Letter from Martin Green: Music at St. Paul’s

When Dean Penny approached me to prepare this Ministry Highlight on the  Music Department, I was immediately struck with what a difficult task this is to accomplish in just one short letter. How do I talk about something in which I am so impassioned in just a few paragraphs? How do I convey how special the different facets of the St. Paul’s music program are in such a brief period of time?

St. Paul’s has been known for its outstanding music offerings for decades.  We are so fortunate to have a wonderful mixed choir, consisting of outstanding staff singers and wonderfully dedicated volunteers, our Cathedral Schola, which include other professional musicians from all over San Diego who join us for Evensong, and, of course our boy and girl chorister program which has long been held in high regard on a national level.

As we know, all our programs suffered a blow during the pandemic shutdown.  Our children’s chorister program was hit especially hard during this time. The program that I have personally nurtured over decades ground to a halt. Almost all our experienced boy chorister voices changed.  The vast majority of the girls graduated. While I will forever grieve what was lost during that time, hope has found its way back into the program, and the seedlings of a new (albeit very young) chorister program have begun to emerge.

The choristers at St. Paul’s are given the opportunity to learn and perform music that is some of the finest sacred music ever written.  But their music education is much more than just learning to “sing those songs”.  It incorporates elements of music theory, music history, aural skills, and comprehensive vocal technique training.

Given that they currently only have one regular rehearsal per week, they are learning at a rapid pace, with obvious results each week which speaks to the quality of the program offering.

I have had the privilege of recently forming our new alumni choir. This was an idea that I had in my head for a long time but wasn’t able to find adequate time to properly organize. It wasn’t until the need for bringing more experienced singers back for some of our larger events surfaced as we returned to a much more robust schedule since our post-pandemic reopening that afforded the perfect opportunity for this ensemble.  Much to my delight, the proposal was met with much enthusiasm by former alumni, many of whom have said that the music program left an indelible effect on their lives.  It is one of my greatest joys and highest testament to my life’s work when I have alumni families that bring their own children back to St. Paul’s for music training, completing that circle started decades ago.

One of the most exciting projects of my career here is now underway – the creation of a new Music Center to house all the various components of the Music Department.  Much hard work has been going on behind the scenes for some time now, and I want to take this, and every opportunity to thank the Cathedral chapter, clergy and staff, and the steering committee who have all worked incredibly hard to help make this project a reality.  For all the emphasis that St. Paul’s has always placed on excellence in music throughout its long history, we have never had adequate facilities for rehearsal space and other aspects of the day-to-day operations of the music department.  I am so excited to be at this point of making the dream of a functional, efficient, safe, and self-contained Music Center get ever closer to reality.  This new space will not only enhance our own programs, but will finally give us an attractive and useable space to host and partner with more organizations in the local community.

As Dean Penny recently remarked in a conversation, “It’s only been 154 years in the making.”

One thing that I am often asked is “how can we help with our Cathedral music program?”  In additional to continued financial support through donations to funds like Friends of Music, or our Music Endowment Fund, the single biggest impact that all of us can have is to help share the word about our programs.  Recruiting girls and boys for the chorister program is always a top priority.  And personal testimonials from within our congregation are one of the most effective ways of bringing new families into the program.

In closing, I’d like to share words written by a former chorister from a letter I received after they had moved away to study abroad:

“You made sacred music accessible and showed us how to understand it. You created such a safe space for all of us that even the most shy choristers learned the courage to perform, and this carries over magnificently into our adult lives – because we will not be afraid to raise our voices in defense of what we feel is right.  How could we not, having sung high A’s and B’s in front of an audience?  I am so grateful for learning in such a loving and nurturing environment.  If we would bottle this, the world would become a utopia!”

Martin Green
Canon for Music