fully supportive of Mr Thompson's main case here, there's an unfortunate whiff of Roman Catholic exceptionalism throughout this podcast at the expense of the Church of England, along with ambiguous references to "catholic" and "Roman Catholic. For example, the assertion that Anglican choirs are not as skilled as those in the Roman Catholic tradition, which is self-evidently absurd, and disingenuous. This was apparent to me even before Gavin Ashenden, a Roman Catholic convert from the Church of England, was invited to join in, when the Roman Catholic proselytising became transparently disobliging to the C of E - indeed, bordering on the obnoxious. Not very subtle. Spectator: The Church of England is this country's Established, National Church in case you hadn't noticed.
@@AntPDC Oh certainly! I was blocked from the C of E's facebook page for complaining! Had to unlike ++Welby when I saw him wishing Muslims a happy celebration of something. I was hopeful for York when I heard we were getting an anglo-catholic, but then I heard he sacked 60 priests who now have to treat their faith as a hobby for Sundays while making ends meet throughout the week with a job. I hate how it's treated as a business. I pray the Holy Ghost comes back in charge.
@The505Guys Many, if not most, Anglicans are also cultural Anglicans. At any rate, last time I looked the Romans weren't doing great either. By contrast, Islam is now the fastest growing religion by far - everywhere.
Not just Rome. The Anglicans are just as bad. Look at what's happened in Sheffield! It's just one of the symptoms of the general dumbing down "no-one must stand out" ethos in modern life (unless you're a Premier League footballer, second rate pop singer, soap star or other "celebrity" when you try to stand out as much as possible). My father was in the military and we moved around a lot. For many years my only musical outlet was school and church choirs and over the 7 decades of my life so far I've sung in a LOT of church choirs of all sizes and standards. I've witnessed the gradual decline over those years. When I first started we all wore robes and the women wore hats like soft university mortar boards. Around the 1980s along came song writers like Graham Kendrick and Stewart Townend who - to be fair - wrote songs with reasonably meaningful words and singable music so we snuck in a few of those and cast off our robes. Fine. Just a few songs here and there won't matter and those robes were hot and itchy anyway. Then we decided to introduce guitars and drums. "We can't sing to THAT!". So we didn't. The mixed age choir was replaced by young and over-enthusiastic "worship" bands who didn't want to sing the "musty old stuff" that had been the staple for centuries and focused on extremely energetic AND VERY LOUD songs - none of which was over 10 years old (if that). The worst thing about those "praise and worship" songs is that they're almost impossible for ordinary people to sing! They're NOT congregational songs, they're performance pieces which were written by their composers to be sung by them and the handful of people in their personal band. As I said, I've been singing since I was 10. I've sung opera and some extremely complicated choral music in that time but I CANNOT sing many of those songs "straight off" with no practice beforehand. They change key, tempo, melody and just about everything with no warning. Their range is too high at one end and too low at the other for an average congregational singer ... I could go on but you get the idea. The only thing they have going for them is their insistent beat and the emphasis on the "worship experience" which is all about heightened emotions and feelings. As for the words: "Jesus, you're my best friend and I love you very much. You love me and I'm so happy." That's about it. I know, you're going to tell me that there were old hymns with dirgy tunes and uninspiring words. Yes, there were - and I've had to sing an awful lot of them - but at least most people COULD sing them! I think we've swung too far in the other direction.
They were very upset. A parent posted in Norman Lebrecht’s blog on this. He said he was low income from Wales and had two boys in the choir. He said when they found out they were in tears as were obviously unable to continue and got little sympathy from the school. Thankfully they have found places in an Anglican Cathedral Choir now: see the comments section of this slippedisc.com/2019/03/westminster-parents-fear-for-cathedral-choir/
Audio wave bar should have been placed else where on the image perhaps the top, or even perhaps a different image too. However content is good, but needs to be presented sharper
It is all about politics. I lost all respect for those who run Westminster Cathedral when they agreed to performing the 99 Names of Allah in this cathedral, the Cathedral of the Precious Blood. I wrote to them at the time back in 2007 pleading with them not to do this. My letter got passed down to a priest, who is now rather important there, basically telling me not to worry my little head about this because did I not realise that we are all Abrahamic religions together? They went ahead and did it.....
@francescagilbert9034 If a Roman Catholic cathedral cannot host a performance (concert, not liturgical) of a work by a Greek Orthodox composer setting Islamic texts, then what is Heaven for?
There's a huge difference between being born again and being religious. God bless you and I pray that God will strengthen your faith each and every day. 🙏
@J W1234 Then feel free to remove the word boarding it will make no difference to the question being asked I am more than happy to extend the underlying meaning to include all priests and feel confident there is more (much more) than enough evidence for the question to be a valid one.
YHWH's Clay every single Catholic parish including Westminster has a child safeguarding team. If you have any concerns whatsoever about what is taking place at Westminster or elsewhere, report your concerns on-line, you can do so anonymously. Your concerns must be investigated and reported directly to the police.
Are these the same safeguarding teams and sympathetic police ears that supposedly were available at the BBC (Saville hidden in plain sight. tip of the iceberg) The Diocese of York ( hidden in plain sight. Tip of the iceberg and never followed through on) or the white underage teenage girls in Rotherham (Tip of the iceberg never followed through on) and every other town & city in the UK. Still walking our streets free. Stop following the narrative fed to you by those who's sole purpose in life is to destroy life.
YHWH's Clay in part you have answered your own question. All of the examples you cite are outside of the Catholic Church. I cannot answer for any of those cases. It does however make the point that these issues were raging outside of the that institution. Anyone reading the Guardian or listening to the BBC was led to believe that sexual abuse of minors was the sole preserve of Catholic priests. At least your comment makes clear that this is a societal issue. Maybe, just maybe the BBC were busy hounding the Catholic Church because they knew only too well how "look over there" tactics work. For an example of how our premier investigative journalist dealt with this: th-cam.com/video/6kv4dsh31v4/w-d-xo.html
Terry Owen hopefully those criminal religious who perpetrated those terrible actions are either in prison or dead. If you or anyone has evidence that abuse is currently being carried out, there is an extensive child safeguarding network that operates in every single Catholic parish. They report directly to the Police. This discussion is about the choir. To the best of my knowledge there are no abuse allegations attached to that choir.
@@Denis-tg6jw Hogwash. Child rape is endemic in the rcc and you know it. If every rapist priest were dead or in prison I would be very happy. According to the data 7% of Australian rcc priests are paedophiles. And people like Pell protected them. Lets hope the child protection measures are at least half as good as the priest protecting measures which have proven to be robust. And the best of your knowledge carries no weight at all. Prove your assertion that no choristers have ever been abused. See, you can't. I can't prove that any have been abused but then then it would go against the trend of evidence which shows the the rcc is riddled with paedophiles and kids get raped especially in residential environments. Name the crime and the rcc is guilty of it. The latest I have read about today is the disgraced cardinal who was pulling property a scam in London.
Oh no! I didn't realise that unless you practice your craft on the weekend you actually lose all ability and skill, that's crazy! I mean it.... that's CraZy!
You miss the point. The boys are required to perform to a virtuoso standard. That requires dedication. It's why they were regarded as the best choir in the world.
If you want to know Jesus read the Bible for yourselves. Don't look to any man/ or woman. Worship true worship comes from within each believer. Jesus said that those born of the spirit worship in spirit & in truth.
Pompous, pseudo pious nonsense... No logic to this whatsoever. Children should spend some time with their families. The music at the Cathedral remains excellent. This is just a collective hissy fit.
I’m a Protestant, however, I absolutely love the polyphonic music that the Catholic Church and her composers wrote. It has been a huge topic of study for me in my academic life. To me this is a clear case of “you don’t know what you got til it’s gone”. A director so oblivious to the one of a kind experience and uniqueness of one of the best choirs in the world that’s sat right under his nose. I wish every church could have a choir like this, to invoke TRUE spiritual awakening in the believers heart. We are worshiping the Most High God of the universe! He deserves nothing less than the best humanity has to offer, and we’re able to offer Him the most beautiful music humans have ever created, yet because someone can’t be bothered with living arrangements the halls will fall silent. Around the world we are seeing a demise of culture, many are not interested in preserving something so rigorous. I fear you’ll hear a drum set and an electric guitar soon enough. I wish the director who’s holding this stunning choir back could realize he has something, that thousands of us can only hear on a recording, right under his nose and he couldn’t be more ungrateful. Spiritual vandalism is certainly at hand. Thanks for your video.
Sadly apart from a few exceptions in Bavaria and Austria and of course St Peters the tradition of boy singers in the Catholic church is dead.
Alleluila SD! Our God always deserves the best we can do.
Protestant here, too. Loving the Polyphonic music ❤
Notre Dame in Paris used to have a wonderful choir, which I have only heard on TH-cam. Was the choir disbanded after the fire destroyed the cathedral? What has happened to the choir?
This is the year of one thousand heresies.
Appalling. I live in a cathedral town and I love going into the cathedral for evensong and listening to the choir singing. If I want guitars and "happy clappy" song and dance I can go to any number of churches in town. Everything nowadays seems to be catering to the lowest common denominator. We are heading downwards instead of trying to bring those at the bottom upwards. There is, rightly, concern about young people who have not been exposed to nature never having seen native animals, insects, flowers and other things which my generation would have taken for granted and not even knowing that milk comes from cows but this is the musical equivalent. Instead of trying to "get down wiv the yoof" we should be encouraging them to aspire to the heights of the great composers. I'm not saying that ALL "high church" music is good. I'm not a Catholic but I've sung in a lot of Anglican church choirs of all sizes over the past 50 years and some of the dirges I've had to sing I wouldn't want at a funeral but choose the music wisely and there is nothing to compare with it. I once went to evensong in Lincoln cathedral and the choir sang Allegri's Miserere. We ALL cried because it was so beautiful. We have a glorious musical tradition. For many years even a small town would have several choirs and a brass band. Every school had a religious service in the mornings and music lessons every week. Now there are no school assemblies and music lessons have been scrapped because of cuts and the drive to ensure schools stay in the artificially enhanced league tables which only measure achievement in a very narrow range of subjects. Young people are not stupid. They just don't know what they're missing. Many of them would really appreciate good music - if they could ever hear it.
Well said! My sentiments exactly. Thank you.
It’s even worse in the Anglican church Cathedrals with ever changing Chapters full of trendy views and who are culturally and musically clueless. You just have to look at the trouble at Sheffield Cathedral this year. Also my local Cathedral Rochester has abolushed both the boys choir and the very good older girls choir into a single mixed top line with an inferior sound. The boys will gradually vanish from that mark my words.
@@mattbod I heard about Sheffield. A travesty! Musical mutilation! Sorry to hear about Rochester. I didn't know about that. I live in Winchester and - so far - we're still hanging in there with both the boys' and girls' choirs. If you're in the cathedral close on a fine afternoon and the rehearsal room windows are open you can hear the choirboys practising for evensong. It's glorious. I try to get there at around that time and sit on a bench in the sunshine to listen to them.
You're absolutely correct and this applies to so much more than music/liturgical music. I am in my 20s and I always prefer high church mass to the family friendly "Kumbaya" stuff. This has been one of my greatest reticences with the CoE in particular - not only is the music trying to be family friendly/PC but so is the narrative itself. Sermons seems to focus purely on how Christ loves all no matter what, which is true, but it doesn't inspire a better understanding of the faith or how to be a better Christian. The Anglo-Catholic side of the CoE has resisted this quite well and I usually attend mass there but I'm considering converting to Catholicism anyway.
@@bigred5287 Amen. Well written. God bless.
I am Armenian and am not catholic , however, being musician I love the diversity that London offers and catholic art in general made a huge contribution to spiritual world imuch needed now. It is a paradox that a catholic cathedral makes such a step , diminishing the importance of what is the integral part of its own service that is the music . I hope , like many , that this will be corrected.
Having been sent to a boarding school myself...going home for weekends is disruptive emotionally, academically and in terms of stability. When I return to the UK and attend Westminster Cathedral musically I feel one with Catholic continuity. The choir and music are unique and a treasure that is an inspiration to the world.
I was lucky enough to sing on this recording of the requiem and standards were exceptionally high. It was an honour to sing in such a fine choir. It was a golden age thanks to David Hill and James O’Donnell. Choral music at this level is surely one of the highest forms of human expression and it is a tragedy that they are diluting its potency by making these changes which will inevitably erode the quality of the sound. Thankyou for your thoughtful words and message that highlights this tragedy.
I wish I could write with depth..,all I can say this is another example of the churches failing.The Anglicans and Roman Catholics need to take politics out of Christianity. We want a sermon of how we can improve our souls, not to be preached politics? I believe they want to destroy the church.
Excellent point !!!
The truth of it is that they believe that they are improving you soul!
There is a growing true traditional movement on the rise. I have drawn great strength from it.
Same at Sheffield Cathedral. What is it with these meddlesome, Philistine clerics?
It's an illness that's spreading through the whole of the western world. The church is not the only victim, society and It's values are being eroded.
@J W1234 Yes, it seems more to do with whether they are woke enough nowadays. No wonder congregations see through his BS and leave in droves, especially in rural areas of England.
God save us from ignorant clergy, for all their doctorates they have no knowledge, for all their pomp they have no sense of grandeur. If they slowly kill their traditions, do they not realise that they will, over time, remove their own reason d’etre? So much for the Beauty of Holiness in the world of Marxist, woke racism.
Thank you Anthony for your wonderful TH-cam channel. I visit frequently and can always find fine music there at least!
@@gillfleming1741 How kind of you Gill, thank you!
the church heirarchy would rather have some thicko playing a guitar badly, as it suits their anti elitist stance .quality,competence,excellence and eventually goodness itself will be sacrificed for the sake of virtue signalling.
What a shame you spoil your comment with the use of an irrelevant dog-whistle. This is nothing to do with virtue signalling, it's just philistinism.
Well I agree with you. I am a musician (piano, organ, classical guitar) and I am centre left but culturally conservative.
Why are we so scared of excellence? Like Dr Ashenden, I was a chorister at Canterbury: Senior Chorister, in fact, under the luminous aegis of Allan Wicks. By the age of 12 I was effectively a professional musician. That took me, via music scholarships, to a school ranked ninth best - was it? something like that - in the country, and thence to Cambridge, as a Choral Scholar at Clare, under Dr. Rutter. It all began with that choristership. Yes, of COURSE it was hard work. Anything worthwhile in human experience is hard work. No, its demands may not glibly align with fashionable tenets of secularism, of diversity, of the featherbedding of a snowflake next generation. But without my fellow-choristers - Stephen Barlow, Harry Christophers, Ivor Bolton, Paul Daniels, Michael Chance, Jeremy Sams, Andrew Lyle, Matthew Best, on and on it goes - England, this half century later, would barely have a classical musical culture. Nor was it merely the music. My life was enriched, at the time when a child is most absorbent of information, by architecture, by history, by Latin and Hebrew, by poetry, by everything which civilises us, and which is, in the main, now unavailable to children raised in a correct and progressive manner. In a time such as this I have endless wells of spiritual sustenance upon which to draw. Today's kids have the Kardashians. The opportunistic greed of Westminster Cathedral's barbarians bodes ill for other English choir schools, Catholic or Anglican. Pause, dear reader, and try to quantify what the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College, Cambridge, means to you, to your family, to England, to the world. I'm not religious, but I'd ask these so-called clergymen: if man is in created in God's image, are we to imagine and to restrict God therefore merely to the playlist on a twelve-year-old's iPhone?
"Today's kids have the Kardashians." This is by now a byword for the mountainous morass of cheap and nasty, trivial and frivolous culture and entertainment in the internet, screen-age world. Kids waste their childhood playing never-ending video games that are all alike, 'connecting' with their friends and missing out on face to face communication. Technology might not be anywhere as good as it's cracked up to be.
Wow this is actually huge! Thanks for bringing it to light
The beautiful world of religious music is being slowly but steadily murdered by the very people who should cherish them, the clergy. In the Anglican church, we have recently seen the closure of York Minster School and the utterly disgraceful treatment of the choir at Sheffield Cathedral. This act of cultural vandalism at Westminster Cathedral is another nail in the coffin of the choral tradition ... for what reason? It must be either failed management by the senior clergy OR the unChristian ‘woke’ racism which purports to value ‘diversity’ but which is really anti-white, unChristian, Marxism. I had a choral training as a boy and it has informed and imbued my religious outlook, my knowledge and understanding of Biblical text and my own spirituality. Taking these things away from future generations fills my soul with anguish, and I fear it is being done by blind, misinformed and culturally ignorant clergy, whose views will change with the wind, whilst taking the beauty of music away from the wind. God help us, and God save us from ignorant clergy!
Sadly, the clergy use the laity as the excuse for dismantling that which is profound, beautiful and, liturgical. “The PEOPLE don’t want that.”
This is a tragedy. The technical skills that the boys learn to create this amazing music should be an aspirational example of what is best in choral music. Why degrade it?
@Tim Norris Untrue
It's a tragedy that the churches aren't heaving like the supermarkets on a Sunday these days....and I'm guilty as charged.
It's possible to do both; church in the morning, shopping in the afternoon.
the exception to this rule being those attending the Traditional Latin Mass where attendance has INCREASED since covid
The choral tradition at Westminster Cathedral is the finest in the Roman Church in the UK. Who can forget their singing for Benedict XVI. Perhaps only Leeds Cathedral comes anywhere close to it. But what is happening at Westminster Cathedral is only too typical of what is going on all over the Country. This is what happens when CLERGY rule in the Church and - indeed - regard themselves as the 'real' Church. The Church of England became the 'Church-of-Clergy' the moment that the clergy, alone, decided to lock the doors, to keep the saints out. It is NOT the laity who have managed to fail Our Lord, and have presented his Church as an organisation of hypocrisy and cold cruelty to (especially sexual) sinners. That has been the work of the CLERGY. Now, the clergy are stuck with empty churches, and ever-increasing costs, with no saints to meet the bills. Authority in the Church lies within the pages of our canon of scripture: and that is not the property of the clergy. It belongs to all who call on the Lord. Perhaps the Church needs to 'radicalise'; to return to its roots, with small numbers of us meeting to celebrate what God has done, in the breaking of bread, and drinking of wine: and baptising those who are new believers. With MARXISM and ISLAM in the offing, I doubt we are going to have the luxury of denominational differences.
For Westminster Cathedral Choir School to introduce weekly boarding for choirboys whose principal work is at weekends, thus disrupting their practice, is sacrilegious cultural vandalism, symptomatic of the Woke agenda which is corrupting both Anglican and Roman churches. When Basil Hume was moved from Ampleforth to Westminster he realised the Choir was central, crucial, to the life of the Cathedral, promoted it and put it on a sound financial footing. We need another Hume as Cardinal to replace the current incompetent nonentity - and an educated man (or woman) who understands and treasures the long tradition of European sacred music to replace the present PC headmaster.
Well said !!! Francescoboneri
@@conrad152 Thank you. I think Benedict XVI, who was right about so much that is wrong with Europe, would be horrified to learn that the singing, which he clearly relished on his visit to Westminster Cathedral, is now, again, at risk. Unfortunately this overblown pandemic plays into the hands of the church hierarchy, who are reluctant to see the return of what they have always regarded as an expensive accessory. Sacred music, after all, interferes with their 'mission' !
You only need to hear the hymns! if you can call them that the the Cardinal wrote with Rev E Sands
We need a Traditionalist Man
They are not interested in the music but money. It is all about attracting rich people’s children now.
Reminds me of vicar villain Slope from Antony Trollope’s Barchester Chronicles who also wanted to ban music from religious ceremonies. What is going on within the Church?
Woke is going on.
100%agree with everything that was said it is a total disgrace and Cardinal Nicholls should hang his head in shame for allowing it to happen, what a sad legacy he will leave behind
Not a Catholic, however, this is deeply disturbing!
Griggsy the priests and other religious who carried out those criminal acts were just that criminals. Hopefully they are either in prison or dead. This discussion is about the choir school. If you have evidence of abuse taking place there, go to the police.
And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.”
I’m not a catholic, but I love church music of all sorts. I’ve always been disappointed by the awful choirs, peopled by indifferent and distracted choristers, who attend papal elections. I’d assumed that Catholicism had given up on its brilliant musical heritage and had left it to lay Protestant choirs to maintain. I’d forgotten about Westminster Cathedral, but now they seem to have destroyed their own brilliance too. Hugely sad.
They are determined to do the choir in. Why I do not know since wealthy benefactors have offered to pay the money needed to keep the full choir going and boarding full time. Unfortunately church politics is a grubby thing. Thank goodness I have my recordings from them: a glimpse of Heaven. I used to work in Westminster and would always attend Mass after work even though not Catholic and unable to communicate .It was always a profound religious experience.
What is the motivation for this vandalism?
It has a name "The long march through the institutions" (Google it)
@@chrisneedham5803 ah yes. I was hoping that might be a different motivation for a change. See Liz Jolly planning to wreck the British library in the name of BLM and "perceived racism". We must find a way to get these rogues out of their positions of power and quickly.
The answer lies in a country hailing from the middle east and who has sworn for centuries to destroy Christianity and Muslims. Catholics are a favorite target but any Christian will do. Miliions of Catholics including priests and bishops are calling the pope a heritic. He is.
Heard about this scandalous situation but this was a particularly fine and comprehensive analysis of what really went on! Only bit of good news is the work still being done in Leeds and now being shared with the rest of the UK’s Catholic dioceses.
i feel your pain.
one of the flowers of catholic culture, garnered and burnished over centuries., and in a few generations becomes legend, then myth.
I try to put myself into the position of the people who make decisions I disagree with to get a sense of their rationale, but this one has me stumped. Even the basest of human instincts don't seem to explain why they, the very custodians, decided to do what they did. It is a genuine puzzle - I don't mean this by way of criticism - I'm just perplexed.
Once having made the decision, it's easy to explain an unpreparedness to back down - simple ego often does that - but getting there in the first place, that's what gets me.
Ever watched "The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers" I sometimes wonder if the fictions become fact. I can't think of any other rational explanation for the madness that's overtaken our country including the church.
God, this is depressing.
I listened with interest, but by the end felt that your fears are unfounded. I am a professional musician and I grew up in the 1970s singing in what was one of the best girls’ choirs in the world, evidenced by the number of times we either won or nearly won the international BBC competition, ‘Let the People’s Sing’. We sang complex polyphonic music, too, and were chosen by leading world class composers to feature in Mahler and Britten choral symphonies because we were renowned for our tone quality. We did all this on four hours’ rehearsal per week. When I was in my mid teens, our conductor, Sheila Mossman MBE, developed a brain tumour and passed away. After that we continued with four hours per week but our success went up and down depending on which conductor was training us. We had a very good one who kept us at the top of our game; but she moved on and the choir’s fortunes were precarious. It finally faded and died a few years later.
My point is that if the person training the choir is highly talented, giving the boys a home life for a few hours per week is not going to ruin the choir. And one day those boys will be men and will very likely have to find a different occupation from which to make a living. How will they feel in their forties when only a distant memory of their choir days is there to compensate them for their lack of career success because of a skimpy academic grounding, coupled with a lack of emotional solidity because in their formative years they were denied the foundation of a good family life? So, if the choir deteriorates, it is more likely to be because a lesser replacement has been found for their conductor.
Perhaps your line of argument is the one Mr Chips of Goodbye Mr Chips fame would have made. So perhaps all will be well that ends well.
The importance of family has been highlighted this year during the pandemic. Because of the pandemic.
I was at a baptism there where the priest preached that there were no such people as Adam and Eve ~ I was compelled by the Holy Ghost to stop him . . .
Amen
My father used to go to those masses.He would be upset to hear this.He died in 2011.
What would the Man in Sandals say?
They celebrate the new ordo of mass at the cathedral, a pedestrian liturgy for which the music of the great polyphonic masters is ill suited.
Westminster Cathedral Choir is not unique in the Catholic World - check out St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney - they also have choir school and ( at least before Covid ) daily sung Mass and Vespers
How sad!
Whilst I am fully supportive of Mr Thompson's main case here, there's an unfortunate whiff of Roman Catholic exceptionalism throughout this podcast at the expense of the Church of England, along with ambiguous references to "catholic" and "Roman Catholic. For example, the assertion that Anglican choirs are not as skilled as those in the Roman Catholic tradition, which is self-evidently absurd, and disingenuous. This was apparent to me even before Gavin Ashenden, a Roman Catholic convert from the Church of England, was invited to join in, when the Roman Catholic proselytising became transparently disobliging to the C of E - indeed, bordering on the obnoxious. Not very subtle.
Spectator: The Church of England is this country's Established, National Church in case you hadn't noticed.
Perhaps this podcast is more appropriate for The Tablet!
@@jonathanthompson4734 No kidding. Although it has to be said that ++ Welby is a hopeless, hapless, useless leader and Primate of All England.
@@AntPDC Oh certainly! I was blocked from the C of E's facebook page for complaining! Had to unlike ++Welby when I saw him wishing Muslims a happy celebration of something. I was hopeful for York when I heard we were getting an anglo-catholic, but then I heard he sacked 60 priests who now have to treat their faith as a hobby for Sundays while making ends meet throughout the week with a job. I hate how it's treated as a business. I pray the Holy Ghost comes back in charge.
Indeed
@The505Guys Many, if not most, Anglicans are also cultural Anglicans. At any rate, last time I looked the Romans weren't doing great either. By contrast, Islam is now the fastest growing religion by far - everywhere.
"Very unique" Very best G......
There’s not an ounce of faith or belief in the Vatican
You all are preaching to the choir...somehow the message needs to be driven on Rome, and get results via that route.
Not just Rome. The Anglicans are just as bad. Look at what's happened in Sheffield! It's just one of the symptoms of the general dumbing down "no-one must stand out" ethos in modern life (unless you're a Premier League footballer, second rate pop singer, soap star or other "celebrity" when you try to stand out as much as possible). My father was in the military and we moved around a lot. For many years my only musical outlet was school and church choirs and over the 7 decades of my life so far I've sung in a LOT of church choirs of all sizes and standards. I've witnessed the gradual decline over those years. When I first started we all wore robes and the women wore hats like soft university mortar boards. Around the 1980s along came song writers like Graham Kendrick and Stewart Townend who - to be fair - wrote songs with reasonably meaningful words and singable music so we snuck in a few of those and cast off our robes. Fine. Just a few songs here and there won't matter and those robes were hot and itchy anyway. Then we decided to introduce guitars and drums. "We can't sing to THAT!". So we didn't. The mixed age choir was replaced by young and over-enthusiastic "worship" bands who didn't want to sing the "musty old stuff" that had been the staple for centuries and focused on extremely energetic AND VERY LOUD songs - none of which was over 10 years old (if that). The worst thing about those "praise and worship" songs is that they're almost impossible for ordinary people to sing! They're NOT congregational songs, they're performance pieces which were written by their composers to be sung by them and the handful of people in their personal band. As I said, I've been singing since I was 10. I've sung opera and some extremely complicated choral music in that time but I CANNOT sing many of those songs "straight off" with no practice beforehand. They change key, tempo, melody and just about everything with no warning. Their range is too high at one end and too low at the other for an average congregational singer ... I could go on but you get the idea. The only thing they have going for them is their insistent beat and the emphasis on the "worship experience" which is all about heightened emotions and feelings. As for the words: "Jesus, you're my best friend and I love you very much. You love me and I'm so happy." That's about it. I know, you're going to tell me that there were old hymns with dirgy tunes and uninspiring words. Yes, there were - and I've had to sing an awful lot of them - but at least most people COULD sing them! I think we've swung too far in the other direction.
@@Sunflowers159 Agreed!!! Well written piece sir!
@@moshodi100 Thanks - but I'm madam 😊.
Vandalism has been a frequent thing since the Council. Many a bear ruined choir.
Perhaps Stormzy could be a replacement.
Lol I hope not 😂
i wouldn't be surprised with dear Cardinal 'Vince' Vincent
What is the Boys' perspective?
They were very upset. A parent posted in Norman Lebrecht’s blog on this. He said he was low income from Wales and had two boys in the choir. He said when they found out they were in tears as were obviously unable to continue and got little sympathy from the school. Thankfully they have found places in an Anglican Cathedral Choir now: see the comments section of this slippedisc.com/2019/03/westminster-parents-fear-for-cathedral-choir/
They are not worried
George Malcolm would not be pleased...
George had battles with the clergy too, and eventually resigned.
Audio wave bar should have been placed else where on the image perhaps the top, or even perhaps a different image too. However content is good, but needs to be presented sharper
Yeah but... no but... Stormzy.
It is all about politics. I lost all respect for those who run Westminster Cathedral when they agreed to performing the 99 Names of Allah in this cathedral, the Cathedral of the Precious Blood. I wrote to them at the time back in 2007 pleading with them not to do this. My letter got passed down to a priest, who is now rather important there, basically telling me not to worry my little head about this because did I not realise that we are all Abrahamic religions together? They went ahead and did it.....
I wonder if that is the same priest who denied Adam and Eve at a baptism ?
@francescagilbert9034 If a Roman Catholic cathedral cannot host a performance (concert, not liturgical) of a work by a Greek Orthodox composer setting Islamic texts, then what is Heaven for?
See my upcoming book with its chapter on music: Language in the Liturgy (James Clarke, Cambridge) to be published in January 2025.
As Spike Milligan said,
" two things I can't stand, intolerance............ and Catholics.
I'm very very new to Jesus , but how does this podcast have any relevance when people are suffering...Im not criticising, I'm asking ?
There's a huge difference between being born again and being religious. God bless you and I pray that God will strengthen your faith each and every day. 🙏
@J W1234 A troll. Ignore him (or her).
Music mends the soul of those who suffer - not everything is improved by application of material measures! You are very confused if you think so!
@Zenith Climber Not every act of faith has to be giving to the poor and suffering, Judas.
@@kepnjem Thank you for those supporting words, you have increased my faith.
Some choristers need to be deaf, autistic or to have learning disabilities in order to match the quotas.
Otherwise waycist n sheet.
Why on earth would you want young boys boarding with priests.
We never learn, this has probably saved a few future victims though.
@J W1234
Then feel free to remove the word boarding it will make no difference to the question being asked I am more than happy to extend the underlying meaning to include all priests and feel confident there is more (much more) than enough evidence for the question to be a valid one.
YHWH's Clay every single Catholic parish including Westminster has a child safeguarding team. If you have any concerns whatsoever about what is taking place at Westminster or elsewhere, report your concerns on-line, you can do so anonymously. Your concerns must be investigated and reported directly to the police.
Are these the same safeguarding teams and sympathetic police ears that supposedly were available at the BBC (Saville hidden in plain sight. tip of the iceberg) The Diocese of York ( hidden in plain sight. Tip of the iceberg and never followed through on) or the white underage teenage girls in Rotherham (Tip of the iceberg never followed through on) and every other town & city in the UK. Still walking our streets free.
Stop following the narrative fed to you by those who's sole purpose in life is to destroy life.
YHWH's Clay in part you have answered your own question. All of the examples you cite are outside of the Catholic Church. I cannot answer for any of those cases. It does however make the point that these issues were raging outside of the that institution. Anyone reading the Guardian or listening to the BBC was led to believe that sexual abuse of minors was the sole preserve of Catholic priests. At least your comment makes clear that this is a societal issue. Maybe, just maybe the BBC were busy hounding the Catholic Church because they knew only too well how "look over there" tactics work. For an example of how our premier investigative journalist dealt with this:
th-cam.com/video/6kv4dsh31v4/w-d-xo.html
I thought there would be more Douglas on this channel. I don't really care about church.
ME 0020 "Douglas" do you mean that bleating "why oh why is everything so horrid" Murray. Who hides his nasty race baiting views, behind a smirk?
@@Denis-tg6jw That's some circular ass logic right there.
ME 0020 what, you mean coming to a channel about Westminster Cathedral Choir and expecting Douglas Murray. That kind of "logic"?
@@Denis-tg6jw What's wrong with that kind of logic?
The Roman Catholic Church has a much bigger and much more important issue to worry about. That of paedophilia. Sort that out.
Terry Owen hopefully those criminal religious who perpetrated those terrible actions are either in prison or dead. If you or anyone has evidence that abuse is currently being carried out, there is an extensive child safeguarding network that operates in every single Catholic parish. They report directly to the Police. This discussion is about the choir. To the best of my knowledge there are no abuse allegations attached to that choir.
@@Denis-tg6jw Hogwash. Child rape is endemic in the rcc and you know it. If every rapist priest were dead or in prison I would be very happy. According to the data 7% of Australian rcc priests are paedophiles. And people like Pell protected them. Lets hope the child protection measures are at least half as good as the priest protecting measures which have proven to be robust. And the best of your knowledge carries no weight at all. Prove your assertion that no choristers have ever been abused. See, you can't. I can't prove that any have been abused but then then it would go against the trend of evidence which shows the the rcc is riddled with paedophiles and kids get raped especially in residential environments. Name the crime and the rcc is guilty of it. The latest I have read about today is the disgraced cardinal who was pulling property a scam in London.
Oh no! I didn't realise that unless you practice your craft on the weekend you actually lose all ability and skill, that's crazy!
I mean it.... that's CraZy!
You miss the point. The boys are required to perform to a virtuoso standard. That requires dedication. It's why they were regarded as the best choir in the world.
Perhaps the choir is too white.
If you want to know Jesus read the Bible for yourselves. Don't look to any man/ or woman.
Worship true worship comes from within each believer. Jesus said that those born of the spirit worship in spirit & in truth.
At least the boys will be safer, kept at a distance from priests urges
Pompous, pseudo pious nonsense... No logic to this whatsoever. Children should spend some time with their families. The music at the Cathedral remains excellent. This is just a collective hissy fit.
I don't believe in Mass so I don't care !!! why waste you tube on this.
Nobody cares about your personal preferences.
Nobody cares what YOU don’t care about ! That is the point - learn to care if you want to be heard
Why waste your time watching it.
Perhaps you should stick to TikTok
@@Ichioku ....... it's good you pointed him in the right direction (Tik Tok) ..... less taxing for his brain.