Choral tradition on song

THESE DAYS, caught between galloping doom and gloom and the nagging feeling that Irishness is synonymous with negligence and catastrophe, it comes as a pleasant surprise – a shock, even – to discover there's something we do reasonably well. That something is the Irish choral tradition, which – if the evidence of concerts given by the National Chamber Choir at St Ann's Church, Dublin and at Queen's University, Belfast this month is anything to go by – is very much alive and kicking, writes ARMINTA WALLACE

Clicking, even. One of the pieces on a programme described as "a collection of work exploring Ireland's influence in choral music" was an exuberantly explosive song about a squirrel in the Xhosa language, One Day Fine, by the South African composer Kevin Volans, who is now an Irish citizen. There was also a sumptuous slice of 13th century plainchant in honour of St Patrick, sung in Latin; a set of delightful Songs of Springtimeby the Norfolk-born composer Ernest John Moeran, whose father was Irish, and who died in Kenmare in 1950; and Ian Wilson's heart-stoppingly beautiful Irish-language setting of a text from the Song of Solomon, The Beloved and her Lover. The latter is barely four months old, having first been unveiled in Cashel in September. Also on the programme, a mysterious "very old Irish tune" – which turned out to be Danny Boy.

It made for an impressive evening of music – and if you’re now kicking yourself for having missed it, don’t worry. You’ll be able to catch up when it’s recorded on CD by Lyric FM next April. Most Irish people, though, would probably raise an eyebrow at the idea that we’ve had any influence on choral music.

“Well,” says the National Chamber Choir’s artistic director and chief conductor, Paul Hillier, “it depends what you mean by ‘influence’. But I think there has been a very strong presence, in all sorts of different ways – both musical and in the ideas around the word ‘Irish’. Because when we’re talking about vocal music, we’re also talking about words; and there’s the fantastic poetic tradition in Ireland as well, which has been such a huge influence, especially in the 20th century.”

Perhaps it took an Englishman to point it out to us. A conductor of pinpoint accuracy and eclectic interests who works with choirs in Copenhagen and Portugal as well as the NCC, Hillier is also the founder of the now-legendary Hilliard Ensemble, the author of a collection of musical rounds, the editor of a collection of Steve Reich's essays on music and the possessor of a Grammy for his 2006 recording of Arvo Pärt with the Estonian Chamber Choir. At the mention of a Grammy, he wrinkles his nose. "Hmm," he says. "My Theatre of VoicesCD has just been nominated for another one. I don't know if we'll get it, though." It all augurs well for the forthcoming disc from the National Chamber Choir. But where did the idea for the project come from?

“It didn’t start with Irish music, particularly,” he says. “We wanted to make a CD that people would like, and I said, ‘Well, that’s fine, but I want to do pieces that I like too’. I didn’t know about Ian’s piece, but the choir had done it before – and they enjoyed it so much they said, ‘Could we do this piece again?’ And then I began to realise that we could actually put together an interesting CD with an Irish theme running through it. You could have attractive and varied music, and at the same time have this identity.”

Can he put his finger on anything specifically “Irish” about the National Chamber Choir, as opposed to the other groups he has worked with? “Working with this group is very much like working with an English choir – when I compare it to the other groups, especially the choir I work with in Portugal,” he says. “Now, if I only worked in England and Ireland, I suspect I’d notice how Irish it all is. Of course, there’s quite a connection between London and Dublin in terms of professional singing.”

It’s a connection which, it’s beginning to dawn on us, works both ways. We’ve always been – almost inordinately – proud of Irish singers who “make it big” in London and elsewhere. On the compositional side, however, we’ve been rather more reluctant to embrace the “Anglo” side of the Anglo-Irish tradition. If one were to compile a list of Irish composers, the name Charles Villiers Stanford might not immediately spring to mind. His choral works sit at the centre of what we usually think of as the English “cathedral” tradition and he spent most of his working life in Cambridge; yet Stanford was born in Dublin in 1852, making him at least as “Irish” as Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw.

There is no requirement on members of the choir to be Irish, of course; the whole point is the quality of the singing and musicianship, not the nationality. For soprano Deirdre Moynihan, however, who is Irish, and whose exquisitely floated notes on the top line of Wilson's The Beloved and Her Loverearned her a hug from the composer at the end of the National Chamber Choir's Dublin concert, part of the joy of the piece lies in its synthesis of traditional and classical elements. "I come from a family that's steeped in both traditional and classical music," she says. "And that piece, in particular, combines both – the vocal line has traditional ornamentation and all that – so it was a really enjoyable experience. Although it's not every day you have the composer sitting in front of you – and that obviously hikes up the nerves a little bit."

Those Xhosa plosives also presented quite a challenge. “We were fortunate to have a lady from South Africa who spoke that language. She came in to tutor us, and to help pronounce the clicks and all the rest. It was a real learning experience for us – there was a lot of variety in that concert, which made for an enjoyable rehearsal period as well as what, I hope, was an enjoyable performance.”

Moynihan no longer sings full-time with the National Chamber Choir, but has embarked on a freelance career and will be singing contemporary music with the Crash Ensemble, as well as early music with her pianist cousin Fionnuala, in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Variety is, it seems, the spice of an Irish choral life.

The NCC embarks on a three-city tour of Handel's Messiahthis week in conjunction with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, after which it will retire to the Shaw Room at the National Gallery of Ireland for a programme entitled Christmas Tidings. The latter will open with a mouth-watering 12-part motet by Giovanni Gabrieli and an eight-part arrangement by Michael Praetorius of In Dulci Jubilo– and if works by a baroque Italian and a German hymn-writer don't strike you as particularly Irish or indeed particularly traditional, well, you may just have to think again.

"Christmas is such a time for tradition," says David Brophy, who will be conducting the choir for this concert. "Whether we go to our mammies for Christmas dinner or they come to us – and on Christmas Eve, people all meet up in town or whatever. The ritualistic side of it is very important. And I always think at Christmas, music comes into its own in a way that it doesn't at any other time of year. We do anchor traditions on music, even if it's just singing Hark the Heraldat Mass on Christmas morning. And, you know, the 16th century tradition of polyphony is still living – because we're still singing it. It's not all about music by dead people. It's living because we're doing it. We sing Gabrieli differently now to how it was sung 50 years ago. So this concert is teeming with tradition – but not necessarily the tradition that we all assume. There are lots of parallel living traditions."

There is, though, Brophy argues, such a thing as a distinctly Irish approach to Christmas music. “There’s the notion of everybody ending up singing together, and I’m curious to see whether I can bring that intimacy to a concert setting.”

Happily, there’s no argument at all about the Irishness of Shaun Davey, whose music – in the shape of a set of newly-composed carols, offered as a gift to the choir from the composer – will bring the concert to a close.

“It started off with a very simple request: ‘Have you got a carol?’” Brophy explains. “Always, when I approach Shaun and say, ‘Will you write something?’, he says, ‘Great’. And he goes off into his little hut outside his house in the garden and then comes up with four or five things.”

The original plan was to have two of Davey's carols, Carol of the Birdsand An Oíche a Rugadh Mac Dé (The Night the Son of God was Born), with Davey himself accompanying the choir on harmonium. As rehearsals progressed, however, the twins turned out to be part of a quintuplet set – the very epitome, perhaps, of a "living" tradition.

“We’re workshopping them all this week,” says Brophy. “And we’re going to try and get some instrumentalists to come in as well. So there might be a good session at the end of the night.” And if that isn’t Irish, I don’t know what is.

The National Chamber Choir/Irish Chamber Orchestra's Messiah, conducted by Jonathan Cohen, is at City Hall, Cork (Thursday, December 17th); University Concert Hall, Limerick (Friday 18th); and the RDS Concert Hall, Dublin (Saturday 19th). Christmas Tidings, conducted by David Brophy, is at the Shaw Room, National Gallery of Ireland on Tuesday, December 22nd at 3pm

“I always think at Christmas, music comes into its own in a way that it doesn’t at any other time of year. We do anchor traditions on music, even if it’s just singing Hark the Herald at Mass on Christmas morning