An interview with Tim Cain

 Our very own second tenor Tim Cain is the composer of the carol Let Us Now Go to Bethlehem which won the Bach Choir Sir David Wilcocks Carol Competition in 2022 and which we are looking forward to performing in our Christmas concert this year. As well as having enjoyed a career as a music teacher, Let Us Now Go To Bethlehem is one many of works written by Tim in his long, successful and varied career as a composer.

 We’re delighted that Tim has found the time to tell us more about himself, his life as a composer and of course, his wonderful prizewinning carol!

How did you come to join the Waynflete Singers, Tim?

 My wife Ann (A1) used to sing with the Waynflete Singers back in the mid 1990’s, when we lived in Romsey. Then we moved to Cheshire for my job, returning to Hampshire – this time to Alton – in 2017. One of the first things Ann did after we moved was re-join Wayns and this time, I came with her.  She said it was like walking into a room full of old friends, none of whom had changed at all!

Do you sing with any other choirs?

Ann and I both sing with the Guildford Cathedral Singers, and occasionally sing with other groups whenever possible. When we lived in Cheshire, we sometimes sang for Radio 4’s Daily Service. This meant leaving home at 7.30am, arriving in Didsbury at 8.15 for a rehearsal, then taking part in the live broadcast at 9.50. Musically it was unremarkable – usually two hymns and an anthem – but we were a small group, it was broadcast live (with microphones only a couple of feet from our faces), and we were all very much on our mettle so it was actually very exciting.

Tell us about the first piece of music that you ever composed.

The first piece with a title was a movement for a string quartet called Little Orange Peel. In a sense, my little sister commissioned it. It happened like this. We were sitting around at home; I’d switched on the radio which was playing a late romantic orchestral piece and immediately my brother said, “I know this – what’s it called?” And before I could answer, he said, “No – don’t tell me – let me remember.” My little sister, who must have been about seven years old, said, “Tell me, quietly so he doesn’t hear” and I whispered the title into her ear. And when our brother gave up, not able to remember the title, she shouted out, “Little Orange Peel!” And I told her that there really ought to be a piece of music called Little Orange Peel and I might write one for her one day, but the one on the radio was actually called Till Eulenspiegel. (My string quartet bore absolutely no resemblance to Strauss’ tone poem and the only time it was performed, it was far too slow, which taught me all I know about metronome markings.)

What sparked your career as a composer to develop alongside your teaching career?

I trained to teach music and drama but I wasn’t that good at acting so, when there was a play to perform, I tended to write music for it. When I was at college, I wrote some songs and incidental music for our final year performance and, on the back of that, was invited to join a group that was going to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. There were about twenty of us; we met on a Monday afternoon in early August, without any idea of what our performance was going to look like and, five days later, travelled up to Edinburgh with 90 minutes’ worth of singing and acting, developed through improvisation. The show followed three children through their schooling – a Public School girl, a grammar school boy and girl at a Secondary Modern, all of whom encountered typical challenges of coping with peer pressure, alienation, bullying, and sexual awakening, before leaving their schools to go to Oxbridge, technical college and a factory job. The content was heavily influenced by ITV’s Seven Up documentary series (where the participants had recently reached the age of 21), and the style of presentation by Joan Littlewood’s theatre workshops, especially Oh What a Lovely War! The music’s influences hovered between Kurt Weill and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

You have composed music for both children and adults. Is there a difference?

I don’t think there’s a huge difference between writing for children and adults; I think it’s a matter of writing for the capabilities of the performers. When I was teaching, I learned that it is very time-consuming to write for the capability of each performer but ultimately worthwhile because it leads to a better performance.

Which do you write first, words or music?

I tend to find somebody else’s words, and write for them. I absolutely love what I think of as high-quality writing, and enjoy the challenge of setting difficult words, but I usually have to relate to them in some way. At one point the MD of a local choral society commissioned me to write a Requiem but, after a couple of attempts, I had to ring him up and tell him I couldn’t do it; it was making me depressed. He said, ‘Well, what do you want to write?’ and we settled on a setting of Roald Dahl’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This is a long poem and every single line goes de-dum- de-dum- de-dum- de-dum. My achievement, and I’m still proud of this, was to turn this into a secular cantata of seven or eight movements, each with very different rhythms.

Can you tell us a little about the journey from commission to composition?

It usually takes me quite a long time. Because I believe that words really matter to vocal music, I spend a lot of time working with the text and trying to find musical ideas that might express their meaning – not only their literal meaning but their atmosphere, emotional shape and how a sensitive actor might declaim them. Usually, melodic fragments and sounds come to mind and I try to capture them and work with them until I get the broad shape of the whole piece. At this point there’s often a difficult phase when I think everything I’ve got is rubbish but, if I can come out of this phase, there’s often a polishing phase when I iron out the musical grammar and the bits that might be particularly difficult to sing. The piece is finished when the tinkering stops making a discernible difference.

One exception to this time-consuming process was when my sister Jo was getting married. We visited her on the weekend before the wedding and she had a framed poem that I really related to. I asked her if she’d like me to set it to music for the wedding. She said she’d be delighted, and gave me the phone number of the man who was to conduct the church choir on the day. I rang him and pretended I had already written this piece of music and just wanted to check a few things with him. He grumbled a bit – unsurprisingly, he protested that it was the first he had heard of it (I think I said, ‘Well, you know what Jo’s like …’) but he eventually agreed to look at it. I distinctly remember putting the phone down, running upstairs and writing the first few bars. Six days later they performed it with a young Andrew Tortise singing the tenor solo, and I think Irish Blessings is still my most performed piece.

What’s the reason that you have chosen not to sell your compositions but instead to make them available in return for a contribution to the “Help Musicians” charity?

It’s always nice to get money but I don’t really need more so I prefer people to give to indigent musicians. I also think people who buy music are more likely to give to musicians than, say, overseas aid.

How does it feel now, each time you hear one of your pieces being performed?

Usually I love it, but not always. I wrote a piece for the Charles Wood festival last year, based, in accordance with the brief, on Wood’s Hail, Gladdening Light. As you probably know, this eight part anthem is very homophonic - big blocks of sound, moving antiphonally between the two choirs. I used some phrases from this and put a somewhat sentimental melody over the top. I was pleased to find it had been shortlisted and would be performed at the festival but then I made the mistake of looking at it and thinking, ‘actually, it’s not very good’. We went to Armagh and the performance was fine but by that time I had decided it wasn’t up to much, so all I heard was the brilliance of the other shortlisted pieces.

What’s your favourite performance of one of your works so far (until we perform your carol this Christmas, of course?!)

Hearing the music I wrote for our two children’s weddings was probably the best thing. They were both songs – our son Matt’s was sung by our daughter Becky, accompanied by a professional string quartet, while Becky’s was written for soprano, viola, cello and piano. Both days were beautiful and the music was so sensitively performed.

I also liked the film, made by the Tapiola Choir, of my setting of Greta Thunberg’s speech to the United Nations. This piece was another competition winner and when Pasi Hyökki, the Tapiola’s conductor, said ‘By the way, we’re making a film of it’ I thought this would be for internal use; I didn’t imagine that it would eventually be watched by nearly 70,000 people! [You can watch the video by clicking here]

Has anyone ever performed one of your pieces in a way in which you really didn’t expect?

Yes. When I was teaching at Kingston University, I got the chance to compose a piece called Rock, Paper, Scissors for a combination of Western symphonic instruments and Chinese Traditional instruments. I split the ensemble into three sections and, among the Chinese instruments in the Scissors section, I included a Suona, which is a double-reed instrument, a little bit like a shawm. I’d only heard a couple of recordings of this, but thought it might blend nicely with a flute, clarinet and di-zi. What I didn’t know was that the Suona doesn’t really blend. Not with anything. It is deafeningly loud – so much so that when we performed the piece at the China conservatory in Beijing the poor clarinettist might as well have been playing Rhapsody in Blue because you really couldn’t hear her!

And now turning to your carol “Let us now go to Bethlehem”, which we are going to have the pleasure and privilege of singing at our concert this Christmas! How do you feel about the prospect of our performing this song in the Cathedral under Andy Lumsden’s direction?

Really good. Andy is such a great musician; he understands exactly what it needs and how to do it justice. I have to say – the first time I heard Wayns singing it, I thought everyone was sight reading and I was blown over by what I heard. (I’d missed a previous rehearsal when it was sung for the first time.) Now, having rehearsed it a few times, I still feel extremely privileged to hear it sung so professionally.

Did writing the carol for a competition restrict or dictate its content in any way?

The competition allowed any suitable text but I wanted words which weren’t already well known. I found Reverend Chope’s text online; there are various versions but I was taken with the line, ‘Bright stars above shine on to light our speedy way’ and that was the version I used, albeit without the final verse which I thought was a bit too much like preaching.

What lay behind your decision to use the unusual 7/8 time signature?

I think I’ve sung well over 200 Christmas Carols over the years, and precisely none of those is in 7/8 time so I thought it was time to redress the balance!

Tell us about finding out that you’d won the carol competition!

Having sent it off, I heard nothing for several weeks until, one rainy November afternoon, I opened the ‘Thank you for entering’ email which I assumed was the usual rejection until I got to the ‘We are delighted’ bit. I don’t know if the writer was actually delighted but I can tell you that I really was!

The carol was premiered by the Bach Choir in London in 2022. How involved were you in the performance, and were you happy with it?

The performance took place in Cadogan Hall and I went with Ann, Becky and Becky’s son, Seth. They all went for hot chocolates and I attended the final rehearsal. David Hill had added a tambourine rhythm to much of the carol and I loved that because, if my carol had a single influence, it’s John Gardner’s Tomorrow shall be my dancing day, which has a part for tambourine. David asked me if there was anything that I wanted to advise and the only thing I could think of was that the first alto entry could be a little stronger. (NB altos!)

Before the performance, I was invited onto the stage with the joint winner Matt Finch, and the competition judges, Jonathan Wilcocks and Cecilia McDowell, for a brief interview with David Hill. The performance itself was lovely (including the alto entry!) and the two carols were well matched; Matt Finch’s carol being lyrical, gentle and fairly quie

Is there anything you can tell us or say to us about the carol that will help us perform it as you/d really like it to be performed?

There’s not really an emotional depth in the piece; it’s all about excitement and joy. The main thing, I guess, is getting the dance-like rhythms and dynamic contrasts. What’s really nice is when people tell me they like it. After one rehearsal, I got this WhatsApp message: ‘Tim, that was wonderful, joyous and full of fun and life’. I really treasure that. 

Tim’s music is available from his website:   https://tim-cain-music.com/

Tim Cain (in red sweater), together with joint first prize winner Matt Finch, with competition judges David Hill, Cecilia McDowell and Jonathan Wilcocks.