Jim Aston admits to a quiet satisfaction that the Right Rev Paul Colton, new Bishop of Cork Cloyne and Ross, chose for his recent enthronement service choral settings by Stanford in A: these are favourites of Aston's own which are now rarely heard. But then Paul Colton is a former boy chorister of St Fin Barre's Cathedral, and may well share Aston's affection for a vulnerable repertoire.
James Michael Aston is now in his 71st year of unbroken service to the Cathedral choir; Colton is his eighth bishop, and he has now sung at seven enthronements in Cork. For the commemorative service of Evensong to mark his recent 70th anniversary, Aston revived the old Richardson chant for Psalm 84, selected Tallis for the Magnificat and Nunc Dimmitus, picked the Hewson setting of "Crossing the Bar" as the Anthem, and no. 311 - "God of Our Fathers" - as the offertory hymn. The setting was by J.T. Horne, who retired in 1977 after 55 years as Cathedral Organist and Chorus Master.
"I'm biased, maybe," Aston says now, "but Horne was a power in the land in those days!" It's not an unjustified claim: Jonathan T. (Jock) Horne was choral conductor for the Cork School of Music and for several choirs and music groups, and founder of the Oratorio Society and the Gilbert and Sullivan Society. His disciplinary tactics as organist and master of the choristers are spoken of with envious admiration by all those who remember them; his musical authority was so effective that his expectations were achieved without resentment or dispute.
Weekly routine
Now 79 years old, Aston remembers the weekly routine for choristers during much of his life: it began with Sunday School at 10 a.m., followed by Morning Prayer at 11 a.m., Evensong at 4 p.m. and again at 7 p.m. During the oratorio term there were rehearsals each Monday from 8 to 10 p.m., a choir practice on Tuesday evenings, Choral Evensong each Wednesday during Lent and choir practice again on Friday nights. "Family life did have to accommodate it - but it was what I did and they accepted that." It can't have been all bad: both his son Gregory and daughter Rosemary sang with the cathedral choir under Horne.
Horne's successor was Andrew Padmore, whose recruiting drive achieved an ecumenical membership, later expanded by Padmore's successor Colin Nicholls in the formation of a new choir for girls and women which now alternates with the male voices from week to week. Still, Jim's wife Alice remembers the Sunday afternoon curfews to family events, and doesn't believe that he's ready to quit just yet.
Many changes
There have been many changes, not least the mixed voices, the abridged liturgy, the diminished congregation. Aston grew up in the Cathedral tradition of male voice only, but recognises with good grace the contracting pool from which singers must now be drawn. His own start came under the tutelage of Miss Daisy Hay at St Fin Barre's National School. He and his brother Bruce (later a founder member of the Cork Jazz Festival) were given piano lessons at his mother's insistence, but it was Miss Hay who introduced him to the tonic solfa. At eight he was taken on as a probationer in the Cathedral by Jock Horne, who delighted in his true pitch; and even when his voice broke and it took four years to resolve itself into a bass, Aston continued with his Friday night practices at the Cathedral and took up the scholarship to the Cork Grammar School offered by the choir.
Despite the changes some things have remained the same. St Fin Barre's Cathedral, for example, is one of the very few places left in Ireland where Compline can be heard, usually on the last Sunday of every month. It means a great deal to Aston and to many of the other Cathedral Gentlemen that the Book of Common Prayer is still used both for Evensong and for this lovely service: nothing has so far rivalled the austerity of the plain chant or the sense of human fragility in the prayers - "Keep me as the apple of an eye, Hide me under the shadow of thy wings" - which are its choral centrepiece. And Aston was delighted to be told by Dean Michael Jackson recently that sung Morning Prayers is to be reintroduced in Cork for those months on which there is a fifth Sunday.
Despite the massive fundraising commitments required for the repair, renovation and renewal programme designated "St Fin Barre's Beyond 2000", the Dean with Colin Nicholls and the Select Vestry have found the time to enhance the tradition inaugurated by Jock Horne of providing musical scholarships for the choristers. By this means tuition in the instrument of their choice is financed for young members who study at the Cork School of Music. A recent development has been the introduction of bursaries for choral scholars, young adults already training in vocal studies in Cork. One of these has been established in memory of the late Dermot Sherrard and another is funded jointly by UCC and the Cathedral. Both UCC and the Michael James Memorial Foundation are contributing towards the continuation of the Organ Scholarship, a benefaction which is of great significance to church music in general and to Cork in particular, where organ studies are in increasing demand. E Radio 1.
Modern hymns
As he awaits the arrival of the new Church Hymnal of 2000 with some trepidation - about 300 hymns from the BCP are to be dropped - Jim Aston can't be objective about the continuing conflict between the organ and the guitar in terms of church music. He's not very comfortable with modern hymns (although his own taste, as a former member of the Lochrian Madrigal Consort and of the Arthur Weekes Singers is pretty wide-ranging) and has some difficulty adjusting to the lack of melodic weight which seems to have become popular. But then he remembers psalm 150: "Praise him in the timbrels and dances; praise him upon the strings and pipe . . . Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord."
He's not sure how much longer his own breath will hold out, but he has praised the Lord for 70 years and has enjoyed every one of them.