Here is a perfect example of modern classical music production at its most vulgar. It’s also a symptom of one of today’s more disturbing marketing trends: anything can be sold to the masses, be it yogurt or classical music, if there’s enough sugar in it and if you don’t have to work very hard to swallow it.
The idea sounds fine: select seven outstanding boy singers from top-rank English cathedral choirs–St. Paul’s, Westminster, Salisbury–and arrange for them some of the most beautiful choral repertoire from composers such as Fauré, Britten, Gounod, Duruflé, Mozart, and Rutter. Why, then, subject this beautiful music and these heavenly voices to such atrocious-sounding accompaniments–syrupy, sloshy synthesizer washes and totally uncharacteristic, electronically generated, pseudo-orchestral noodling–that demeans the integrity of the music and makes about as much sense as hot fudge on filet mignon? The plinky, planky, plunky synthesizer sounds on Fauré’s “Sanctus” and the organ-grinder accompaniment to Britten’s “Benedictus” are laughable distractions.
Was it money? Surely, the producers could at least have afforded a real organ to create a more appropriate accompaniment. But therein lies the answer: they didn’t want to. These synthetic sounds are intentional, presumably an attempt to open wide marketing doors to the coveted and moneyed youthful hordes. Have any of these people heard real boys’ voices, unprocessed and unadulterated, unaccompanied or accompanied by real instruments? Unless we’re being royally fooled, these boys’ natural voices could charm the most anti-classical listener, and impress the most avid vocal fan all on their own.
I certainly wish no ill will on these seven young singers, whose recorded efforts and public appearances may broaden the listening horizons of those whose diet is primarily pop. And there’s nothing wrong with arrangements–look at the marvelous things the King’s Singers and Swingle Singers did with many classical favorites. But when it’s done without class, style, or taste, it’s mere commercialism without credibility. Have the styles of music broadly categorized as classical really become so unpalatable in their original forms that such “modernizations” are necessary for the music’s survival? Hardly. The reason this happens is that, unlike in the world of painting or theatre or sculpture, there is and has been a long-term dearth of new, audience-friendly, accessible classical compositions.
During the last 50 years, most classical composers have had to survive in academia, which is not an arena conducive to producing broadly appealing works, or they’ve bolted for the more lucrative worlds of film and television. No wonder, then, that the old stuff, which composers actually did write to appeal to lots of people, gets recycled–over and over. It’s inevitable that tunes like these would fall victim to the clutches of electronic hell, and we can take comfort in the fact that one of the proven attributes of classical music is its eternal resilience.
