La Inejecución de Obligaciones en el Contrato de Trabajo

In order for chant to be effective within Durham Cathedral, the community of singers needed to be aware and responsive to their sonic relationship with the building. This being particularly important as the music became more advanced and technically difficult, to the point in which composers have at times been commissioned to write music for specific buildings, such as Canon Lancelot’s comments suggest of Tudor music. But what of the relationship between sound and the building today?

Looking around the nave of the Cathedral, it is easy to see that technology has incorporated itself into the ancient stonework of the building. Lights, wires, alarm systems, CCTV cameras, speaker systems, microphones, and even Wi-Fi transmitters are tucked into the corners of the building with wires running through holes in the walls. The use of microphones negates the need to work with the building in the same manner as the monks once did. With the installation of microphones in the stalls of the quire, and speakers discreetly hidden under the book rests of the quire stalls as well as in the nave and Galilee Chapel, there is no need to think about how one’s voice will be heard throughout the building, one simply uses the Public Address system. In such an environment one could quite easily assume that the building is a place in which sound happens as opposed to with which sound happens.

The speaker system of the Cathedral is not garish or abrasive, but well refined and understated. One is largely unaware that the sound is coming from the speakers, which is how it is intended, in order to be as unobtrusive as possible. However, without them, one would not be able to hear nor understand what was being preached. The entire relationship between sound and the building is thus still reliant upon the sound being able to fully interact with the architecture, particularly the stone vaulted ceiling and the mixture of rounded and pointed arches. Each architectural element adds a different factor to the end result of the sound when it reaches the ear. However, with the microphones so close to the source of the sound, and the speakers so close to the listening congregation, the architecture has minimal opportunity to become involved. Of

32 _{Indeed, a number of documents used by the medieval monks of Durham Cathedral Priory show} signs of ‘added accents and marginal notes to facilitate reading aloud’, namely The Durham Cantor’s Book (DCL B.IV.24) (Piper 1994:85).

course, this is the desired effect, otherwise the speakers would serve no purpose and the building would reverberate the vocal sound waves to the point that they were once again indistinguishable to the listener.

During services in which there is a large amount of speaking and reading, the acoustic attributes of Durham Cathedral play only a minor role, and its once dominant role in the experience of sound is reduced. However, at times, the relationship between the sound of worship and the building remains as important as ever, as I found during the Christmas period, culminating in the Midnight Eucharist.

V.i. Singing with the Building

I arrived forty minutes early to find the Cathedral already full of people sat in rows and dressed in layers of thick jumpers, scarves, and coats. The babble of noise was lively within the nave and individual voices were indiscernible from one another. Pews creaked as people shuffled along them, and heels of shoes clacked noisily on the stone floor. The Cathedral was warm, brightly lit and cheerful-looking. Taking a service booklet from a smiling steward, I too slid into a creaking pew and awaited the start of the service, listening to the sounds of the building.

As the service began, my eyes and ears explored the building, and there could be no doubt that the Cathedral played a role in the experience of the Midnight Eucharist, the impressive stone vaulted ceiling looming high above us through the thick cloud of incense certainly added to the visual experience.

The service was conducted in the nave, and the choir were stood in the crossing. According to the Choir Master Canon Lancelot, it was the services when the choir were in the crossing where the voices of the choir needed to be managed most. Standing in the crossing of the Cathedral situates the choir beneath the lantern of the tower, a huge empty expanse above them: ‘It can be a problem as the sound gets stuck up there and so doesn’t propagate through the building in quite the same way’ (Recording, 28th January 2014). For the clergy, however, the building did not really need to be thought about, due to the portable microphones which hung around their necks. The proximity of the speakers in the nave to the congregation almost completely eradicated the architecture’s chance to engage with the sound.

It was not until the choir began to sing that the building was able to fully interact with the sound of the service. Guided by the Master of the Choir and their own knowledge of the building, the choir worked with the building in order to achieve their full potential full of rich tones, with rhythmically undulating syllables working the reverberation of the

architecture. The congregation, however, were neither trained nor guided, and as such the building reacted in a different way to their singing. Without the intricacies of the choir’s singing, the result lacked the rich tones created by the choir and simply amplified the sound the congregation made so that the building’s natural reverberation, the unity between choir and architecture, was missing.

Towards the end of the service the congregation turned to face the Nativity scene situated at the font at the back of the nave. At this point of the service, the choir had relocated and were now stood around the font with the full clergy. It was difficult to see where everybody was stood from my vantage point toward the middle of the nave. However, from somewhere to the south of the font came the sound of a single chanting voice which I immediately recognised as being that of the Vice Dean who was also wearing a microphone. What was significant here, was that the microphone was switched off. This act of switching the microphone off may at first be seen as a practicality for technical reasons. A microphone set up for the spoken voice would distort if one was to sing through it. Yet in this action I heard something more significant, I heard the building.

I had been hearing the building all throughout the service, as the choir stood or congregation stood to sing. Yet, the switching off the Vice Dean’s microphone offered a distinction between the amplified and unamplified voice. At once the pure acoustics of the architecture played upon the Vice Dean’s voice, lifting it high into the air, enriching every vibration of the chant. Furthermore, the impression of the single voice ringing through the air was one of complete unity between the voice and the building, one voice working with the building.

Through switching off the microphone and chanting out into the environment of Durham cathedral, the Vice Dean was singing with the building in the same manner as the Benedictine monks, embellishing the words chanted through a direct relationship with the building. However, this was not so much a re-enactment of what went before, but a continuation of the conversation with God in which the building played an integral part. By extension, we could view the singing of the choir and congregation in the same manner.

Such an awareness of the acoustic properties of the architecture result in a unity of community and building coming together to enhance the experience of the building and the sound produced in the Cathedral’s ministerial mission of giving praise and conversing with God. From developing a relationship based on the necessity of dealing with acoustic difficulties born out of the architecture, the relationship between the sound

produced by the community and the building has developed into an understanding of what the architecture can offer the sound and experience, not by working against it, but by understanding it and working with it. Furthermore, whilst technology has made the relationship less crucial to everyday worship, it is nonetheless still an important relationship acknowledged and understood by the Choir Master and choristers of Durham Cathedral. As Deryck, a male chorister of the choir explained to me:

As I am singing, I have an eye on Canon Lancelot as he guides us [the choir], through the music, I’m listening to my colleagues beside me, constantly adjusting the level of my voice to fit with them, but I am also adjusting myself to the building too, I’m positioning my body in such a way as to project my voice out into the building at the correct angle. I am also listening to the building and my voice returning back to me, listening to its sound, and adjusting myself further to fit with what I am hearing come back to me from the walls as it’s mixed with the other voices (Fieldnotes, February 2014).