Concert to mark four score years

WILLIAM DART salutes Peter Godfrey as he celebrates his 80th birthday.

On Sunday afternoon, seven Auckland choirs and assorted loyal choristers gather at Holy Trinity Cathedral to celebrate Peter Godfrey's 80th birthday with style and collegiality.

It's difficult to believe this spry Englishman has clocked up four-score years. He still has that energy and charm that made him such a dynamic force when he came to New Zealand in 1958. As well as lecturing at Auckland University, he immediately set about reviving (or in some cases replacing) the sagging voices of the St Mary's Cathedral Choir.

Composer Gillian Whitehead, a St Mary's soprano in her time, comments that he brought "the whole English choral tradition over and it was good to have something so rigorous. Look what it's produced. If Peter hadn't come here and started what he started we wouldn't have what we have now."

Talking to Godfrey today, he seems almost embarrassed by such praise. When he came to New Zealand, he was fired by "the enthusiasm of the Auckland singers, much more so than in English choirs who seemed to take it all for granted. There was the exciting opportunity to get things going - chorally and orchestrally. And there has always been the wider scope of repertoire possible, as well as the chance to go on working longer."

At this point he reminds me his Kapiti Chamber Choir has just staged two performances of Bach's little-known St Mark Passion in Wellington.

The second half of Sunday's concert will feature Godfrey in action as he conducts a massed choir in a selection of hand-chosen offerings. Gerald Finzi's partsong My Heart Sang All Day is balanced by Lay a Garland, a glorious partsong from the Victorian composer Pearsall (a work I have heard Godfrey defend, more than once, against the protests of sceptical singers). The jubilant finale will be Handel's Zadok the Priest.

Also on the bill are a number of local works: David Hamilton's Lux aeterna, two movements from Gillian Whitehead's Missa Brevis and David Griffiths' Beata Virgo (in which the composer was inspired, Godfrey tells me with a chuckle, by some warm-up exercises he used to do with his Dorian Choir).

Godfrey is one of the heroes of New Zealand music. His choirs have performed and commissioned New Zealand works and, when he was conducting the Auckland String Players in the 1960s, the city heard the music of Lilburn, Franchi and Farquhar.

Composer John Rimmer recalls how Godfrey, when commissioning Rimmer's Visions I, "asked for choir and electronic sounds because he didn't think that anything like that had been done before". Rimmer, who sang and played horn under him, remembers Godfrey as "one of those rare musicians who get inside the music and let the music speak for itself. He liked to translate the choral sounds into orchestral terms. It was all to do with timbre, sustaining and blending."

Godfrey is famously reticent when talking about his art, although he's quick to say what he looks for in a choir: "Good blend, enthusiasm, being able to learn quickly and not being stuck in their ways."

David Hamilton, another Auckland composer, always found him "a stickler for detail but someone who knew how to make a rehearsal fun, yet still keep the singers working hard. You know you're achieving but you're almost not aware of it."

Using these techniques, Godfrey was the guiding force behind many of our young choral groups of the 70s and 80s. Overseas tours with the Auckland University Singers and the National Youth Choir made him "aware New Zealand music was an excellent advertisement for our country and musicians. We took with us the wonderful sounds of David Hamilton's Lux aeterna, and Douglas Mews' Ghosts Fire Water, which got a terrific response."

Godfrey has always been a nurturing musician, but tempered with a streak of pragmatism. Sometimes there are almost "old world" manners at work (I hear of cards he has written to musicians whose performances he enjoyed in the concert hall). Yet here is a man dauntless enough to throw himself into fearsome scores by Peter Maxwell Davies and Krzysztof Penderecki.

He is also aware a tradition must be passed on. Peter Watts, the director of the Auckland Choral Society and one of many musicians associated with organising Sunday's celebration, hails Godfrey for "the encouragement of young conductors. A lot of us - myself, John Rosser, Karen Grylls - owe so much to his example and practical help."

And Godfrey is cheered that this tradition is thriving. His biggest thrill is "the upsurge of choral work in schools, which must be due to the music teachers who have come from the ranks of the National Youth Choir". I suspect many of these teachers will be bringing their students along this Sunday to pay homage and experience some splendid music-making.

* Tribute to Peter Godfrey: Holy Trinity Cathedral, Parnell, Sunday, April 7, at 2pm.