Church Crawl

Two days ago, I visited seven churches to the north and east of our home in Richmond, North Yorkshire, in search of a place which is quiet enough and resonant enough to use for recording the lute. Next month, another visit to points south and west is planned. I'm particularly thinking about the CD of vihuela duets which Ariel Abramovich and I will be recording next year in September, with Adrian Hunter producing and engineering. This one will require a slightly more reverberant acoustic than usual (something like the sound on my Josquin CD or my Siena Lute Book CD, rather than the more intimate sound of my Holborne or Bakfark/Waissel discs).

My helpful and invaluable guide was Janet Hall, local person-with-many-irons-in-many-fires, heavily involved in the musical life of this area and intimately acquainted with the local churches. She kindly made arrangements for us to visit seven churches in a day, arranging to borrow keys or have churches unlocked for us where necessary.

I played a bit in each place, and listened to the silence, checking also for facilities such as a separate space (usually a vestry) to use as a control room, availability of toilet facilities, etc.

Of the seven, more than one would be suitable for recording the lute, I think, but possibly only one was reverberant enough for the two vihuelas project.

We began at

Janet is in the foreground here.

Quality of silence: excellent. Control room: yes. Toilets: nearby. Acoustic: very clear but not much tail -- certainly not enough for the two-vihuelas project without the addition of artificial reverb. But lots of brownie points for silence and peace and quiet.

Next, it was

Note the name of the vicar.

Quality of silence: mostly good, though I'm a tiny bit worried about the road nearby. It's not a very busy road, but when something drives past, it's audible. When there's nothing driving past, it's beautifully quiet. Control room: yes. Toilets: no -- would have to make an arrangement with some friendly resident of the village. Acoustic: though this one is smaller than Stanwick, it felt distinctly more live. It's a lute-friendly space -- the lute sounded warm and full and seemed to fill the room. I'm not convinced it's reverberant enough for the two vihuelas, but would be lovely for some other lute projects I can think of. There is always the possibility of using one of these small churches and adding a bit more "room" to the sound artificially. Nowadays, there are some very convincing techniques for doing this.

Church number 3:

Christ Church at East Layton is a small private chapel modelled after Worcester Cathedral (!) with forty-odd seats. Quality of silence: lovely! Control room: yes, but problematic because the partition is open at the top, so Adrian would get a lot of room sound coming over into his cubicle. Toilets: no -- but an arrangement could probably be made. Acoustic: simply not spacious enough. It's a pity, because it's a fascinating and quiet place.

Church number 4:

Melsonby Church is obviously bigger and more spacious. Quality of silence: I thought I heard a bit of continuous outside noise. Control room: yes. Toilets: no -- would have to come to an agreement with a friendly resident. Acoustic: not reverberant enough -- didn't really pick up the lute sound very much.

Church number 5:

St. Cuthbert's with St. Mary's, Barton

We were to meet the keyholder, but when he hadn't arrived by ten minutes or so after the appointed hour, we decided to move on. There was no point in viewing the interior anyway, as the roar of the A1 is clearly and disctinctly audible in the churchyard, and would certainly be so in the church as well. Pity.

Church number 6:

Middleton Tyas

Quality of silence: excellent. Control room: yes. Toilets: no, and nothing nearby (which is itself an advantage for silent undisturbed recording); we'd probably have to fork out to hire portable toilet facilities. Acoustic: quite nice, but not quite as good as Forcett, I'd say. However, it has one advantage over Forcett -- no road going past. I don't think it's an option for the vihuelas without added reverb.

Finally, Church number 7:

As luck would have it, the best came last.

South Cowton, like Stanwick, is a Churches Conservation Trust church.

This fascinating, beautiful and isolated mid-fifteenth-century church captured my imagination in a way that the others had not. Here are some pictures of the interior:

Quality of silence: superb; there is a farm opposite, but not too close. Control room: vestry was locked, but I peered in through the vestry window from outside the church, and it looks like a suitable room.

Here's the vestry, photographed from outside through the window. I don't know if there is a power point in the vestry. Probably yes; there are power points dotted throughout the church, though there is no lighting at all. We'd have to provide all our own lighting and heating, and we'd have to check (as at any church) whether the power capability is sufficient to handle our lights, electric heaters and recording equipment. Toilets: you must be joking. But we could hire portable facilities, or seek an agreement with the farm. Acoustic: beautiful. It was obvious (and Janet agreed) that it is by far the most reverberant of the spaces we looked at. You can see from the pictures that there's nothing in it -- no carpets or curtains, no pillars (which can make quite a difference). Just reverberation. I think it would work for the vihuelas. As I wandered around the church playing my lute as I walked, I came upon a surprising phenomenon. If I played at the back of the church, by the font, near the space pictured here (the space with the bell ropes beyond the wooden screen), 

an even more reverberant tail was added to the sound. If I stepped beyond the screen into that space, it became a wonderfully reverberant and stony echoey sound. So there is the potential to control the amount of reverb by placing oneself near to or further from (or even inside) that space, which therefore functions rather like the wonderful side chapel at Toddington Church which we've made use of on many occasions in the past.

Whether we end up recording the vihuelas (or anything else) there or not, it's a magical place which I intend to visit again soon. I'd like to take Adrian there to see whether he thinks it's doable. It really is isolated -- at the end of a lengthy unpaved road well away from other buildings except the farm which is a good few stone's-throws away.

If Adrian thinks it's doable, it would be my first choice, though I think he should have a look at Stanwick, Forcett and Middleton Tyas too. And there are still lots more places to check out in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, I'm visiting Weston Church in Hertfordshire (where John Taylor and I recorded Holborne about sixteen years ago) with Ade later this month. We'll find the right place eventually. Meanwhile, it's been an educational experience, and South Cowton at the end was a wonderful surprise.