It's Whit Friday today!

So I'm going to start by ignoring choirs and talking about brass bands :-)

EDIT: To all the people coming here looking for Whit Friday 2007 results, Saddleworth results are here and Tameside results are here.

I'm always quite surprised that many musical people who live in Greater Manchester have never heard of the Whit Friday band contests, so today I feel the need to tell people about them. Then, if you're intrigued, you can go and watch tonight! (This is a slightly updated version of an article I wrote for a Mensa music magazine many years ago, but as far I know the details are all still true. (I apologise for the number of exclamation marks. Not sure what I was thinking...)

(I do have a few comments from last night's piano rehearsal of The Kingdom, but I'll get to them at the end of this post.)

The whole Whit Friday thing will make a lot more sense if I explain about brass bands first. Brass bands are commonly perceived as being a typically Northern phenomenon, but, although I was born and raised in Manchester, I knew practically nothing about them until I started work in Rochdale. The whole system is so unique that I find it fascinating.

There are more rules concerning brass bands than those covering all other areas of music put together. The reason for this is that the brass band world is primarily geared towards competition rather than entertainment (many bands do no concerts at all, in fact). The contests, however (invariably taking place on a Sunday, starting at a ridiculously early hour like 8 a.m. and continuing until the bar closes at midnight or so) are very bitter, hard-fought affairs, with the results being discussed for weeks afterwards.

For the purposes of contests, bands are divided into five sections (Championship, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th). There is a fixed number of bands in each section, but I’m not sure what it is (something like 30 in the Championship or “top section” and rather more in the others). At each contest, bands score points according to their placing (so many for a win, 2nd place, etc.) and at the end of the year there are promotions and relegations, just like in football. In addition to the five sections, there is also a Youth Section, which is just as competitive - the only limit is that players must be under 19. (Young players can, of course, play for “section bands” too.)

The actual contests are amazing. I thought someone was pulling my leg when I was told what happens, but I’ve seen it for myself and can assure you that this is all perfectly true! The actual admin stuff for the contest starts several weeks earlier, when the band’s secretary checks that each player’s registration card is in order. These cards have (amongst other things) the player’s photograph and signature, and they are amended at Head Office (wherever that is) if a player is transferred between bands. No-one can be registered with more than one band. At the same time, the secretary will get each player to sign the contest registration form, and this will be sent off so that the band is officially entered. The band will have been practising the test piece for weeks - in each section, there is only one test piece, so if there are 20 entries (common) then the audience will hear the same piece 20 times!

The contest day begins very early for youth and lower section bands (the top section usually starts at a much more reasonable hour). The first thing that happens is the draw, which is often at 8 a.m., so a band may have had to set off at 6 a.m. if they have any distance to travel. At the draw, each band’s manager has to be present while a draw is made for the order of play. When this has been done, the band knows whether it has time to rehearse or whether it has to proceed to registration. The band drawn first also has to play the National Anthem (or “The Queen”, as they call it), so they will find a few minutes to practise it - they don’t get judged on it, in theory, but most conductors are of the opinion that it’s not a good idea to play it badly!

Even when the draw is known, there is not a fixed time at which the band knows it will be playing - they have to guess what time to tell the players to meet. Eventually, though, it will be their turn to “proceed to registration”. This takes place in a backstage room. The contest controllers sit at a desk. One has all the registration cards (which were handed in at the draw) and the other has the contest registration sheet. The players file past, and each one is compared with his/her photo on the card, and then signs the registration sheet (right next to where they signed it the first time). After this signature has been compared with the first signature, and both have been compared with the one on the card, the player is allowed to play - or not, if there are any discrepancies!

Now you may be thinking “this doesn’t sound much like any music I’ve ever taken part in!” - but bear with me! It gets even stranger! When the band, having passed through registration, finally get on stage, they will be announced simply as “Band number 5” (or whatever) and there will be two notice boards on the stage, saying something like “Draw number 5” and “Programme number 9”. Why? Because the adjudicator is not allowed to know which band is which! Before the contest began, he will have been taken to his “box” (and it usually is just that - a box (with sides but no roof) constructed right in the middle of the hall) by a steward who will have ensured that no-one speaks to him (they might tell him the results of the draw!). The adjudicator stays in this box all day - I believe there is a bucket in there in case he needs to relieve himself.

The audience, however, know which band is which, because they’ve all bought a programme, in which the bands are listed in alphabetical order, and they’ve all written down the draw, which is posted outside the contest hall as soon as it’s known. In addition, the audience will quite happily sit through 20 or 30 performances of the same piece - some even take a score with them to follow! Most of these test pieces are especially written for this purpose and are fiendishly difficult (more so in higher sections!)

After all the bands have played, there will be a long, tense wait until the adjudicator blows his whistle for the last time. He will already have used it to let each band know he’s ready for them to start - now he uses it to say he’s ready to be let out of his box. He goes on stage and delivers some general comments, but nothing specific. Then there are lots more speeches in which everyone thanks everyone else. Eventually the contest controller reads out the results - usually only the top 3 or 4 places, and always in reverse order. Often the bands are only separated by one point - I’m not sure how the adjudicators fiddle it to be so close. Finally, everyone goes to the bar to celebrate or drown their sorrows.

A variation on this theme is “entertainment contests”. These mainly involve youth bands - there are very few for section bands. In an entertainment contest, there is no test piece - bands can play whatever they like, and they have a rigidly enforced time limit (penalty points are deducted for each minute they are outside the allotted range). The music is supposed to be “entertaining”, and most of it is - but there are still many conductors who feel that a brass band programme is incomplete if it doesn’t include a march, a hymn tune and a solo feature (usually for the top cornet or euphonium, and often a theme followed by lots of twiddly variations - yawn!). There will be at least one very silly item (e.g. Nellie the Elephant done as a tuba feature, with the players wearing tutus and elephant ears - I kid you not!) and probably something by Andrew Lloyd Webber (The Old Gumbie Cat is a particular favourite).

Entertainment contests have two adjudicators - one for the music and one for the entertainment. At the end the marks from both sections are added together (usually the music is given marks out of 200 and the entertainment out of 100, or a similar ratio). The music adjudicator sits in a box and operates just as he would at a traditional contest. The entertainment adjudicator watches, however. But each band’s compère has strict instructions not to mention the name of the band, or indeed to say anything that could give a clue to which band is playing.

The instrumentation, by the way, is as follows. A standard brass band has only 25 players plus drummers (although there may be more in concerts, particularly for youth bands). These will be: 1 soprano cornet, 9 cornets, 1 flugel horn, 3 tenor horns, 2 baritones, 2 euphoniums, 3 trombones, 4 tubas. There are no trumpets or French horns in a brass band, surprisingly.

Anyway, I’ll finish by telling you about Whit Friday. It’s the Friday after Whit Sunday each year (this year that means it’s today). On this day each year, bands from all over the country (and elsewhere too) converge on the Saddleworth area of Oldham, just to the east of Manchester. More than 100 bands take part, and each of the 20 or so villages involved basically stops work for the day (except the pubs!). Each village runs its own contest, and the prize money is not to be sniffed at! The contest starts at about 4.30 p.m. and runs till 10 or 11 p.m. The bands play on a “first come, first served” basis - sections are irrelevant at this stage. They arrive on coaches, and as each coach arrives, the band’s “runner” (usually the band manager) leaps off while the coach is still moving and races to the registration point. The order of play is determined solely by the order of registration, regardless of where the coach is in the queue - this can make the traffic policeman’s job interesting! It is to the band’s advantage to play as soon as possible, because the sooner they play, the sooner they can leave to go somewhere else and enter another contest. Anyway, depending on how busy the contest is, the players may well have a 30-40 minute wait before they play, which they will spend in the pub.

When it’s their turn to play, the band will get ready to march. Usually trombones are at the front (they need more room) and cornets at the back, with the bass drummer and one or two side drummers in the middle. Some bands also have a mace-bearer at the front. At a signal from the steward, the conductor (or band manager) will tell the band to “take the street”. At this point they line up in perfect order. In theory no-one speaks or moves, because from this moment on they are being judged on their “deportment” - uniform, discipline, straight lines etc. The youth bands are much better at this than the section bands, in my experience - the top bands don’t take it too seriously, because they know that the real money for them is in the music prizes.

Eventually the steward tells the band to march. The mace-bearer, if present, will do a complicated set of actions at this point. Then the bass drum does a two-bar rhythm, after which he is joined by the side drummers for two bars, and the band raise their instruments for the next two bars. Then they start to play, and after a fixed length of time (the first phrase, usually), they all start to march - left foot first. They march along the street, following a child with a sign with the name of the band chalked on it. He leads them to the bandstand or contest field or wherever. As soon as they are reasonably near to it (but still out of earshot) they are given a signal, at which the bass drummer will do a “double tap”, and the band stops playing at the end of the phrase in which this occurs. (If they finish the piece before this signal, they start again at the beginning.) They continue to march until the side drummers do a two-beat roll to stop them. When they are told to leave the street, they are no longer being judged on deportment - they walk to the bandstand and play their contest march (this will be much more difficult than the street march). The adjudicator will be told nothing about them apart from which section they are to be judged under, and he will be somewhere from where he can hear them but not see them (often in an upstairs room of a nearby pub, with the window open but the curtains shut).

After the band has played its contest march, the players race back to the coach and set off for the next village. Ten contests during the course of the night is a reasonable average - many do more, many do less. The results of the contests are available the same night if you wait around till the end, or online or in the local newspaper over the next couple of days.

If you have never experienced Whit Friday, I feel that your life will be incomplete until you have - so tonight is your big chance! There are only two good ways to “do” Whit Friday - either arrange to be on a coach with a band, or pick one spot and stay there all evening. Following a coach in a car doesn’t work very well, because the parking is horrendous and the roads frequently close while a band marches down them. But, assuming you don’t know any bands who’ll let you join them, a good first visit is to go to Uppermill and sit in front of one of the pubs on the High Street. Last year 57 bands went through Uppermill between 5 and 10 p.m., including most of the top section bands. This page gives you an idea of the scale of the thing (and it doesn’t include all the contests). (If you want somewhere a bit quieter than Uppermill, try Friezland - the top section bands don't go there, so it's a bit more laid back, and there are slightly fewer drunken people due to there not being an actual pub there.)

Anyway - I should probably talk about choir, shouldn't I? As previously mentioned, last night was the piano rehearsal for The Kingdom (i.e. with Mark Elder but not the orchestra - we see them on Saturday). It went reasonably well - needless to say there was lots of dragging due to people not watching, and a few bits where the basses seemed to have no clue what notes to sing, but apart from that it was OK, I thought. And we did get through the whole thing and only finished 5 minutes late. Not bad. (Did you know, by the way, that CBSO & C are having a bit of an insane weekend? They're doing Gerontius tonight, The Apostles tomorrow night and The Kingdom on Sunday afternoon! I dread to think when they started rehearsing... or how long it will take them to recover! Nice thing in the M.E.N. about our weekend though.)

Mark, as usual, inspired everyone, including those who weren't entirely convinced about how good the piece is. (Am I the only one that hadn't previously realised that it tells the story of what the apostles got up to after the Ascension? It all makes so much more sense now!) There weren't many classic Markisms though - maybe he's saving them for his birthday. (He did start talking about a recent disturbing Australian film at one point - I thought he said "Jitterbug" but there hasn't been a film called that for many years. EDIT: Apparently it was Jindabyne. THanks, Libby!) I think the best one was when he was telling us about the priest who comes to all the Hallé concerts and sends critiques afterwards: "He has a parish right over the other side of the country. In Yorkshire!" ... This seemed funnier at the time than it does now :p

Oh, and finally - you know I told you about the things the orchestra are doing for the Festival? Well, now they've got Alan Rickman with them for one of them!