On a cold afternoon last March in the bleak surrounds of the National Basketball Arena in Tallaght, nearly 600 Dublin primary schoolchildren turned up for a choir practice. The following evening the access roads were blocked by buses and cars containing their families and friends, queuing to get into one of a series of huge children's choral concerts.
All over the country - in Limerick, Waterford, Galway, Clonmel, Thurles, Portlaoise, Kildare, Tullamore, Longford and Sligo - similar crowds of children were gathering to sing together en masse in an exercise believed to be unique in Europe. Altogether around 8,000 children took part in this year's version of the ESB National Children's Choir, which reaches its climax with 1,000 children singing in three concerts in the National Concert Hall in Dublin this weekend.
The idea for the choir was dreamt up in 1985 by a Department of Education music inspector, Sean Creamer. Because that year was the tercentenary of the birth of both Bach and Handel, the European Parliament designated it as European Music Year, and the inevitable official committee was looking for ways in which Irish primary schools could become involved. Creamer threw out the idea of a national children's choir and was immediately asked to organise it himself. He put together the musical side and brought in a friend, Harry Smith, principal of a national school near Swords, to handle the onerous task of organising 5,000 children in fifth and sixth year classes all over the country to sing in choirs.
The plan, which has become the model ever since, was for each school and local cluster of schools to rehearse the same repertoire of songs, which would then be performed in public at regional and national level. "The most important part of it is that absolutely every child gets to sing in a public concert, whether they can sing well or not," says Creamer. Around one-seventh of the performers from each school are also chosen to take part in the culminating national concerts in Dublin. The first year proved such a success that Creamer was encouraged to continue on a biennial basis. He chooses the repertoire for each series of concerts, and conducts many of the regional and all the national concerts himself.
He does not make the repertoire particularly easy, believing that participants will get bored if only ordinary children's songs are demanded of them. This year's programme features The Land of Counter- pane, a cantata (a series of songs with a linking story) by Howard Blake - composer of Walking in the Air - which is based on a cycle of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson. It also has a Gregorian chant, religious pieces by Schubert, Mozart and Mendelssohn, light opera by William Wallace, a series of sea songs in Irish, and some numbers from American cartoon films.
Colette Hussey, the south Dublin teacher who is the event's volunteer national organiser, says some sceptics have sniffed that 10 and 11 year-olds, particularly those who are not musically inclined, could not possibly manage such diverse and difficult songs. However, anyone who has seen these largely untutored youngsters perform in their hundreds cannot fail to be moved by their thundering harmonies and the sheer delight they take in their performance.
Creamer stresses that the credit for much of the National Children's Choir's success - as for so many things in Irish education - must go to the teachers who organise it. The organisational headaches seem nightmarish: no musical event in Ireland comes near it for size - in 1989 10,000 children took part, and 2,000 of them packed the Point for the two final concerts. Yet Hussey says they rarely have any serious behaviour problems. In fact she believes the discipline children learn in order to sing in a massed choir spills over into other areas of their schoolwork. The networks of friendships the children make around the country through the choir are another bonus.
The core group of teachers which runs it, many of whom have been involved since the beginning, also organise summer schools and evening workshops to allow interested teachers to learn the current repertoire.
Until his retirement in the early 1990s an indulgent Department of Education allowed Creamer to organise the choir in his work time, which avoided the need for a major sponsor. Since 1995 the ESB, led by its music-loving public relations manager, Barney Whelan, has come in to fund the choir to the tune of £10-15,000 per year.
"People say to me - you must be delighted when the whole thing is over," says Creamer. "But I feel really lonely when it's finished, and I miss the kids. I adore that age group and their enthusiasm, and the way in which if they really catch on to something, they'll really go for it. It's great to be able to convey to young children that they're the important ones - without them, this whole wonderful event would not happen."
The National Children's Choir concerts take place at the NCH on Saturday, Sun- day and Monday at 8 p.m.
Brian Boyd's Sleeve Notes column returns next week.
