Kenneth Shenton writes:
JOHN BERTALOT was one of sacred music’s most revered elder statesmen. He was a musician of formidable intellect, imagination, and insight. Throughout his long and successful career, countless generations of choristers and choir trainers were inspired by his direction, his musicianship, his music, his sense of humour, and, not least, by his total dedication to the Church and its liturgy.
Of Italian descent, John Bertalot was born in Maidstone in 1931, the only son of Francis, a credit controller, and his wife, Dorothy (née Allcock). After Shoreham Grammar School, and singing at his local church, Bertalot won a scholarship to study with Harold Darke at the Royal College of Music.
In 1953, he took up an organ scholarship at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he studied with the composer Egon Wellesz. He was subsequently appointed organ scholar at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where his tutor was Boris Ord. While accompanist to the Cambridge University Musical Society, he wrote musical comedies with Peter Vincent, and also played for a week’s mission led by the American evangelist Billy Graham.
In November 1958, Bertalot succeeded Robert Joyce as Organist of St Matthew’s, Northampton. The post carried with it the conductorship of Northampton Bach Choir and Orchestra. He displayed a great flair for choir training, and revived the St Matthew’s Singers. Large-scale performances included works by Bach, Verdi, and Honegger, and, with a choir of 300, Handel’s Messiah. Bertalot also taught at Maidwell Hall, Northampton School for Girls, and Trinity High School.
At St Matthew’s, and with Benjamin Britten as patron, he began the popular annual subscription series of church concerts. Composers including George Dyson, Elizabeth Poston, and Peter Dickinson were commissioned.
In 1964, Bertalot became Director of Music and Organist of Blackburn Cathedral, where he initially found an institution in transition. It was soon to be transformed from a blackened building with a leaky roof into an airy, well-lit cathedral with the ceilings vividly painted in rich, medieval colours. It would also acquire a magnificent new organ, a 48-stop Walker, complete with a 32-ft pedal Serpent.
Here, once again, he succeeded seamlessly in creating a cohesive and highly confident choral entity. After obtaining a bold cohesive sound from the choir, he set about enriching and enhancing the choral repertoire. Besides a new youth choir, he also formed and conducted Blackburn Bach Choir, which twice won the European Broadcasting Union’s Let the Peoples Sing competition.
He was a Senior Lecturer at what became the Royal Northern College of Music and a Special Commissioner for the Royal School of Church Music, and was much in demand as a keynote contributor and conductor at choral seminars, workshops, and festivals worldwide. It was often said that he had friends on every page of the atlas. Jet lag seemed something unknown.
In 1983, Bertalot took on the exciting challenge as Organist at Trinity Church, Princeton, New Jersey, where he was also Adjunct Professor of Westminster Choir College, at Rider University. Further success soon followed, with a new mixed-voice chamber choir, the Princeton Singers. They were regular visitors to the UK and performed at the Three Choirs Festival in 1994.
Bertalot came back to Lancashire in 1998, and was appointed Assistant Regional Director of the Royal School of Church Music. He served as an adjudicator and spent 11 years as organist of his village church. He wrote a popular series of primers on choir training and numerous choral arrangements. His unerring ability, whatever the occasion, to pluck from the air a most apt quotation from the Psalms, formed the basis of perhaps the finest of his many anthems, “Thy Word is a Lantern”. Written for brass, choir, and organ, it marked the visit of the Princess Royal for the rededication of Blackburn Cathedral’s restored Lantern Tower in June 1999.
John Bertalot died on 21 February, aged 94.
