Getting back on song
The director of The Sixteen on the secret of his choir’s much-loved sound
Our strength is the vocal support system; knowing when to cover and when to let someone shine
NINE singers are spread out like chess pieces across the black-andwhite chequered floor. In the background hangs a rainbow painting, not with a message of thanks to key workers, but the inscription Non sine sole iris (‘no rainbow without the sun’). It alludes to the portrait’s sitter, Elizabeth I, who is shown bringing a colourful arc to her people. The Marble Hall of Hatfield House is one of a handful of handsome settings for A Choral Odyssey by The Sixteen, a mix of performance and documentary presented by actor—and former chorister —Sir Simon Russell Beale.
‘I called in a lot of favours,’ smiles Harry Christophers, conductor and founder of the choral group with the glorious sound that thrills and moves its devoted followers in equal measure. ‘The Marquess of Salisbury [who owns Hatfield House] is our patron and kindly allowed us to film there.’
The series also includes dispatches from Oxford’s Magdalen College, where Mr Christophers is an honorary Fellow, as well as Shakespeare’s Globe, the Soho church Our Lady of the Assumption & St Gregory, Penshurst Place in Kent and Cadogan Hall.
The project replaces the group’s Choral Pilgrimage, an annual programme of sacred music in cathedrals and abbeys around Britain. ‘The energy of a performance can get missed in streamed concerts,’ says Mr Christophers. ‘We’ve tried to do something a bit different, but quintessentially The Sixteen.’
The choir, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2019, was founded as ‘a group of 16 choral scholars performing 16th-century music’, but Mr Christopher notes that the number has another significant link. ‘[Magdalen College founder] William Waynflete’s statutes specify 16 choristers for the chapel—that number seemed ideal.’ Magdalen College was also Mr Christophers’s alma mater. Sadly, restrictions meant that the group could not meet in its entirety. Hatfield’s exquisite hall was intended for whispered realpolitik—and masques rather than masks. There, The Sixteen became The Ten. ‘The largest group was 11, but generally we were eight.’ The mixed-voice ensemble is used to different incarnations: its list of alumni reads as a who’s who in classical singing, including Dame Sarah Connolly, Mark Padmore and Carolyn Sampson, as well as Jessica Cale, 2020 winner of the Kathleen Ferrier Award and an alumnus of the choir’s student programme, Genesis Sixteen.
Its sound has developed over the years, yet The Sixteen’s blend of voices remains remarkably consistent, in part due to Mr Christophers’s sensitive leadership. ‘If you listen to each of the six sopranos individually, they sound very different, but when they sing together, as part of The Sixteen, they sound as one,’ says the conductor. ‘I think our real strength is the vocal support system; knowing when to cover for each other and when to let someone shine.’ It’s a system created and nurtured by Mr Christophers, who was appointed a CBE in the Queen’s 2012 Birthday Honours.
Renaissance and Baroque music lies at the heart of The Sixteen’s repertoire—mr Christophers has also been artistic director of the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston, US, since 2008—but the group has expanded upon his original intention. The ensemble has a particular connection with James Macmillan; in 2019, it gave the world premiere of the Scottish composer’s Fifth Symphony at the Edinburgh International Festival. It is subtitled Le grand Inconnu (‘the great unknown’) —as does much of Mr Macmillan’s music, the work draws on Catholicism. The Sixteen performed his Stabat Mater for Pope Francis in the Sistine Chapel in 2018.
Mr Christophers insists, however, that listeners ‘do not need to be religious to appreciate the meditative quality of the music’ and that ‘sacred music is more popular than ever before’. He’s right: ‘curated playlists’ on streaming platforms are filled with plainsong, Gregorian chant and contemporary approximations. Estonian composer Arvo Pärt is another fixture in The Sixteen’s song books; Mr Christophers pits Tudor favourite William Byrd against Pärt’s own tintinnabuli (triad textures based on early modern chant music) works.
The pandemic has had a notable impact on church musicians, particularly on institutions that were already struggling. York’s Minster School, which educated choristers for the Minster, closed last year and Sheffield Cathedral Chapter disbanded its choir, citing a ‘renewed ambition for engagement and inclusion’. Amid all this, Mr Christophers was appointed president of the Cathedral Music Trust. ‘The aim is to preserve the choral-singing tradition, as well as make it more accessible. Over the past 10 years, girls’ choirs at places such as Salisbury and Wells have really established themselves and Leeds has been incredible in expanding its educational offering. In the old days, groups such as mine were always full of Oxbridge choral scholars. That’s no longer the case—genesis Sixteen brings together lots of different types of singers.’
Under the auspices of the Genesis Foundation, The Sixteen offers a funded choral training programme for singers aged 18 to 23, alongside many workshops, including the delightfully named Couch to Coloratura, designed for choral singers who are performing oratorios. Of course, much of this work is temporarily on hold, but Mr Christophers is hopeful the group will tour again soon. ‘In 2019, we did 80 concerts; in 2020, 10. Somewhere in between would be nice for 2021!’ Claire Jackson