Out of sorts, obviously

Last Friday (today is Tuesday, for me) I was supposed to go to my old church's "Christmas dinner". Originally cancelled because of lack of interest, it was re-arranged to February. The O&C was to pay for the meal of all the choir and a drink for everyone. There were to be 33 people there, so you can imagine. (There aren't 33 people in the choir, there were guests and spouses and partners, and both churchwardens. The choir numbers about 15 people at best on a Sunday, usually just double figures.)

To show willing since I have no official connection with the church any more, I turned up to the practice beforehand. My pupil, T, was playing. Somehow he was not at the console, so I crept in and got to the console unnoticed. As the O&C was playing a hymn on the piano (poor thing, should be put out of its misery, about 80 years past its play-by date) I joined in on the organ, just a 1/4-tone above concert pitch. All was fun. Happy happy happy. I got off the console as T had come back in the church and was to play the rehearsal.

Anyway, as he got on the console, the O&C told T that the psalm sheet T had prepared had an error on it, so they would go to a previous version. T hadn't seen that chant before (he's only just out of his teens) and had to try to learn it in the (and I am *not* exaggerating) 30 seconds before the choir rehearsal of it started.

Now, I have 36 years experience of Anglican Chant and its accompaniment, and I'd have found that a tad tough. But to do that to a 20-year-old of about Grade 6 standard is unfair. So O&C noticed wrong notes (potentially right in that they fitted another version), and decided to shout "CHECK" every time he noticed a "wrong" note. (He missed some.) But since some of the "wrong" notes were the same every time, I really didn't know why he bothered. It was a display of arrogance and disdain of T's feelings and professional competance beyond anything he'd ever done to me, whilst I was his assistant.

Now, I don't know if I'm fair in putting this in the public domain, but I found his attitude so bad I refused to go to the "Christmas" meal. I emailed him about it as well, saying he owed T an apology.

O&C is a tactical genius (in his own opinion). He didn't reply, instead he said I wasn't well when he was asked why I wasn't at the meal (which I understand was pretty average, but from only one choirmember). He then emailed T to say he loved the new music T had chosen and O&C had accepted, and proposed a solution to the magically changing chant: that it should be settled before the previous Sunday. Now, I am no genius, but even I (when I was organist in a parish position) started rehearsing difficult music at the beginning of a new term. But O&C has put down the Allegri Miserere for two weeks into next month, for Ash Wednesday. He hasn't started rehearsing it yet, and the choir (for the most part, including the children) don't know it. But for these occasions, he gets in extras, and gets a glowing reputation for it.

So who's right? Me, when I take a term teaching Joubert's There is no Rose to an ordinary parish choir, or O&C for packing the back-benches with old pros and leaving the regular members completely at sea on the day and told to "sing quietly"? And who gets the plaudits and deputy conductorship of a local choral society? Certainly not me...

Seriously, not sour grapes. But superficial results annoy me, especially where the regular choir has been striving (for all of two or three weeks) to learn Eccard's When Mary, and somehow it comes off, not because of their sustained effort, but because a few drinks have been bought for a quartet brought in for the occasion.

I think a parish choir should be for the parish, and from the parish. If other (and wildly grandiose) music is put down, then the choir should either spend time learning it, to their edification, or it should not be put down in the first place. The O&C took the choir to a major cathedral to sing a week in 2007. With "suitable" reinforcements, of course. This didn't stop him having virtual hysterics at everyone, coming up with various stupid ideas whilst there, and annoying both churchwardens - both came. The Rector didn't bother.

Wow! What a whinge.