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Eric Whitacre says British choirs are best – or does he?

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Grammophone magazine features an article this headline:   Composer Eric Whitacre on why British choirs are best.  There was a huge backlash, first from Patrick Dupre Quigley making a case for American choirs.  Patrick took his case to ChoralNet, and there was a huge discussion about it in the ChoralNet forums.  NPR has taken an interest in the Grammophone article – look here for their story.
 
In Eric's defense, I don't see Eric making this claim – he may be a victim of an attention-seeking headline.
 
UPDATE:  I originally posted this blog before Christmas and there have been quite a few developments.  Eric Whitacre has posted a defense of his comments, and it was what I suspected – an innocent article with a flaming headline.  Eric's manager reiterated the point yesterday (Wednesday): The headline 'Why British choirs are the best' was neither penned nor 'approved' by Eric, although the article is indeed from his hand.

 
Let's give Eric a break – he meant no harm.  He is, indeed, a marvelous international presence for American choral music.  The unfortunate headline frames his comments so that they have a negative implication.  Here is what he says:
 
At the end of the day, I was asked to write about my love of British choirs, so that is what I did. If I would have been asked to write about my love of American choirs, I would have written a completely different article, about the American choir’s extraordinary stylistic range, their deep understanding of the texts, their natural musicianship, their freedom of sound. And I would have written different articles had I been asked to write about my love of Scandinavian choirs, or Asian choirs, or European choirs, or African choirs, or Australian choirs, or South American choirs. It’s true, I absolutely adore British choirs. But I adore all choirs, and all singing, wherever it may be happening. I feel grateful to live in a world where we can all sing together – no competitions, no lists, just beauty and truth expressed through our shared voices.

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Comments

  1. Thank you, Philip, for helping to quell this tempest in a teapot.  Having read Whitacre’s original posting, and the reaction to it, and now the reassessment, I think this is yet another example of the 300-year-old sqauabble between the colonies and the mother country.  If, as has been rightly said, we are indeed two people divided by a common language, I think that diversity is also manifest in our art.  That is, there IS NO BEST … only a distinctive quality of music making that transcends these petty ideas.  There are those days that I just can’t pass up the chance to hear Evensong on BBC3 (on the web); the very next day, or maybe even the same day, I’m grooving down the highway to Keb’ Mo, wondering how I can arrange one of his signature blues tunes into choral music.  Of course, I’ve started mixing apples and oranges here, but I think the true fact remains for me that music trasncends all of this; and the choral art is a wide universe that should not be brought down by ethnocentrism, on either side of the pond!
     
    Yours,  Tim
     
    Timothy Paul Banks, D.Mus.A.
    (Retired Prof of Choral Music and Conducting, Samford University)
    Executive Producer, Landmark Music Festivals / Landmark Tour & Travel LLC

  2. The truth is, we all have to look at ourselves critically.  Whether Eric’s intention was as Gramophone wanted us to think (“Ah, another stick in your eye, ol’ chum; and from a Yank as well!!!”) or as he and his manager states, is, in the end, truly immaterial.  Eric is as entitled to his opinion as the next, and in some ways I share his views, though not on the technical side (I’m not qualified to comment on those) – BUT – I spent two years in England living there in the local community and singing with a marvelous community chorus in the little town of St. Neot’s, Cambridgeshire (The St. Neot’s Choral Society) – a 130-voice choir in a town of 30,000 – and we did some marvelous music, and their director, Reg Searle, is to be congratulated for maintaining that wonderful tradition of singing in a challenging situation.  I have also sung in choirs in Germany and the States, so…what I have learned is:  we all can learn; we should all be self-critical; we should all sing to be as good musicians as the circumstances allow; and we should sing because we love it.  Not because we want to be first (that’s this American self-defeating thing, in the end) or the biggest or the highest or whatever – it’s about the song, folks.  If I love the sound of what I refer to as the “Anglo-Norman” tradition as most accurately expressed by English choirs, that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy Chanticleer or the Kansas City Chorale or any other choir singing beautiful music.  Let’s get a grip.
     
    Ron Duquette

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