The Chief Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra invites Herald readers to a feast of music in Dorchester-upon-Thames
On a countryside walk one autumn day in 2015 my then-girlfriend Sophie and I reached the point at which the River Thame meets the River Thames, about 40 miles north-west of London. In the near distance we could occasionally glimpse the tower of the huge former abbey church of Dorchester-on-Thames. Making for it, as we entered the village we passed alongside a stone wall over which could be seen a bellcote belonging to a far more modest building. The sign told us that this was the Catholic Church of St Birinus, first Bishop of Dorchester in the first half of the seventh century.
The door of the small, Puginesque church was locked, but a smiling priest soon hastened towards us from the direction of the presbytery. I knew from experience that revealing Sophie’s surname had a knack of sparking conversation with any English Catholic of a certain generation. Somewhere down the line they were bound to have come across one member or other of the Bevan family. And so it was with Fr John Osman.
“Yes, of course” he knew of Sophie’s father, David – for decades director of music at Holy Redeemer & St Thomas More, in Chelsea, London. “Ah, yes indeed,” he’d seen a couple of uncles and some cousins of Sophie’s not so long ago. “I don’t suppose you play the organ, do you? Ah, good – in which case would you like to come in for a glass of champagne?” So began our friendship with this wonderful priest and our close association with this special place.
Inside, the church proved to be an exquisite jewel, shimmering gilt on blue, lovingly restored and embellished under Fr John’s watchful eye over the course of his 20-odd years as parish priest. It was soon to host my reception into the Church, my marriage to Sophie and the baptism of our two children. But much sooner than that we were to learn just how important singing had been to Fr John during his time at Dorchester. For many years the late distinguished scholar of Gregorian chant Dr Mary Berry had arranged for a group to sing during the Triduum, but following her death things had mostly lain dormant. Might Sophie and I possibly come to Father’s aid?
My “day job” as composer, conductor and pianist had grown out of a typically Anglican education. It was as a chorister at Sheffield Cathedral, and subsequently as organ scholar at New College, Oxford, that my love of Renaissance polyphony in particular had been instilled. Sophie, of course, had been singing in her father’s choir pretty much from the cradle, firstly alongside her mother, then joined by an ever-increasing number of younger siblings (both she and her sister Mary have gone on to have international singing careers, whilst a third, Anastasia, is well on her way). Gregorian chant and the masses and motets of Palestrina, Victoria and Byrd had entered their bloodstream before they could walk.
Forming the Davey Consort then followed relatively swiftly – the name is borrowed from the local recusant family who paid for Dorchester’s Catholic church to be designed and built by William Wardell in 1849. The building only had a very dated, utilitarian electric organ, so we began the process of raising the £400,000 necessary to commission French organ builder Bernard Aubertin to produce a versatile, two-manual, neo- Classical instrument, full of character but on a smallish scale – no mean feat.
The recently-installed organ is a triumph as well as being an object of great beauty (important in a building in which everything is beautiful). The five-voice consort now sings every Sunday morning and for feast days throughout the year. The congregation has embraced the opportunity to sing the chant masses, alongside which the consort provides the chant propers and a repertoire focusing primarily on the great polyphonic tradition of the 16th century.
Of huge importance to us all was that, alongside the Novus Ordo, the Tridentine Mass continued to be offered at St Birinus. Not only was the Traditional Latin Mass celebrated beautifully, but here was the liturgy in which this music made such perfect sense, the liturgy – with its distinctive rhythm and flow – for which this music was designed.
To put it simply, the wonderful polyphonic settings of the major feast-day propers composed by William Byrd and published in the two volumes of his Gradualia (1605 and 1607) can only be sung as written within the context of the older rite.
This is not per se an argument for persisting with a form of the liturgy which now finds itself at the centre of a battleground, but for those of us who are drawn to the idea of conserving and promoting even a minuscule part of the Church’s vast cultural heritage, it is not a negligible consideration.
Sophie and I formed the consort out of love and a desire to nurture this heritage in however modest a way. But it costs money to maintain a venture even on this scale. Not only that, but we find that new families with their many young children are being drawn to St Birinus. So, naturally, our thoughts have turned to founding a parallel children’s choir, and for this we need to adapt the presbytery’s semi-derelict stables into a rehearsal space. Eventually we hope to be able to guarantee the funds to instigate choral and organ scholarships, but in the first instance we need simply to keep going.
And so over the weekend of November 3-5 we will mount our first fundraising “St Birinus Festival” in neighbouring Dorchester Abbey, for which we are lucky to count among our patrons my eminent colleagues Sir Stephen Hough and Sir James MacMillan, as well as His Grace the Archbishop of Birmingham. I do hope that Catholic Herald readers might like to join us for these events. Those unable to come, but who are perhaps sympathetic towards our aims and endeavours, might consider supporting our future plans: www.thedaveyconsort.co.uk
Events at the St Birinus festival
Friday November 3: Dorchester Abbey, 7pm
The renowned Professor of Reformation History at the University of Cambridge, Richard Rex, presents William Byrd: Faith and Music in Elizabethan England with music by Byrd and his contemporaries, sung by the Davey Consort.
Saturday November 4: Dorchester Abbey, 1pm
Two student groups of chamber musicians from London’s Royal Academy of Music perform works by Mozart.
Saturday November 4: Dorchester Abbey, 7pm
Sophie Bevan (soprano) and Ryan Wigglesworth (pianist) perform a programme of works by Müller-Herman, Schubert and Mahler.
Sunday November 5: St Birinus Church, 12.30pm
Following on from Mass, a short (and free) recital on the new Aubertin organ given by the distinguished organist and composer Matthew Martin, currently Precentor at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
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Photo: Julie Broadfoot
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