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| Me as a Parish Church chorister |
I was brought up in a Methodist household. Non conformism being a gently informing quality within my family. Perhaps most clearly embodied by my Father. A unassuming man, who rebelled quietly. Like everything else about him as a man, it was rarely overtly expressed.
Temperamentally my Father took an independent path as a matter of course. From an early career finding his feet working on building sites, to becoming a self employed joiner and running his own small hardware shop, moved from a town to a village in order to run a corner shop, briefly became a milk man, then returned to being a specialist bespoke joiner, and building his own house in his late fifties. Observing in his retirement, Methodism's very evident slow decrepitude and decline. It's congregation literally dying off. He ended up learning to live with it, in a type of spiritually resigned disillusionment
As I write this, I'm recognising there is a personal legacy here. The idea. Lutheran in origin, of 'living your own truth'. A view I've picked up and held onto almost instinctively. Never quite comfortable conforming myself to fitting in, even in places and institutions I appear to have an affection for. Integrity existing in its purest fullest form, only outside of belonging to an institution. This status of outside looking in, is not entirely explained by my being gay, nor shyness, nor introversion, nor disillusionment. Though these have on occasions played their part. The circumstances of where and who I've found myself to be, frequently forged the direction life took.
Though the stronger personality traits are rarely the whole story. I also possess a self expressive extrovert side, that has to overcome the introversion. A love for the baroque that challenges the zen in me. The maximalist cohabiting within the minimalist. The desire for uninhibited devotional ritual, extravagantly expressed, and the purity of restrained austerity. These can be in contention, whilst both of them have their foundations in my childhood.
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| West End Methodist Chapel, Halifax |
Belonging to anything involves a deal being struck between individual authenticity and any communal context you find yourself belonging to. It's often worth sticking with the constriction and irritations, as they do teach you a lot about oneself, but there can come a moment when they just don't. The dialogue between you and the context you are in can cease to be a fruitful one. This is the point at which I tend to depart. It's a familiar dynamic to me.
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In retrospect, Methodism in its 20th century manifestation, felt analogous to the dried out hay meant to sustain cattle through the austere months of winter. Certainly well intentioned, but past its best. It was a religion stripped of its soul. I don't have fond memories, sacred or otherwise, to make me look back on my earliest encounter with faith, with little sentiment or appreciation.
But then my Mother discovered that her son, whose poor left to right hand coordination made playing a piano far from fluent, actually possessed a fine boy soprano singing voice. With an expressive strength belied by my young age. Piano lessons became quickly exchanged for singing lessons.
Methodism, as a Protestant form of Christianity, is pared back to the bone to what is deemed fundamental. A Non Conformist Chapel is the Christian equivalent of a Zen interior. Functionality rules, adorned with a framework of sparseness. It has no standing choral musical tradition of its own to speak of. There is rousing hymn singing, the belting out of organ and voice variety, that is primarily communal and democratic in structure. My Mother, bless her, through Miss Gilliat my primary school music teacher, obtained an audition for me to join the choir at the Church of England, Halifax Parish Church. Into which I was accepted.
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| Exterior Halifax Parish Church |
The organist and choirmaster, Neil Wade, was a small wiry man, probably someone I'd refer to these days as quietly camp, highly strung, with a nervous twittery demeanour. He possessed a broad passion for music that he skillfully communicated to his choir. A whole other religious world, a manner of devotion and ritual, was opening up to me.
Singing enables a union of bodily experience with an expanded sense of oneself, and of the sacred drawing closer through its commonality. Music, it is thought, predates spoken language. Language being a development and elaboration born out of vocal tone and pitch. Playing or singing music is self expressive, connects with something other and is a collective experience. It forges a bond of belonging with the possibility of self transcendence.
To a child brought up within the minimalist aesthetic of non conformism, it all felt extremely exotic, intoxicating soul fodder. Richer sounds and rituals plugged me in to the sacred in a way I couldn't explain rationally. I loved the big set piece rituals at Christmas and Easter. The candles, the incense, the sense of theatre, occasion and importance, fully embraced by the act of dressing up in a red cassock, white ruff and surplice.
When my boy soprano voice broke, that was also when my close, and unquestioning, connection with Christianity began to crack. Retrospectively I've tended to couched my time as a chorister as solely based on a love for collectively creating beautiful music. It's a view that purposefully ignores its depths. Misplacing what music, in conjunction with ritual, had been putting me in touch with. This had altogether a deeper volition than simply being entertained by performing it.
Early in life I'd toyed with the idea that maybe I might want to become a vicar. But then in my teenage years came a small, yet significant rebellion. The wooden crucifix placed atop my writing desk, found itself replaced by a ceramic Buddha. A figure I didn't understand the meaning of at the time. I somehow knew it was an alternative. This was a foreshadowing of a future direction.
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| Interior Halifax Parish Church |
My love for choral music fully blossomed in Halifax Parish Church, as did my 'church larking'. This was the first church, that on a weekly basis, I was able to explore in greater detail. Encouraged by the Church Warden, Mr Beavers, I had access to areas not normally open to the casual visitor. Halifax Parish Church is a classic example of how local church architecture evolves. With lots of very unique features that speak of both its local history and moral contribution to a Pennine wool town. Disparate, cranky elements, are somehow made to work together. All of it's external medieval ornamentation later to be soot blackened by the Industrial Revolution.
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| Interior Peterborough Cathedral |
Many decades later I'm with a Buddhist friend taking in the glories of Peterborough Cathedral. Just pottering and pondering. We stand in its vast echoing trancept, whilst the choir struck up a rehearsal for evensong. Instantly I recognise something about it, or in it. I physically shiver, a churning gut feeling, releases rushes of bliss-filled energy, I'm transfixed and tearful. Overwhelmed by the sense of decades of loss. I'd missed the intimacy, this musical relationship. The original feeling for what was sacred, that I'd not been in such close proximity to, for far too long.
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