JUNIOR ST. CECILIA AWARD WINNERS

On Sunday September 14th, Father Roger Calder presented Kimberley Hale (14) Anna Higgs (15) and Amy Starmer (14) with the Junior St. Cecilia’s Award. The three Choristers from St. Wilfrid’s Church, Bognor Regis are the first from this choir to achieve this award which is given by The Royal School of Church Music to those Choristers who show an exceptionally high standard of musicianship together with commitment to their Church Choir. Such is the standard of this exam that only a dozen or so choristers achieve it each year over the country as a whole. The three girls, who were already holders of the Bishop’s Award, passed the examination last July. Between them, they have sung in the Choir for a total of 17 years and have all been or are currently Head Choristers. The Choir is led by Choir Trainer Helen Woods who worked with organist Rex Latter in preparing the girls for the examination.

CHORISTER AWARDS

It would seem that these days whenever something appears to be working well, there is always a group who seeks to change things so although our three choristers were the first from our choir to achieve the St. Cecilia’s Junior Award they will in fact also be the last! The purpose of this article is to explain these changes and how they will affect our choir.

In the past, choristers have worked through the RSCM Training Scheme with its light blue, dark blue and red ribbons working for Diocesan Awards along the way. The Junior St. Cecilia’s/St. Nicholas Award was open to Choristers under fifteen and the Senior Award to those under twenty two. The RSCM set the syllabus and provided the examiners. The Dean’s and Bishop’s Awards were awarded by the Diocese in which the candidate was a chorister with each Diocese providing its own examiners. Each Diocese arranged its own syllabus for the examinations, but I understand that some monitoring was carried out by the RSCM to ensure standards were roughly the same throughout the country. The badges and ribbons were obtainable from the RSCM. Some Diocesan Examination Boards also had other categories of Award such as Junior Bishop and Provost’s. Choristers who gained at least a good credit mark for the Bishop’s Award were then encouraged to tackle the Junior or Senior RSCM Awards according to age and experience. This may all seem a little complicated but it worked well for our choir. This system had its disadvantages but the only one that really affected our choir was how to continue to provide training and incentive to those choristers who passed the Bishop’s Award at a relatively young age but who weren’t likely to tackle the St. Cecilia/St. Nicholas Awards. I don’t think this new scheme will change that.

The RSCM has set itself the highly commendable task of trying to improve singing, not only in churches but schools as well and to enable singers of all ages to work for the awards. To this end it has introduced a new scheme. Choristers work through the training scheme as before but the Dean’s Award becomes the bronze award, the Bishop’s the silver and the St. Cecilia/St. Nicholas the gold. Another difference is that the bronze, silver and gold will be open to all ages. The bronze and silver awards will equate with the Dean’s and Bishop’s (as I understand it) but there may be variations in the syllabus. Some Diocese, Chichester’s included, have decided to produce their own syllabus and cast their own medals (Harriet Ball from our Choir is currently waiting for the new medal.) so here the Dean’s and Bishop’s Awards will continue in very much the same way at least for the foreseeable future, with the age limit remaining at eighteen.

So how will this affect us? I feel that for church choristers to receive medals from the Dean or Bishop of their Diocese is very meaningful and somehow much closer to home than perhaps bronze or silver from a somewhat abstract body. Therefore, at the moment I intend to continue with the present arrangement in encouraging children to work for their Dean’s Award sometime after achieving dark blue level in the training scheme and continuing on to Bishop’s where appropriate. Suitable candidates could then work for the Gold Award. That is not to say that we shall ignore the bronze and silver. I shall compare the syllabus of each very closely and it may be that there will be differences, which make some singers more suited to one exam than the other.

Helen Woods