Michael McCarthy has recently been appointed director of
music at Washington National Cathedral. We had occasion to speak with him on June
25, 2003, at the London Oratory School where he is currently director of The
Schola of the school, a choir of boys. We attended an 8:00 a.m. rehearsal of
the Beethoven Mass in C and the daily Psalm. Then we had coffee in the lounge
and adjourned to the garden for an interview. We spoke on a variety of topics.
GB: Michael, you said earlier over coffee that you were
going to do a lot of polyphonic
music when you get to Washington Cathedral.
MM: Yes, I hope it will feature highly in the musical
program. Whilst the composers of the polyphonic era were organists they were in
fact singers first and foremost. They progressed through the choirs to direct,
so they had a distinct understanding of vocal phraseology. I believe that
understanding polyphonic music texturally and structurally is terribly
important to articulating and understanding musical phraseology in general.
GB: What are your plans for the Psalter at Washington
Cathedral?
MM: In Washington the Psalter must do two things. Firstly,
it must reflect the wealth of great chant writing throughout the world, but
secondly and significantly it must reflect the history of the place in which it
has evolved and composers associated with that particular place, either locally
or regionally. The heritage of the cathedral needs to be at the heart of such a
book.
GB: Well, what are your hopes and dreams for Washington?
MM: Well, I don't know. I'm not going on a crusade either
for my own self or for the sake of Washington. I'm just going to do a job and
to do it to the best of my ability. It is easy to want to aspire to be like
other famous cathedral choirs. Whilst ambition is, of course, positive in
nature, it can be damaging. There is much work to do in Washington. Rather than
try necessarily to emulate the great cathedral choirs such as Westminster or
St. Paul's, it is important to identify our own unique strengths and
characteristics and build on those. At the end of the day our central role is
to help enhance the work of the cathedral by uplifting prayer.
GB: The crux of good choir training is first of all
knowledge of the voice. I think it's important to note that they were wise
enough to get a vocal culturist instead of just an organist that was a skilled
trainer.
MM: Yes, I think that the heart of good choral singing is
good choral technique. I really believe that my strength in this post will be
an understanding of essential technique. There are a lot of services to get
through and if the children are having vocal trouble because they haven't been
taught how to use the instrument it slows things down. If you can get to grass
roots and teach them about vocal production, then they will have some grasp
about how they can fix their own technical questions. It will speed the process
through, you'll get more music done and to a higher level.
BB: Will you do girls choirs as well?
MM: Yes, I'm there to do all the choral music basically.
GB: Several times during my time at Washington Cathedral as
a Fellow in music during Evensong with just the boys singing, there were a couple
of "train wrecks." Things didn't go too well. However, it would be
fixed the next time around.
MM: I think you have to expect that if you're going to be
the train driver. Occasionally the train will come off the rails and that will
be the case whatever. It happens even with the best choirs. There is no
foolproof way of avoiding this. However, by investing heavily in the
choristers' musical and vocal education you can reduce the level of risk.
BB: What system does Washington Cathedral have in place for
teaching the probationers?
MM: The probationers will train for about two years. Part of
their weekly routine would be to attend Evensong. They will also be given a
fairly intensive course in music theory and sight-reading as well as vocal
instruction. Gradually they will come up to speed at which point that up so
that they can slipstream into the main choir.
GB: Jim Litton, the "Man for All Seasons," interim
choirmaster, has certainly made your job much easier.
MM: I got to
know Jim well over the past six months. He is a real gentleman and a man of
great integrity. In a very short space of time I appear to have acquired a very
good friend. He's retiring now, but I'm not entirely sure he's quite worked out
the definition of retirement yet! I understand he's going to Princeton to look
after one of their choirs for a term.
GB: Four of our choristers from Cantate, the Children's
Choir of Central Virginia, auditioned and were accepted into The American
Boychoir. We've worked with Jim there through the years and have great respect
for his abilities.
MM: He's a real gem!
GB: Tell us about your work singing in professional choirs.
MM: I have sung for about 15 years now with The Sixteen.
They are a choir I have been with for most of my working life. Sadly, that came
to an end two nights ago with a fairly big party following a concert in the
northernmost island of Scotland--that was fun. I'm still recovering! The other
well-known choir would be the Monteverdi Choir. I have been involved with them
for about five or six years now. The last three of them I've been the choir
manager, so I deal with the contract booking of all the singers, and work
closely with John Eliot Gardiner, personnel and a little bit of programming.
Along with that there are a few other London-based choirs, the English Consort,
the Gabrieli Consort, for whom I have done occasional work. One other newish
choir I sing for is the Cardinall's Musick. Andrew Carwood is the director. We
went to school together, were at Christ Church Oxford as lay clerks for a time
together, and are life-long friends. When we were at Christ Church he formed
the choir which is a now well established and well known touring group. I
suppose those are my main singing groups.
BB: Tell us about your film and TV projects with The Schola.
MM: Through my singing contacts I've been able to nurture a
relationship with the film companies for the possibility of bringing the boys
in to record. Harry Potter has been a little bit of our lives, but certainly
Lord of the Rings the last two years has been the bulk of it. It's a very
unpredictable business. The phone rings, and they'll want something next week.
It could be Lord of the Rings, it could be a documentary about driving safely
on the right hand side of the road (laughter). It could be anything really.
BB: Do you normally have to put in extra hours for prep?
MM: Yes, with the film stuff it always comes at short
notice, so you can't just manipulate their time in school. Their education
comes first. With the concert work you'll see it coming up six months ahead,
and you'll just work it in to the schedule. I think it's only fair to try and
make sure that you achieve what you want to achieve in the time you've got. If
you go asking for extra time it needs to be for something really quite important.
GB: Do you have another rehearsal at the oratory besides the
40 minutes?
MM: No, that's it, Monday to Friday, and then an hour before
Saturday mass. There are occasions when we are putting on concerts where we have
to get professional singers in, so we rehearse in class time, but this is only
once or twice a term. The discipline is to use the time as well as you can and
not intrude into any other time. It's important for the choristers to get away
from music as well and to be children. That is really important. Take someone
like James O'Donnell (Westminster Abbey) who's fantastic with the kids. Never
for one moment does he forget that he has 8 to 13-year olds in front of him,
but yet he treats them like adults when they are working. The boys really
respond to it--they respect him and he respects them and the results show.
GB: Do you have anything specific about Washington that
you'd like to share?
MM: Accepting that job has been a huge decision personally
to give up a singing career that has taken me all over the place and provided
some wonderful music making experiences. The job at Washington is huge, but the
potential there goes beyond any other place I have seen. You can work with
children from age four and put together a program at a junior level. At the
other end of the scale you could then have a student choir of 16-18 year olds
who will have had a considerable amount of experience with sight reading, and
vocal pedagogy. I have not seen any other program anywhere that has that sort
of opportunities that are there.
I'm very lucky to be able to have the task of taking this
program forward. If it works it could be spectacularly successful. I hope so,
if not for my sake then for the next person. I'm conscious, as I've been
conscious of both the choirs I've built in the past ten years, that the person
who really cuts their teeth with the choir probably at the end of the day
doesn't get to enjoy the benefits of their labours. It would be my hope that
the next director of music 10 years, 20 years, 100 years down the line will
inherit a strong program and will then be able to take the choir on to another
level. We'll see.
GB: Well put!
MM: In the UK if you drove around every church that had a
professional sung service on Sunday morning in London you'd be counting 20 or
25 cathedrals and churches. This is music sung by essentially professional (or
thereabouts) quality singers. In Washington there isn't really that depth in
numbers so the pool of excellent choral singers is quite small. A wonderful
thing to be able to do in Washington would be to nurture and widen the net of
teenage singers as a way of investing in the future, possibly through advanced
choral courses to prepare potential choral singers.
BB: The RSCM is having their first course for handpicked
older youth at the cathedral this summer.
GB: One of our sopranos (a 17-year old) is in it.
MM: It may be through the RSCM that the cathedral can offer
real support. This is something that I look forward to exploring with Ben
Hutto. In England there is a well-known and well organized choral course for
16-18 year olds at Eton College near Windsor. It does excellent work in
providing a focus for young singers. To be able to invest in the musical
education of the choristers at the cathedral and see them return one day as
professional singers or as professional people for whom singing is a big part
of their lives would be truly rewarding.
GB: We need that really badly. I hope it can happen. It will
be exciting.
MM: For every ten singers that we will have trained I hope
that at least one or two of them might go on to be singers/directors
themselves. As I prepare to start my work at Washington this particular aim has
to be somewhere well down on the list, but it's something to work towards. I
look forward to the challenge very much.
Our interview ended with the burning question of the day as
to whether Michael's 1-year old daughter would speak American English or the
Queen's English. There was much laughter as this point was debated. The results
remain to be seen. We wish Michael well in his new post and welcome him to our
side of "the pond." We feel confident he will be very successful in
Washington. As we left the oratory school, he was on his way to a rehearsal of
the Stravinsky Mass.
Several weeks later, Michael conducted his last service at
the oratory. Gordon sang with the boys plus professional men in the Beethoven
Mass in C. The performance was exciting in that wonderful room. At the
conclusion of Mass the choir parents hosted a going away party for Michael in
the garden.
