It’s the singing that still fills us with glee (From Worcester News)

It’s the singing that still fills us with glee

2:49pm Wednesday 9th November 2011 in Mike Pryce By Mike Pryce

IF you mention the word “glee”

in musical terms today, the chances are most people, and certainly the under-40s, would associate it with an American high school singing/dancing comedy drama which has taken television by storm.

It could be reasonably argued that the antics at William McKinley High in Lima, Ohio, have highjacked an ancient word at the very foundations of Worcester Festival Choral Society, a richly talented assembly of singers whom I doubt have ever performed a Tamla Motown song in their very long and distinguished existence.

Still, it’s good to see a single word pulling together the strands of the music universe from widely diverse points, because WFCS, celebrating its 150th anniversary this year, has its roots in a glee club formed in Worcester in 1810 and which met at the Crown Hotel in Broad Street, then a busy coaching inn.

The club attracted much local talent, not only among the working class, but also from the higher echelons of society, who were regular attendees at the already well-established Three Choirs Festival, an event that even in those days was more than a century old.

In 1861 the idea came, probably at the instigation of Worcester Cathedral organist William Done, to form a Festival Choral Society from the membership of the Crown Hotel Glee Club in order to create a pool of quality singers from which members could be drawn for the Three Choirs Festival chorus that was needed each year in turn at Worcester, Hereford and Gloucester.

The alternative was to import singers, often from distant northern towns.

The first rule book of the WFCS underlined the state of play: “The object of the society shall be the cultivation of choral music and the formation of a chorus fitted to take part in the triennial festivals”.

And it’s been pretty much the same for 150 years.

So far, so good, but throughout its history the society has faced a battle familiar to most minority interests – finance and audience attendance. By 1866, after only five years, it was more than £18 in debt “despite stringent economies having been made.” Ticket prices were increased but the following year there was a reported fall in subscribers from 100 to 60, presumably because of the more expensive tickets.

In her definitive history of the society, called A Prevailing Passion, long-time member Mary Parsons wrote: “It is certain at this time the parlous state of society finances was not helped by members’ cavalier attitude to paying their subscriptions on time, if at all, and this put the WFCS in a severely weakened position.”

There was another fly in the ointment, ironically born of the fledgling society’s success. As its reputation spread, more knowledgeable audiences turned up and to satisfy them members wanted to perform more challenging pieces. Unfortunately the orchestra couldn’t quite cope.

Or, as Mary Parsons, records: “William Done considered the band may not be equal to the challenge.”

At this point the whole show could have stopped not long after it started and because of these problems, following the 1868 concert no more were held for about 20 years.

However, as the title of the book says, choral music in Worcester has been a prevailing passion and its supporters refused to let it die.

The society was reconstituted in 1888 with a new rule book that required, among other things, members paid their subs on time.

There was also a 2d fine for the late return of music borrowed.

By then a chap by the name of Edward Elgar was a member of the band – he later became its leader – and his brother Frank and father William also performed occasionally. So things began to look up, but not before some of the snootier members of the society had railed against singing music by “Mr Elgar, who was, after all, only the son of a local tradesman, who had even been known to tune their pianos”.

It possibly didn’t help that Elgar was an enthusiastic supporter of the society’s new conductor Hugh Blair, who had succeeded the stoical William Done.

Blair couldn’t have been more different. He had a reputation as a heavy drinker, was once alleged to have been found drunk in the Cathedral’s organ loft on Christmas morning, and according to records “showed weaknesses in his consistency with regard to rehearsals and other matters”.

Nevertheless, Elgar wrote to a friend in 1890: “Blair and I are pulling together here and making things lively.”

Unfortunately it didn’t last long.

Before the end of the century Blair had been compelled to resign and he subsequently left Worcester under something of a cloud, although history doesn’t record the nature of the cloud.

His departure heralded the arrival in 1897 of Ivor Atkins, born in Llandaff, Wales, who was to become a legend in choral music circles. Atkins was organist and choirmaster at Worcester cathedral for more than half a century – 53 years in fact, from 1897 to 1950 – and his association, both with Elgar the man and his music, cemented the place of Worcester Festival Choral Society in music circles.

More recently the torch has been carried by series of distinguished conductors, including David Willcocks, Donald Guest, Christopher Robinson, Dr Donald Hunt and currently Adrian Lucas, who will conduct WFCS’s 150th anniversary concert, a performance of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, in Worcester Cathedral on the evening of Saturday, November 19, at 7.30pm.

It promises to be some occasion.

Remembered long after a passing teenage craze has been forgotten.