Sir David Willcocks (1919-2015)
On Saturday, December 19 at 7:30pm, Yorkminster Park Baptist Church will ring out with the sounds of carols and Chanukah songs old and new as Toronto’s Amadeus Choir, along with the glorious voices of the Bach Children’s Chorus, joins with the Trillium Brass, composer and pianist Eleanor Daley and organist Shawn Grenke to celebrate the life of Sir David Willcocks, the great British choral director, who died in September.
This event is much more than simply a tribute to a great musician for me personally, as Sir David was a great mentor and friend to me.
Our connection goes back to 1976 during my student days at the Royal College of Music in London, where he was warm, generous, welcoming and encouraging to me. He gave the students at the RCM tremendous opportunity to perform on a professional level and, with his expectation of the highest standard, brought students to a higher level of performance than they could have expected, at a crucial time in our development. We could not have been in better hands.
I was fortunate enough to sing with and play for him for the five years I was in London. My very first performance with him was as a member of the Royal College of Music Chorus, for the memorial service for Benjamin Britten in Westminster Abbey, with Sir Peter Pears singing the lead role in Britten’s St. Nicholas Cantata; and my final performance with him was as a member of the Bach Choir, singing at the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.
In addition to recording sessions, there were many, many performances at the Royal Festival Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, annual performances at Wormwood Scrubs prison and touring throughout England, Wales and Europe.
Along with his uncompromising standard of excellence, he was one of the kindest people I have ever met. For all his brilliance, he had a profound humility. He led by example in his meticulous rehearsal technique and in his way of working with people. He gave young singers such as the Amadeus Choir’s honorary patron, mezzo-soprano Catherine Wyn-Rogers, their very first major performance opportunities, and he kept up with and supported all our careers as we travelled forward. He was extremely important in the life of our own great Canadian baritone, Gerald Finley, and had a profound effect on many choral musicians of Canada: Jean Ashworth Bartle, Robert Cooper, Elmer Iseler, Gerald Fagan and Peter Partridge, among many others throughout the country.
He came to Toronto on several occasions as an honorary patron of the Amadeus Choir to conduct us and the Elmer Iseler Singers in extraordinary performances of Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s B Minor Mass. Every singer involved in those performances sang for him to the very best of their ability – sang from their hearts – and they, along with their audiences, were rewarded with some of the most brilliant performances you will ever hear of those works.
Sir David Willcocks was the consummate musician. He was well known for the annual Service of Nine Lessons and Carols from the magnificent King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, and he turned the service into an annual broadcast event not to be missed by musicians around the world. He made many recordings with his King’s College Choir, but none more loved than his performance of the Requiem of Gabriel Fauré, which was released in 1967. He had a spiritual connection with this most sublime of compositions, and his performance with the King’s Chapel Choir, John Carol Case, baritone, and Robert Chilcott, treble, is a benchmark performance in the choral world.
Sir David succeeded Reginald Jacques as the musical director of the Bach Choir in 1960. With this magnificent group of 300 singers, he performed all the great choral repertoire and championed the works of British composers Vaughan Williams, Howells, Britten, Elgar and Tippett among many others. As a singer in the Bach Choir, I performed the Bach St. Matthew Passion with them each year and toured and recorded with the choir regularly. I recall that we had just finished a recording of some of his famous Carols for Choirs, when we were told that it was the very first recording ever with a new technique, something called digital recording! We also recorded the Bach St. Matthew Passion (in English). Each year, the Bach Choir would perform a sold-out Christmas program at the Royal Albert Hall with the Phillip Jones Brass Ensemble and the massive organ of the Royal Albert Hall.
Composition competition: Another aspect of Sir David’s legacy will also be on display at our December 19 concert: As part of his association with the Bach Choir, he had started a composition competition for children to write a Christmas carol. The lucky winner had her or his carol arranged by Sir David himself for the 300-strong singers of the Bach Choir and the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, and it was always a magical moment when the time came for the performance of that work. It was an amazing way to inspire young composers.
Sir David and the Bach Choir’s annual Christmas concerts at the Royal Albert Hall became the inspiration for the Amadeus Choir’s own seasonal composition competition, now in its 29th year. Through this competition the Amadeus Choir and the Bach Children’s Chorus with conductor Linda Beaupré have sung premieres of hundreds of carols and Chanukah songs, along with a number of winter solstice pieces.
This Amadeus Choir’s annual competition for composers has been an important stepping-off point for many of Canada’s finest composers for choirs, including Eleanor Daley, Mark Sirett, Matthew Emery, Scott Tresholm, Kunle Owalabi, Malcolm Edwards and Sheldon Rose, among many others. (The collaboration with Linda Beaupré and the Bach Children’s Chorus has been vital to its success, as has Eleanor Daley’s role as an arranger of the carols by children.)
On December 19, we will be singing nine new works, including one called Mary’s Lullaby by eight-year-old composer Antonia Dragomir, who also wrote her own stunningly beautiful lyrics. There is an amazing Chanukah piece, Al Hanassim, by Adam Adler from Thornhill in the youth category and we will have premieres in the adult amateur and professional categories that we consider outstanding.
In the spirit of Canada, as we move forward this annual competition for composers will take on a new focus, starting with the upcoming 30th anniversary: it will become more inclusive and welcoming of new works written in a spirit of diversity. It will also include an exciting additional component: a workshop with some of our finest composers here in Toronto, to assist young and amateur composers in building and honing their skills.
When Eleanor Daley’s arrangement of Antonia Dragomir’s Mary’s Lullaby is being sung by the Bach Children’s Chorus on December 19 in the wonderful space of Yorkminster Park Baptist Church, I will be smiling: in memory of a great musician and in pleasure at a moment that reflects his ongoing legacy. It is a legacy evidenced in the thousands of conductors, singers, instrumentalists and audience members throughout the world who have been inspired by his outstanding leadership and musicianship, as well as all his recordings, arrangements and original works.
Lydia Adams is conductor and artistic director of Amadeus Choir of Toronto and the Elmer Iseler Singers.
