The Episcopal Review of Winchester Cathedral was completed recently and a summary published on-line.  The presenting crisis was the departure last year of Andy Lumsden, the Director of Music, after more than 20 years in post.  The Review tells us very little about the events, disagreements and failures in communication that led up to the event, but clearly there has been, and, no doubt, still is, a great deal of unhappiness among staff and stakeholders in the management and running of Winchester Cathedral.   The Bishop, Philip Mountstephen, identifies ‘declining performance, unsatisfactory relationships and failings in leadership and management’ at the Cathedral, justifying both the current Review and the recommendations that flow out of it.    

The published summary of the Episcopal Review is only ten pages long and the reader is given little detail which would account, for example, for the Dean bringing forward her announced retirement from May 2025 to this month.  It is not profitable to speculate on these matters, and I have no access to any source of inside information.  What is hinted at in the Review, as the central concern, is the issue of music and the part that it plays in 21^st century cathedral worship.  While there are bound to be precise details about the management failings as well as the behaviour of individuals within the Cathedral community, the summary Review does not name names or apportion blame to anyone.  We are left to speculate on what might be the broad issues prompting the Review.  My own assumption is, from the evidence of the summary, that the context of the Review is a number of serious disagreements about the place of music among those involved in its provision.  A telling sentence appears on page 7, suggesting serious non-communication and diverging understandings of the role of music in the life of the Cathedral.  ‘It was felt that Chapter simply did not understand the musical side of the Cathedral’.  Such non-communication and misunderstanding are probably found in other centres of musical excellence in Britain today.  How do these centres best fit in with the rapidly changing face (and decline) of church life in this country?  The cathedral music tradition is for many still a compelling reason for attaching themselves to churches which maintain an active choral tradition, but which is so radically different from what is commonly termed ‘Christian music’.

Seventy years ago, I was a member of the cathedral choir in Canterbury.  The experience opened me up to appreciate a particular style of church music which has since become familiar to quite large numbers of people. At that time, the 50s, cathedral-type music was known only to those who attended cathedrals or one of a limited number of Oxford/Cambridge chapels and other foundations where choral traditions had been maintained.  Little of this genre of music was filtering through to the general public in Britain. The BBC radio programme with a reputation for the high brow, the Third Programme, seemed to show little interest in this rich vein of sacred choral music, whether in 16^th /17^th century polyphonic manifestations or later styles.  Two further reasons for the non-circulation of cathedral music were current.  The first was that LP records were extremely expensive.  If there were recordings of church music, they would have been priced at 35 shillings each, a sum equivalent to over £30 today.  The second fact was that there was simply no exposure to this style of music except among the vanishingly small number of active church musicians.  The only church music familiar to the general public were hymns and the yearly broadcast of the King’s Cambridge carols.  One piece of church music did penetrate into popular consciousness when the boy chorister, Ernest Lough, sung Mendelsohn’s ‘O for the wings of a dove’ in the mid-30s and the record was widely acclaimed.  The arrival of Radio 3 in around 1964 had the welcome effect that more music of every kind, including church music, was aired, no doubt creating a new ‘fan-base’ for what had been an extremely niche cultural taste.

Today we can note two major changes in the church music scene. One is that the music found formerly only in cathedrals and a cluster of Oxbridge chapels has spread out widely from this narrow base.  Both in terms of the number of musicians performing such music and those hearing it, there has been enormous growth and appreciation of this particular style.  Secondly there has been growth in the music available to be sung.  Some of this is as the result of new compositions by young composers who are fascinated by the ancient tradition that binds music and worship together.  There has also been a large amount of serious academic scholarship, bringing to light forgotten or neglected masterpieces of the past, particularly from the age of Elizabeth I when English music of all kinds excelled.

The rise in popularity in church music which I have witnessed in my lifetime has not been without its problems.  Winchester is one of the top cathedral choirs in the country.  Such a description comes with its own challenges.  What makes a choir good?  Is it that the style and quality of music inspires a quality of worship that is special and could act as an incentive to other churches aspiring to high standards, but lacking the endowments to meet the costs involved?  Having a ‘good’ choir could be a judgement based purely on technical and aesthetic factors.  It need have nothing to do with God or the reality of worship.  Finding out where is the meaning of excellence in terms of the choir achievements, is likely to be a constant cause of tension between clergy and the musicians who work for the institution.

A second point of tension, that will apply to every choral foundation in the country, is the rise of ‘popular’ Christian music.  For the majority of Christians, Christian music is found in what is known as worship songs.  Without expressing a value judgement on this style of Christian music, one has to say that such music emerges from a very different culture from the one in which cathedral musicians operate.  Church leaders working in cathedrals are acutely aware of the incompatible demands of the aficionados of choral mattins and those who prefer Graham Kendrick and Hillsong.  In a small way, I faced this tension in my parish and resolved it by allowing, as far as possible, both styles or cultures to co-exist.  The church choir and the music group appeared at different services and a kind of peace prevailed.  Whether the current tensions at Winchester have anything to do with these divergent styles or cultures of church music I have no inside knowledge, but the existence of such contrasting styles remains a very large elephant in the room called Christian worship.  It cannot be expelled easily.   In a centre like Winchester Cathedral where traditional cathedral music has reigned for literally centuries, it is hard to imagine that worship songs ever get an easy welcome, if at all.  But, if this is the only genre of Christian music known by a segment of the congregation, then it will be hard for the leaders to ignore it without causing upset and unhappiness.

In this piece I am suggesting that church music of all kinds is likely to draw into itself many of the other divisions and unspoken conflicts that already exist in the church.  Deep irreconcilable differences exist over the LGBT issue, climate change as well as theological attitudes to Scripture.  It is possible to distinguish a ‘liberal’ approach from a ‘conservative’ one, and, maybe, the two sides can have a discussion with a measure of civility.  When it comes to divisions over what church music is the preferred option, there are sometimes even deeper underlying issues, matters of taste, culture and social class.  These are difficult to address without sounding elitist.  I am well aware that my wanting to listen to Tallis’ Lamentations as part of my observance of Holy Week will not be understood by many sincere Christian people.  A greater number might fill a cathedral nave to listen to the Matthew Passion in Holy Week, but we are still facing the fact of widely divergent tastes in music among Christian people.  Somewhere in the unhappiness that has arisen in Winchester are, I believe, these cultural and aesthetic issues that arise when two incompatible musical styles are brought in close juxtaposition and found to be totally alien to each other.  Resolution of such cultural divergences will require a wisdom far greater than anything I see on offer in the Church today.

In writing this piece I am prepared to accept that the issues addressed by the Review and the resignation of the musical Director may have absolutely nothing to do with the clash of discordant musical cultures that we see in the wider church.  If I am wrong, this does not render all my comments of no value.  The tension between popular and classical church music is a live issue in many places and, sometimes, it can be said to exist as open warfare.   It is one of the ironies of today that one area of growth in church life at present is in an appreciation for the meditative, even contemplative style of BCP choral evensong.  It is for others to explain the appeal of the Psalms sung to Anglican chant, which also allows a renewed appreciation of the English language as spoken five centuries ago.  In a century’s time, it will become obvious which style has stood the test of time.  I suspect we all have our preferred guess.