October: We end 2022 with a sigh of relief. At last we were able to run the programme of courses planned back in 2019, but not always at the times of our choosing, as we juggled the new availabilities of venues and directors, nor with the singers that originally signed up for them, though we are extremely grateful for those of you who stood by us through the two years of postponements. On top of all that turmoil the Lacock team was beset by illness and other vicissitudes which would have been trying at the best of times.
So we’re very happy to put this year behind us and look forward to the next. We begin 2023 with the weeks in Cádiz, Tenby and Skipton announced in the last newsletter – at least the covid years gave us time to think about new venues. These weeks are now largely full, but there is still the odd available place, so if you’re interested in joining one of them it’s still worth asking. Then in the summer there will be the usual two weeks at Monteconero. In the first, from the 11th to the 17th of June, Eamonn Dougan has put together a programme to illuminate composers who worked in the penumbra of Palestrina – Marenzio, Anerio and the like. The second, from the 18th to the 24th of June, will be an invited week directed by JanJoost van Elburg devoted to two masses separated by exactly 400 years: the eight-part requiem of Duarte Lobo and Frank Martin’s Mass for double choir.
Then in July we return to Edinburgh for another programme of music from 16th century Scotland, “a rich and vibrant musical landscape”, devised by Rory McCleery. Rory had to miss this year’s course for the best of reasons – childbirth – so we’re looking forward finally to connect with him in his native city, having first invited him to conduct there in 2019. Old St Paul’s Church turned out to be an excellent venue, hidden away yet right in the centre of the city, with very obliging clergy. This year we have added some cheap student accommodation to our list of suggested places to stay.
After that we are still working on the details of a course in the town of Gourdon in SW France on the border of the départements Lot and Dordogne from the 27th of August until the 1st of September. Rory Wainwright Johnson, who stood in for the other Rory to great acclaim in Edinburgh last July, will direct a programme of Josquin and his successors – Mouton, Gombert, Pierre de La Rue among others. Then a return to Trogir, Dalmatia’s Little Venice, for a week of Croce and other Venetians of his generation with Patrick Craig, from the 11th to the 17th of September. We will begin on the Monday evening and end on the Sunday morning as we have been invited to sing Mass on Sunday morning in the cathedral. We also hope to fit in a visit to sing in Dioclesian’s Palace in Split during the week. We will probably add a further course in the UK in the half term week at the end of October.
Since we last wrote we have returned to Croatia for Patrick Craig’s Gunpowder Plot course in Trogir. All was going well until the Queen died on the Thursday afternoon. Suddenly the texts we were going to perform publicly the next day couldn’t have been more inappropriate: ‘O clap your hands together’, ‘O metaphysical tobacco’, ‘England receive thy rightful king with cheerful heart and hand’, ‘. . . the present joy. . .’ On top of that, Patrick received a summons from St Paul’s cathedral to sing in a major national service, which would be televised and shown live round the world. We decided to give him compassionate leave and declared a Lacock day of mourning. On the positive side, the Trogir cathedral director of music discovered what we were doing and has become a big fan, offering to find us a better rehearsal venue and a Mass in the cathedral if we came back in 2023. So that is what we are going to do.
Then a quick dash across the Adriatic to Robert Hollingworth’s consort course in Lucca. It was a great treat to live in the centre of Lucca for a week but we had an inkling that it might be a challenge to keep a disparate group happy all week and so it proved. But we learned a lot and if we attempted it again would probably be thinking of a smaller invited group. During the week Robert found time to record an episode of his podcast with the group of no fewer than seven Lacock scholars there. You can find it here https://shows.acast.com/choral-chihuahua, though it’s probably no longer the most recent episode, so look for Season 3 Episode 2. It includes the scholar’s excellent recording of Lobo’s Versa est in luctum made in the chapel of Convictus, the former convent in which we were housed.
Most recent we’ve return from Lewes singing some larger scale Tudor works with Eamonn Dougan. These included William Mundy’s Vox patris caelestis, written for the coronation of Queen Mary in 1553 and the return of the kingdom to the embrace of Rome. Mundy’s thrill at being allowed to write once again in the expansive pre-Reformation style in which he grew up and was trained is palpable on every page; we left Lewes in a Stendhalian reverie with the sound of the final ecstatic two-and-a-half page Amen re-echoing in our heads.
October took me to Oxford for a symposium to launch Andrew Parrott’s book The Pursuit of Musick, a monumental work of over 500 pages of original writing and pictures relating to all aspects of musical life from 1200 to 1770. It has been a mammoth undertaking, reflecting four decades of research. Friends of Andrew’s had resigned themselves to thinking that the project was so vast that it would never be finished, like The Key to all Mythologies in Middlemarch, though Andrew couldn’t be further from the charmless author Casaubon. If you have been to one of his courses you will know that Andrew often finds it hard get to the end of a sentence, not because he has forgotten what he is going to say, but because his head is so fizzing with ideas that half a dozen new thoughts have occurred to him since he started it, each demanding its own parenthesis or relative clause. The book “aims to illuminate diverse strands of musical life . . . in a manner not previously attempted”. It certainly succeeds and I am sure will come to be accepted as the book no one with the slightest interest in musical history can afford to be without. His office tells me that the quickest way to find out more about it or get hold of a copy is through their web site www.taverner.org.
Also in October to Blackmoor, Essex, a few fields away from Stondon Place, where William Byrd ended his days, for a memorial service for Mike Brown. Mike was a great charmer, always with a twinkle in his eye; he and Mavis were loyal supporters of Lacock dating back to our first overseas courses in France in the nineties, and as an alto and tenor with well-focussed voices and excellent sight-reading, were always very welcome. It was they that introduced us to Justin Doyle, who has become a regular Lacock conductor despite a crowded schedule including principal conductorship of the Berlin Radio Choir.
Finally, on a tedious administrative note, we have realised the foolhardy largesse of our previous policy of returning deposits unconditionally. Most of our courses are oversubscribed and it is often possible to find a replacement if someone drops out, but this becomes harder as the course approaches. That is why on recent courses we offer to return a deposit only if we can find someone else to take your place.
August: We’ve begun to look ahead to 2023, our 38th year, or 36th if you take out the two we lost to covid. Actually we did manage at least one course in both 2020 and 2021, so let’s settle for 38th. My recent move to London prompted a count of the total number of courses since we began: 222. Amazingly, Robert Harris, one of the first people to put his name down for a course next year also came to our second ever, and Bernardo Lopez, with us as recently as the 2019 week in Rome, came to the very first Lacock course, conducted by Harry Christophers in 1986.
We kick off the year with a visit to the ancient port of Cádiz. Gabriel Díaz’s programme of renaissance music from Spain and Mexico reflects not only the season of Lent but also the fact that Cádiz was, along with Seville, the place of entry of most of the trade and plunder from the American possessions. We will sing not only some of the best of Guerrero, Lobo and Victoria, but also pieces by those adventurous composers born in Spain but died in Mexico: Hernando Franco, Pedro Bermúdez and Padilla. The early dates – the 5th to the 10th of March – will enable us to benefit from a relatively tourist-free city and its famed mild winter and spring climate.
Then after Easter, from the 16th to the 21st of April, we go to the seaside town of Tenby, in southwest Wales. Patrick Craig’s programme of music by Byrd and his circle (or in Patrick’s word, flock) commemorates the 400th anniversary of Byrd’s death in 1623. This is a course for invited singers, but there’s meant to be nothing secretive about it. All the details are on the web site (www.lacock.org) and so if you’re the type that wouldn’t be fazed by being asked to sing a one-to-a-part section or even gets asked to do the occasional solo and would like to join in, let us know using the reply form on the web site. We will sing in the most welcoming and inspiring 15th century parish church, whose vicar is the aptly named Canon Grace. I wonder what his parishioners make of that line in the hymn: ‘Saviour, if of Zion’s city I, through Grace, a member am’?
Conductors with young children are understandably keen to do courses on their home turf, so the 21st to the 26th of May takes us to Justin Doyle’s beautiful home town of Skipton, in the Yorkshire Dales. Justin is now principal conductor of the Berlin Radio Choir so spends enough time away from home already. His programme centres on the triumvirate of Schütz, Schein and Scheidt, who brought music north of the Alps from the old world of polyphony to the new world of seconda prattica; all excellent and interesting conductors shamefully underrepresented in the four decades of Lacock courses. This week puts them into their Germanic context going as far back as Senfl and right through to senior members of the Bach family of the generation before JS.
After that, we are planning two weeks at Monteconero, with Eamonn Dougan (the 11th to the 17th of June) and with JanJoost van Elburg (the 18th to the 24th of June) and a week at a venue to be decided, probably in the UK, with Rory McCleery, from the 16th to the 21st of July 2023.
Inevitably, alas, more deaths to report. Jenny Gowing, widow of the painter Sir Laurence Gowing, was a great lover of Italy and never missed a chance to come and sing in Venice. Fred Hartley, with his fine bass voice both singing and speaking, was a permanent presence for a whole run of Lacock winter schools. And just this afternoon an email from Scotland told me that Margaret Miller had died last week. She was a very kind gentle person and a stalwart supporter of the Lacock summer school: one of ‘The Manor Farm Five’ from their regular billet with the Freelands at the Abbey gates. Margaret was a great help when I set up the first Scottish Lacock course in Callander, gently steering me away from the perhaps more picturesque Aberfoyle, which she felt was overtouristed and awash with ‘tartan tat’.
We’ve had a long letter from Jill Mitchell, for many years a commanding presence on Lacock courses. She is very much alive but no longer able to come and sing. She was particularly sad to miss Robert Carver’s 19-part O bone Jesu, which we sang at the course in Edinburgh in July. One of her specialities was to compose and declaim an amusing verse at the end of each course, using her considerable talent to poke gentle fun at the mannerisms, turns of phrase and idiosyncrasies of the conductor. She has now collected them into a book, Musical Moments and Other Sundry Musings, which is available from Amazon. Just search for Jill Mitchell and the title will appear. The price is £3.03: as she says, a bargain.
It is such a joy to be singing on courses again, and planning new ones, after the two interminable years of postponements. A huge thank you to those of you who left your deposits in place and patiently waited for the resumption of normal service. This enabled us to pay our conductors, many of whom have families to support and mortgages to pay, at least part of their fee when they were expecting it. You may notice that we have taken advantage of the break to revamp the www.lacock.org website. Now all you have to do to apply to a course is to click on a button at the foot of the page. We are looking forward to seeing a lot of old friends again in 2023.
March: No, you haven’t missed a newsletter – this is the first we’ve written since April last year. We had hoped it would mark a return to normality and optimism, but in the event the grim news from the east casts a dark shadow over everything else. Whatever happens it’s important to keep singing together. As we move forward to our post-pandemic programme Lacock’s strong international tradition has never felt more apposite or cherished.
As it happens, our first course couldn’t be more pertinent: the Corsham Lamentations directed by Rory McCleery from the 20th to the 25th of March. We will sing settings of the prophet Jeremiah’s lamentation for the destruction of the city – Quomodo sedet sola civitas: how desolate lies the city – by Osbert Parsley and Thomas Tallis, with other penitential music by Robert White, Clemens non Papa and Nathaniel Giles. A group of thirty-two has been patiently waiting since its postponement last year, but there have been some who can no longer come, especially in the inner voices, so it’s well worth asking about vacant places if you would like to join us.
The year continues with a well-subscribed all-Lassus week in Dartmouth with Patrick Craig in April. Then from the 15th to the 20th of May we head for the Lake District and to one of Eamonn Dougan’s current enthusiasms, the under-recognised Spanish composer Juan Esquivel. Then follows a much looked-forward-to return to Monteconero in June, first for JanJoost van Elburg’s ‘Songs of loss and regret’ (12th to 18th), followed by Gabriel Crouch’s early music in Latin-American programme (19th to 25th). After that comes the Edinburgh Early Summer School from the 10th to the 15th of July. Rory McCleery and his wife are now expecting their second child around this time, so the week will now be directed by Rory Johnston, composer, conductor and protégé of Justin Doyle. There are a few soprano and bass places available in this week and new applicants would be welcomed. Then it’s to that wonderful Venetian port in Dalmatia, Trogir, for Patrick Craig’s Guy Fawkes programme (the 4th to the 9th of September), closely followed by our exciting new venue in Lucca (the 11th to the 17th of September) for the consort week with Robert Hollingworth. Most of these courses are full or nearly so, but there is the odd free place on all of them so it’s worth asking if you’re interested in joining us. At the moment Corsham (in under three weeks) and Edinburgh in July have the most free places.
A fascinating email arrived from Brussels a few weeks ago. It was attached to a whole hoard – there must be well over a hundred – of black and white photographs taken by Marc Lamote, who was singing bass in the chorus while his partner, my old friend Catou Pecher, was playing violin in the 1999 Lacock Summer School. That was the year of JanJoost van Elburg’s first Monteverdi Vespers. Marc is clearly a gifted photographer; there are many excellent portraits and pictures from every possible venue – the church, the house, the garden, the dining tent, the pub, a trip to Bath even. It’s well having a look – even if you weren’t there you may know or remember people who were. https://marclamote.smugmug.com/19990720-23-Lacock/.
Of course many of those photographed a quarter of a century ago are no longer with us. Alex Murchie, a university contemporary of mine, sang in the 1999 Vespers and has been a Lacock regular for as long as I remember. Leukaemia finally claimed her last summer. Here is her envoi from her last email: ‘As you will be well aware, I have enjoyed your courses immensely, and the friendships made have been hugely important to me. Have loved Deborah’s marvellous garden, and the New Year evening! So enjoyed knowing you and singing with you – keep it up! Big hugs . . .’ In the autumn we heard that heard that Robin Lomas had died of a brain tumour. He had discovered Lacock in more recent years, but was first-rate company and an ever-flowing spring of erudition, wit and charm. He had lived for a while in South Africa and was very keen for me to organise a course there. He organised a tour of Western Cape for Deborah and me in the autumn of 2019, taking us to possible venues and introducing us to local singers, including the excellent Cape Town Youth Choir and their impressive director Leon Starker.
I recently came across the clue ‘very hungry’ in a quick crossword in The Guardian. A few crossing letters and a lifelong diet of Latin Magnificats made it obvious that the required answer was ‘esurient’. Yes, it’s in the dictionary, but surely a word no well-balanced Englishman would think of uttering?
The pandemic has given us time to think about what happens next and we have decided that now is a good time to give up Cantax House. This Easter we will leave Lucy and Gog as our Wiltshire presence and Deborah and I will move back to our house in north London. Of course we’re having a massive clear-out, as anyone would after thirty-four years in one place, with no shortage of space to store all those things that might have turned out to be useful, but in fact didn’t. Deborah has realised that she has accumulated a large number of smaller works – maquettes, life sketches &c., in terra cotta or a cast stone that sculptors call ciment fondu – that her galleries weren’t particularly interested in as they sell for less than anything cast in bronze, three figure sums rather than four or five. She has decided to have a studio sale on Sunday the 20th of March. It won’t be widely advertised, just to friends and fellow artists. Anyone receiving this newsletter is welcome too, especially those of you with memories of Lacock. From 11am.
We have also found a little house in the south of France, on the border of the départements Lot and Dordogne. It’s near the historic small town of Gourdon, with its lively market and a large ancient church on the summit of its hill. It’s even got a station on the Paris to Toulouse line. A Lacock course venue? One of my first jobs will be to introduce myself to the maire and the priest. Stay tuned.
