The Somerville College Choir concert at the Bom Jesus Basilica Old Goa on December 12 this year was a historic one for Goa in terms of choral excellence. It was also the curtain-raiser to the jubilee 15th year milestone celebration of Child’s Play India Foundation.
This “robust, gorgeous toned young choir” was made up of 33 singers from Somerville College and the wider Oxford student community.
While some were choral scholars, the rest came from a diverse mix of student backgrounds, from history to medicine.
The choir’s recent album, ‘The Dawn of Grace’, featuring music for Christmas by women composers, has received wide ranging acclaim from around the world, and was named as Christmas Choice Album by BBC Music Magazine, 2022.
The Goan audience was privileged to hear several tracks from that album: ‘Behind the Clouds’ by Abbie Burt Betinis (b. 1980); ‘There is no rose’ (Cecilia McDowall b. 1951); and ‘Star of Rohini (Shruthi Rajsekar b. 1996).
In general, the selection of works performed included “music for Advent; music about the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of the Lord; and music about the journey of the Three Kings, who brought Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh; and finally a section of arrangements of traditional Christmas melodies”.
With just a few exceptions, the majority of the programme was sung ‘a cappella’ (unaccompanied by any musical instrument) in highly intricate polyphony, harmony and counterpoint.
Watching and listening to this youthful choir in rehearsal and concert was quite a revelation. With a strength of just ten sopranos, eight altos, seven tenors and eight bass, they were the collective embodiment of the maxim ‘Less is more’. Each singer was supremely confident of his or her part and could be placed at will wherever the best acoustic advantage was to be found.
Indeed, at their concert in Delhi, their conductor, Director of Chapel Music Will Dawes had the choir placed all around the periphery of the concert space, enveloping the audience in a stereophonic sonic cathedral.
At the Goa concert too, there was no “safety in numbers” huddling of singers according to voice type. Dawes spent some of the very brief rehearsal time ascertaining which work on the programme would be best served by the ideal placement of voices.
In ‘Omnes de Saba’ (All they from Sheba) by the late Renaissance composer Orlando de Lassus (c. 1532-1594), the musical equivalent of ‘mitotic division’ was called for. The text taken from Isaiah 60:6 and Psalm 71:10 is a blazing double-choir account of the prophecy of the visitation of the Magi.
The choir displayed its stylistic versatility, following from 1500s Lassus to modern jazz with ‘Follow that Star’ by English singer and composer Peter Gritton (b. 1963). One could go on with further breathless accounts of the rest of the programme if space permitted.
I asked Dawes how he manages to get such stunning results with a revolving-door stream of student singers; each year about 12 to 13 graduate out of the college and so an equal number has to be auditioned and trained annually.
Watching them in rehearsal, pencils at the ready even just before the concert, making notes about the finer points of diction, phrase lengths and breath control, one can imagine just how immersive the twice-weekly sessions round the year must be. The results were gloriously audible that night.
It was the model of college and university choirs like these that led me to propose the idea of a university choir here in Goa in the first place. My name has been deliberately expunged from the record for vested reasons, but I have the paper and digital trail that prove the idea first came from me. It was meant to be a choir for university students from all walks of life, academic disciplines and socio-economic backgrounds, a true choir of, for, and by the youth. Instead, what eventually resulted was a vainglorious travesty that was neither student-driven, youthful nor interested in excellence, despite all the hyperbolic hoopla written by chamchas in print and digital media.
That none of the ‘vainglorious cabal’ even came to this choral concert of such sterling quality gives the lie to their much-ballyhooed ‘love of music’. But it was a learning opportunity missed: that shouting, shrieking and screaming in mammoth numbers is not quite the same thing as singing. That there are nuances of tone, colour and dynamics that only come with serious dedicated work; that “less is more” in so many musical instances. That when singing, especially in a house of God, the music and the text glorifying that same God are paramount, not photo or video opportunities to preen and bask in the limelight.
But we at Child’s Play continue regardless with our commitment to the future of children and young people. ‘Songs of Hope’ is a choral workshop with noted choral conductor Marie Bejstam (Sweden) organised in collaboration with Crescendo Centre for Music, at St Xavier’s Campus Mapusa, from January 4-7 2024. Entry is free. At the time of writing, there have been 66 registrations, so we are already heartened by the response.
I feel so blessed to have found a kindred spirit in Rajendra (‘Raj’) Fernandes D’Pietro, a consummate musician who shares an untiring passion for coaching children and youth and has an impressive body of work with so many young choirs: Crescendo choir (Mapusa), Archangel Voices (Anjuna) and now our Child’s Play Chorus.
Many of you will have watched Bejstam’s a cappella arrangement of ‘Tambde Rosa’ that her choir ‘Vocal Colours’ (Sweden) sang at our benefit concert four years ago. It is the nuanced quality and calibre of young voices like Vocal Colours and the Somerville College choir that we at Child’s Play wish to emulate and sow the seeds of here in Goa. Parents among you, please send your children to this workshop. Join us in singing ‘Songs of Hope’ for the future.
A very Happy New Year 2024 to all!
(Dr. Luis Dias is a physician, musician, writer and founder of Child’s Play India Foundation. He blogs at luisdias.wordpress.com)