According to the Bloxham School archives, the House Song Competition, more familiar to generations of Old Bloxhamists as ‘the House Shout’, first took place in 1976. As the one event in the calendar in which every member of the School takes part, the House Shout occupies a vital part in Bloxham life.
At the inaugural competition in September 1976, Wilberforce were chosen as clear winners. The adjudicator on that evening, as on most subsequent occasions, was a member of another school’s Music Department. For many years the contest was always held on the second Sunday of term, providing a concentrated rehearsal period and a great opportunity for house bonding at the start of the school year. In the words of the Director of Music at the time, Martin Roberts, ‘the customary routines were swung into action. Rehearsal timetables appeared, pianos were moved, other musical activities cleared out of the way for the week, and songs which had been chosen well beforehand were taught and practised by each House in preparation for the sing-off.’
Three different houses won in the first four years of the competition; five houses took part until the advent of Seymour in 1981, when the new house swept to success, winning on the tenth full day of the house’s existence and repeating the feat the following year. With Crake winning for the first time in 1979, that left Raymond as the last house to taste success, but that all changed in 1985, with Pippa Pyle only taking over the role of conductor on Friday and whipping the house into shape by Sunday. Each Old Bloxhamist will have their own memories of particular performances; two that stand out in mine are Egerton’s 2005 song and Wilson’s effort in 2001, of which The Bloxhamist editor remarked that ‘Wilson showed how many variations on a tune are possible from one note.’
What makes a good House Shout performance? Successive Directors of Music advised conductors to decide on a song early, to choose a song which the singers could sing well and to encourage the members of the house to look as if they were enjoying themselves on stage. A classic example of what can be achieved was the winning Wilson song of September 1992, conducted by John Fraser (Wn 88-93) and accompanied by Simon Johnson (Wn 91-93), who is now Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral.
After the 2003 contest, when The Bloxhamist remarked that ‘it would be good to see more emphasis on singing and less on dressing up for this occasion’, the rules were changed to eliminate dancing and costumes. The House Shout has undergone two major changes in the last two decades; first, it has moved to the last night before the October Half Term, providing more rehearsal time with no discernible impact on musical standards. Second, the House Shout, properly the Unison Song, has now been joined by the Ensemble element, enabling the best of the part song and instrumental categories of past House Music competitions to be combined.
Each house has had its share of wins and losses over the years, with the girls’ houses generally successful in the recent past, but the House Shout’s unique feature of mass participation still makes it the event that house staff and pupils most want to win. Not even the COVID pandemic was able to prevent the 2020 contest from going ahead, though the event took place in the open air at the end of the Summer Term.
With the addition of Exham (the old Lower School), Merton (the day house) and Stonehill (a third girls’ house), there were nine houses to fit in, and this year will see ten houses compete, with the splitting of Exham into Hedges and Barwell houses. As a result, the event has become longer and its Great Hall home more crowded. With the growth in the size of the School, the venue is now the Dewey Sports Centre, ‘Bloxham’s very own Wembley Arena’, in the words of the current Director of Music, Alex Redpath.
Our thanks to School Archivist, Simon Batten, for this article.
