Our Story
Pershore Choral was founded in 1949 as the Pershore W.I. Choir by the late Joan Philips, a leading member of the Abbey community and teacher at the Alice Ottley School in Worcester. Some male voices soon had to be recruited to help out with a performance of Handel’s Messiah and stayed on once the concert was over. Thus Pershore Choral, formerly Pershore and District Choral Society, was born. The Choir performed three classical concerts in the Abbey each year and contributed to the Pershore Music Festival into the 1970s.
Membership grew to over 100 in the 1990s and larger scale works such as Verdi’s Requiem and Orff’s Carmina Burana were performed with an enhanced orchestra. Sadly, the COVID lock-down saw numbers reduced and the current Choir numbers between 70 and 85 singers. We enjoy singing works by Bach, Brahms, Faure, Handel, Haydn, Mozart and of course Elgar, but part of our aim as a charity is ‘to educate and inform the public’ in things musical and particularly choral. This we do by performing lesser known works as well as more popular ones. We also encourage younger people to sing with us by offering a reduced subscription, and more recently, a form of ‘musical apprenticeship’.
This scheme was introduced in 2018 to attract younger singers from local High Schools and 9 students joined a performance of Mendelssohn’s Elijah the following year.
We are managed by an able and hard-working committee drawn from our membership and by our two professionals, Carleton and Tim who set a high standard of musicianship. Best of all are the regular Monday night rehearsals where the atmosphere is a combination of serious endeavour mixed with friendship and fun. Experience the joy of community singing!
The story of the Choir upto its 70+ celebration in 2022 is available as a publication from the current Choir Chair Paul Clarke. paulclarkehallow@gmail.com
OUR PROFESSIONAL MUSICIANS
Joan Philips was musical director until shortly before her death in 1983. Under her baton, the choir grew in stature and confidence with a repertoire that ranged from Bach to Verdi. She established a good working relationship with James Hutcheon from the BBC Midlands Light Orchestra and they expanded Pershore’s range of music. In later years, the Orchestra da Camera supported Choir concerts under the leadership of John Engelhart and Ken Page.
Michael Anderson took over from Joan and led the choir through seventeen years of exciting and challenging music making. From 2000 – 2006 the choir was led by Andrew Wilson whose contacts included Dale Chambers and his assembled West Midlands Sinfonia.
The current conductor is Carleton Etherington. Under his direction, Pershore Choral is proudly continuing its tradition of learning and singing fine music in Pershore abbey – a venue which is widely acknowledged to be one of the best for miles around.
The Choir has enjoyed great continuity with the accompanists for rehearsals and concerts. Betty Banbury was a stalwart in the early days and accompanied the choir for 37 years. Ian Gerrard supported the Choir from the keyboard for 30 years and also conducted when required. Tim Sidford took over in 2017 and has shown his virtuosity as a performer as well as rehearsal mainstay. Charles Matthews has been a regular keyboard player at concerts as accompanist and soloist.
An organ of outstanding quality was hand-built in Italy and installed in Pershore Abbey in 2023. It should ensure a high-quality sound for future concerts.
Carleton Etherington
Tim Sidford
Charles Matthews
CONCERT PROGRAMME
There is little in life more uplifting than a concert accompanied and led by professional musicians and conductor and sung in front of an audience of several hundred people in Peshore Abbey.
We enjoy singing works by Bach, Brahms, Faure, Handel, Haydn, Mozart and of course Elgar, but part of our aim as a charity is ‘to educate and inform the public’ in things musical and particularly choral. This we do by performing lesser known works as well as more popular ones.
Among the most popular performances have been those of Brahms’ German Requiem, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Mozart’s Requiem, Haydn’s Creation, Faure’s Requiem, Dvorak’s Stabat Mater,
And Bach’s St Matthew Passion.
The Choir enjoys learning lesser known works such as Cherubini’s Requiem in C and Gounod’s St Cecilia Mass as well as performing works by English composers such as Vaughan Williams, Britten and Stanford.
Concert rehearsals take place on Saturday afternoon where we may be joined by an orchestra and performances are on Saturday evenings in May. November and December.
What is it like to sing choral music?
A singer’s perspective of Elgar and Chilcott
What is it like to sing Elgar and Chilcott? A singer’s perspective
I have been a tenor member of Pershore Choral for some 30 years. As an amateur singer, it is a challenge to find the right pitch for key notes. Some people can sight read the music quite easily. I need to hear it sung and then have several runs at it to feel comfortable with where the text and music is headed in each section.
The pattern of concert preparation has stayed largely the same with two classical performances in May and November and a Christmas carol concert in December.
The preparation for a May concert begins some two years earlier for the Choir’s management committee who choose a programme, book musicians and soloists and order copies of the appropriate music. The choir have their first sight of the music in January on what is usually a cold and dark evening in the school rehearsal hall. Our director Carleton will have mapped out a plan for some 14 such evenings, breaking down the music into manageable sections of note-bashing and fine tuning the dynamics. Our progress obviously depends on the degree of our familiarity with the concert pieces and our speed of learning.
.This extract from the opening of Elgar’s Benedictus is a straight forward example.
The basic beat has four crotchets in each bar and the words are printed to fit the notes. All very straightforward but Elgar is very precise about the dynamics he wants. The line starts very quietly (pp) and then swells to emphasise ‘God’. Then there is a diminishing of the sound (dim) towards the end of the line. Placing of the consonants is important too. If the ‘s’ of ‘blessed’ or of ‘Israel’ is not in exactly the right place, the audience will hear a whole host of ssss which is not pleasant.
This second extract is to be found a few pages further on in the Benedictus. The words still match the notes clearly but there are many variations in the length of the notes. The phrase ‘Called the Prophet of the Highest’ has lots of half-beat semi-quavers leading to two whole beats on the word ‘Highest’ to give meaning to the phrase. Sopranos sing the top line; the altos are split into two parts on the second line with notes in close harmony; the tenors are singing two parts on the lower line and join together towards the end of the line.
Elgar is again very precise in his writing. There are dramatic differences in the pace all within one line of music. The line starts at a lively pace (animato), slows to emphasise ‘Prophet of the highest’ (molto allargando) with a huge crescendo of sound (fff), and then returns to the faster pace towards the end of the line. All eyes should be on the conductor who steers us through the changes. There are 15 pages to the Benedictus and it needs team work to keep in tune, in time and to give drama and meaning to the words.
Bob Chilcott’s Requiem was first performed in 2010 and for me, has something of Faure and Rutter about it. The music is dramatic with some stirring organ accompaniment and moving solo pieces. As a singer, there are some straightforward lines to sing but also some unexpected notes and rhythms.
The second extract appears four pages further on in the ‘Sanctus’. It appears to be a very gentle and smooth piece of writing but it still has the 7/8 beat running through it which gives a jazzy feel to the music. So three beats and two beats on the first syllable of Benedictus, two beats on ‘ne’, three beats on ‘di’, and two each on ‘ctus’ and ‘qui’. Very technical on paper but Chilcott’s accompaniment gives a deal of support and the overall effect has the feel of a gospel choir. So we smile and enjoy it.
Chilcott’s overall directions for dynamics are clear with phrases such as ‘still and gentle’, ‘flexible and expressive’, ‘with simplicity and stillness’. I have found that the music grows on you and has as much resonance as more well-known settings of the Requiem. I hope you agree.
As a singer, you can feel when a concert is going well. You know the music well enough to lift your eyes out of the copies and watch the conductor. You catch the eye of some of the audience who are attentive to the music. There is a buzz at the interval and at the end of the concert when the feeling is one I have experienced before in playing team sports. A sense that you have done your best as an individual but that more, you have made something special together as a choir, conductor and accompanist.
Paul Clarke April 2025
70th ANNIVERSARY
A joint choir with male voices was formed to sing the comic opera ‘Merrie England’ in 1949. It was called ‘Pershore Women’s Institute Mixed Choir’ (a contradiction in terms?). The successful evening led to the formation of the Pershore and District Choral Society.
In the period 1949-1999, the Society has sung approximately 150 concerts and in that time several soloists have sung with us and later went on to national and international recognition.
The Choir in 1999
In 2002, members voted to change the name of the Choir to Pershore Chorale. Not everyone was happy to lose the historic ‘society’ but in practice, the full title was rarely used. The Choir’s charitable purpose was underlined with a commitment to sing and disseminate as wide a range of music in the local community. In an attempt to increase the proportion of younger members, the subscription fees were to be free to under-35s. In the event, membership numbers stayed fairly stable with a steady trickle of new members replacing those who retired.
It would not have been apparent to new members in 2020, just how many changes have been made to the Abbey environment in which we sing. In 1994, major renovations to repair leaking rooves in the Abbey were carried out, but more significantly for us, the flagstones were lifted and an underfloor heating system installed. New lighting and sound systems make the management of concert audiences and orchestras so much more straightforward.
In 2019 we prepared to sing Brahm’s requiem but within a month or two, we followed the country into COVID lockdown. Our scores went away and few of us can have foreseen that we would be unable to sing together for 18 months. Since then, we have learned about the added value of technology for our preparation. With Cyber Disc and other musical rehearsal aids easily and cheaply available on the Web, everyone should be able to up their game in the final stages of preparation for Concerts.
We have also learned how good the sound can be when we are accompanied by slightly smaller orchestras in the Abbey. We will want to tackle the big pieces with full orchestras now and again but a cycle of concerts where intimate Christmas music is complimented by less well-known but challenging music in concerts in November and May could be a winning combination.
70th Anniversary Book
A full account of the Choir’s history and the experiences of choir members and musicians can be found in a publication ‘ Seventy Years Plus’ published in 2022 and available from the current Chairman, Paul Clarke. Contact via email
