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Andrew Mellor salutes the organist and choir trainer, 80 this year, who came fromnowhere to change procedures and standards in church music-making for ever

ICONS

Barry Rose

On May 17, 1961, the first cathedral to be designedentirely to order in England since St Paul's wasconsecrated. Almost everything about the place

and the event was unusual. The cathedral wasn't situatedwithin the town it served, but overlooking it. It was encasedin utilitarian red bricks instead of carved and cantileveredstonework. But inside it on that day - resounding throughthe pure, minimalist nave described by Pevsner as 'curvilineargothic' - a choir sang that could stand comparison with thebest of its kind. Its boys and men had been singing togethernot for seven centuries, but for seven months.

The next day, the composer Herbert Howells scribbleda handwritten note to GuildfordCathedral's organist, BarryRose. 'So many of us, towhom music in the churchand cathedral means so much,will wish you, as I do, constantsupport and happiness in yourwork at Guildford,' wrote Howells. As he did so, Rose wasreadying his choir to sing the new cathedral's inauguralEvensong - the very first in a cycle of daily sung services thatcontinues to this day.

Guildford Cathedral was never supposed to have dailychoral services. For a period, it wasn't even supposed tohave a choir (one early concept was for a 'spoken word'cathedral; the interior of Sir Edward Maufe's building was tobe lined with plaster designed acoustically to favour speechover music). But Rose had different ideas. As a 25-year-oldinsurance salesman turned jobbing choir trainer without auniversity education, he wasinterviewed for the Guildfordjob and stormed out -frustrated by the academicapproach of the selectionpanel. But his insistence thatthe new building should havedaily singing struck a chordwith one of them. WaiterBoulton, Guildford's provost,chased Rose into the streetand persuaded him to visitGuildford the next day. Rosedid, and was offered the jobthere and then. Immediatelyhe set about establishinga choir that would changechurch music-making inBritain - both stylisticallyand logistically.

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I first heard that choir on a 2001 episode of BBC Radio'sChoral Euensong - the programme Rose went on to produce,exercising a significant influence on the sound of so manyecclesiastical choirs throughout the land. It was a retrospectiveepisode marking 75 years of the programme, compilingarchived excerpts from the best broadcasts down the years. Allthe Guildford choir sang was a chanted portion of Psalm 119,recorded in 1974. But that was enough. It told you exactlywhy these musicians had become the stuff of legend. Therewas the airy, ethereal tone of the famous Choir of King'sCollege, Cambridge, but without any of their occasionalmanners, edge or strain. It was, to call on a horrendous cliche,

an utterly heavenly sound:floating, glowing, patient,rich, astoundingly blendedyet rooted in the text.

Rose built it all on a wingand a prayer. His Guildfordtrebles began with minimal

experience and no senior boys to learn from by osmosis; hismen were underpaid and itinerant but came to Guildford -often from the back rows of far more famous choirs - to bepart of something special, something new. Technology wasvital. Rose would record services and play the results back tokeep the learning curve steep. Soon enough, the choir forged arelationship with EM! that saw it make what was, for over twodecades, the best-selling church music recording in history:'Christmas Carols from Guildford Cathedral' (1966, the firstclassical recording on the Music for Pleasure imprint). Aroundthe same time, and long before the LSO and RLPO did the

same, the choir formed itsown label (Guild Records),gifting itself autonomy andcontrol in the process.

After a decade and a halfin Guildford, Rose movedto St Paul's, and from thereto St Albans. Both cathedralchoirs felt the effects of hisunrelenting high standards.Following his retirement in1997 he became a frequentvisitor to cathedral musicdepartments (more oftenChelmsfords and Blackburnsthan Winchesters andCanterburys), impartinggentle wisdoms to choristersconcealed in his endearingordinary-bloke manner.

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'lt was an utterly heavenly sound-floating, glowing, patient, rich

and astoundingly blended'

'1960Rose is controversially appointed the first Organist at GuildfordCathedral- having walked out of the selection interview.

'I964Rose's Guildford choir makes its first recording for EMI;Gramophone concludes that 'the choir is ineffably smooth'.

'I967Rose and his right-hand Guildford lay clerk Roger Lowmanform Guild Records - engineering, producing and editingrecordings themselves.

'I981After seven years at St Paul's Cathedral, Rose masterminds themusic for the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.

'I988Rose takes his last cathedral music position: Master of the Musicat St Alban's Abbey in Hertfordshire.

And in his 80th year, his legacy is palpable. The model ofa permanent presence 'downstairs' - the 'organist' workingwith his choir, an assistant organist accompanying it - wasnurtured by Rose. It was he who proved that an ensemble ofchildren and adults could sing daily to the highest standardswithout the support of a choir school. His shepherding ofthe weekly Choral Evensong programme in the 1970s and'80s saw his ideas about blend, tone and text - particularly inpsalm-singing (a homage to one of his great musical heroes,George Guest) - seep into choir stalls around the land. That,and Cboral Evensong became a properly 'produced' entity:a programme in which individual musical and architecturalcharacteristics were celebrated.

Appropriately, given the non-Establishment footing ofthe whole Guildford project, many of the choir's recordingshave been posted online (some on YouTube, some on Rose's

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own website, barrvrose.co.uk), Even at their most homespun,you sense something special in them - a mixture of cohesion,zest and transcendence that calls to mind Rose's famous,Furtwangler-like remark to his singers that 'the beat isirrelevant'. Rose wanted his musicians to feel the music theywere singing just like he did. Only that way would choirs,congregations and listeners grow to love it like he did, too. 0

THE ESSENTIAL RECORDINGVaughan WilliamsFantasia on Christmas CarolsJohn Barrow barGuildford Cathedral Choir I Barry RoseWarner Classics ® 567427-2 (12/66")

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