A PLEA for wider access to choral music was heard at the annual conference of the Choir Schools’ Association (CSA) this month.
Participants raised concerns about the state of music provision in state schools, including the underdevelopment of children’s voices, and discussed the part played by the Church in offering help.
Speaking this week, the Precentor of Gloucester Cathedral, Canon Craig Huxley-Jones, described “unprecedented pressure” on school budgets. “I also think that pedagogically and philosophically we have pivoted really hard towards talking about STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] all the time. So, subjects like music were the nice-to-haves around the edge.”
A lack of professional music provision meant that some schools were “understandably” relying on pre-recorded music, which tended to be pitched low, “because it’s easy and people can quickly pick it up”, he said. “But what it means is that the voice just doesn’t get developed. You have choristers who arrive where you have to do some quite serious remedial work to get their voices up to the point where they can sing the Anglican repertoire.”
It was difficult to imagine a successor to James Partridge, who led a session singing “primary-school bangers” at Glastonbury last year, he suggested, now that fewer children were singing hymns in primary school. Couples in their twenties preparing for their wedding were often unable to name a single hymn that they wished to see in the order of service.
Concern about the fragility of the Anglican choral tradition has been voiced in the cathedral sector in recent months. Last year, the Royal Society of Church Music reported that two-thirds of church choirs had no under-18s. Its Hymnpact! initiative is designed to bridge school worship and church music (Features, 5 April 2024).
Joanna Forbes L’Estrange, a singer and composer who began singing in a “tiny” parish choir in Surrey at the age of seven, delivered a keynote speech at the CSA conference and echoed Canon Huxley-Jones’s concerns this week. She contrasted her own primary school, where a hymn was sung every morning, with that of her children, where there was no singing at all. When she and her husband visited to get the children “enthused and energised” about singing, she said, the teachers chastised pupils for jumping and “messing about”. “That’s what you need them to be like,” she said. “You’ve got to feel it in your body.”
A lack of hymns in school — “something that should have been about galvanising people and linking people” and was “integral to our culture” — could be the result of fears about “alienating” people, she said.
While emphasising that singing did happen in state schools, she said that she had observed a contrast with the independent sector, where, typically, a singing tradition already existed before her visits. “It’s not even just the physiology of it: it’s the fact that it’s normal to them to be asked to sing. It’s not embarrassing or cringy.”
Often, school houses would be asked to develop a “house song” at the start of the new year as a way of getting to know one another. “It’s something they are really proud of and take seriously, and I’d love to see that more in state schools.”
Music is a part of the national curriculum in England for ages five to 14: it says that all children should learn to sing. In 2023, Ofsted reported a “significant variation” in the quality of music education in both primary and secondary schools, but that the strongest aspect of the curriculum in primary schools was teaching pupils to sing. In 2024, the Cultural Learning Alliance warned of an “enrichment gap” as a wealthier background meant much greater participation in the arts.
Grappling with the charge of “elitism” a topics discussed at the conference, and some defending the pursuit of excellence. In recent years, some cathedrals have severed ties with the independent sector to recruit from state schools near by (News, 2 April).
Gloucester Cathedral retains its link with The King’s School, Gloucester, where choristers are eligible for a bursary of 40 per cent of fees with further support available from the CSA. To “stick the boot into the ancient foundation helps no one”, Canon Huxley-Jones said. But the cathedral was determined to “think creatively” about how to “pass this on to widest possible pool of young people”. Currently, it runs three choirs for local five-to-18s. It has also developed a partnership with a school in an area of deprivation to provide music provision.
The two older choirs each sing evensong once a week. “This isn’t about crumbs from the cathedral,” he said. “It’s about exposure to the rich Anglican choral tradition.”
Ms Forbes L’Estrange, whose work includes a new coronation anthem for King Charles, recalled the “refuge” that the church had offered during her childhood: “singing beautiful music in a lovely building with other people creating harmonies around me”.
Both she and her husband now write music for primary schools and have developed learning resources where “you just press play, and everything else is done.” She praised recent national initiatives, such as Sing Up.
“There have been lots of musicians over the decades who have recognised this need, but still somehow there needs to be a seismic culture shift,” she said. “It’s somehow convincing the people who make the big decisions that singing provision in schools is absolutely vital.”
The Church was “in a pretty good place to actually move the dial on music provision in schools”, Canon Huxley-Jones suggested. In Gloucester, he said, “It’s working, but, gosh! It’s hard work, because we are swimming against the tide here, culturally. You’ve got to have the resource to really, really go for it, but it is absolutely doable.”
Listen to an interview with Joanna Forbes L’Estrange on the Church Times podcast