On 28th August we said goodbye to Lee for a term. Here he explains a little about what he will be doing. During his absence Ralph Allwood will take over and we attach a short biography and a personal message from Ralph whom we look forward to welcoming on 11th September.
I was delighted when my Headmaster at London Oratory School granted me a term’s sabbatical leave after 15 years service and he encouraged me to do something big and different. After some head scratching and a flirtation with the Catholic Cathedral in Sydney, I eventually decided that the main feature of the leave would be to travel to Sao Paolo in Brazil and undertake a programme of musical study, private practise, some teaching and musical networking and, more generally, time to reflect upon my own faith and teaching at LOS and at Hampstead.
The Sao Paolo part of the sabbatical has two main aims: the first, to study Gregorian chant and chant semiology at the Monastery of Sao Bento. The practice of singing and teaching chant here is highly respected and the largest and most important centre in South America and one of the largest in the Americas in general. This will involve my absorbing the chant and daily office on two days per week and some individual tuition from monks. I hope to increase my knowledge of how chant is performed and interpreted and used as part of the rhythm of daily worship and liturgy in a fully functioning and lively Benedictine community. I will also be looking at different historical approaches to chant, how to conduct it effectively and also to accompany it.
The second aim of the SP visit is to teach part time at St Paul’s International School where I am to assist and advise their Director of Music in choral training and the musical teaching of preparatory aged children in particular. I will study Latin American music as used in Brazilian Schools (in particular the use of percussion and effective teaching through rhythm and dance) and on behalf of the school have been asked to meet outside musical agencies in Sao Paolo and aim to engage them in work at the school, particularly those involved in more formal vocal study and western classical traditions.
Towards the end of my stay I will move Rio de Janeiro where I hope to have some experience working at a number of churches, along with others, with our partner church and Nicholas Wheeler, offering any help, musical or non-musical that I can. It’s this part of the trip which will also be the most relaxing and I fully intend to spend the New Year on Copacabana beach! All in all, I would expect to have more time to practise the piano and organ and to read educational musical books and journals. I will take some organ lessons at the conservatoire in Sao Paolo, where they are particularly experienced at ‘early music’: an area in which I will benefit from further study and development. I would also hope to resurrect lessons in conversational Portuguese! It will be very strange indeed being away from HPC at such a special time and after so many years. I know you will have a great time with Ralph Allwood, who is an amazing musician and intellect. I want to thank Stephen and the PCC most sincerely for allowing me this time away. I will think of you all throughout Advent and Christmas and look forward to seeing you again in January, when I return on the13th.
Lee Ward
Ralph Allwood
Ralph Allwood was until recently Precentor and Director of Music at Eton College. He was a pupil at Tiffin School and graduated from Durham University in 1972 with the Eve Myra Kysh prize for music, conducting the University Chamber Choir from 1970-1972. He was later a member of the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge under Sir David Willcocks and then became Director of Music at Pangbourne College. While Director of Music at <Uppingham> he founded the annual Choral Courses <The Eton Choral Courses> for prospective choral scholars. There are now seven Eton Choral Courses attended each year by four hundred singers aged between 16 and 20, and 100 have now been held. Next summer is the 30th Anniversary of the courses. He is a judge for the Llangollen International Eisteddfod <Llangollen International Eisteddfod> and is a regular visitor to several Welsh choirs, including the National Youth Choir of Wales. Most recent choral travels have taken him to Nantes, Philadelphia, Canberra, Beijing and Minneapolis. <Eton College Chapel Choir>, which he directs, has toured Israel, the Arabian Gulf, America, France, England, Ireland, Japan, Hong Kong, the Czech Republic, South Africa, China and Italy. It has appeared in the Bruges Festival, and has released eight recordings, most recently withSignum. He also directs the Windsor and Eton Choral Society and the Rodolfus Choir. The latter, a young choir made up of the best singers from the last four or five years’ Eton Choral Courses, have released recordings <Visit the Rodolfus Choir CD Shop> of music by Tallis, Francis Grier, Bax and Villette, English Folk Song arrangements, arrangements by Gottwald and the Monteverdi Vespers with the Southern Sinfonia. A disc of Howells <Howells: Choral Works> with Signum is the latest, and the Bach B minor mass <Bach: B minor Mass> will shortly be recorded. He is a choral advisor for Novello and Co, for the National Youth Choir of Great Britain and for the Voices Foundation.
“Having just left Eton, Lee asked me to take over at Hampstead till Christmas, and I was delighted, partly because of the fear of being idle on a Sunday after 42 years of highly enjoyable activity, partly because of the excellent church and the choir, most of whom I seem to know from Eton Choral Courses and partly because I’ve been hearing about Hampstead all my life from my father, who spent the first twenty-one years of his life above a newspaper shop in West End Lane, going to school at the elementary school round the corner from this church. He’s now 90 and living five minutes away from me in Pimlico. He regularly takes the 24 bus to Hampstead to wander around his boyhood haunts. In the early seventies I once sang in the choir under Martindale Sidwell on Easter Sunday. I still remember the chant we sang for the Easter Anthems, and the glorious sound the boys made in the descant.
In addition to duties at Hampstead, I’ll also be conducting the Symphony Orchestra of St Paul’s Girls’ School and Inner Voices, a new choir made up of four singers from each of twelve Inner London comprehensives. I’ll be running workshops and “Come and Sing” days, I’ll be a Choral Advisor of Queens’ College, Cambridge and Director of the National Youth Choir of Wales, the Eton Choral Courses, the Junior Choral Course and the Rodolfus Choir. I very much look forward to meeting you in the near future.”
Ralph Allwood
Changes in the Music Department