Where I grew up, "serious" music was referred to as "highclass" - a term of respect, but indicative of a general reticence to ever appear above your station. And while it was certainly a matter of well-mannered hanging-back, it had unfortunate implications. There was an issue of ownership and anyone who wasn't "high class" themselves had only a dabbler's rights. Music that was "highclass" really belonged elsewhere and to other people.
It was a damaging belief system which had persisted on all sides. "Highclass" stuff like Mozart (or jazz) was only for "educated" people who were able to appreciate it properly - to understand it in ways beyond its obvious beauty. The irony, however, was that the people I always heard talking about this music as some kind of unknowable thing were the very ones who were actually singing it week in, week out, in the church choir.
These, of course, were the days before "folk" groups. I've no idea how that all started but something seemed to happen almost overnight - sudden vain attempts to get the congregation to join in the singing. Student teachers slapped tambourines, nuns bought John Denver records and everybody thought they were being very groovy indeed. Walk, Walk in the Light became a greatest hit and it was further calculated that young people would like "jivey" stuff like Lord of the Dance. That was bound to pack the churches. After all, young people were crazy about Mary O'Hara.
But I prefer to remember the ancient and more musical days, when I wore a brown anorak (and chewed the toggles), and when there was no way you could sing along. It was a time when church music had an extraordinary power. Every Sunday I stood beside my mother in the gallery and listened to all these beautiful words - miserere, laudate, aeternum and Dominum (pronounced dominooooooom).
I enjoyed those full, exaggerated, sounds and the way they seemed to be mysteriously drawn from the mouths around me. I looked at the strange expressions that suddenly appeared on the singers' faces - Willie Henderson, Jim McDonagh, Katie McCusker, Eugene Kelly, Chubby Hynes - all eyes on Father Murphy caressing the air in front of him as he conjured extraordinary music out of "ordinary" people.
Of course, the singers around me had been familiar with this music for years - the sung Mass, Benediction and so on - but this elegant priest had introduced much more. He understood instinctively that music could not be owned by any class or clique, and so he willingly distributed what he had and handed it out on sheets of paper like another Eucharist. Sister Cecilia played the organ and she told me that she was called after the patron saint of music. I told her that my middle name was Edward, and that I was called after Father Murphy - which was true.
The scores were passed around and they were full of dots and squiggles and strange words . . . Ave Verum, Adoro Te, Panis Angelicus, Adoremus in Aeternum. And soon the church was full of the most glorious music - sometimes quiet, sometimes sad, sometimes triumphant and always deeply moving, even to a child who had brought his Matchbox cars with him to vroom along the seats. And so, from the age of four, I was somehow aware of the power of what they were calling "high-class" music - serious or composed music for want of other terms. It could lift the heart and the soul and it gave you the feeling that you really were part of the choir of angels. It was quite possible that God was actually in the house.
I would try to watch the dots go by and I could see that they went up and down. I tried to guess what the words might mean - not that it mattered. I think I understood, even then, that music created feelings and emotions, and that it had a supernatural power over us. Stabat mater dolorosaiuxta crucem lacrimosa would almost make you cry - and I didn't even know what it meant. And when Christus Vincit was belted out you nearly felt like cheering and punching the air. Maybe that's why I refused to study music. I was happy enough with the experience I already had of it. Maybe I didn't want to ruin it with what seemed like the tedium of lessons and scales. Anybody I knew who was learning an instrument actually seemed to hate music - and you had to stay in after school.
But I learned a lot about music just by standing beside my mother listening to what was going on around me. In fact, I didn't realise how much I had learned until I started writing this. Whatever singing I ever did, I knew it was in a soprano voice and that when I grew up I would probably be a tenor like my father, or maybe a baritone or a bass. I understood that there were different parts to be sung and that there were harmonies. I could hear that each part sounded incomplete on its own but that when they all swelled together, it was the most beautiful sound you could imagine. I learned, too, that sometimes you would sing quietly and other times you would at the full of your lungs. I heard names like Mozart and Gounod, and, for the first time, I understood that music might be the most important thing on earth - and maybe even further afield.
THE choir, as I remember it, was always at its best at Christmas and Easter. Tom Morris would sing solo, or Pauline Dunbar, and their voices would actually lift you. Not merely in a vague "uplifting" sense but also in a more immediate, Fermanagh, sense that it would lift you like the wind would lift you. And it was rare to hear such drama and confident expression. In fact, it was almost shocking. It marked the occasions well.
Of course, there's a Christmas nostalgia in all of this - memories of childhood and very innocent days. But that choir was genuinely magical at Christmas and it made everything else so easy to believe - the birth of Jesus, the Shepherds, the Angels, Santy, and the whole Christmas package. Of course it's never quite so easy as an adult - but the music helps. And, when I go home for Christmas, it's good to hear that they still sing Adeste Fideles at Midnight Mass.
But in many ways, the damage has been done. That trend to replace "highclass" music with the "folk" thing was the beginning of the end for a lot of people. Once the "folk" thing happened, all that childhood piety went right out the stained-glass window and never came back. I know the intentions were good, in that it was supposed to get everyone involved, but it's never going to happen for me. If I want a clap-happy experience I'll go see The Blind Boys of Alabama. Call me old fashioned, but give me the "high-class" stuff any day of the week - especially on a Christmas Day.