Choir Trip to Ripon Cathedral

31st March - 2nd April 2006

I sing with Strathclyde University Chamber Choir and a few weeks ago we went on a cathedral trip to Ripon in Yorkshire. Ripon is the fourth smallest city in England with a population of just 16,500. It's a very twee little place with lovely Yorkshire cream teas, nice pubs and lovely countryside.

The cathedral has its own choir, made up of the boys who go to Ripon Cathedral Choir School, which is where most of us were staying. The school has about 140 children, of which about 50 are boarders. Apparently, they take boys as young as 3, though what they can do at that age is unclear. The choristers all have to board at the school so they can be available for rehearsals as and when needed, girls are not required to board. As it was the Easter holidays, the children had all gone home which means Cathedrals often get other choirs in to sing services. Choirs like ours use this as an opportunity to get some much-needed practice in so as to be able to send demos off to bigger, more presitigous cathedrals like York or Durham, so we can sing there some time.

I've done this sort of singing before when I was with the University of London Chamber Choir but didn't really get a feel for it until this time. As I'm not remotely religious, I used to find this sort of singing more tedious than anything else. It's not just church, it's the Anglican High Church which has very strict rituals and rules that have to be adhered to. As I don't know too much about the different demonitations in this country, I just got really confused cos it all seemed very Catholic to me, when it wasn't. But it is always amazing to sing in buildings such as these and you definitely feel a bit awed by it all.

We were there to sing the Evensong services over the weekend, as well as the Sunday Eucharist, which I think I'm right in saying is another word for Communion. The proceedings begin by the choir assembling whereever it is they've been told to and the priest/dean/man in cassock (Sorry! Not up on my church terminology!) comes along to open with a prayer and a couple of responses, which I have already forgotten but it's along the same lines as Priest: "God be with you", Choir: "And also with you." The choir then processes into the choir stalls whilst singing a processional hymn of some sort.

Again, I haven't the foggiest idea why, but in a cathedral you're only allowed to walk in straight lines, so when you process in, it's all a bit like a military operation - you have to know exactly where you're heading and, if there is ever a need to walk around a corner, you have to get to the pivot point and whip round so that you make the corner at a 90 degree angle. So far, I've always managed to avoid being the very first person in the line (too much responsibility!) but I did have to lead everybody just once over this weekend. Luckily it was on the Saturday, so I could use Friday to practise. Once you're in the stalls, you bow to the altar and the service proper can begin.

It's all a very rigid format, with most of the service sung rather than spoken. This entails singing the psalms, which is quite tricky. Normally, you just read your notes and words off your music, but the notation for psalms is a bit different. You're supposed to sing it as if it's spoken, so although you do get notes, there's no rhythm notated, you only know at which point in the words to change note. So it's really quite hard to get an entire choir of 30 or so people (most of whom have never done this before) all singing to the same rhythm. It's really hard to fight the temptation to fall into a regular da-da-da when you're stuck on one note. You have to keep thinking how you would phrase the words if you were speaking, so important words are ever so slightly longer etc. But I think we did a reasonable job and by the end of the weekend we were old hands. I actually quite enjoyed it in the end, which is good because I'd always found singing psalms the epitome of boredom. They're actually quite nice!

It being a formal occasion, we had proper choir robes to wear. I'm sure the boys who normally sing at Ripon look a lot smarter than we did, but I think the emphasis with our robes was on easy-care. Long, polyester blue jobbies that don't crease when you bundle them to the bottom of your bag and no shirts to keep pristinely ironed. We did all look a trifle silly (like a cheap immitation of Gregorian Chant) but it just wouldn't be the same if you weren't wearing a silly dress. At least we all looked silly together. With the exception of Alan, our conductor, who looked extremely dapper in his little black number! He only needed a dog collar and he'd have looked like a vicar!

We had a very busy, tight schedule for most of the weekend, what with rehearsals in the song room underneath the cathedral and 4 services to sing in three days. Obviously there were also very important visits to the local pubs and a slap-up Sunday lunch at The Deanery, which is to be highly recommended to anyone thinking of taking a trip to Ripon. All in all, it was fairly exhausting so those of us staying at the cathedral school (ie, the poor ones who couldn't afford to stay in a swanky hotel) fell into our child-sized beds pretty easily at night. Of course, it helped that the school cook made us the most delicous food I've ever seen - we were expecting youth hostel style slushy pasta and indeterminate stews, but no, we got the works. This tiny little old lady cooked us Shepherds Pie with home-made apple crumble for afters on the first night (there were only 11 of us staying there, she'd cooked for about 30!), we got ham with veg and a stupendous sticky toffee pudding on the Saturday night and it was roast chicken on Sunday for those who were staying on to sing on the Monday. I was heading back on the Sunday night a rather tired and rotund little chorister!

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