Striking a chord

The director of music at King’s on conducting the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols

Ysenda Maxtone Graham meets Stephen Cleobury, director of music at King’s

FOrgive the mention of football at a moment like this, but it’s astonishing to think that Chelsea FC has had 12 different managers since 2000 and the choir of King’s College Cambridge has only had five different directors of music since 1876. Those five are Arthur Mann, Boris Ord, Sir David Willcocks, Sir Philip Ledger and Stephen Cleobury. King’s embodies the culture of continuity and stewardship: always reassuring in this hiring-and-firing age.

I’ve come to King’s on a beautiful late autumnal Saturday to talk to Stephen Cleobury, who’s been director of music here since 1982 and who, on Christmas Eve, will conduct his last Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols before retiring next summer at the age of 70. Appropriately, this will also be the 100th anniversary of the first Nine Lessons and Carols service at King’s, inaugurated on Christmas Eve, 1918, by Eric Milner-white, the visionary Dean at the time.

We sit by a georgian window in the gibbs’ Building, overlooking the lawn going down to the Backs, with punting poles just visible in the distance and cattle in the meadow beyond. I ask Mr Cleobury if he remembers his first service on Christmas Eve 37 years ago?

‘Oh, I do. I remember walking into the chapel 20 minutes before the service, and being overwhelmed by the atmosphere of expectation and calm,’ he says. ‘I suddenly realised I was about to do this terrifying thing. Luckily, it went off all right.’

‘Luckily’ is typical Stephen Cleobury modesty. In fact, it’s skill, total commitment to the job and hours of preparation.

I’ve heard the myth that the chorister chosen to sing the firstverse solo of Once in Royal David’s City doesn’t know who he is until the morning of the day. I’m wrong: in fact, the boy doesn’t know until the very last second. ‘I have three or four boys who are primed and ready,’ Mr Cleobury tells me. ‘When the BBC’S red light starts flashing, which means we’re live on air, I call one of them forward. I think it’s much the best way. No one has a chance to get nervous.’

The method has certainly worked. Millions of us, bent over the wrapping paper and searching for the vanished scissors on the carpet on the dot of 3pm, can’t help holding our breath as we anticipate the exquisite sound of that solo treble: will he manage to soar up to ‘Mary was…’ without a crack and do so again with ‘Jesus Christ’? I can’t remember a single disaster in the past 36 years. Phew! Beautiful. And now Christmas has really begun.

One innovation Mr Cleobury did bring in, in his second year in the job, was to commission a new carol for every Nine Lessons and Carols service. This makes King’s choir not only the steward of a precious tradition, but also a patron of the Arts. How does he choose the composer? ‘There’s no official system: it’s always just happened through an acquaintance or a chance meeting during the year,’ he explains.

Which, does he think, are the new commissions that have really caught on and become part of the national repertoire? ‘Judith Weir’s Illuminare Jerusalem, definitely, and John rutter’s What Sweeter Music.’

Illuminare Jerusalem is an exquisite piece, so I’m delighted to hear that this year’s new commission is also by Judith Weir, Master of the Queen’s Music. ‘The only composer I’ve ever asked twice,’ Mr Cleobury reveals. ‘She’s set Charles Wesley’s hymn O Mercy Divine to music, for choir accompanied by solo cello. The cello’s going to be played by one of our former choristers, guy Johnston, who was BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2000.’

This will also be the 37th year that Mr Cleobury has read one of the nine lessons. He used to read the fifth (‘How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?’), but, a few years ago, swapped over to the seventh (‘And there were in the same country’).

‘I really enjoy reading the lesson,’ he tells me. It’s also Mr Cleobury who decides which chorister should read the first lesson and which choral scholar the second. ‘Last year’s chorister got quite carried away and very dramatic, reading the lesson,’ he reminds me—and yes, I remember that. It was bloodcurdling. ‘CURSED is the ground for thy sake.’

After the service, the choristers have a Christmas party at the school and the college puts on a dinner for the choral scholars. ‘Which do you go to?’ ‘I go over to the school first and then come back to the college.’ Mr Cleobury is well known for his pastoral care for the boys. ‘I see part of the job as showing a real interest in what they’re all doing. If the boys are playing in a football match, I’ll go along and see it.’

Since his arrival, the boys have had individual singing lessons, training them in posture and breathing. This certainly helps with the sound, but he also aims to enthuse them. ‘I try to nurture their love of the music. The important thing is to respect the people you’re working with— don’t patronise them. Keep it lively. I say things such as “Listen to this chord! Don’t you love it?”’

Mr Cleobury, his wife, Emma, and their two daughters—aged 15 and nine—are moving to a house in York, where their youngest has just started as a chorister in York Minster. He’s delighted about today’s opportunities for girls to sing as cathedral choristers, as long as they sing an equal number of services as the boys. ‘One thing I think is not a good idea, as happens in some cathedrals, is when the girls are a kind of B team.’

What about his own plans? ‘I’m intending to go on working as and when people invite me.’ A superb organist and recitalist, he names the organs of King’s and of Ely, Durham, Salisbury, Winchester and Canterbury cathedrals as his favourites in Britain to play on—‘a great treasury’.

Next year, Mr Cleobury hands over to the brilliant Daniel Hyde, himself a former organ scholar of King’s, who knows and understands the choir’s traditions and its unique sound. Here’s to the next 37 years! Ysenda Maxtone Graham

I remember being overwhelmed by the atmosphere of expectation and calm