Most of the time, our music writers spend their time discussing what they see and hear in our concert halls and opera houses and listening to what emerges from the recording studio. There's nothing wrong with that, and no picture of our musical life would be complete without proper attention to these places.
But the picture thus painted is not the full one. In fact, it is in some ways extremely misleading, because most of these music writers pay almost no attention to performances in the arenas in which arguably the majority of our national musical life takes place. I refer, of course, to our churches.
This critical neglect is at its most brazen and indefensible in the month of December, as this is when the centrality of the church to modern British musical life impinges most obviously. A religious point could be made about this—but I am seeking to make only a musical one.
I am not going to argue that the average carol concert is a musical event that deserves the same critical attention that is lavished on the secular concert hall—although some of them may be. But these concerts are among the most widely attended musical occasions in the calendar, as well as some of the most participatory. The best of them are also extremely well performed.
It is also at these concerts that the music of one of Britain's very few genuinely popular classical composers is regularly performed. You would never know this by reading the critics. Condescension towards the work of John Rutter can come from the church—which does not find him religious enough—as well as from music critics, who refuse to treat him as a serious musician. Radio 3 largely ignores him. Rutter is nevertheless one of the tiny number of indisputably successful composers in this country today. He is the leading contemporary mainstay of the British choral tradition. Like him or loathe him, December is his month.
December is also Messiah month in the churches of Britain. The position of Handel's oratorio in this country's musical life remains unique—and it shows no sign of weakening in the 21st century. With the exception of the (much shorter) national anthem, there is no more important piece of music in the country. Certainly no full-length piece bears an equivalent civic weight in urban Britain. None has a communitarian role to approach it. Yet Messiah has very broad shoulders. Although it is a devotional work, in practice it plays a largely secular role in British life.
Only this wider cultural status can fully explain Messiah's continuing salience. The good news is that, if anything, there seem to be more performances of Messiah nowadays than there were a generation ago. This is partly because the revolution in performance style means smaller bands and smaller choruses are not just acceptable, but even preferred, and partly because performances of Messiah are so bankable. One might even say that, as the importance of the Church of England declines, so that of Messiah increases.
Unique though Messiah is, it is not alone. December is also a month in which it is routinely possible to encounter performances in our churches of other significant seasonal works—among them the Christmas oratorios of Bach and Schütz, Berlioz's L'enfance du Christ and Britten's St Nicolas. No other season or commemorative event—Easter and Remembrance Sunday are the only distant challengers—is as musical.
So, when you listen to the broadcast of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from Cambridge on Christmas Eve—an event for which, I confess, I have an aversion—it is only right to recognise that it is one of the annual peaks of this country's massive, far-flung and deeply rooted network of church music and music in churches. Go to any medium-sized town in Britain and the chances are that its musical life exists overwhelmingly in its churches. There are more cathedrals than concert halls in Britain, and the music they support is very diverse, by no means exclusively religious and often of an extremely high standard. None of this is exactly a secret. But it would be good for the musical culture of this country if the music establishment paid it more attention.
First, they came for the staging
First they came for the stage directions—let's make opera more relevant by overruling the composer's setting. Now they have come for the libretto—let's make opera have more impact by changing the words. It won't be long before they come for the music—let's make opera more accessible by changing all those boring notes. Believe me, in the light of this production of Carmen, it's only a matter of time.
