Mark Williams on Be Still My Soul

In a time when much traditional religious observance is either declining or evolving into new forms, one thing that still brings many people in the UK together, regular churchgoers or not, is the singing of hymns at weddings, funerals, civic events, sporting fixtures and similar.

A new album from the choir of Magdalen College Oxford under their Director of Music Mark Williams (who, like his predecessors, rejoices in the formal title Informator Choristarum - dating back to at least the seventeenth century and unique to Magdalen) captures this musical heritage, while also paying tribute to some more specific connections - three hymns by former Magdalen Fellow Joseph Addison, and descants composed by the late John Scott (d. 2015).

Mark talks about how these hymns slot into the choir's everyday activities, and shares his views on the thorny question of balancing the time-honoured poetry of archaic hymn-texts with modern moral concerns about inclusion and fairness.

Image credit: Hugh Warwick.

This is now your third album on the Coro label - how did this relationship come about, and how is it developing?

The Choir has recorded for a number of labels over the years, most recently Harmonia Mundi during Bill Ives’s tenure, and, from 2014 when Daniel Hyde was directing the Choir, Opus Arte. The move to CORO in 2023 seemed a natural next step, given the label’s choral specialism and the very special link we have with The Sixteen through Harry Christophers, who sang in the Choir here as an undergraduate, and through the annual Genesis Sixteen residential course which takes place at Magdalen College each summer.

What drew you to the idea of a whole album of hymns? On the face of it it reminds me of Andrew Nethsingha’s 2022 album of Anglican chanted psalms from St John’s…

Hymns are part of our meat and drink as a liturgical choir – we sing hundreds, if not thousands, each year – and it can be easy to dismiss them and to focus on projects to record ‘real music’. However, hymns occupy a unique and rather special place in the musical life of institutions such as ours. A particular feature of weddings and funerals, they bring people together and offer an opportunity for communal expression of joy, grief, gratitude, reflection and myriad other sentiments. It would be unimaginable for a large group of people to stand and recite a poem, but when those words are given a melody, they find a voice with which we are all much more comfortable, and texts of great beauty are brought to life.

With about an hour to play with, how did you make the call about which hymns to include? Is this selection primarily shaped by your own personal taste and experience?

At the heart of the set lie three ‘Addison Hymns’, with texts by the writer, poet and founder of the Spectator magazine, Joseph Addison, who was a Fellow of Magdalen College between 1698 and 1711. The inclusion of a hymn by Sir John Stainer (Informator Choristarum at the College between 1860 and 1872) and a descant by Christopher Gower (Organ Scholar between 1958 and 1961) give the collection a further Magdalen flavour, but, ultimately, this is a collection of hymns that might be heard in Magdalen College Chapel at services sung day-in, day-out, throughout the year. And yes, I admit that it was nice for me to be able to include some personal favourites. 

I’m used to a tradition where last verses are often inventively reharmonised, while descants are reserved for Christmas - so I was temporarily taken aback at the number of treble descants included here. How often do you use these in the course of a normal service?

One element of the collection that is personal to me is the inclusion of a number of descants by John Scott (1956-2015), with whom I worked at St Paul’s Cathedral in my first job after graduating, and who was a significant influence on me as a musician. Both reharmonisations by an organist and descants sung by the sopranos or trebles can serve to enhance the final verse of a hymn or to throw the congregation off when they lose sight of the tune. A really skilfully-written descant maintains the integrity of the original hymn and keeps the congregational singer on track with the tune, whilst adding another dimension that lifts the spirit as a hymn draws to a stirring conclusion. Descants appear quite often in services at Magdalen. We get a lot of tourists – many of whom aren’t familiar with Anglican hymnody – coming to Evensong, and it’s always nice to see them smile when the choristers take flight in a final verse.

Can you tell us a little about the new (2023) organ, that appears here largely in a supporting role?

The Eule organ, which features on the Choir’s 2024 album ‘Voices of Thunder’ (CORO16209), inevitably plays a less prominent role in an album of hymns, but that role is no less important. Playing hymns well is a hugely valuable skill – supporting the congregation, lending colour to the texts being portrayed, and providing the necessary encouragement to the apprehensive to sing out, whilst at the same time never overwhelming. Here, our organists have a wonderful range of colours and sounds to play with, thanks to the versatility of the instrument (details of which can be found on the College website).

There are increasingly conversations being had about the gendered language used in traditional hymns, and how to react to that problem without losing the poetry of the original words. Where do you stand on this sort of question?

There are some easy fixes and some greater challenges. Where a text is gendered in a way that reflects a prevailing attitude at the time of writing that is no longer considered appropriate, it can be possible to preserve rhyme schemes and the basic integrity of the text whilst making adjustments to language to promote a greater spirit of inclusivity. Sometimes, it’s just not possible to make changes without fundamentally altering the character of the text, and in those cases we simply have to ask ourselves whether the potential harm caused by elements of the text that alienate or upset people is worth it for the purity of the poetry, and the answer will nearly always be no. That means that some hymns may be lost, but there are Victorian hymns sung by our parents and grandparents that have disappeared because the language now seems out of date – this is natural attrition.

There is a balance to be sought. If ‘How sweet the name of Jesus sounds in a believer’s ear’ promotes some discussion about the author of the text, John Newton, because it refers to the owner of the ear as male, it’s healthy to debate whether Newton, an abolitionist who was himself once enslaved, really meant to exclude women as believers (unlikely). We sometimes need to be magnanimous and mindful of the value of texts written at a different time – it is hard to see how lines like ‘Craftman’s art and music’s measure’ could be expurgated without being diminished – whilst also emphasising to all who attend our services or listen to our music that they are welcome and valued for who they are.