THE VILLAGE CHOIR

One of the most enjoyable programmes of television recently, for me at any rate, was Ashley Pharoah’s adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree. It is Hardy’s sunniest novel, the story of three very different men’s attempts to win the hand of the beautiful young schoolmistress, Fancy Day.

But of course there is a sub-plot, which though not ignored, was naturally underplayed: the passing of the old-style village choir, who had provided the music in Mellstock Church for centuries, and the introduction of a new organ. This reflected a major social and theological change on the part of the church. Until the Reformation, worship was largely sacramental, a ceremony conducted in the chancel by the priest and his acolytes, watched in awe by the people in the nave. All this changed in the sixteenth century, and for three hundred years the church became a preaching house, with the parson placed high in his triple tiered pulpit right among the congregation. A gallery was built at the back of almost every church to house a motley band of singers and instrumentalists, who simply followed the instructions of the parish clerk, who announced and intoned the psalms. Hymns were forbidden, unless they were paraphrases of the scriptures.

These musicians became fiercely independent and often rebellious - perhaps ten or fifteen singers, who also played a variety of instruments, fiddles, clarinets, cellos, bassoons and the wonderful but hideous-sounding serpent. They were largely self-taught and extemporised their own harmony, but as time went by skills improved, and Hardy’s own church at Puddletown, Dorset, boasted no less than fifteen instrumentalists. Music inevitably became more elaborate, and John Foster’s arrangement of While shepherds watched was scored for a four-part choir and full orchestra. But far more usual were more rumbustuous settings, like the same words to the tune of Ilkla Moor baht’at, which caused some raised eyebrows when we sang it in St. Peter’s a few years ago!

From 1830 onwards the largely Oxbridge-educated clergy began their long war against gallery choirs, replacing instrumentalists with barrel organs and harmoniums, and the altar at the east end of the church regained its dominant position. Surpliced choirs were introduced in imitation of cathedral practice, and the publication of Hymns Ancient and Modern in 1861 effectively brought an end to the old tradition. What relevance has all this today? Few west galleries remain, that in St. Peter’s, where the great John Small played his bass viol for an astonishing seventy-five years, having been taken out during Blomfield’s restoration of 1874 and East Meon’s removed five years earlier.

The inspiration for Hardy’s Mellstock, Stinsford, between Puddletown and Dorchester, lost its gallery in 1843, though a new one was built there ten years ago.

They are still to be seen in some remote village churches. At Corhampton, in the Meon Valley, for example. This little Saxon church, hidden behind a huge yew tree, and famous for its wall-painting of St. Swithun, retains its gallery, which ironically had an organ placed on it in 1853, just as it has at Idsworth, though here the gallery was actually rebuilt during Goodhart-Rendel’s restoration of 1913.

Both churches are tiny, and it is easy to imagine the impact of those raucous singers and instrumentalists, and, especially at Idsworth, of the parson, perched high in his pulpit, with the inscription “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet…” on the wall close by. Yet, rightly or wrongly, there is a parallel between the passing of the Mellstock choir and the present day. During the past thirty years many churches have lost their traditional choir, and indeed their organ, the upkeep of which can be prohibitive, to be replaced by a music group, accompanied by guitars and synthesisers, whilst hymnbooks are sometimes jettisoned for overhead projectors. The ghosts of Hardy and John Betjeman must be turning in their graves. Tom Muckley, February 2006

This article was originally published by the Petersfield Post

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