The music man

David Flood and I are sitting in his study, a room of such spectacular untidiness (“the dust comes free!”) that it actually defies comment. Behind him is one of the greatest views this county can offer – Canterbury Cathedral.

It’s a sight the Organist and Master of Choristers must know by heart, for we are here at his home in the precincts to celebrate David’s 30 years of music at the Cathedral, which includes 20 years ‘in command’, making him the longest continuous serving member of Cathedral staff.

David, now 52, was appointed assistant organist in 1978, straight after his degree at Oxford. Eight years later, he moved to Lincoln Cathedral to be Organist and Master of the Choristers, returning to Canterbury in 1988 to take up his position upon the retirement of his mentor, Allan Wicks.

“Allan really set me up to do this job. Under him, I understood how things in this great building had to go, and how to use both the building and the forces you have – the organ – to their best,” he explains.

“That gave me a great insight, but I had to make it fresh. I knew I was going to do it my own way, but what I did first were some simple things. For example, I turned our rehearsal room around 90 degrees, so that it would feel different and make people realise immediately that I was going to re-examine the way we did things.”

Married in 1976 to Alayne, a medical secretary, while still at university, it was on his honeymoon during that long hot summer that David first visited Canterbury, little realising it would become his home just two years later.

Gifted father
Today, he is father to four gifted musicians, ranging in age from 29 to 18 – two sons and two daughters, each of whom has played at least two musical instruments and sung in various ways (both boys have been head choristers). But David very nearly missed his own calling.

Born and raised in Guildford, he began to learn the piano at the age of six, despite his piano teacher telling his parents ‘he’ll never be anything special, he didn’t start when he was five.’

David’s fascination with the organ first saw the light at grammar school, when he began to learn to play at 11. “I was never a chorister, because Guildford Cathedral was being built and opened when I was chorister age and my family just didn’t think about it – which is one of the things that spurs me on, to make every family aware,” he explains.

“We would have the occasional school service in Holy Trinity Guildford, and it was the sound that got me. I just wanted to learn the organ. There had been no history of playing the organ in my family at all – I was a complete mutation.”

His interest deepened, and by the time he was 15, David had his own parish council job in Farnborough, where he would travel by train for choir practice on a Tuesday evening and then back again for Sunday service, a role he carried out until he went to St John’s College, as Organ Exhibitioner.

So what keeps the music alive for David, the man responsible for daily sung services at a Cathedral that attracts millions of visitors and pilgrims each year?

It’s understood we have such a jewel, that we have to preserve it. I have this in my hand and I’m not going to drop it

“When you do perform every day, it could be easy to sit back and let the train go on, but whatever we’re doing, it has to be the best performance, even if you’ve done it 20 or 30 times before,” he says.

“You have to listen, listen, listen and keep questioning everything you’re doing.”

And as well as a repertoire that has undergone a constant fluid change in the past 20 years, it’s the ‘raw material’ – the choir – that is evolving all the time, making every performance different. The boys change every year, one fifth of the total number being replaced at a time; the maximum David has had in the group is 30.

“The great thing is to work with friends and a super group of children,” David explains. “And in working with them, I’m helping them to grow and to achieve their full potential.

He adds: “One of the great joys is allowing and encouraging each team to achieve their very best. The sound you start with in September with a new group will be very different by January, when it’s tended to gel into the particular sound I like.”

David starts to advertise every September for the following year, and 80 per cent of his choristers are from the Canterbury region. He awards 66 per cent scholarships to five or six boys every year, who’ll each spend five years with the choir, attending St Edmunds School and boarding at the recently renovated choir house.

Auditions are held once a year, in November, but unusually, David still has a vacancy in the seven and eight-year-old range. Demographics has a lot to do with it: with fewer children (especially boys) having been born in the millennium year, many schools have a small Year 3, with a high proportion of girls.

So what are the qualities David looks for in a future chorister? “I’m looking for a very acute musical ear, and often parents are not aware a child has this, then I need the ‘making of a voice’, a voice that is free and easy but not necessarily fully developed,” he explains.

“I’m not looking for any prior tuition, it’s just potential. I have to be able to spot potential in a seven year old, which will blossom in a 12 year old.

“Then I need to have intelligence. When a chorister does 22 hours of music a week on top of a normal school career – and every boy also plays two instruments – you’ve got to have a chap who can cope with that. We’re not looking for Einsteins, but boys who will get the most out of it. It’s a quick response, slightly above average.

“And then I need personality. I need someone who is going to be bouncy. I don’t mind if they have a reputation for being mischievous, I’d far rather have that than someone who is going to be a bit ‘soggy’. I need a boy with a bit of vitality about him, that’s what’s going to give me that great performance.”

Don't give up the day job
Of course, the choir would be nothing without its grown-up male voices – the 12 lay clerks who sing six days a week, at seven services, while holding down a day job, or even running their own business.

“We are reliant on people having the skills to produce the music we need on very little preparation time, while having a job locally that allows him to sing and be in the Cathedral by 5.15pm every day – so I’m looking for magicians, really” says David, stressing how important it is to have a really well-knit community that includes the family behind the man singing.

“They do it because they love the singing, so my job is to make the performance as rewarding for them as I can. But to find people like this is very difficult.”

One of the challenges is the sheer amount of touring involved in being a member of Canterbury Choir – or, as David puts it, “a responsibility to take our gifts outside.”

In the past few years, they have visited France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Malta, Australia and New Zealand, with visits to the USA in 1994 and 1999 and one planned for next year, to coincide with the Cathedral Fundraising Appeal going global.

In Canterbury we have one of the widest musical repertoires, so we can do anything from yesterday backwards

As David explains: “We want to help the visibility of the projection of the launch into America.

“Last time we visited Fort Worth in Texas and we had a cowboy guide around the stockyards. We went into a saloon bar, and the whole bar applauded. The boys were knocked for six,” he recalls.

David is in great demand as a guest clinician and festival conductor, directing the Washington All-State Honor Choir in January this year, and every August hosts an American Childrens’ Choir Festival involving more than 300 children.

In between assistants until September, David has been putting in a seven-day week since Easter that includes everything from working with Kent County Council’s music advisors as part of the Sing Up! Government initiative with primary schools, to fulfilling his role as the diocescan organ adviser and teaching piano or the organ at St Edmunds to eight choristers every Friday morning.

No wonder he describes his multi-faceted days as “like a tapestry of things that need to be done.”

But the Cathedral and its music remains the overriding focus. “We have a big responsibility to be here in Canterbury when the visitors and tourists come through – people who enjoy seeing the Cathedral come alive, which is when there is music in it. We can’t leave it destitute very often.

“It is part of our national culture to have this wonderful tradition of church and cathedral music that’s been going for over 1,000 years.”

David plans a two-week programme three weeks in advance and is constantly looking for something different, although he says his favourite piece of music is the one he is doing at that moment.

“I look at other people’s programmes, look at new catalogues, on the internet for new music literally just written yesterday or the day before – or ancient music that’s been re-visited.

“In Canterbury, we have one of the widest repertoires, so we can do anything from yesterday backwards. It’s like a kaleidoscope, it’s always changing.”

The £50m development plan for the Cathedral needs £9m to support Canterbury’s musical tradition and its continuity and because it revolves around people, some of the money will go towards enhancing the endowment – be it scholarships for choristers, or salaries for lay clerks, “so we don’t have to struggle to get the right people.”

Musical challenge
One of the biggest challenges is extending the organ, a musical instrument that performs every single day of its musical life. The main organ was first built in 1886 and has been rebuilt four times since then – the last time 30 years go, in 1978.

“It doesn’t give us problems, but it doesn’t serve the building as we want it to,” explains David. “The Cathedral itself is a very unusual space, being broken in two halves by the steps and the screen, so to produce music through the whole length of the building is a huge challenge. And the organist at the moment only addresses the choir half of the building.

“We can’t produce the big grand sounds you’d expect if, for example, we have a Royal visitor or a guest of the Archbishop who may come in, with great ceremony, through the West door. I haven’t got the great organ in the nave to produce that kind of music I need – I can’t do it. So we want to be able to provide this for this great building for the first time in its history.”

David has estimated £4m to produce two organs – and admits that the one that will go in the nave is a huge challenge.

“I haven’t got any floor space, the nave is a very tall building, and quite narrow, it’s acoustically a challenge, because the vault takes the sound at its centre – it’s got to be suspended up high.”

The design he has come up with “creates a kind of medieval worship space and at the same time will send sound into the vault of the nave and address the whole length of the building, and give us that wonderful colour for any ceremonial or domestic occasion.”

There had been no history of playing the organ in my family at all – I was a complete mutation

He also needs to enhance the organ currently in the choir, which tries to serve a building over 500-foot long from its place tucked away in the triforium. When it was originally put there, the nave wasn’t used anywhere like it is today, so it needs to evolve as the use of the building evolves.

“We need to make it more intimate and at the same time able to address the far eastern end of the Cathedral.”

David says his great ambition is to see Canterbury Cathedral properly served for organ music for the first time in its life. His other ambition is to “see the great continuity of 1400 years of choral tradition maintained and supported into the far distant future.

“It’s understood we have such a jewel, that we have to preserve it. I have this in my hand and I’m not going to drop it.”

But above all, David wants everyone to be having fun. Describing the qualities he most needs for his own role as the ability to be “approachable and gregarious”, he says: “My philosophy is that this team of mine won’t produce at the highest calibre if they are not enjoying themselves.

“They are part of a living organism that is performing at its very peak. At my rehearsal every morning, I look forward to my performance at evensong and the joy on people’s faces every day, when they’ve heard something that has meant something intangible to them, is a thrill every day.

“As the Gateway to Europe, we get a tremendous number of foreign visitors and students, but when they come to a service here, they become part of our community.”

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