An Interview with Simon Carrington
Simon Carrington is the current director of the Yale Schola Cantorum and professor of Choral Conducting at Yale University. He has had a long and illustrious career that includes, most notably, a twenty five year tenure in the King’s Singers, who have long set international standards for small-scale unaccompanied choral music, as one of the group’s founders. Other notable positions include seven years as the director of choral activities at the University of Kansas, and three years in the same position at the New England Conservatory. Along with Bronislawa Falinska and Brian O’Connell of Lexington High School, Mr. Carrington leads the Chamber Choral Conducting Workshop in Sarteano, Italy every summer.
Mr. Carrington came to Lexington High School on January 24, 2008 in his capacity as a choral clinician, to work with the High School’s Concert Choir and Madrigals Singers. For two hours, he led a clinic in which he first conducted and rehearsed the Concert Choir in two of their pieces, Sleep, by Eric Whitacre, and Ave Maria, by Anton Bruckner, and then worked with the Madrigals Singers on many shorter pieces from their repertoire, including Il Bianco e Dolce Cigno, Adieu, Sweet Amaryllis, Thule, the Period of Cosmography, Fair Nymphs I Heard One Telling, Somerlied, and O Magnum Mysterium. After this period, Mr. Carrington participated in a question and answer session for three quarters of an hour.
Below is an abridged and paraphrased transcript of this session. If you want to listen to actual recordings of the Q&A, they are available here.
Of all of the pieces that you sang with the King’s Singers, do you have a favorite?
Well, the great thing about the King’s Singers was that we did this wide, wide range of repertoire, much like you seem to do here. And so each day, it was something different: one day, I would feel that the only piece I ever wanted to sing for the rest of my life was some Renaissance motet, just like the ones you’ve been singing right here with this small group [the Madrigals Singers]; at another time, it might have been some hot new arrangement of some ‘pop’ track. The fun thing about the King’s Singers was that we did so many of these “off the wall” things, and yet really at the heart of what we did was this Renaissance music.
We had all been brought up in that, and that’s what we understood, and actually it’s interesting how much the style of doing that kind of music has changed since we started… But no, I don’t think I had a favorite, I really don’t. In a concert, you would have a large program that was filled with favorites.
Do you have a favorite venue to perform in?
I think a lot of that depends on the day, on the weather, on the travel schedule. But I think acoustic is the key. You become acutely aware of that sort of thing. The great thing about the King’s Singers is that they sing without mikes – they use the room sound. The acoustic is vitally important…
Carnegie Hall is one of the great halls, though since they rebuilt the stage several years ago, it has lost some of its greatness. Many of the best halls are the ones that were built at 1900, 1910, 1920. Jordan Hall, actually, at NEC, is a marvelous space. Now, of course, they have all these ways of ‘creating acoustic,’ but to me there’s nothing like a natural building; so give me a stone church or some stone building anytime. The sound bounces, the surfaces are hard.
At the time you left the King’s Singers, how big do you think your repertoire was?
Well, we’d been collecting music over twenty-five years by then, so several thousand pieces, but I really don’t know. I used to have a library of all the pieces we did on my computer, but the file got corrupted, and I lost it. So I’m not sure how many, but several thousand pieces at least.
Who would win in a fight: the King’s Singers or Chanticleer?
[general laughter]
[Laughs] There are twice as many of them as there are of the King’s Singers, so I think they would win. There are twelve Chanticleer, normally – they tour with twelve singers, by and large. And the King’s Singers are always six. So I think there’s no question there.
When the King’s Singers were founded, why did you decide to make it an all-male group?
In a way, that just sort of happened naturally because the choir of King’s College, Cambridge, where we were students, consists of boys singing treble parts, who go to a Cathedral school, and the men’s parts – alto, tenor, bass -- were all male. At the time that I was a student there were no women at King’s College. Now there are, but they still don’t sing in the choir.
In some ways, it was an imitation, because no matter how high an alto voice can sing, it’s not as flexible as a female voice is, but on the other hand, it gave you a certain tambour. Anyway, all-male group, but with relatively high altos, which gave us some flexibility. I guess it was a bit sexist, but what can you do? There was no choice at that time.
I know you’re not a composer, but since you have worked with so many, do you have any words of advice for composing and composers?
Of vocal music, or just generally?
Vocal music and anything else.
Well, I suppose I’ve played a lot of contemporary music, written by a lot of people, instrumentally [on the double bass]. I think with vocal music, the real challenge now is that when you’re looking for new music to perform, you go to one of these music fairs, where all the publishers and all the music are, and it’s wall-to-wall boring. It’s easy listening, it’s supposed to be attractive, and it’s got a sort of slight ‘pop’ feel to it. In a way, it’s a pity. People have gotten hooked on it, and that’s all they do – except in an establishment like this.
The interesting thing is to find a language [i.e. musical vocabulary], which is not impossible to sing without perfect pitch. So it’s tonally exciting and different, and yet is approachable and at the same time is understandable. And that’s a very delicate balance to write. I’ve done a lot of music by some great contemporary composers, like Sofia Gubaydulina, and Osvaldo Golihov. These are people to look at. If you’re interested in composing, find some of these contemporary composers who have found a special language that is not impossible to either appreciate or perform. And there are a lot of them around.
In a group with six people that are high-level musicians, how do you get along so well, and how do you stay together for many, many years?
Funny enough, I had a conversation with my choir last night because some of them find my way of rehearsing irritating – not because I’m pushing them around, but because I like it to be cooperative, and I like people to ask questions and to take time to stop and discuss things. The King’s Singers were that way: it was a democracy and everyone contributed and you had to be patient. Sometimes, we had to resolve the most difficult issues by the flip of a coin because if it came down to three versus three, there was no way of resolving it. But you had to appreciate that there were points in favor on both sides.
When it came to audition time for new singers, the first thing you wanted to know about them was whether they had a fragile or a difficult ego, and if they did, you weren’t interested. Basically, the perfect people in a group like that have to be flexible, they have to be able to take and give without getting on a high horse or being oversensitive. In a way, it’s a very good test of character.
- Andrew Olsen
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