Cathedral Music: Autumn 2025 by Cathedral Music Trust

SIR JOHN RUTTER

We raise a toast to the great British choral composer as he turns 80

How the streaming of services online became a global success

We explore his enigmatic life and eloquent music THE MAGAZINE OF CATHEDRAL MUSIC TRUST

GIBBONS AT 400

VIRTUAL CATHEDRALS SINGING OUT

How St Paul’s Cathedral has revitalised its education programme

A Cathedral Music Trust membership is the perfect gift for a choral and organ music lover.

Give someone special the chance to delve deeper into the heart of cathedral music.

Buy now at: www.cathedralmusictrust.org.uk/friends or for further information please email katy.ashman@cathedralmusictrust.org.uk

From just £30 a year

CATHEDRAL MUSIC TRUST

Royal Patron

HRH The Duchess of Gloucester

President

Harry Christophers CBE

Ambassadors

Alexander Armstrong, Anna Lapwood MBE

Board of Trustees

Jonathan Macdonald (Chair), James Gurling OBE, David Hill MBE, Sue Hind Woodward, Stuart Laing, James Lancelot, Giverny McAndry, Heather Morgan, James Mustard, Isobel Pinder, Gavin Ralston, Simon Toyne CEO

Jonathan Mayes

Programmes Director

Cathy Dew

Programmes Manager

Anna Elliss

Development Director

Leila Alexander

Development Officer

Katy Ashman

Volunteer & Events Coordinator

Hannah Capstick

Digital & Communications Manager

Laura Cottrell

Director of Finance & Resources

Dan Bishop

Finance Officer

Amanda Welsh

Cathedral Music Trust is extremely grateful to our team of volunteers across the UK who give many hours of their time each year to support the work we do.

Cathedral Music Trust

27 Old Gloucester Street London WC1N 3AX info@cathedralmusictrust.org.uk 020 3151 6096 (office hours) www.cathedralmusictrust.org.uk

Registered Charity Number 1187769

CathedralMusicTrust @_cathedralmusic @cathedralmusictrust

CathedralMusicTrust

Cathedral Music Trust

CATHEDRAL MUSIC MAGAZINE

Editor Rebecca Franks editor@cathedralmusictrust.org.uk

Designer

Louise Wood

Production Manager Kyri Apostolou

Cathedral Music is published for Cathedral Music Trust by Mark Allen Group twice a year, in May and November. Autumn 2025

WFROM THE EDITOR

elcome to your autumn issue of Cathedral Music, and my first as the magazine’s editor. It’s a joy to be stepping into this role, and after a wonderful summer meeting the team at Cathedral Music Trust, I know it’s going to be easy to fill this magazine with engaging features, interviews and news, bringing you all the latest insights into the cathedral music world.

I distinctly remember the first time I fell in love with a piece of choral music. It was at my school’s carol service in a local church, and a small group of singers were rehearsing John Rutter’s The Lord bless you and keep you. I was so moved by the seemingly effortless simplicity and purity of this piece, and I still am today. I’m far from alone in being touched by Sir John’s music, as you’ll read in our wonderful tribute to him, to mark his 80th birthday, by those who know his craft best (p42).

Based in Cambridge, Rutter follows in a long line of distinguished composers who have shaped the English choral tradition, including Orlando Gibbons. Four hundred years after Gibbons’s death, details of his life remain hard to pin down, but his music speaks for itself, as we find out in ‘The Master Storyteller’ (p38).

The theme of traditions, and how they might evolve, is threaded through several other articles in this issue. It’s been fascinating to find out more about why choirs decide to recruit choristers from a variety of schools rather than the single choir-school model (p28). And if you can’t always get to a cathedral near you, think about watching a streamed service online (p31), an intriguing development that’s come out of the pandemic.

As I write this letter, the nights are drawing in and autumn is on its way, and it will soon be the busy time of Advent and Christmas. I couldn’t let the season pass without celebrating it in print, and I hope you enjoy our perusal of the history of Christmas carols (p45) as well as a round-up of the unmissable Christmas albums (p62).

Rebecca Franks, Editor of Cathedral Music

The views expressed in articles are those of the contributor and do not necessarily represent any official policy of Cathedral Music Trust.

Advertisements are printed in good faith, and their inclusion does not imply endorsement by the Trust; all communications regarding advertising should be addressed to info@cathedralmusictrust.org.uk.

Every effort has been made to determine copyright on illustrations used; we apologise for any mistakes we have made. The Editor will be glad to correct any omissions.

Corrections from Cathedral Music, Spring 2025: p27. We mistakenly claimed that Leeds Cathedral Choir offers opportunities to collaborate with the singer-songwriter Gabrielle. We would like to correct this and put the record straight. In fact, the choir works with Paul McCreesh’s Gabrieli ensemble. Please accept our apologies, on behalf on Mark Allen Group, for these errors.

Front cover: Sir John Rutter (Photo: Nick Rutter) Back cover: St John’s College, Cambridge (Photo: Keith Heppell)

28 Multi-school cathedral choirs

Andrew Stewart finds out why some cathedrals prefer to recruit choristers from a variety of local schools rather than from dedicated choir schools

Partnerships at St Paul’s

Cathy Dew reveals how the iconic London cathedral has revitalised its educational outreach programmes over the last two years

31 The virtual cathedral Clare Stevens discovers why the streaming of services online has flourished in Britain’s cathedrals since the pandemic

38 The master storyteller

To mark the 400th anniversary of Orlando Gibbons, Jeremy Summerly explores the composer’s enigmatic life and eloquent music

Graham Westley Lacdao

Adobe Stock/Nicolae Gherasim

Matt Wilson Nick Rutter; Chester Cathedral

42 Celebrating Sir John Rutter

We speak to leading performers, composers and clergy about what makes the popular British composer’s choral music so special

45 A history of Christmas carols

Carols might be a staple of Christmas today, but that hasn’t always been the case. We tell the colourful story of these festive favourites

Rebecca Franks welcomes you to this new issue

The latest developments and stories from across the world of church and cathedral music 19

People & Places

Who is moving and to where? We congratulate those taking on exciting new roles

Events

Join a Cathedral Music Trust at a gathering near you 22 Award

Reflections

2024 recipients discuss the beneficial impact of Cathedral Music Trust’s vital support 50

Reviews

Recent releases of choral and organ music reviewed, plus a round-up of the latest scores, and a Christmas album special 66

Cathedral Music Trust Future Leader David Whitworth on the joys and benefits of a life involved with choral music

Adobe Stock

Nick Rutter

NEWS & PREVIEWS

UNESCO RECOGNITION CAMPAIGN FOR ANGLICAN CHORAL MUSIC

Anglican Choral Music is a remarkable cultural treasure.

This autumn, Cathedral Music Trust is calling for its inclusion in the UK’s nominations for UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage inventory, overseen by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). For centuries, the sound of Evensong has shaped our cathedrals, chapels and communities, creating a shared experience of music, language and spirituality. Together, we sustain more than music; we nurture a legacy. Your support for the Trust and local choral foundations ensures that choristers and organists receive life-changing musical training and opportunities to cultivate artistic skills, confidence, discipline and a sense of belonging.

Our collective backing ensures that this example of living heritage reaches millions worldwide through broadcasts, concerts and recordings. However, in a fast-changing world, the tradition faces real challenges.

The Trust’s advocacy efforts are multifaceted, focusing on both financial support and strategic initiatives to ensure the vitality of cathedral music and the preservation of daily sung worship. By actively campaigning for UNESCO recognition, we aim to raise the profile of this living cultural heritage, champion high quality music education, and secure a future where Anglican Choral Music remains a vital part of our national legacy.

At this stage Cathedral Music Trust is leading the campaign by creating a

forum of support across choral and heritage sectors, inviting testimonies and examples demonstrating the living nature and community impact of choral music, and invites organisations and individuals to endorse the initiative to raise awareness within their own networks.

Autumn updates will be shared about progress on the Trust’s website and across social media. Securing UNESCO status would mark an important milestone, but not an endpoint, in a wider effort to ensure that Anglican Choral Music continues to inspire, educate and transform lives through this important musical pratice for generations to come. Visit cathedralmusictrust.org.uk to get involved

CATHEDRAL MUSIC TRUST ANNOUNCES LATEST AWARDS

Cathedral Music Trust has announced its latest round of awards through the Cathedral Music Support Programme, totalling £470,000 and supporting music in 27 Anglican and Roman Catholic cathedrals and churches in the UK.

Now, as its renewed main awards scheme enters its second year, the Cathedral Music Support Programme

Cathedral music scholarship scheme

The Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick has announced a new choral scholarship programme for talented young choristers in Warwick and the surrounding area, which will begin in September 2026.

The King Henry VIII Choral Programme, which is a partnership between Warwick Schools Foundation and The Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick, has been made possible by The King Henry VIII Endowed Trust, Warwick.

The programme will enable young choristers to sing in the choir of St Mary’s while also accessing the musical opportunities available as part of being a pupil at Warwick Schools Foundation, which comprises five schools, four in Warwick and one in Royal

(CMSP) is awarding 20 new recipients, as well as continuing to support 20 choral foundations which were awarded multi-year grants in 2024.

The CMSP builds partnerships with cathedrals and other choral foundations across the UK, developing work that shares Cathedral Music Trust’s objectives in

three areas: pathways to music; training and development; and supporting the workforce. This year, financial support provided by the Edington Festival contributes to the award made to Chester Cathedral.

Cathedral Music Trust CEO Jonathan Mayes says: ‘The invaluable work of our cathedral and church musicians enriches the lives of both participants and the communities in which they operate. At a time when the sector faces numerous financial challenges, this much-needed investment demonstrates the Trust’s dedication to securing the future of our world-renowned tradition.’

The Church Choir Award, run in partnership with the Royal School of Church Music, also awarded £30,000 of funding to seven church choirs to enhance their work through innovative and exciting projects.

For details of all the recipients, visit cathedralmusictrust.org.uk

Leamington Spa. Boys and girls across the Foundation from Year 3 upwards will be eligible to be assessed for the Award.

Oliver Hancock, Director of Music at St Mary’s Church, said: ‘The newly launched scholarship is an exciting new venture between St Mary’s Church and Warwick Schools Foundation. We’re hoping to

continue to build on a really solid relationship, and give more and more children a doorway into this fantastic world of choral singing.’

For more information regarding the scholarship programme, including the application process and eligibility criteria, visit warwickschoolsfoundation.co.uk/ khviii-choral-award

IN BRIEF…

The National Youth Choir of Northern Ireland has announced its closure after 26 years, after losing its Arts Council funding, which totalled around £60,000 a year.

A petition has been launched calling for the withdrawal of funding to be reversed, noting that the decision is ‘not only short-sighted, it is an act of cultural vandalism’ and that its loss is a ‘deliberate dismantling of a vital pathway for young people in Northern Ireland to engage in transformative artistic experiences.’

In an article for the Irish Times, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland said the decision was not due to funding pressures but instead ‘based on the ability of the organisation to meet the programme’s criteria’. They say that ‘provision of high-quality youth choral training and development in Northern Ireland remains a priority for the Arts Council’.

The King’s Birthday Honours List 2025, announced in June, included several figures from the UK’s choral and cathedral music community. Michael Downes, Director of Music at the University of St Andrews, received an OBE for services to music, while James Manwaring, Director of Music at Windsor Boys’ School, was awarded an MBE.

The Reverend Richard Coles’s cosy crime novel Murder Before Evensong has been made into a TV series, due to be aired this autumn on Channel 5. It stars actor Matthew Lewis as Daniel Clement, the Rector of Champton, who finds himself turning amateur sleuth.

OWAIN PARK APPOINTED CHIEF CONDUCTOR OF THE BBC SINGERS

Owain Park has been appointed Chief Conductor of the BBC Singers, beginning in autumn 2026. He will succeed Sofi Jeannin, who has led the group since 2018. Park has been Principal Guest Conductor of the group since 2022.

Over the last year, Park conducted the group in several performances. In February 2024, he directed a concert celebrating the music of distinguished composer Dame Judith Weir and in October 2024, he conducted the BBC Singers as part of their Centenary concert at the Barbican. The previous year the renowned choir had been threatened with closure, but after protests and public outcry the

decision to disband was scrapped and the group was saved.

Park says: ‘I’m absolutely thrilled to be stepping into the role of Chief Conductor of the BBC Singers – it’s both a dream and an honour. With their rich history and spirit of innovation, the Singers represent so much of what excites me about music-making.’ Jonathan Manners, Director of the BBC Singers, says: ‘Everyone involved with the BBC Singers is thrilled that Owain Park will be the group’s Chief Conductor. He is perfectly placed to continue the remarkable work of Sofi Jeannin as the BBC Singers continue to make music that is exciting, relevant and impactful.’

Richard Tanner named as the next Organist and Director of Music at Saint Thomas Fifth Avenue, New York

Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, New York has announced Richard Tanner as its next Organist and Director of Music. Tanner replaces Jeremy Filsell, who has been in the role since 2019, and joins from his position of Director of Music at the prestigious Rugby school in the UK, established in 1567. During his time at Rugby, he founded the Rugby Choristers at Bilton Grange, the UK’s most recently formed Anglican choral foundation. Tanner also became director of Festival on The Close, a five-day celebration of culture community and creativity all in aid of Cancer Research and The Bradley Club.

Speaking of the appointment, Tanner said, ‘I am delighted to have been invited by Fr. Turner to join the vibrant community at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue … I look forward to building on their legacy, excited by the Vestry’s vision for the future.’ Tanner’s career includes 20 years of work as a musical director and organist for BBC Radio 4’s Daily

Service. As producer, he has worked on over 40 commercial recordings and as an organist he has played on numerous recordings including of Messiaen’s La Nativité du Seigneur, music by David Briggs, and The Manchester Carols by Carol Ann Duffy and Sasha Johnson Manning.

ORGAN AT ST JAMES’S CHURCH, PICCADILLY TO BE RESTORED AS PART OF MULTI-MILLION PROJECT

The Renatus Harris Organ at St James’s Church, Piccadilly, will be rebuilt as a part of a £20 million restoration project. 85 years after

the last restorations, which were due to the bombing of the church and the rectory during the Second World War, the ‘Wren Project’ seeks to

rejuvenate the building, courtyard and gardens.

The organ was originally in the private Roman Catholic chapel of King James II in Whitehall Palace. It was then given to St James’s Church by Queen Mary in 1691. The organ served the church well for around 280 years, with the likes of Handel and Leopold Stokowski playing it.

However, the instrument has not been in playable condition since the 1960s. Organ builders Goetze and Gwynn have been commissioned to build the new pipe organ, which will be made in their workshop in Sherwood Forest. A memorial grant has been given by the Julia Rausing Trust towards renewing the organ as well as funding a 10-year organist and sub-organist scholarship programme at the London venue.

Jaya

Vemuri

GAVIN HIGGINS NAMED INAUGURAL ASSOCIATE COMPOSER OF THE THREE CHOIRS FESTIVAL

The Three Choirs Festival has named Gavin Higgins as its inaugural Associate Composer, marking the launch of a major composer development programme. This three-year residency deepens the festival’s ties with living composers, placing long-term creative collaboration at the heart of its programming in the lead up to its 300th edition in 2028.

Higgins’s first commission as Associate Composer, a setting of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, will be premiered at the 2026 Festival in Gloucester, the city of his birth. The work will be premiered by the combined three cathedral choirs of Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester at Choral Evensong on Wednesday 29 July 2026, and will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

The Organ Club celebrates centenary in 2026

The Organ Club, founded by a group of organ enthusiasts in 1926, is set to celebrate its centenary next year. Festivities began this September with a launch lunch in the grand Cutlers’ Hall in the City of London. The event included speeches from the Club’s Vice-President Dame Gillian Weir, and Lord Berkeley (the composer and Radio 3 presenter Michael Berkeley), after which members walked round the corner to St Paul’s Cathedral for Evensong. Celebrations in 2026 include three new compositions for organ commissioned from leading composers, an annual organ-playing competition for teenagers (open to competitors from the UK and overseas) and an organ recruitment drive spearheaded by a group of young members who call themselves The Musketeers.

Each year, a new composer will join the programme, building a cohort of three composers in residence by the third year. Over the course of their residencies, Associate Composers will engage closely with audiences and contribute to the artistic life of the festival, culminating in the premiere of a major choral orchestral work in their final year.

Speaking of the appointment, CEO David Francis says: ‘Speaking on behalf of the Artistic Directors and team at the Three Choirs Festival, we are really excited that Gavin Higgins, who has strong local connections, has accepted our invitation to become our Associate Composer, the first of this new initiative. Over the years our festival has created deep and lasting connections between composers and festival audiences, and this Association will continue that incredible legacy.’

Gavin Higgins added: ‘I was born in Gloucester and grew up in the area, and so the chance to come back home and share my music with the amazing audiences Three Choirs attracts feels very special indeed. I’m looking forward immensely to immersing myself within the festival and introducing some old and new works to audiences over the coming years. I can’t wait to get stuck in – it’s going to be very exciting!’

Yusef Bastaway

TRURO CATHEDRAL WELCOMES

MORE GIRL CHORISTERS

For the first time, girls aged 8-13 are being invited to apply to the Chorister Programme at Truro Cathedral, following the move to welcome girls aged 13-18 for the first time back in 2015. The latest development is part of the Cathedral’s push to enrich the Cathedral’s musical life and lay the foundation for greater inclusivity. The aim is to eventually create a fully mixed-gender chorister group.

All choristers attend Truro School, which offers scholarships to those in the programme. There are also means-tested bursaries to ensure

financial circumstances do not hinder access to the programme.

Truro Cathedral’s Director of Music, James Anderson-Besant, commented, ‘This will widen access to the choir; through an immersive training, children develop teamwork, leadership and confidence skills alongside musical excellence. In due course, we will be announcing our plans for an exciting new scheme to nurture boys’ singing in the 13-18 age

range – an area currently underrepresented in cathedral music.’

The Very Reverend Simon Robinson, Dean of Truro and Rector of St Mary’s Truro, said: ‘This is great news for the children and young people of Cornwall as well as for us.’ At the core of this development is a commitment to empowering young singers and widening access opportunities to all children.

Gloucester Cathedral has announced that its new organ, built by Nicholson & Co., will be installed and unveiled at Easter 2026, in time for that summer’s Three Choirs Festival. The project, which began in 2024, involves a complete renewal of NEW ORGAN FOR GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL TO BE UNVEILED IN 2026

the organ’s mechanism, including new soundboards, console and wind system, while retaining the historic façade and restored Harris pipes dating from 1666.

Designed to serve as a liturgical and concert instrument, the organ will feature an expanded tonal

scheme, including new 32-foot stops, enabling it to accompany both choirs and orchestra.

Assistant Director of Music

Jonathan Hope described it as ‘the heartbeat of the Cathedral’s worshipping life’ and a resource for the wider community.

NORTHERN IRELAND ORGAN COMPETITION

19-year-old Italian organist

Maximilian Haller heralded as the winner of the 2025 competition, which took place in St Patrick’s Church of Ireland Cathedral, Armagh on 11 and 12 August 2025

Haller played a programme consisting of the movement ‘Hermes’ from Jean Guillou’s suite Hyperion, or The Rhetoric of Fire; two movements from JS Bach’s Organ Concerto in D minor, BWV 596 ‘After Vivaldi’, and Reger’s Fantasia in D minor Op. 135b.

Haller is a student at the University of Music and Theatre Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in Leipzig, Germany. As first prize winner, he receives £4,000 awarded by The John Pilling Trust and a trophy awarded by Neiland and Creane Organ Builders of Kilinick, Co Wexford, together with public recitals hosted by St Thomas, Fifth Avenue, New York, Westminster Abbey, King’s College, Cambridge, St Michael’s Church, Dún Laoghaire and St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast. Haller also won the Dame Gillian Weir Medal, plus £300 donated by Wilson Auctions, for the stand-out performance of a single work, the Reger Fantasia.

‘For me, the main focus was to give my very best while still letting the music breathe and speak. Performing pieces from the German Romantic tradition, which I truly love, made the whole experience even more special,’ said Haller. ‘The audience was so warm and appreciative, and it was a real joy to share this music with them. I also really enjoyed the atmosphere and the chance to meet everyone involved – it’s a wonderful experience that goes beyond just the prize.’

Second Prize in the Senior category of the competition, which is open to under-21s, went to Jukka Geisler, 19, a student at the

University of Music and Theatre in Munich, Germany, who receives the David McElderry Memorial Award of £1,000 and public recitals hosted by St Paul’s Cathedral, London, Trinity College, Cambridge and The Portico of Ards, Co Down. Geisler also won the Bach Prize of £300, donated by Mrs Elizabeth Bicker MBE.

The third prize was won by Daniel Carroll, 20, from the USA, a student at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. He receives £300 sponsored by Wells-Kennedy organ builders and public recitals at St George’s, Hanover Square, London, Glasgow Cathedral, and Galway Cathedral. Highly Commended Awards were given to Pascal Bachmann (18, UK) and Julien Landers (20, Luxembourg).

Nathan Whitley, 18, from Ireland, won The John Pilling Trust First Prize of £500 in the Intermediate category of the competition, held on the afternoon of Tuesday 12 August.

Second Prize and £300, presented by the Pipe Organ Preservation Co., went to Chamberlain Ofosu (15, United Kingdom). Third Prize and £200 – also presented by the Pipe Organ Preservation Company – went to Gavin Lawrence (17, Ireland).

Rafael Estrella (14, UK) was awarded The John Pilling Trust First Prize of £300 at the Junior Competition held in St Malachy’s Church, Armagh.

The competition jury was chaired by Sophie-Véronique CaucheferChoplin, organist of the Great Organ of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, who was joined by Simon Harden, Lecturer in Organ Performance at the TU Dublin Conservatoire and Organist and Director of Music at Christ Church Cathedral, Waterford, and by David Hill MBE, artistic director of the Bach Choir, London, the Yale Schola Cantorum, Connecticut and of the Charles Wood Summer School, which runs concurrently with the organ competition.

Liam McArdle

25-HOUR ORGAN MARATHON

Organist Hugh Morris is set to take on an impressive endurance challenge when he plays for 25 hours straight, beginning at 5pm on 21 November. He’s undertaking the musical marathon to raise money for the Royal School of Church Music (RSCM), of which he is director, as part of the Royal College of Organists’ ‘Play the Organ Year’.

For most of the time, Morris will be playing hymns chosen at random from Ancient & Modern: Hymns and Songs for Refreshing Worship, but once an hour, on the hour, he will play a standalone organ piece, plus he will be joined by guest

Lambeth Palace Library celebrates 500 years of the Arundel Choirbook

Lambeth Palace Library is celebrating the 500th birthday of the Arundel or Lambeth Choirbook by hosting ‘Sing Joyfully: Exploring Music in Lambeth Palace Library’, an exhibition that runs until 6 November 2025. The exhibition places the Choirbook alongside other musical holdings from the collection, including two leaves of 14th-century polyphony recently discovered in the binding of a 15th-century printed book.

The Arundel Choirbook is one of only two surviving choirbooks from the reign of Henry VIII and an important source for early English polyphonic music. The manuscript volume has been held in Lambeth Palace Library since the 17th century.

To celebrate the manuscript’s quincentenary in musical fashion, chamber choir the Iken Scholars has recorded seven pieces from

performers and local choirs throughout the day. Audience members can donate to request a specific hymn, and the entire event will be streamed live on the RSCM YouTube channel. As part of the event, organists worldwide are invited to join in a mass play along of the Largo from Handel’s Xerxes at 2pm on 22 November.

the Choirbook, to be released this autumn. The seven pieces, recorded for the first time, were anonymously composed and are unique to the Choirbook. The set is known academically as the ‘Lambeth Anonymous’ and the recording took place in the Lambeth Palace Chapel. This autumn, the Iken Scholars will present two concerts with selections from the Choirbook: one in the Great Hall at Lambeth Palace, and the other at St Nicholas’s Church in Arundel, in the same building as the chapel for which the Choirbook was first commissioned.

Mary Clayton-Kastenholz, Curator of ‘Sing Joyfully’ at Lambeth Palace Library, said: ‘It has been a huge privilege to coordinate these activities … it feels as though we are bringing this wonderful manuscript, otherwise silent, to life.’

IN BRIEF…

The British Institute of Organ Studies (BIOS) is hosting a conference, ‘The Global British Organ’, in April 2026 to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Held at Wadham College, Oxford from 9-11 April 2026, it will focus on the global impact of the British organ over the centuries, the influence of foreign organs imported into the UK on the British organ, and the influence of British organ music around the world.

In addition to recitals and conference papers, there will be a gala reception and dinner. Further details and application information will appear on the BIOS website soon.

Music publisher Stainer and Bell has signed an agreement with the charity Elgar Works, securing exclusive worldwide distribution rights for all titles published by the charity. This partnership marks the first time that Elgar Works editions – including the Elgar Complete Edition – will be available globally through a single distributor. The new agreement will see Stainer and Bell make the full Elgar Works catalogue available globally to performers, libraries, academics and enthusiasts.

Lay Vicar Steve Abbott retires after 40 years’ service in Salisbury Cathedral Choir. He joined the choir as an alto in 1985. His highlights include The Prince and Princess of Wales launching the Spire appeal, Desmond Tutu preaching and Edward Heath’s funeral. Abbott will continue to conduct the St John’s singers and the Cathedral Youth Choir as well as rehearsing with the Cathedral Staff Choir he set up earlier this year.

Lambeth Palace Library

NOTES FROM A SMALL ISLAND

CEO Jonathan Mayes reflects on the first part of his 3,000-mile cycling pilgrimage to see 100 choirs in 50 days

And we’re off. The first four days of 50 completed and they were four days of absolute joy! Sunny weather, (mostly) smooth roads, and very warm welcomes. What has struck me the most on this first portion of my ride is how doing the journey by bicycle gives an amazing sense of the connections between places – the architecture, the topography, the people. Cycling brings a particular sense of how places of worship relate to the landscape – sometimes soaring above habitations, sometimes nestled on the edge of a village or next to a key river crossing.

On two wheels you also get a feel for the tangible distance between places of worship, building a detailed picture of the rich tapestry of churches, abbeys, priories and cathedrals dotted across the map. I went from the modern urban reality of Newcastle Cathedral (in which, we heard a brilliant rendition of Byrd…) to historic Carlisle (where, paradoxically, the music took on a more modern hue with Leighton’s setting of the Canticles).

What made these days particularly special, however, were the many conversations I had. I’m hugely grateful to those who made time for me, sharing stories of the huge impact of singing; of the community formed through choirs; and of the splendour of organs, supporting and augmenting music in all these places. I am very much looking forward to many more conversations like this, which all demonstrate the broad and deep passion for cathedral music that exists across the country.

It only occurred to me as I was heading on the train from London back up to Lancaster for the start of Leg 2, that the seven days ahead of me accounted for the longest (though, perhaps surprisingly, not the hilliest) leg of my Choral Adventure, averaging 62 miles each day. I’ve

never tried riding this far before. Seven days of cycling also meant seven nights away from home, and I was hugely fortunate to spend five of those with some wonderful hosts connected to cathedrals and churches in Douglas, Manchester, Chester, Wrexham and Hereford. The hospitality and generosity I encountered was immense and meant that any hopes I had for losing some bodyweight were squashed by the copious quantities of cheese and cake consumed.

The kindness of strangers was also particularly welcome, when, at various times, I found myself soaked through (thanks Lancashire…), with oily hands having tried to fix a broken chain in Shropshire, and for company on the road just when I was running out of steam – especial thanks to Fran Wilson, Lay Clerk at Lichfield Cathedral and cyclist extraordinaire.

All of this leads me to a reflection of how our magnificent choral tradition doesn’t just require physical resources, training and spaces. It needs those things in abundance, of course. But for great music to be sustained, it requires above all things, great people. People who care deeply, who engage passionately, and who share their talents generously.

For Leg 3, I had a lot planned for just two days of cycling – the geography of the West Midlands meant that visiting seven different choral foundations is feasible in the space of around 100 miles – but found myself packing in even more, with what felt like essential detours to places of childhood memory. I’m a Brummie, both in terms of upbringing and in my heart (Up the Villa!). These days of the pilgrimage took me to places I’d not visited in years, and how very wonderful it was to reacquaint myself with them.

The privilege of exposure to joyful experiences in childhood –particularly the musical ones – ought to be the right of every child. We’re doing our part to try and make that

reality here at Cathedral Music Trust; having launched the Small Sounds programme in five cathedrals last autumn, we’re seeing it expand to 12 venues later this year – creating new musical memories for young children and their families at the earliest stages. The value of this work is hugely visible as I visit the places the Trust has funded, reinforcing our continued efforts to increase our support – including this challenge of cycling around the country. At times, the ride feels overwhelming, but then I remember why I’m doing it and find renewed energy to keep pedalling!

The fourth leg was the longest in terms of days in the saddle, distance travelled and number of hills traversed. So it’s no surprise that across the eight days, I went through a range of emotions: from elation to despair; from figurative and literal highs to frustrating lows. The overriding emotion throughout the 20 days so far is still one of great joy and enormous fulfilment. However, a third of the way into this adventure, this is where I also felt some of the challenge of the epic journey. 3,000 miles really is a long way. But I reached the 1,000-mile mark, and it felt like a really significant milestone as I make my way around the country. Read more on Jonathan’s blog and donate to support the Trust at www.cathedralmusictrust.org.uk

THE SIBTHORP CIRCLE

The Sibthorp Circle, named in honour of our Founder Revd. Ronald Sibthorp, recognises and brings together the generous individuals who have pledged to remember Cathedral Music Trust with a gift in their Will.

We give thanks to those who have remembered the Trust in this way.

Michael Antcliff

The Revd Sarah Bourne

David Bridges

Michael Cooke

Eric Cox

Stephen Crookes

Robert Frier

Clarendon Gritten

Rodney Gritten

Julian Hardwick

Edward Hart

Rosemary Hart

Tom Hoffman MBE

Sheila Kemp

Dr James Lancelot

Robin Lee

Jonathan Macdonald

Julia MacKenzie

Kate MacLean

Roddie MacLean

Iain Nisbet

Martin Owen

John Pettifer

Marc Starling

David Williamson

Margaret Williamson

And several anonymous supporters

To find out more or to join The Sibthorp Circle

To find out more or to join The Sibthorp Circle contact:

Leila Alexander T: 0203 151 6096

E: leila.alexander@cathedralmusictrust.org.uk www.cathedralmusictrust.org.uk

Leila Alexandra T: 0203 151 6096 E: leila.alexandra@cathedralmusictrust.org.uk www.cathedralmusictrust.org.uk

NICOLAS KYNASTON (1941–2025)

Preston/Murrill; Jackson/ Cocker; Danby/Boëllmann. To many organists of a certain generation, these names will instantly bring to mind the EMI compilation, The King of Instruments. They might continue the list: Willcocks/Bach –and Kynaston/Vierne. This last track – the Carillon de Westminster – was my own first encounter with the playing of Nicolas Kynaston, the virtuoso British organist who died in March 2025 at the age of 83.

Even to my novice ears there was something that set it apart; I couldn’t define quite what it was, although I remember being intrigued by his registration. Other recordings by him soon joined my collection: Popular Organ Works at the Albert Hall (for which he won an award for sales, which he proudly showed to visitors); the Elgar Sonata at Ingolstadt; Bach at Clifton.

Kynaston enjoyed mentioning this appearance when interviewed; it seems pleasingly emblematic of the slightly quixotic aspects of his upbringing. He came from a spiritual and artistic family; his mother was a violinist, his father a priest and painter. A former student recollects ‘waking up on the spare bed in the study, usually with a sore head, to be greeted by the sight of barely covered, cavorting water nymphs, as depicted in an enormous oil painting hanging overhead, painted by Nicolas’s father’.

After a choristership at Westminster Cathedral in London, Kynaston attended Downside, but after taking lessons with Fernando Germani, he walked out, never to return. After further study with Germani and Ralph Downes, he returned to Westminster Cathedral at the age of just 19 as organist, leaving after ten years to become one of the great virtuoso players of the 20th century.

Westminster Cathedral and its organs always kept a special place in

Kynaston’s affections; a recording of his final (2009) recital there is currently available on YouTube.

Kynaston’s renown is easy to understand. His performances packed a punch, as one former student put it to me; his playing was ‘breathtaking, thrilling, communicative, moving, intimate, grand’. His recordings (many now easily accessible online) were, as one producer attests, prepared as if they were performances; Liszt’s Fantasy & Fugue on the Chorale ‘Ad nos, ad salutarem undam’ was once captured in a single 40-minute take.

Public achievement is one thing. But Kynaston’s private activity, as a teacher (including as Professor of Organ at the Royal Academy of Music for 12 years), reveals another side to his musical character. His students speak with unanimous respect and affection of their association. He was civilised, cultured, thoughtprovoking, encouraging, generous, and heedless of time when it came to teaching – lessons would extend long past their allotted span, with no extra payment expected.

He demanded high standards. An example: NK: ‘[redacted]?’ Student: ‘Yes, Nicolas? NK: ‘there should never be any need for wrong notes in the pedals, should there, [redacted]?’ Student: ‘No, Nicolas’. But he was no dictator: ‘He encouraged and enabled me to seek my own authentic voice… he provoked me always to be curious and to explore numerous different approaches –even (especially?) those that didn’t sit well with me at first’.

He gently repaired bruised confidence and broadened musical horizons, instilling in students a sense of line which came from his experience as a French horn player. ‘I have always felt how important it is for organists to widen their horizons, including by playing an orchestral instrument. It is crucial to understand, apart from anything

else, how breath works. A musical line needs to breathe.’

On the matter of breathing, lessons were famously wreathed in cigarette smoke – he was notorious for regularly blocking the chapel drains of one Cambridge college with discarded fag ends.

Kynaston’s last months were spent in a nursing home. He found this difficult, but frequent visits from former students and colleagues brightened his days, and in their company, he enjoyed reminiscing about the past and listening to recordings of his playing. The kindness and respect he showed to young players at the start of their careers was repaid in full.

Kynaston’s own words should close these reflections. ‘I have been obliged sometimes to say to students, “Are you enjoying playing this piece?” I am afraid that just occasionally people have replied that they have not considered that before. But this is the point, the heart of what we do as musicians. The performer is a communicator, trying to express what he or she feels about the music, and trying to capture what the music itself, the composer, is saying, is meaning in the composition. But enjoyment, pleasure, is the core. That is your job. Otherwise, there is no reason to do it.’

STEPHEN FARR

JOAN LIPPINCOTT (1935 – 2025)

Joan Lippincott, one of America’s pre-eminent concert organists and a revered teacher, whose artistry and pedagogy shaped generations of performers and church musicians, died on 31 May in Newtown, Pennsylvania at the age of 89, following complications from a spinal infection.

A musician of extraordinary intellect, technical brilliance and spiritual depth, she leaves a legacy of excellence that continues to resonate through concert halls, churches and conservatories across the country.

Born Joan Edna Hult in Kearny, New Jersey, she studied piano and organ from an early age, eventually becoming a pupil of Alexander McCurdy at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey, where she earned both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, and at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she received the Artist’s Diploma. Lippincott

quickly established herself as a formidable interpreter of the major organ repertoire, particularly the works of JS Bach, whose music remained central to her life’s work. She served with distinction on the faculty of Westminster Choir College, where she was Professor of Organ and head of the organ department. With an unerring ear, a fierce dedication to musical integrity, and deep kindness, she was both a demanding teacher and a lifelong mentor to her many students, who became affectionately known as ‘Lippincott Kids’.

In 1967, she signed with Lilian Murtagh Concert Management (which later became Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc). Her discography of more than 20 recordings garnered acclaim for clarity, expressiveness and stylistic insight, in which scholarly rigour and vibrant musicality were always held in elegant balance. Her playing demonstrated her

championship both of historical performance practice and the living American organ tradition. Lippincott served from 1993 to 2000 as Principal University Organist at Princeton University, sat on the juries of several prominent organ competitions, and was active in the American Guild of Organists and other professional organisations. She served on the Advisory Board of The American Bach Society and was an honorary member of Sigma Alpha Iota. Her career was rewarded with a garland of honour, including awards and an honorary doctorate from Westminster Choir College. In 2013, the Organ Historical Society published a festschrift, ‘Joan Lippincott: The Gift of Music’, with Larry G Biser editing contributions from students and colleagues. Rider University awarded her its Sesquicentennial Medal of Excellence in 2015. She was the honouree for the American Guild of Organists Endowment Fund Distinguished Artist Award Recital and Gala Benefit Reception in 2017 and was named International Performer of the Year by the Guild’s New York City Chapter in 2019. Beyond her public accomplishments, Joan was a person of grace, humility, and quiet strength. Her students remember her not merely for her precision and high standards, but for her nurturing of the entire student, person and artist combined. She took deep care with each student’s voice and vocation, guiding both with patience, insight and love. She was preceded in death by her beloved husband, Curtis, to whom she was married 58 years. She is survived by countless former students, friends, colleagues and admirers. A service of thanksgiving for her life was held on Saturday, 4 October at the Princeton University Chapel.

SCOTT DETTRA

PEOPLE & PLACES

We offer our congratulations to the following people who are on the move

Hilary Punnett joins St Paul’s Cathedral as Assistant Director of Music. For the past 20 years she has worked as a conductor and organist across England and Canada, including at the cathedrals of Christ Church Oxford, Chelmsford and Lincoln.

Anna Lapwood MBE, one of Cathedral Music Trust’s ambassadors, has been named the firstever official Organist of the Royal Albert Hall, where she will continue to increase access to organ and choral music and launch a Royal Albert Hall Organ Scholarship.

Ben Collyer has been appointed Sub Organist at Manchester Cathedral. He is currently Assistant Director of Music at St Michael’s Cornhill, Organ Fellow of Sinfonia Smith Square and was until recently Acting Assistant Director of Music at St Albans Cathedral.

Geoffrey Woollatt leaves his Sub Organist post at Manchester Cathedral to become the Director of Music at Bradford Cathedral. Woollatt previously held positions at Chester Cathedral and St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow.

Steven Fox’s tenure at the Cathedral Choral Society in Washington has been extended to 2028-29. He has led the symphonic chorus since 2017, and garnered a Grammy nomination for his recording of Kastalsky’s Requiem for Fallen Brothers.

Peter Siepmann has been appointed Director of Music at Nottingham Cathedral. The conductor and organist has been Organist and Director of Music at St Peter’s Church in Nottingham since 2007 and Conductor of Nottingham Bach Choir since 2019.

Hugh Rowlands also heads to New College, Oxford this autumn as Assistant Organist. He joins following time as Assistant Master of Music at the Chapels Royal, HM Tower of London and Acting Director of Music at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.

William Saunders has been appointed by Colchester City Council as the new City Organist. The role includes performing at key civic occasions and the annual Mayor Making ceremony. Past roles include Director of Music at The Royal Hospital School.

Nick Rutter

St Pauls, Graham Lacado

www.cathedralmusictrust.org.uk/legacies

EVENTS

Join us for a Cathedral Music Trust gathering near you

SUNDAY 8 FEBRUARY 2026

Selby Abbey Local Gathering

Discover historic Selby, the hidden gem of North Yorkshire, and journey through the Abbey’s 900 years of worship, music and tradition. Marvel at inspiring architecture, from the famous Jesse and Washington Windows to the intricately carved high altar, and experience the majestic sound of the Romantic-style Hill Organ, one of the finest of its kind in the UK. At the heart of it all, the Choir of Selby Abbey leads us in sung worship.

FRIDAY 6 – SUNDAY 8 MARCH 2026

Oxford National Gathering

Join us in the City of Dreaming Spires to explore the thriving choral tradition in Oxford’s choral foundations. From the world-class choir at Christ Church Cathedral to the stunning Dobson Organ of Merton College Chapel, come behind the gates of the colleges and learn about the hundreds of years of history and musical excellence at work inside their beautiful chapels.

SATURDAY 19 SEPTEMBER 2026

Gloucester Cathedral Local Gathering

With the brand-new Nicholson & Co organ set to be unveiled by Easter 2026, ready for the Three Choirs Festival, our Gloucester Local Gathering offers a remarkable chance to experience this exciting instrument in all its glory. Recently featured in Cathedral Voice, the new organ will serve not only as a liturgical and concert instrument, but also as an inspiration for future generations of musicians. Join us to

be uplifed by the organ, an excellent choir and the stunning Cathedral.

FRIDAY 9 – SUNDAY 11 OCTOBER 2026

Exeter and Buckfast Abbey National Gathering

Discover the work of Exeter Cathedral’s music outreach team and the Cathedral School at the Autumn National Gathering. Saturday will explore the tranquil Buckfast Abbey, near Buckfastleigh in Devon. It’s home to a community of Roman Catholic Benedictine monks, for whom music plays a fundamental role in the Daily Office, and the first Ruffatti Organ in the UK. We come back to Exeter for evensong and our Gala Dinner, with guest speakers Peter and Simon Toyne. With even more music and exploration on offer on Sunday, this weekend promises to showcase the world-class cultural heritage on offer in the South West.

For more information or to book, visit www.cathedralmusictrust.org.uk/events, email info@cathedralmusictrust.org.uk, or call 020 3151 6096 (Mon–Fri, 9am–4pm).

VOLUNTEERS

Local Ambassadors are needed in these areas: Chichester, Guildford, Winchester, Exeter, Truro, Bristol (and Clifton), Hereford, Worcester, St Albans, Coventry, Birmingham, St Edmundsbury, Cambridge, Lincoln, Sheffield, Wakefield, Liverpool (Anglican and Met), Carlisle, Ripon, London: Westminster Cathedral, Greenwich, Hampton Court, Windsor, Edinburgh, Glasgow and all of Scotland (except Inverness), Bangor, Brecon, Llandaff, Newport and all of Wales (except St Asaph), all of Ireland and Northern Ireland. We would love to hear from you if you are interested in volunteering. To find out more please visit www.cathedralmusictrust.org. uk/support/volunteer or email hannah.capstick@ cathedralmusictrust.org.uk

Buckfast Abbey hosts a Cathedral Music Trust Gathering in 2026

AWARD RECIPIENTS

IN SUPPORT OF EXCELLENCE

As a Friend or Patron of Cathedral Music Trust, your generosity allows us to make awards to support the music-making of cathedrals and churches in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. In 2024, the Trust made 28 awards totalling £500,000. We speak to some of last year’s recipients to discuss their impact

By JONATHAN WHITING, HOLLY BAKER & HATTIE BUTTERWORTH

Derby Cathedral received £29,500 to support the extension of the schools’ singing programme and its Keyboard Pathway as part of the Music in Schools programme

Since its inception in 2021, Derby Cathedral’s Music in Schools programme has been rapidly expanding its outreach, now engaging over 900 children weekly across 18 schools in Derbyshire. A significant and promising aspect of this initiative is the Keyboard Pathway, which provides piano and organ tuition to students across age groups from Key Stages 1 to 4.

Alexander Binns, Director of Music at Derby Cathedral, explains the urgent need for the scheme: ‘Currently, many churches across Derbyshire are desperately short of organists, with most existing players in their 70s or 80s. We established the Keyboard Pathway to nurture the next generation of organists and pianists who can fill these roles in the coming years.’

The programme has made a strong start, currently working individually with 14 young pianists and organists across three schools. Students have access to expert tuition from professional musicians, learning on high-

DERBY CATHEDRAL

Alexander Binns

quality instruments, including a Royal College of Organists digital organ installed in one of the schools. The programme is designed to cater to all levels, providing foundational skills for beginners as well as advanced training for students aiming to achieve higher qualifications or perform publicly.

Performance opportunities have quickly become a cornerstone of the programme.

Derby Cathedral recently hosted a Key Stage 1 concert showcasing some of the youngest pianists in the programme, while older students regularly perform at cathedral services. One pupil, preparing for their Grade5 examination, recently played voluntaries before and after Evensong, providing them with valuable public performance experience.

Binns describes the benefits of these opportunities: ‘Performance builds confidence and skills dramatically. Many children in state schools have limited performance opportunities compared to their peers in independent education. By providing frequent and diverse platforms –from cathedral services to celebration concerts – we’re levelling that playing field.’

Alongside regular tuition, the Cathedral has partnered with the Derby and District Organists’ Association to deliver interactive workshops in local primary schools, introducing younger pupils to the organ through innovative demonstrations, musical games and hands-on instrument-building sessions. They also experience the vast range and versatility of the organ, hearing familiar tunes from Harry Potter and ‘Steve’s Lava Chicken,’ a song from the recent A Minecraft Movie, captivating their imagination and sparking a new interest in the instrument.

The collaboration with the local organists’ association is crucial, providing students with access to additional mentorship, resources and potential future opportunities in the broader musical community. Binns emphasises, ‘It’s about building a musical ecosystem where young musicians can thrive and see a clear pathway forward, whether professionally or as dedicated amateurs.’

Looking forward, Binns hopes the programme will continue to grow. ‘We want to see our keyboard students not only filling church positions across the county but also achieving scholarships and excelling in

broader musical circles. Ideally, we’d like a dedicated full-time Keyboard Tutor to drive this vision, ensuring even greater accessibility and musical excellence.’

The programme has already celebrated significant successes. One student recently won a regional competition in Leicester, highlighting the remarkable standards and exceptional talent emerging from the programme. Additionally, a new Junior Organ Scholarship has been established, creating a formal pathway for talented young musicians to further develop their skills through dedicated training and public performance opportunities at the Cathedral and beyond.

The vision of the Keyboard Pathway goes beyond simply addressing the shortage of church musicians; it aims to foster lifelong passion and engagement with music. Binns notes, ‘We want our students to feel confident and enthusiastic about musicmaking, whatever their future paths. Music provides invaluable personal growth and community connections, enriching lives beyond measure.’

Ultimately, the Keyboard Pathway remains a crucial component of Derby Cathedral’s broader mission: fostering musical excellence, building community engagement, and enriching the lives of young musicians across Derbyshire. Through committed teaching, ample performance opportunities and strategic partnerships, the Cathedral hopes to inspire the next generation of organists and pianists.

LEFT

Alexander Binns hopes to inspire a new generation of pianists and organists with Derby Cathedral’s new Keyboard Pathway initiative

Derby Cathedral

BELOW The three choral scholars and one organ scholar who joined Hereford Cathedral for the 2024-25 year

Hereford Cathedral received £20,500 to support its successful choral and organ scholarship programme

‘We are aware that we have achieved a high standard of choral excellence with the scholarship programme, and we want it to remain excellent,’ Julia Smith, Hereford Cathedral’s Fundraising Officer, explains. ‘The music scholarships are particularly intense, their schedule is full-on with up to eight choral services a week, assisting chorister

training, chaperoning, flyering; they get involved at all levels,’ she continues.

Hereford Cathedral takes on three choral scholars and one organ scholar every year and immerses them in the cathedral’s life. The scholars are housed in St Ethelbert’s house in the city centre, with the cathedral paying for the rent and bills as well as providing a stipend, with the aim that each scholar can dedicate their full time to the cathedral and its music. It is an intense but rewarding year for the scholars, and this summer has been particularly busy with Hereford Cathedral hosting the week-long Three Choirs Festival, as Smith explains: ‘They are entrusted with a lot of responsibility from quite early on. There is the expectation that they are good role models for the choristers and one of them takes on the responsibility of organising the song school as well.’

One of Hereford’s biggest aims with the scholarship programme is making the opportunity accessible for all. They take a range of scholars, some with cathedral music backgrounds but others from local parish churches. Smith explains: ‘We want to keep our reach as broad as possible. We are looking at who is going to benefit the most from the scholarship and who is going to fit in with the other scholars, as they are a close team.’

However, it is not just the scholars who benefit from the programme, but everyone involved in the cathedral’s music, as Smith illustrates: ‘It’s very much a two-way benefit – they’re brought here and receive experience of high-level choral music, but they bring us a fresh energy, and it really reinvigorates the choir.’ The funding has allowed Hereford Cathedral to continue its scholarship programmes at the high standard of which they are proud. ‘We’re so grateful to Cathedral Music Trust as their support has meant we now have the breathing space to make our music more financially sustainable.’ They were at risk of having to cut back in order to fix short-term budget problems, but the Cathedral Music Trust Award has meant that is no longer the case. As Smith says: ‘It’s a real success story, not just for the Cathedral, but for music excellence in Hereford and Herefordshire.’

Hereford

A Church Choir Award of £3,300 was awarded to St Lawrence Parish Church to support the development of the choir and the introduction of midweek services

Jonty Ward, Music Director at St Lawrence Parish Church in York describes the church as traditional, citing the fact they hold midweek feasts in the day, which is unusual for a parish church. ‘It’s the style of worship that needs music really to lift it off the ground,’ Ward explains.

Ward started the church choir himself in 2017 while at university in York, at which point the group was entirely student based. After his degree, Ward stayed on at the Church, growing the choir so it is now open to anyone and boasts a mix of all ages and backgrounds. ‘The funding has really opened up what is possible to do chorally midweek. We have done a lot more this year.’

The church is currently without a vicar, but Ward cites the music as helping keep the energy and impetus of the church alive

between their vicar’s departure and advertising for a new one. ‘Being traditional Anglo-Catholic, we rely on having an incumbent for a sense of direction, so it’s been really important in the absence of the vicar to keep the church vibrant and fresh.’

Ward eventually aims to give the singers a fee. ‘We hope the music becomes a more professional set-up, something similar to a large London parish church. There seems to be a discrepancy between what happens there and in the North of England and we are hoping to change that.’

Despite not being a cathedral, Ward hopes for the same quality and standard of music, which he defines as ‘excellence in liturgy and music, aiming to be on the upper end of what you might expect from a parish church.’

Ward has big plans for the future of choral music at St Lawrence, and the funding from Cathedral Music Trust has allowed them to dream even bigger. Ward also describes the ‘reassurance’ the award has given them: ‘To receive the award has been a validating step for our choral music. Proof that we are heading in the right direction. We are still such a young church, so every year is just going to be better than the previous one.’

ABOVE

Henry Dyer

St Lawrence Parish Church Choir, in York, was set up in 2017 by its current Music Director Jonty Ward

MUSIC ADMINISTRATORS

Rochester and Newcastle Cathedrals have both received funding to support valuable administrative roles

ABOVE Newcastle Cathedral Choir has benefitted from hiring a Chorister Programme Supervisor and Administrator

They are the silent heroes of cathedral music departments, yet rarely do we hear about the work of the music administrator or the impact their presence has. Maybe it is understanding the difficulties of running a department without one that can give the greatest insight into their importance. ‘If only the job was about turning up and conducting a choir,’ says Director of Music Adrian Bawtree, reflecting on running Rochester before a Cathedral Music Trust grant enabled a music administrator to be hired. ‘There are so many things that have to be done in terms of the logistics, the timetabling, the

scheduling. All of this has a knock-on effect as to how much we can then reasonably achieve in terms of artistic creation, because you need headspace for that, you need time to think and time to develop ideas.’

Cathedral Music Trust awarded £29,500 in 2024 to Rochester Cathedral, which enabled them to hire Victoria Kemp. With Kemp now managing the department’s logistics, ‘it’s just beginning to free me up to think creatively,’ Bawtree says. ‘Now, the administrator makes connection with the voluntary choir, makes sure that everybody’s got the message about when the rehearsals are, when we’re singing, what we’re singing, where we need to meet, what are the arrangements for getting into the building at certain times etc. Now, when I turn up for the rehearsal, everyone knows what they’re doing so we can concentrate on the music.’

Peter Cumiskey

Previously much of this administrative work has been done by the assistant organist, someone who traditionally plays the organ for the cathedral’s services. ‘That’s taking them away from time for preparation for the services and the concerts that we do,’ says Bawtree. ‘You can never get away from admin,’ he acknowledges. ‘It just exists, and it exists in spades! You have to have somebody pragmatically-minded who knows what to prioritise. It is of great comfort to me that we now have Victoria because, as an artist myself, I’m quite nervy and I need that pragmatism.’

This is something mirrored by Newcastle Cathedral, who received £28,000 from the Cathedral Music Trust to hire a Chorister Programme Supervisor and Administrator. This position has a large focus on the safeguarding and wellbeing of choristers. ‘With a greater number of children from a range of socio-economic backgrounds now venturing to the Cathedral as Probationer Choristers, Verity’s role is helping us provide an infrastructure that will ensure that these children keep singing, and progress and develop through the choir,’ explains Ian Roberts, Director of Music at Newcastle Cathedral about hiring Verity Hodson Walker. ‘Through Verity’s communication,

administration, and pastoral oversight we are seeking to provide support where it is most needed, so that an ever-increasing number of children continue to receive the wonderful gift of cathedral music.’

Hodson Walker discusses the impact of her role: ‘Where my role is particularly important is ensuring that everyone that comes in and works with the children or alongside them knows exactly what is expected of them and how the adults in the room can support children and look out for them.’ Before her role at the Cathedral, Hodson Walker studied music at Newcastle University, having been a member of the National Children’s Choir. Following a PGCE in Primary Education, she decided she wanted something ‘a little bit more focused in the musical world but centered around teaching and learning.’

‘I’ve been impressed with the commitment of everyone here and how the music department fits in within the wider worship and community of the cathedral,’ she adds. ‘I think it’s really, really beautiful and continuing to grow in its impact of worship – whatever that looks like for an individual.’

For more information on the Trust’s grant programmes and on recipients of awards, visit www.cathedralmusictrust.org.uk/programmes

Victoria Kemp, the Music Administrator at Rochester Cathedral

LEFT Verity Hodson Walker, Chorister Programme Supervisor and Administrator at Newcastle Cathedral

ABOVE LEFT

BROAD HORIZONS

Dedicated choir schools provide many of Britain’s cathedral choirs with choristers. Yet it’s not the only model and many cathedrals recruit from a variety of schools in their local area

By ANDREW STEWART

Tradition has ways of burying change such that old practices are quickly forgotten and new ones just as soon valued as eternal verities. Take the case of cathedral choir schools, providers of Britain’s choristers for longer than anyone can remember. They belong to a strikingly diverse, surprisingly fluid tradition, one with medieval roots and High Victorian branches. Some are open to residential pupils, some to day pupils, others to both. Yet not every cathedral, whether Anglican or Catholic, offers choral scholarships to a nearby independent school. The venerable choir school model is one of several, increasingly so, as cathedrals strive to recruit choristers from a variety of communities.

Canterbury Cathedral made headline news in 2023 when it announced that it would set aside compulsory boarding for members of its Boys’ Choir and open the doors to choristers from local state schools. The rule change ended an exclusive association with the independent St Edmund’s School, in place since 1972. Beyond considerations of equality and inclusion, the move was driven by a significant fall in recruitment. The new arrangement sees boy and girl choristers each singing three services a week. Current choristers studying at St Edmund’s on a full bursary, worth two thirds of the school’s annual fee, will continue to receive financial support from the cathedral until they leave the choir.

BELOW Canterbury Cathedral moved to a new recruitment model in 2023 for its choirs

Matt Wilson

Dr David Newsholme, Director of Music at Canterbury Cathedral, believes the change will secure the choir’s future. His confidence rests on the experience of recruiting choristers to the Girls’ Choir he founded in 2014. Its members travel to Canterbury from all over Kent. ‘Around 50 children have applied since the new model began two years ago,’ notes Newsholme. ‘We will have 22 girls and 21 boys in the choir stalls this September and expect nine probationers. Since the change, we’ve seen strong interest from children from a wide variety of schools and social and ethnic backgrounds. We welcome children from everywhere, including some from St Edmund’s who want to become choristers. We find that boys and girls from the state and independent sectors flourish here. I think the future’s very bright.’

Canterbury’s new recruitment model has already returned impressive results. The cathedral choir’s recent recording of works by Gabriel Jackson, a former Canterbury treble, received a coveted Gramophone Editor’s Choice accolade. How does David Newsholme respond to those who lament the passing of the boarding requirement?

‘Resistance to change has always been there,’ he replies. ‘But there have been two quite distinct traditions within living memory at Canterbury, with choristers boarding at Choir House in the precincts while being educated at St Edmund’s School and choristers coming to the Choir School as day pupils. Before that, all choristers were day pupils. It shows how things evolve over time.’

Among Britain’s Roman Catholic churches, Arundel Cathedral stands out for the beauty of its Gothic Revival architecture and the

excellence of its choir. Responsibility for the latter rests with Elizabeth Stratford, Organist and Master of the Choristers, who has worked wonders since 2002. Arundel, commissioned by the Duke of Norfolk in the late 1860s, has never kept a choir school. The Sussex institution’s voluntary choir included one boy and one girl at the start of Stratford’s tenure. Today it numbers 24 choristers drawn from 14 primary and secondary schools, some local, others based beyond Arundel. Their socially diverse backgrounds reflect the reality of a rural county, where genuine poverty is often invisible.

‘I want everyone to have a fair shot,’ says Stratford. Her egalitarian ethos stems from personal experience as the child of a singleparent household where every penny mattered. ‘Becoming a chorister at St Anne’s Cathedral in Leeds completely transformed my life.’ Arundel Cathedral Choir offers its own transformative experiences, including one-to-one vocal training, lessons in music theory and the discipline of performing every Sunday. ‘We don’t give scholarships or travel expenses, so it’s a huge commitment for every parent. They must decide whether they can afford petrol costs and if they want their lives to be governed by the weekly round of rehearsals, services and singing lessons. We’re asking them to do something big. The flip side is what their children receive from a very young age as part of this tremendous collaborative experience, involved in delivering the liturgy.’

Arundel’s choir is not exclusively Catholic as most of its choristers attend state and voluntary aided faith schools, with some coming from the independent sector.

ABOVE Arundel Cathedral Choir includes 24 choristers drawn from 14 primary and secondary schools

Marcin Mazur

Stratford visits schools to hear an entire year group sing, choosing children with potential before leading them through a voice trial. ‘I hear every child without knowing anything about their background,’ she observes. Parents receive an information pack and an invitation to attend an open evening. ‘Money is an obstacle, and our 6.30pm Tuesday rehearsal can be difficult for a parent travelling far or caring for other children. There’s also a perception that the church is going to be a particular thing, so it’s about breaking that down by explaining what modern church life is like.’ Her outreach work depends on clear communication and the development of good relations with head teachers. ‘Boys are very much on my radar for upping the numbers,’ she notes, ‘but we already have more than most voluntary choirs. I want the choir to be all-inclusive.’

Ian Roberts, Director of Music at Newcastle Cathedral since 2014, has long experience of building choirs without the support of a choir school. The process, he suggests, requires strategic thinking, strong partnerships and a determination to embed singing in school culture. Newcastle Cathedral’s choir school closed in 1977, following a long decline in its finances, fabric and academic attainment.

‘After I arrived in Newcastle,’ Roberts recalls, ‘I visited every school I could in our large urban area to widen recruitment. At first, we had more children coming to chorister auditions. But I couldn’t sustain going to 60 or 70 schools on a regular basis and being that week’s “community act” at assembly.’ He devised new ways to raise school singing standards, including short bespoke projects with Year 3 pupils. ‘But I wanted to find

something that was longer lasting and resourced so I wasn’t doing it all myself. The game-changer came when we launched our own schools singing programme and then became one of the first Anglican cathedrals to join the National Schools Singing Programme.’

The latter, established in 2021 with funding from the Hamish Ogston Foundation, aims to arrest the decline of music in state schools. It began by covering most of the UK’s Catholic dioceses before welcoming its initial cohort of Anglican cathedrals. ‘Their template means we can tailor what we do in schools to suit the National Curriculum or the Model Music Curriculum,’ notes Roberts. ‘We’ve seen a change in the culture of certain schools and more choristers coming from them. It’s a major line in, but not the only one.’ Others, he adds, include Newcastle Cathedral’s ChoriStarters programme for Year 2 pupils, Mini ChoriStarters for reception pupils, and the Cathedral Music Trust’s Small Sounds early years scheme, which connects infants under five and their parents with cathedral musicians through weekly music sessions.

‘We couldn’t depend on any one thing for developing potential choristers,’ Roberts comments. ‘Getting more choristers has been a wonderful by-product of our Schools

Singing Programme, which enabled 800 local children to get an amazing musical education this year. Of course, I’m envious of colleagues at places with choir schools... Because our choristers meet less often after school, every precious second of rehearsal time has to be utilised. It would be nice to have more time with them, which a choir school would offer. But that’s the only con I can think of, and there are many more pros about our model.’

ABOVE Newcastle Cathedral joined the National Schools Singing Programme to boost chorister recruitment

Peter Cumiskey

THE VIRTUAL CATHEDRAL

During the pandemic, many cathedrals began streaming their services online. Five years on, the practice is flourishing, both widening accessibility and bringing innovation to the choral tradition

By CLARE STEVENS

There has been a transformation in recent years between cathedrals and the communities beyond their walls, thanks to the presence of cameras, microphones and internet-streaming facilities at so many services.

Perhaps you live abroad and your child or grandchild is an organ or choral scholar at a British cathedral, so you might not be able to travel to hear them play in person very often, if at all. Instead you might have been logging on to YouTube or Facebook Live every Sunday to see and hear them at work. The same might be true if you are the relative of a chorister living in the UK, but hundreds of miles from where they sing; or perhaps in the same city but housebound.

Online, you will you have been able to eavesdrop on their regular services. When the valedictory services take place in the summer for choristers, choral and organ scholars, and the community gathers for their final Evensong and The Dean thanks them for their hard work and beautiful singing over many years, shakes them by the hand and sends them out to the next stage of their lives with a prayer of benediction, you can see their reactions, hear the applause of the congregation and listen in real time to the anthem the departing choristers have chosen as their swan song.

who regularly attends weekday Evensong in person, but now family members who are still at work when the services take place, or ferrying other children to afterschool activities, as well as those who live far away, can often catch up with a special service, a short solo or a particularly impressive organ voluntary via a recording.

‘Choir members’ families are part of our congregation,’ says Sarah MacDonald, Director of Music at Selwyn College, Cambridge and Director of the Girls’ Choir at Ely Cathedral. That’s very apparent to anyone

BELOW Chester Cathedral has embedded digital technology into its services INSET

Sarah MacDonald,

Director of Music at Selwyn College

Nick Rutter; Chester Cathedral

MacDonald’s parents live in Canada, and she says they regularly watch her conducting Evensong while they have their breakfast.

The same applies, of course, to other members of a cathedral or collegiate congregation who, for whatever reason, are unable to attend services in person. ‘There is a small group of about 30 chronically unwell members of our congregation who rely on this weekly broadcast to keep them involved with Cathedral life, and to help their mental health,’ says Adrian Partington, Director of Music at Gloucester Cathedral. ‘We set up livestreams during the pandemic as soon as lockdown rules permitted worship in the cathedral, and we were keen to continue with it, since many members of our congregation continued to feel unsafe in public after the pandemic had passed. The number of views each week has dwindled over the past four years, but we are continuing to do it on behalf of those people.’

Other foundations report that numbers logging on to their livestreams have stayed remarkably healthy in the post-pandemic period, and see online platforms, set up as a response to an unprecedented crisis, as an important channel for building new congregations, worth nurturing both for their own sake and as a potential first step towards in-person worship. Both Sarah MacDonald and Dean Tim Stratford (of Chester Cathedral) say they know their live streams of Evensong

during the week are watched and listened to with headphones by large numbers of students, who have the video open on a corner of their laptop screens as they work in college libraries. But there’s also a worldwide congregation of people who join in with the services, greeting each other via the comments bar and establishing virtual relationships with one another and with the participants in the services. This has led to more than one transatlantic visitor turning up at Chester, greeting the clergy by name and introducing themselves as a member of the online congregation. They also have a devotee who owns a chocolate factory in Ohio, and not only sent a cake to her new virtual friends in England, but broadcasts their livestreams to her colleagues in the factory.

If you want to know anything about the mechanics of livestreaming and how to achieve high-quality representations of your services, Stratford is the person to talk to. Before ordination he had a career in electronic engineering and he has also worked in BBC local radio and as a bishop’s press officer, so he was well placed to take a hands-on role and work out what to do in Chester when the pandemic hit. Looking back, he says the opportunity to experiment with placements for cameras and microphones in an almost empty cathedral was a real gift. ‘There were trip hazards everywhere, cameras on tripods where you’d never put them if you had a worshipping congregation in the building; we learned what we wanted in order to create more of a fixed rig, which we are still developing.

‘We decided to buy the equipment, install everything ourselves and work out how to use it in an evolutionary fashion, rather than getting a company in to do it quickly,’ he explains. The result is a very sophisticated operation with a strong emphasis on having the appropriate sound quality for both speaking and singing, and on helping viewers to feel they are participating in services rather than just observing. This includes providing subtitles, which in turn led to the introductions of screens with slightly different subtitles for in-person worshippers, saving time, reducing the cathedral’s paper and photocopying bill, and benefiting the environment, as service sheets are no longer routinely provided.

When it came to choosing an appropriate streaming platform, Stratford says they were tempted by Facebook Live because of its high viewing figures, but in the end they decided YouTube was best for the long-format videos

ABOVE Director of Music James AndersonBesant immersed in streaming at Truro Cathedral

BELOW RIGHT

Choral Evensong from Truro Cathedral is regularly live-streamed on its YouTube channel

they wanted to stream. ‘I think of the people who watch our services as a worldwide congregation of worshippers,’ he says. ‘We study our statistics carefully and we can see that we have fairly consistent figures of around 400-500 people every Sunday, most of whom stay for the whole service, it’s not just people dipping in and out.’

One thing that directors of music surprisingly don’t seem too concerned about is the presence of cameras and microphones when things go wrong. The consensus is that the livestreams represent the reality of what happens day to day – they are not intended to be polished commercial recordings. Perhaps this is an extension of the familiar instruction to novice choristers that they must sing just as well on a wet Tuesday afternoon in February as they do at a great Sunday Festival Eucharist, to the glory of God and for the benefit of a tiny group of regular congregation members or the tourist who may be paying a once-in-a-lifetime visit to their cathedral or collegiate chapel.

‘If something goes horribly wrong, we can take the recording of that service down,’ explains Philip Rushforth, Organist and Master of the Choristers at Chester Cathedral. ‘Our cameras are very discreet now and the images are high quality, but we film from a distance; individual choristers are rarely in shot and we don’t put people under pressure by zooming in close for solos. To be honest, streaming has become second nature and I rarely think about it.’

‘The consensus is that the livestreams represent the reality of what happens day to day – they are not intended to be polished commercial recordings’

James Anderson-Besant, Director of Music at Truro Cathedral, relishes the opportunity to capture and look back at highlights of services, especially if they are unexpected. He posted a video clip from what he described as ‘a particularly expressive rendition of Lotti’s Crucifixus’ during the cathedral’s 2025 Good Friday Evensong on his own Facebook page, commenting that ‘there wasn’t meant to be a breath before the last chord, and I didn’t intend one (or ever would again), but it happened spontaneously. There was an atmosphere of total fragility and despair in those final moments – a feeling in the building I won’t forget in a long time... what a privilege to work with all these fantastic musicians.’

But recordings also capture non-musical incidents, he reminds me, such as the wonderful and surely unique moment, also during a Good Friday Evensong, when a squirrel dropped from the roof above the choir stalls of All Saints Church, Kingston- ▷

Truro Cathedral; Elowen Media

upon-Thames, onto a singer’s folder, before scampering away unharmed. The singers didn’t miss a beat and needless to say a clip from the church’s livestream went viral.

Anderson-Besant was formerly an organ scholar at St John’s College, Cambridge and played for some pioneering services that were streamed by Classic FM a couple of years before the pandemic meant that streaming became normal procedure.

Cathedrals and colleges vary enormously as to the number of services they stream; some stream everything, leaving them on YouTube as an archive; others stream daily but don’t keep everything online; most seem to stream Sunday services and special occasions; and there are still a few cathedrals that don’t stream at all. Anderson-Besant says he wouldn’t want every service to be streamed, as he has a different approach to a service being filmed, and he needs the freedom to be a little more experimental and adventurous.

David Price, Director of Music at Portsmouth Anglican Cathedral, says he and his colleagues do very few livestreams, partly because the cathedral doesn’t have enough staff to manage the technology, but also because they are keen to encourage people to attend services in person if they can.

Asked if the familiarity of livestreaming helps his singers and organists to feel less nervous when BBC Radio 3 visit for Choral Evensong, he says the regularity of the broadcasts, taking place at least once a year, means that they are used to it and take it in their stride.

Funding plays a part too, Price adds, in terms of paying musicians extra if services are being streamed. This is an issue cathedrals have been grappling with over the past few years, with many different conclusions being reached. Ely, for example, has factored in a certain number of streamed services to the musicians’ remunerations, and negotiates extra fees for anything unexpected. At Truro there are no extra payments for the cathedral’s own livestreams, as the benefits for such a relatively remote foundation of having a global showcase are felt to be shared by everyone.

Emma Gibbins became used to livestreaming while Director of Music at Newport Cathedral, South Wales, and now at Chelmsford Cathedral, Essex, where all choral services are livestreamed, but not the Sunday family communion, owing to the large number of children attending and the complications of consent and safeguarding. ‘I generally ignore the fact that the service is being live-streamed and very, very rarely listen back to it,’ she says. ‘I think all streamed services get quite good viewing figures. I don’t particularly like the shopping around aspect of live-streaming –people chopping and changing, picking music or preachers that they fancy listening to each week, rather than getting stuck into being part of one particular community.

‘That said, in Newport we had a regular weekly attender from Germany, who found that the spirituality, churchmanship, preaching and music suited him spiritually more than anywhere else he’d found!’

ABOVE Chester Cathedral has its own dedicated YouTube channel and consistently has around 400-500 people viewing its services every Sunday

Chester Cathedral

CHORAL COMMITMENT

St Paul’s Cathedral has revitalised its Choral Partnerships Programme to work more intensively with London schoolchildren. We visit one school to find out about the world-class singing education on offer

By CATHY DEW

School engagement programmes are by no means new to the cathedral music sector. Indeed, cathedrals and other choral foundations have been introducing children to the joys of choral singing through outreach activities for some 20 years or more. More recently, however, a growing number of programmes are shifting their focus from giving large groups of children one-off experiences of singing alongside cathedral choirs in an awe-inspiring setting, to making a commitment to working regularly with the same groups over a number of years. The National Schools Singing Programme, pioneered by the Catholic Diocese of Leeds, has led the way in this type of approach, and it is no coincidence that William Bruce, the leader of the Choral Partnerships programme at St Paul’s Cathedral in London, formerly worked as a choral director in that diocese.

Bruce’s many years of experience directing young singers, coupled with his MA studies in Choral Conducting under the renowned Simon Halsey CBE, make him ideally suited to his role. Since arriving at St Paul’s, Bruce has adapted the already highly respected programme from one that engaged massed groups of children over short-term projects to one that commits to a smaller number of schools ‘for the long haul’. Since reshaping the programme in 2023, he has developed partnerships with 11 primary schools in London. Bruce himself, or another member of his growing team, visits each school every week in term time, and works with all children from Year 1 to Year 6.

In July, I accompanied Bruce to St Barnabas’s CE Primary School in Pimlico, where I observed him displaying impressive

stamina in oppressive heat, working non-stop for the whole morning.

Shortly after establishing the partnership with St Barnabas’s in 2024, Bruce decided to relocate his music lessons from the school hall to the church next door. Designed by Thomas Cundy in the late 1840s, St Barnabas’s was the first church whose architecture deliberately reflected principles of the Anglo-Catholic tradition. It is hard to believe that this exquisite little church could spark controversy, but the new building did, indeed, cause quite a stir. Accusations of ‘Popery in Pimlico’ culminated even in riots. Thankfully, the disposition of the children today, enjoying a welcome break from the 30 plus degree temperatures outside, couldn’t have been more different from their unruly forerunners, as they filed in to take part in collective worship.

BELOW William Bruce conducting at St Paul’s Cathedral

In so doing, the children were playing their part in the church’s musical heritage. Sir Frederick Ouseley, church music reformer and founder of St Michael’s College in Tenbury Wells, was its first curate and, later, Basil Harwood was its organist. There was something special about seeing a new generation of young people begin another chapter in this church’s musical history.

The 25-minute session was varied and fast-paced, combining prayer, worship and religious education with energising vocal development and hearty singing.

At the end of collective worship, Year 5 children stayed behind while the other year groups went back to their classes, and the session moved smoothly into their weekly music lesson. This was immediately followed by a lesson for the combined Year 3/4 class and then another for the Year 1/2 class.

Informed by the Department for Education’s Model Music Curriculum (2021), St Paul’s has developed its own progressive curriculum to

deliver effective weekly teaching. It fosters the development of a sound singing technique, underpinned by an awareness of vocal health, at the same time as developing aural skills, introducing staff notation, building an understanding of form and structure, and exploring expressive elements of music such as dynamics and articulation. All this takes place while introducing children to a broad repertoire of choral music, from early music to 19th-century classics, through to Britten, Dove and Ken Burton.

The Choral Partnerships programme currently works exclusively with Church of England schools. As well as delivering a high-quality musical education, the curriculum contributes to the objectives of the framework used for the Statutory Inspection of Anglican and Methodist Schools. It aims to help young people understand and engage with the Christian faith, while remaining sensitive to and respectful of children’s personal beliefs. All partner schools are invited to sing a lunchtime Eucharist at St Paul’s at least once a year. In collective worship, the music is entirely sacred. In music lessons, faith-based repertoire is balanced with secular songs, alongside opportunities to explore and discuss the meaning behind the texts.

TOP Conductor William Bruce leads the Choral Partnerships programme at St Paul’s Cathedral

ABOVE Pupils from St Matthew’s sing at the Department for Education Graham Westley Lacdao

The lessons I witnessed wove the teaching of aural perception and music theory into every song. Year 5 began their lesson, for example, by singing a two-part arrangement of a traditional Shaker round dance. Bruce asked the children if they could identify its (minor) tonality – which they could. To reinforce this, he demonstrated to the class how the music would sound if it had been written in a major key. The notation was displayed on screen at the front of the class, with colour-coded dots to help the children know which part to sing. Bruce kept the lessons moving, basing each on learning outcomes drawn from three different, well-chosen songs, and always relating what the children were experiencing aurally with what they could see in the music’s notation.

A key feature of the Choral Partnerships pedagogy is the ‘normalising’ of solo singing. Throughout all lessons, even with the youngest learners, Bruce invited children to sing on their own. This was accompanied by positive affirmation. If the pitch-matching wasn’t perfect, Bruce congratulated the children on their efforts and kindly offered encouraging ‘next steps’. It was clear that the children had become accustomed to singing alone, and that it held no fear for them.

The programme prides itself in teaching vocal development using similar techniques to those used with the Cathedral’s choristers. To this end, Bruce devoted much of his teaching to voice production. The children were aware of their head and chest voices and understood when and how to manage the transition between them. Although they had only been part of the programme for just over a year, I could hear that the children were developing a good choral sound.

The new-look Choral Partnerships programme is in its infancy but is already having a significant impact. One class teacher at St Barnabas’s told me that this was the first time in her career she had witnessed children being taught to read notation and understand the vocabulary of music. Headteacher, Lauren Castle, remarked that the children’s singing had improved and that this had increased their overall confidence. Children who were not strong academically were being given a chance to flourish and shine as singers. Before the programme began, the staff had to work hard to encourage singing. Now children are keen to use their voices.

And the children themselves? They are clearly gaining a huge amount from the programme and the performance opportunities it offers, with Sarish telling me

‘My head voice has got better’ and Hudson saying ‘Singing at St Paul’s made me really happy’. Gabriel admitted he had been nervous, but felt good when their performance had finished.

A programme of this nature is understandably costly, but thanks to generous support by the Order of the British Empire Chapel Fund and energetic fundraising by St Paul’s’ development team, it is continuing to expand. In 2025-26, the programme will welcome new primary schools and up to three secondary schools. A-level music students will develop leadership skills by assisting the choral directors during primary classes. The programme also includes after-school choirs to give the most enthusiastic young singers an additional outlet for their voices, and the Cathedral Choir of St Paul’s is beginning to recruit choristers from these choirs, with generous bursaries ensuring that finance does not prove a barrier.

I had the pleasure of hearing one of the programme’s after-school choirs in action, since my day was rounded off with Evensong at St Paul’s, commemorating the same Sir Frederick Ouseley who began his clerical career at St Barnabas’s. The Choral Partnerships’ after-school choir from the Borough of Hackney joined the Cathedral Choir, taking a leading role in Gabriel Jackson’s Glory be to God for dappled things, a thrilling and demanding anthem, commissioned for the occasion by the Ouseley Church Music Trust. The children rose admirably to the challenge. I left, heartened by the experience of seeing and hearing young people engage joyfully with cathedral music and develop musical skills that will, without doubt, have a long-lasting, transformative effect on their lives.

CATHY DEW

Cathy Dew is Programmes Director for Cathedral Music Trust

ABOVE A warm-up for pupils from St Saviour’s taking part in a Sing at St Paul’s Day, 2018

THE MASTER STORYTELLER

Orlando Gibbons, one of the towering figures in English church music, died 400 years ago. To mark this anniversary, we explore his enigmatic life and eloquent works

By JEREMY SUMMERLY

The Canadian pianist Glenn Gould once said, ‘Orlando Gibbons is my favourite composer, always has been’. Not JS Bach? No, Gibbons. Orlando Gibbons was baptised in Oxford on Christmas Day 1583, and was registered with the surname ‘Gybbins’. Gibbons’s father was a musician, and Orlando and his three brothers were all

brought up to be musicians. Gibbons only began singing as a treble at King’s College, Cambridge when he was 12, a role he continued for two years. Young Orlando was in the unusual position of being answerable to his oldest brother, Edward Gibbons, who was Master of the Choristers at King’s and 15 years older than Orlando.

Young Orlando suffered the pain of bereavement as a boy: he lost his father, William, even before he became a chorister at King’s Cambridge, and when Orlando was a late teenager, he lost his brother Ellis and their mother Mary, possibly to the plague. While it would be stretching a point to argue that, because Orlando had known such personal sadness as a boy, his music has a depth that it wouldn’t otherwise have had, there’s little doubt that Gibbons’s music speaks from the heart, even when at its most functional. The Nunc dimittis of the Short Service is an example of that. Restrained, but melodically fertile, this short canticle remains a controlled outpouring of the heart, before maintaining its equilibrium and presenting the upper two voices in masterly canon. It is typical of the period, and of Gibbons in particular, that a sound contrapuntal technique can always be relied upon to create an artistic pinnacle.

It is regrettable, and also surprising, that someone who was so obviously destined for greatness should have such an incomplete biography. What, for instance, was Gibbons up to for the five years between his voice breaking and his employment at court?

Gibbons first signed the Cheque Book of the Chapel Royal on 19 May 1603, when he was 19, and he became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal on 21 March 1605, in the era of the Gunpowder Plot. Gibbons was born an

Elizabethan and was employed as a Jacobean. It is clear from his music that Gibbons was a singer, but he excelled as a keyboard player. You didn’t get to be dubbed ‘the best finger of that age’ unless you had the ability to impress at the virginals and the organ.

This is what impressed Glenn Gould so much: Gibbons’s ability to create artistic masterpieces while still – even in his simplest keyboard music – retaining a solid technique. In short, there is no padding in Gibbons’s music. Take the Fantazia of foure parts. This is the embodiment of Thomas Morley’s description of the genre as ‘when a musician taketh a point at his pleasure and wresteth and turneth it as he list, making either much or little of it according as shall seem best in his own conceit’. The most famous passage of this Fantazia always impresses because its syncopations have more in common with the jazz age than music written in the reign of James I.

Gibbons could seemingly turn his hand to any musical thing, although he never set any Latin words. Partly this would have been in accordance with the spirit of the religious age, but also this was because Gibbons’s directness of vocal style required the text to be understood at first hearing. Fine part-writing abounds in Gibbons, even in his simple metrical psalms ( Hymnes and Songs of the Church ), but at no point in any of his sacred or secular music does Gibbons allow contrapuntal artifice to obscure either the plain audibility of the words or indeed the narrative.

And that is another aspect of Gibbons’s music that is unmistakable. Whether in a simple madrigallike The Silver Swan, or a large-scale structure like the Magnificat of the Second Service, storytelling is paramount. In the Second Service, the ‘merciful’ treble duet, the ‘strong’ tenor duet, the ‘scattering’ quartet, the ‘mighty’ bass duet, the ‘merciful’ trio of upper voices, and the ‘gloriously’ delayed entry of all five voices at the opening of the Gloria create a narrative as if this story has never been previously heard at Evensong. What storytelling! It is tempting to imagine that Gibbons had a thespian side to him, in other words that he might have enjoyed holding court at court. Certainly, the fact that Gibbons was such an adept musical performer indicates that holding the listener’s attention was second only to a sound compositional technique. At first glance, as ‘the best hand in England’, it is surprising that Gibbons didn’t leave as much keyboard music as posterity might have hoped for. But this could be ▷

ABOVE King’s College, Cambridge, where Gibbons sang as a treble

INSET Orlando

Gibbons contributed to ‘Parthenia or the Maydenhead of the first musicke that ever was printed for the virginals’

another example of the ‘Fauré effect’. Fauré was clearly an exceptional organist, yet he left no solo organ music, presumably because he was too busy improvising at the organ to write finished compositions for the instrument. Thus it might have been for Gibbons: his ability as an improviser at the keyboard might have been responsible for the relative paucity of keyboard music in his name. William Byrd’s last – and this tells its own story – was Gibbons’s first publication. When Parthenia… the first music that ever was printed for the virginals. Composed by three famous masters… came out, Gibbons was not yet 30. He would undoubtedly have been happy with the company that he kept within the volume: William Byrd was a septuagenarian and the most revered composer of the day, while John Bull had reached his half century and was the most famous organist in England.

When dealing with early-17th century English music, it is difficult to know which labels to apply. ‘Tudor’ and ‘Stuart’ are terms that are bandied around with abandon. Yet much of what is thought of as late-Tudor music was written well after Elizabeth I’s death. Similarly, terms such as Renaissance and Baroque, which are so appropriate when discussing certain continental composers, cannot be applied readily in England. But while opera was being invented in Italy when Gibbons was a boy, the genre had not

‘Gibbons tried, with astounding levels of success, to paint the overall meaning of sentences and paragraphs rather than each colourful word’

reached England. Speculation is fun but can be unhelpful. But what if Gibbons had witnessed early operatic experiments? Gibbons was the best setter of English words of his generation in England. A glance at the surviving consort songs and madrigals might indicate the way in which the English court might have been adorned with operatic experiments from a young Orlando Gibbons. Gibbons never set Latin texts, only ever English. And he never wrote for lute, only for keyboard. What is most important about the innovative nature of Gibbons’s compositional ethic is the approach to the setting of words on a macro level. As Morley put it in 1597, in his Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music: ‘when your text signifieth “ascending”, “high”, “heaven”, and such like, you make your music ascend; and by contrary, where your text speaketh of “descending”, “lowness”, “depth”, “hell”, and others such, you must make your music descend’. While Gibbons inevitably adopted some aspects of that approach in his text setting, he impresses with his ability to see the bigger picture. He tends to use ‘narrative meaning’ rather than ‘word painting’; in other words, Gibbons tried, with astounding levels of success, to paint the overall meaning of sentences and paragraphs rather than to give musical utterance to each colourful word as and when it appeared. In practice, Gibbons adopted both old and new approaches (stile nuovo and stile antico if you will), and it is testament to his craft that he so ably used old and new techniques interchangeably in his music. The composer Thomas Tallis, who died when Gibbons was an infant, would undoubtedly have found some of Gibbons’s gestures too bold and almost certainly incoherent.

There are so many unknowns in the life and work of Orlando Gibbons, and so much speculation as to what might have been had he lived longer than his 40-plus years. Was The Silver Swan written as a mourning song for the premature death of Henry, Prince of Wales in 1612? Was the full anthem O clap your hands commissioned for an Oxford University degree ceremony in 1622? And was it a brain haemorrhage that killed Gibbons on 5 June 1625? Is that what ‘deprived of life by a lamentable rush of blood to the head’ meant? We will never know. But we do know that Gibbons was Glenn Gould’s favourite composer. And mine.

RIGHT The Canadian pianist Glenn Gould said Gibbons was his favourite composer

Don Hunstein / Glenn Gould Foundation

Latest recordings

AD FONTES

The record label and publishing house founded by Buckfast Abbey dedicated to presenting the finest sacred music

Sur le nom d’Alain: Organ music by

Jehan Alain and Maurice Duruflé (AF010)

Matthew Martin organ

O sacrum convivium! Music for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi (AF014)

The Choir of Buckfast Abbey

Matthew Searles

“Especially striking for me is the accompanied plainchant and hymns... They’ve beautifully captured the atmosphere of the service, the choir and the organ, and the acoustic of Buckfast Abbey.” — BBC Radio 3

New sheet music titles

Veni Creator Spiritus: Second Vespers of the Solemnity of Pentecost (AF015)

The Choir of Westminster Cathedral

Simon Johnson

“In an age where digital precision often trumps atmospheric authenticity, Ad Fontes latest release arrives as a testament to the enduring power of masterful organ recording.” — Organists' Review

Fauxbourdon

A LIVING LEGEND

As Sir John Rutter turns 80, we speak to the performers, composers and clergy who know his work best

about what makes his choral music so special

Sir John Rutter is one of the most influential choral composers today, whose gift for writing singable melodies and impeccable craftsmanship make him beloved by choirs and audiences around the UK. Born in London in 1945, he went to school in Highgate, where his fellow pupils included composer John Tavener. He wrote his first carol, the Shepherd’s Pipe Carol, when he was 18. As a student, he was talent-spotted by Sir David Willcocks, who introduced him to Oxford University Press. They signed him up, began publishing his music and made him co-editor of the popular Carols for Choirs collections. For many, his name is strongly associated with Christmas, although his prolific output, mostly choral, includes works such as the Requiem, Gloria and The Gift of Life

After studying and later teaching at Clare College, Cambridge, since 1979 he has devoted himself to composing, conducting and producing CDs. He played an integral role in the music for the King’s Coronation at Westminster Abbey in 2023 and was knighted in 2024. To mark his 80th birthday, we’ve spoken to leading figures in the cathedral world about why they love his music.

BOB CHILCOTT

Conductor and composer

The way Rutter writes is so technically good. He makes people want to sing his music. It’s a huge gift that he’s always had. His music isn’t easy to sing, actually – I’m thinking of his Gloria which is a brilliant piece in the Walton tradition but is hard to sing and conduct. People do it because it’s fun and energetic. When I went to Cambridge, he’d just started [as Director of Music] at Clare College. The musical landscape was incredibly different then, and he had the courage to write the music he wanted to write.

The quality of what John does and his attention to detail are special. I used to sing in The King’s Singers and whenever I wanted to see how to do things, I used to look at John’s scores in the Singers’ library, because they were so beautifully written out. However fast he was working, he had a clear idea of what he wanted to do.

My favourite piece is Hymn to the Creator of Light. I honestly think it’s one of the best pieces of choral music written in the last 50 years. I first did it with the choir I conduct at the University of Birmingham. I wrote to John and said, ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t know this but it’s fantastic.’ And he wrote back and said there was some circumstance that meant he had to write it really quickly. But you wouldn’t think it from the way it’s done. It just shows what a facility he has.

TAMARA ADESUGBA

Chorister, Salford Cathedral

Girls’ Choir

I like how John Rutter uses nature as inspiration in a lot of his music and one of my favourite pieces is For the beauty of the earth. It’s just lovely and I never get bored of singing it. It’s also my mum’s favourite and she’s always smiling when we sing it in choir.

BELOW Composer and dedicated champion of choral music

John Rutter at work

Kaldan (Bob Chilcott); Bill Smith (Ashley Grote); Andrew Staple

He writes enjoyable music which is so nice to listen to. It’s not jarring or difficult to understand which means people can be swept up in it easily. As a singer, I find it flows so well which means I just want to sing it. It feels really natural. I also feel it connects the choir together because it’s so well written and it can make us sound really good.

ASHLEY GROTE

Master of Music, Norwich Cathedral

I have huge admiration for John and his music because everything he writes is so beautifully crafted. He’s the master of writing a natural, beautifully-shaped, instinctive vocal melody. As someone who is working with choristers, day in, day out, I know that if a vocal line is well-crafted then the children pick it up quickly. And there’s always a twist of harmonic interest. The tone and mood of his choral music is always so beautifully judged for the occasion, whether it’s the simplicity of The Lord bless you and keep you, which has spoken to so many people in an important and poignant way, or big, joyous triumphant pieces that have been performed at royal occasions. What sweeter music is a carol that he wrote for King’s College, Cambridge, and which I grew up with as a chorister and organ scholar at King’s. It’s the perfect combination of music and words – another thing he’s so good at. It’s in the lovely rich key of G flat major and it has this wonderful warmth about it. There’s more to this piece than meets the eye, a harmonic richness that underpins a melody that’s beautiful, singable and not quite what you expect. Whenever I hear it, I can just picture the scene and imagine myself there at the Nine Lessons and Carols. It captures the occasion so perfectly.

GRAHAM ROSS Director of Music, Clare College, Cambridge

Everything I do in my workplace comes back to John, who was my predecessor but one at Clare College and was there when they set up a mixed-voice choir. I think the reason his music is so loved and successful is actually quite simple. More than any other living composer I know, he has the ability to spin a Uggi

melody that is somehow instantly memorable and makes you feel like you’ve known it for years. His craftsmanship is also second to none. His music is immediately singable, playable and there’s a great sense of enjoyment. I think that’s why it’s loved by both professionals and amateurs.

I’ve long loved his Hymn to the Creator of Light, which he wrote in 1992 for the dedication of a new stained-glass window in Gloucester Cathedral in memory of the composer Herbert Howells. It’s for double choir and starts off with this very low, plainchant-like melody, that’s answered by a choir higher up, as if they’re the angels above. A wonderful central section is in a much more animated tempo, and the most beautiful bit is when he sets the Schmücke dich chorale by Johann Crüger. It has this hushed, delicate ending, which I can imagine would have been beautiful in Gloucester Cathedral. He wrote it as a standalone motet but in 2015 used it as the third of six movements in The Gift of Life, where it’s found a new home.

REVD LUCY WINKETT

Rector of St James’s Piccadilly, writer and singer

I was very privileged to be one of John’s ‘Cambridge Singers’ during the 1990s on a few albums. Meeting for rehearsals in Finchley and recording often in the Lady Chapel in Ely Cathedral was not only an incomparable musical education for a young singer but good fun. Recording Tallis’s Spem in Alium in the amazing acoustic at Ely was one standout memory and John’s leadership – not only sensitive and musical but also kind – made a big impression on me, not having been the right generation to have encountered him as a student.

As a priest now, I have witnessed the impact of John’s music, which, contrary to some liturgical opinion is most definitely for life not just for Christmas. Emotionally direct, not shying away from some dissonance, but ultimately assuring his listeners of the beauty of the world and of living in it, John’s music fills the sacred spaces of churches, cathedrals, and the chapels of hospitals, prisons and crematoria, as people turn to his cadences in times of great joy and also great grief. Thank God for it, and for his dedication over decades to the principle of St Augustine, that ‘the one who sings, prays twice’. My favourite piece of his is the Requiem

NICO MUHLY Composer

I think many composers would be tempted to make a Faustian pact to be able to write a tune as well as John does. Even writing this has jostled about ten earworms from the archive which will take me the better part of the afternoon to banish. Melodic sense aside, there is also a clarity and rigour of craft in John’s music to which we should all aspire. I’ve long maintained that God be in my head is one of the world’s most perfectly constructed pieces of music. It’s about 90 seconds long and does everything you want it to do; it feels like a hymn but there are more chapters to it than one immediately perceives. It delivers the same drug as the Bruckner motets or even the most scrumptious, suspensionladen Parry, but with an economy of gesture somehow more redolent of Pärt.

I encountered his music as many people did: by singing it. I was a chorister in the Anglican universe and it’s physically impossible to get through a liturgical year without singing at least two pieces of John’s. I have a terrible confession, though: as a pre-teenager I was such a snob about ‘style’; I much preferred the sort of stylised joys and sorrows found in Byrd’s Puer Natus Est than, say, The Shepherd’s Pipe Carol. It wasn’t until I was older that I could really appreciate the generosity of his craft and the beauty of his project. John’s music is often a gateway for musicians of all ages and configurations, and

is a welcoming force for performers and audiences. His unspeakable generosity and fastidiousness as a producer of records (including some of mine) is, I feel, part of a greater mood of benevolence and community-minded musical citizenship which has been the source of great joy to me and countless others.

DR JILL WHITE Record producer

Imagine my joy and pride when John invited me to become his Collegium label CD producer after he’d heard the balance and sound I’d achieved of a BBC Sung Epilogue. I’d stepped in at the last moment to produce it on behalf of an indisposed colleague, and this was one of those ‘chance opportunities’ that morph into great collaborations. I remained John’s Collegium producer for many years.

I must mention the speculative recording John funded of the original edition of the Fauré Requiem, which he had researched and edited for OUP, his publisher. That recording subsequently launched the Conifer label and won a Gramophone Award in 1984.

John is and always was an inspirational composer and conductor. He is modest, kind, courteous yet exacting, with an impeccably sharp ear and, to my mind, his is the gift of a genius. His music speaks to everyone, everywhere. His is music without boundaries – his selective sensitivity to words and inflection is impeccable, be they utterly tender or dramatically declamatory. Our collaboration lasted for years and with us generations of Cambridge Singers who were mostly chosen from his Clare College Choir, which championed women students as well as men. Many are now famous – to name just two, the conductor Paul Daniel and the baritone Gerald Finley.

It’s impossible to choose a favourite piece, but John’s setting of Psalm 23 accompanied by the City of London Sinfonia with Quentin Poole as solo oboist instantly brought me to tears. But then, that isn’t uncommon. So many of John’s settings reach those parts of people’s hearts and minds that few reach. John’s music is universal in spirit, deceivingly simple and seductively sincere.

Happy Birthday, Sir John!

ABOVE John Rutter handwriting one of his meticulous scores

Nick Rutter

A CELEBRATION OF CAROLS

Carols are an indispensable part of Christmas today but for centuries that was far from the case. We explore their colourful history

By CATHY DEW

Even if you have never experienced any other form of cathedral music, there is a strong chance that if you have grown up in the UK you will be familiar with a good number of Christmas carols. Since their beginnings, carols have occupied something of a middle ground between the sacred and the profane. Some have their origins in the monastery, others in the ale house. Throughout their history, carols have suffered censorship and courted controversy but have, nonetheless, come to occupy a central role in the celebration of Christmas the world over.

Christmas texts appear in liturgy dating from the fifth century. Possibly the earliest example is the plainchant hymn, ‘Veni

redemptor gentium’, attributed to St Ambrose. However, this and other Christmas liturgical music remained quite distinct from what were thought of as ‘carols’ until the 19th century. The earliest carols (around 500 or so) are preserved in manuscripts from the 13th to the 15th centuries. It is highly unlikely that any of these were conceived to be performed in church. Most were probably written to be sung socially: in the homes of the nobility; while out ‘wassailing’; or in the local hostelry. Some may have been sung by cathedral musicians between Christmas and Epiphany, when the ‘boy bishop’ and his retinue of choristers and clerks visited local country houses and monasteries, being rewarded with gifts of money.

ABOVE Carol singers getting into the Christmas spirit

The term ‘carol’ probably comes from the French carole, a song for dancing, and it is easy to imagine some lively medieval capering to the strongly rhythmic melodies.

Medieval carols were not synonymous with Christmas. In fact, around half the extant early carols from England celebrate different religious festivals or have entirely secular texts. Many early examples are strophic with a repeating refrain. An example is the ‘Boar’s Head Carol’, which still features annually at Queen’s College, Oxford’s traditional Boar’s Head Gaudy. This was the first English carol ever to appear in print (in 1521), and like a number of medieval carols it is ‘macaronic’, meaning that its text combines two or more languages, usually the vernacular of its country of origin and Latin. Another commonly sung example is ‘In Dulci Jubilo’, a 14th-century song originally from Germany. References to holly and ivy first appear in medieval carols, reflecting the tradition of decorating homes in evergreen at Christmas time. There is even a carol by Henry VIII on this theme, ‘Green groweth the holly’, found in a manuscript in the British Library.

of Carols, which sets nine medieval texts, framed by a Latin plainchant antiphon, ‘Hodie Christus natus est’.

Because they were not habitually sung in church, the Reformation had little impact on carols, and it is likely that they continued to be sung in homes and out wassailing.

Nevertheless, carol singing took something of a knock during the interregnum after the English Civil War. A Parliamentary Act in 1645 banned the observance of Christmas altogether. This was clearly an unpopular move and satirical pamphlets railed against it. Evidence suggests that the ruling was frequently flouted and, though the carols themselves couldn’t be sung, ballads were composed remembering festive Christmases past. One carol that did, somehow, slip through the net was published during the Civil War by the Royalist poet Robert Herrick. ‘What sweeter musick’ is now best known in a version by John Rutter.

Carolling returned with the Restoration in 1660. Some carols were printed and circulated on broadsheets, like other ‘broadside ballads’, but it is likely that most were transmitted orally from one generation to another, and it was not until years later that these were written down.

Carols first began to make their way inside church walls in the 18th century. In 1700, what we now consider to be a carol (but was then regarded as a hymn) was published, by Poet Laureate, Nahum Tate. ‘While shepherds watched’ was the only Christmas hymn sanctioned for use in the Church of England and remained so for much of the century.

Although a large number of texts have been preserved, the music has survived for only about one fifth of medieval carols. Many composers of the 20th and 21st centuries therefore took the opportunity to set new music to ancient texts. Examples include William Mathias’s ‘Sir Christèmas’ and ‘A babe is born’. Perhaps the best-known collection is Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony

This was joined towards the end of the century by ‘Hark! The herald angels sing’. This began its life as ‘Hark how all the welkin ring’, penned by the famous Methodist hymnodist Charles Wesley but George Whitefield changed the words because not many people knew what ‘the welkin’ (meaning ‘heaven’) was. It wasn’t paired with the famous tune by Mendelssohn until many years later.

In the early 19th century William Sandys and Davies Gilbert began collecting and printing carols sung across parts of the UK. These included carols such as ‘The first Nowell’, ‘God rest ye merry, gentlemen’ and ‘I saw three ships’. Their motivation was to Mary

ABOVE Queen Victoria, circa 1849, who helped create the idea of a family Christmas

INSET Henry VIII wrote the carol ‘Green groweth the holly’

preserve the carols that were part of what they feared was a dying oral tradition. In fact, they paved the way for a resurgence of interest and a spawning of many new carols and Christmas hymns. Many of the songs we think of as traditional Christmas hymns and carols became popular in the 19th century.

Queen Victoria and her consort, Prince Albert, were keen to promote the concept of a ‘family Christmas’ and carols played a big role in this. The fact that many Victorian homes had a piano or harmonium allowed families to gather round and sing together.

Carols were gradually introduced into formal worship during the 19th century and the cathedral choir acquired a more significant carol-singing role. John Stainer included carols in Choral Evensong at St Paul’s in 1878 and other cathedrals soon followed suit.

Although it has become synonymous with King’s College, Cambridge, the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols originated in Truro in 1880, devised by the then Bishop, Edward White Benson. The neo-gothic Truro Cathedral was still under construction, so the first service was held in a vast wooden shed serving as a temporary cathedral, at 10pm on Christmas Eve and is said to have been attended by over 400 people. Benson’s structure is attractively simple: nine Bible readings, which put the story of Christmas into its theological context are interspersed by the singing of carols.

The Festival first came to King’s College, Cambridge in 1918. Millions now tune in to the BBC radio broadcast, which has occurred every year but one since 1928, listening with rapt attention from the famous opening solo verse of ‘Once in royal David’s city’ through to the traditional conclusion of ‘Hark! The herald angels sing’.

When he was appointed Director of Music at King’s College in 1982, the late Sir Stephen Cleobury demonstrated his commitment to contemporary music by commissioning a new carol each year. The first, in 1983, was ‘In Wintertime’ by Lennox Berkeley. Since then composers such as Judith Weir, John Rutter, Arvo Pärt, James MacMillan, Jonathan Dove, Cecilia McDowall and Cheryl FrancesHoad have contributed.

In 1961, Oxford University Press published the first volume of Carols for Choirs. This was the brainchild of Christopher Morris, who identified a need for a collection of carols in choral arrangements. The book proved enormously popular and became a bestseller with many further volumes having been published since. The series has done much to

curate the choral ‘sound of Christmas’ and introduce singers and audiences alike to a wide range of Christmas music. Choral arrangements of traditional carols and the composition of new carols have cemented choirs’ unique and important contribution to Christmas music. For many, the sight and sound of choristers singing carols by candlelight epitomises the cathedral choir.

As well as enjoying the Christmas choral sound, everyone can join in with congregational carols and Christmas hymns at carol services and concerts, carol singing in the streets or on village greens or, as is still the case in some parts of the UK, in the pub. The tradition of lusty pub carol singing is particularly strong in towns and villages in and around Sheffield. It is somewhat ironic that the first carol permitted within worship has now become the mainstay of the pub carolling tradition, with ‘While shepherds watched’ being sung to a variety of different melodies, sometimes several times in one evening.

The Christmas carol’s 800-or-so-year history has proved its resilience and popularity. The balance between the traditional and the new, the sheer versatility of the medium and its accessibility to all has placed carol singing at the heart of Christmas celebrations, and will surely keep it there for many generations to come.

Explore our timeline of Christmas carols online at www.cathedralmusictrust.org.uk/carols

BELOW A manuscript of ‘Silent Night’, composed in 1818

THANK YOU TO OUR SUPPORTERS

JUBILATE PATRONS

Richard Creed

Lady Sarah Gough

Julian Hardwick

Jonathan Macdonald

Richard Moyse

Iain Nisbet

Kristina Vi

Matthew Westerman

Michael Wilson

GOLD PATRONS

Anthony Biddle

Alan Ainsworth

Margaret Davis OBE

Colin Dudgeon

Dr Michael Emery

Stephen Emery

Richard Gabbertas

Jason Groves and Charles Owen

Douglas Henn-Macrae

Tom Hoffman MBE

Simon Hyslop

Julian Kelly

John Meyrick-Thomas

Nicholas Parry MBE

Dr John Penniston

Dr Isobel Pinder

Gavin Ralston

Graham Robinson

Abigail Sargent

Philip Shirtcliff

David Tilly

Dr Christopher White

Susan Williams

John Wilsher

Anne Wilson

SILVER PATRONS

Ros and Peter Allwood

Ralph Allwood

Sooty Asquith

John Bain

Richard Baker

Ann Bartleet

Malcolm Beer

Anthony Bowles

David Bridges

Nigel Press

Nathalia Britt-Bird

Nigel Brown

Lady Hilary Browne-Wilkinson

Dr Malcolm Clarke

Stephen Buckle

Lindsey Cooper

Kieran Cooper

Shane Crick

Lady Gillian Curtis

Hilary Davies

David Doggett

Jean and Jeremy Duerden

Kathleen Duncan

Richard Duncan

Thomas Edwards

Martin Eldred

John Ellis

Andrew Fairhead

Professor Alison Firth

Henrietta Fraser

Roma Haigh

Dr Philippa Hall

Jill Harpham

Peter Hignett

Alan Hodgetts

Dr Julian Holloway

Elizabeth Iles

Susan and David King

Jonathan Lancashire

Michael Langton

Mark Lawrence

Diana Lazenby McLaren

Bridget le Huray

Janet Linington

Rosalind and Philip Lund

Sarah MacDonald

Jonathan Mayes

James Mcandrew

Patricia McLaren-Turner

John Mitchell

Andrew Nethsingha

Ann Northy-Baker

Fiona Olson

Neil Page

Katharine and John Parsons

Anna Phillips

Oliver Piper

Melvyn Roffe

John Rootes

Keith Ross

John Saunders

Professor John Saunders

Robert Scott

Morgan Simes

Moyra Skenfield

Gordon Slater

Mike Smyth

Margaret and Patrick Stables

Clive Stirling

Revd Canon David Stone

William F. Tell

Antony Timmins

Revd Paul Towns

Rob Uittenbosch

Dr Elena Vivori

Michael Ward

Simon Webb

Pam and Nigel Whitling

Oliver Willmott

Revd Michael Windridge

Jo Windsor

Brenda Wright

BRONZE PATRONS

Professor Joan Adams

Dr Nigel Allan

Nick Allan

Dr Simon Anderson

Stefan Anderson

Dr William Apedaile

Dr Jonathan Arnold

Michael Ash

Keith Ashton

Rosemary and Stewart Aylward

Florence Bachelor

Nigel Bailey

Elizabeth Baird

Nigel Bairstow

Isabel Bangs

Revd Canon Philip Banks

Jean Barber

Michael Barker

Martin Bartlett

David Bawtree

Professor John Belcher

Christopher Bell

Sonia Bell

Christopher Benson

Gerhard Biss

Robert Blackman MBE

Dr Judith Blezzard

David Blumlein

Stephen Blurton

Sue and Richard Bonnie

Philip Booth

Joan and Michael Bosworth

Roger Boulton and Ruth Dunlop

Stephen Bourne

Paul Bradburn

Christopher Brewer

Josephine Briggs

Elizabeth Briggs

Alison Brimelow

Christopher Britton

Jack Brook

June Brown

Susan Brown

Richard Browne

George Bullen

Roger Burbidge

Catherine Burgess

Jill Burrows

Sir Ian Byatt

Dr Michael Callender

Ian Cannock

Kathryn Carden

Dr and Mrs Carnelley

Joseph Cassells

Simon Chadwick

Richard Chamberlaine-Brothers

Dr Adrian Chapman

Angela Chatfield

Thomas Child

Dr Jeroen Chorus

Katy Christopher

Fiona Chryssides

James Clark

Rosemary Clemence

Hugh Cobbe

Sheila Coles

David Cook

Peter Cook

Janet Cooke

Jennifer Cooke

Christopher Copson

Eric Cox

Graham Curtis

Howard Curtis

Christopher Dainty

Margaret Dale

Patricia Dale

The Rt Revd Edward Darling

Michael Davidson

Christopher Davies

Christopher Daws

Mr Trevor Dawson

Dr David Day

Timothy Day

Simon Deller

Dr Monty Denneau

Nigel Dick

Graham Dickinson

Christopher Donnan

Susie Williams

Margaret Dorken

Geoffrey Dowling

Nicholas Drew

Brian Duckett

Revd Peter Dunbar

Dr John Earis

Peter Eddy

Vivian Eddy

Colin Edwards

Philip Eisenbeiss

Shirley Ellis

Sir Peter and Lady Ellwood

Gareth Eve

Anthony Fage

Dr Robin Field

David Fishwick

Giles Fletcher

Professor Brian Foster

Rosemary Foster

Martin Franklin

Jonathan Gainey-Brown

Dr Andrew Gardner

Jonathan Gibbs

Martin Graham

Harry Grayson

Helen Greig

Catrin Griffiths

Clarendon and Rodney Gritten

Michael Guest

David Haigh

Martin Haldane

Nicholas Hale

Michael Hall

Muriel Hamilton-Glover

Stuart Hancox

Jacqueline Harkin

Philip Harman

Kent Harries

Cynthia and Gerald Harris

Robert Harris

Clare Heath

Gerald Heather

Brenda Heaton

John Higgins

Peter Higgins

Dr David Hiley and Deidre

Sellars

Dr and Mrs David Hill MBE

Diana Hodgson

Patrick Hodson

John Hogan

Denise and Michael Hopkins

Anthony Hopkinson

Dr Don Horisberger

Mark Horsley

Dr Robert Horton

Nicholas Houghton

Patsy Huddy

Michael, Elizabeth and Simon

Hughes

Josephine Humphries

Janet Hunt

Robert Inches

Robin James

Isabel and Patrick Jeffers

Mark Johnson

Peter Johnson

Graham Jones

Michael Jones

Robert Jones

Christopher Joseph

Stuart Keen

Robin Kellow

Diana Kendrick

Sally Kentfield

Professor David Kimbell

Dr Christopher Kimberley

Adam King

Margaret Kingman

Anna Kingsmill-Vellacott

Rosemary Kirkman

John Kirvan

Perry Kitchen

Dr Robert Knowles

Professor Simone Krüger

Bridge

Stuart Laing

Catherine Lamb

Leonard Lamb

Janey and Barrie Lambie

Stephen Lamont

Scirard Lancelyn Green

Susan Lane

Keith Lane

Edith Laprun

The Very Revd Jonathan Lean

Claude Lee

Robin Lewington

Richard Line

Sarah and Timothy Ling

Richard Link

Raymund Livesey

Keith Long

Pippa Lovering

Beryl Lowe

Crista Lyon

Dr Douglas MacDonald

Joe Mace

Andrew Maddocks

Sarah and Richard Malins

Gillian Mapley

Richard Marshall

Gill Mason

Alan Mathewson

Michael Matthews

John Maxwell-Jones

Anthony McClaran

Martyn McClelland

Anne McDonald

Neil Medland

Revd Gordon Melvin

Andrew Menzies

Colin Menzies

Andrew Millinchip

Michael Minta

Stephen Mollett

Mark Molony

David Monger

Stephen Montgomery

Nicolas Moodie

Christopher Moore

Linda Moore

Heather Morgan

Margaret Morris

Professor Andrew Morrisson

David Moss

Revd Canon James Mustard

Jill Neal

Dr Martin Neary

Revd Kimonie Nicholls

Dulcie Noble

Timothy Noon

Brian Ollett

Joan Orton

Revd Canon Keith Pagan

Susan and Frank Paice

Bruce Parker

Revd Denis Parry

Jean Partington

Brian Pearson

Dr Anne Peebles Brown

Revd Canon Jeremy Pemberton

Roger Pengelly

Narayana Picton

Judith Power

Philip Price

Sue Prickett

Ian Provost

Brigadier Neville Pughe

Jennifer Railton

The Ven John Rawlings

Richard Redding

Jane Regan

Andrew Revans

Giles Richards

Dame Patricia Routledge DBE

Julian Royals

Nigel Salisbury

David Salter

Hilda Scarth

Clare Scott

Richard Seaton

Carol Seymour-Newton

Keith Simpson

Andrew Sims

Isobel Skelhorn

Doreen Sladdin

Thirza Sloan

Dr Peter Smail

The Rt Revd and Mrs Stancliffe

John Stanley

Martin Stanley

Margaret Stephen

Anthony Stone

Ivo Swinnen

Richard Tanner

Ian Thompson

Margaret Thompson

Michael Thompson

John Thorne

Graham Thorpe

Clive Tibbits

Janet and David Tiley

Louise Topping

Dr Bernard Trafford

Monica Trenchard

Adam Tunnicliffe

John Turner

Gordon Tyerman

Peter van Son

Tom Venner

Mark Venning

Margaret and Richard Vincent

David Walde

Catherine and Nicholas Walker

Colin Walker

Amelia and Henry Wallace

John Wallace

Laura Wallace

Susan and Clive Watkis

Dr and Mrs Watts

Eric Wayman

Ian Westley

Irene White

Revd Dr Rowan Williams

Dr Roger Williams

Margaret and David Williamson

Arnold Wills

David Wilson

John Winpenny

Nigel Wissett-Warner

Professor Martin Woodward

Dr and Mrs Wooldridge

Diana Woolley

Christine Wright

Janet Yerbury

And several anonymous Patrons and Friends.

Mark

Hannah

Rupert

Bret

Brian

Philip

Clare

Rebecca Tavener

Jeff Gilbert

Mike Cooter

CDS

Alan Hovhaness:

Complete Music for Solo Organ

Peter Wright (trumpet), Tom Winpenny (organ)

Toccata Classics TOCC0763

The American composer Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000) wrote for the organ throughout his career. He spent several years as an organist in his native Boston in the 1940s, at a time when he was exploring his Armenian heritage. He also became fascinated by the music of India, Korea and Japan and travelled there in the 1960s. Hovhaness’s music is a unique blend of many of these elements and his amazing fecundity as a composer still left room for the organ works here, mostly recorded for the first time.

The Prayer of St Gregory (1946) (here arranged for trumpet and organ) dates from the heart of the Armenian phase, a deeply felt hymn of devotion in ancient modal style. The reflective Dawn Hymn (1953) continues in a similar vein. Hovhaness also felt a great affinity with the music of Handel and his entire output is a richness of fugues, canons and chorales.

Of the two most substantial works the Organ Sonata No. 2, ‘Invisible Sun’ (1984), is replete with noble and majestic hymn-like episodes for full organ, alternating with quieter arias. The last movement is a fine example of his extended fugal writing, building to a triumphant conclusion.

The Partita ‘Sanahin’ (1951-66) was inspired by an ancient monastery

complex in Armenia, and has many oriental gestures and wide expressive variation. The last movement ‘Processional of Peace’ is an apt summation of his philosophy of life. Byzantine shafts of light filtered through coloured glass. Timeless.

Towards the end of his life his music took a retrospective turn towards the New England countryside in which he grew up, especially its mountains and bird song which can be heard in the brief Organ Sonata No. 3, ‘Hermit Thrush’ (1990). His very last work Habbakuk Op. 434 (1995), commissioned by an organist who had recovered from injury, displays the struggle and anxiety of illness, culminating in another triumphant hymn of faith.

This music is full of interest, variety and invention, and is very finely played and recorded. Need I say more?

BRET JOHNSON

Anton Bruckner: The Symphonies – Organ Transcriptions, Vol 10

Hansjörg Albrecht (organ)

Oehms OC1905

It seems my last review of this Bruckner series was premature in declaring the ninth volume the final chapter for there is another, almost forgotten, symphony: the Study Symphony. This work from 1863 is brought back to life and transformed into an organ symphony in an arrangement by Eberhard Klotz. The album opens with a speculative reconstruction by Erwin Horn of Bruckner’s improvisation to mark the reopening of the organ in Vienna Cathedral in 1886. Cleverly bridging

the gap between these early and late works is Alpha et Omega by Enjott Schneider. Drawing on the Te Deum, it provides an opportunity to explore more colours from the St Étienne-du-Mont organ in Paris. It’s not clear why this organ is chosen for this album but Albrecht’s skilful handling of the instrument makes it sound finer on this recording than any other I have heard.

RUPERT GOUGH*

Rihards Dubra: Music for Organ Aigars Reinis, Ilze Reine (organ)

Skani LMIC168

This double album is a welcome introduction to some fine organ works by a contemporary Latvian composer better known for his choral music. Rihards Dubra’s unashamedly diatonic style is evident, but so is his fascination with fugal form. This nod to the past is evident with two works subtitled ‘A view of the Baroque era’. Dubra is not afraid to paint on a large canvas with the music evolving in ceremonial or theatrical fashion in the glorious resonance of Riga Cathedral in Latvia.

The vast historic Walcker organ brings everything to life with clarity and gravitas in equal measure. The music is shared between husband and wife Aigars Reinis and Ilze Reine, with both joining forces for a most enchanting Petite Symphonie for organ duet and percussion. The performances and recording quality are superb and there is much to discover and enjoy here.

RUPERT GOUGH*

ORGAN CD s

Langlais: Complete Works for Trumpet and Organ

Nicolas Bernard (trumpet) Tommaso Maria Mazzoletti (organ) Brilliant Classics 96956

A most valuable addition to the ongoing series of the complete Langlais organ works spotlights another facet of this extraordinary blind composer. He wrote many pieces to commission, often at breakneck speed amid his many recital and teaching commitments. Very finely played by two superb artists using the large (100 stop) modern Brondino-Vegezzi-Bossi organ in the Protestant church at Gland in Switzerland, the album includes works which range from chorale format to virtuoso style concert pieces.

My only regret is that the sleeve notes tell you virtually nothing about the music. The brilliant 1981 Sonatine was written for the English trumpet virtuoso Maurice Murphy. The slow movement features a pretty Breton folk tune. The Sept Chorals (1972) include many wellknown melodies such as Ein Feste Burg (No. 2), Vater unser (No. 3), In dulci jubilo (No. 5), Praxis Pietatis (No. 7), which evolves unexpectedly into a fascinating set of variations.

Neuf Pièces (1986) turns again to folk melody, each with its own distinct identity. If you know the Huit chants de Bretagne for organ (1974) you will recognise the idiom. Even these short pieces usually contain a contrasting middle section. No. 6, for example, starts in a haunting 6/8 and then the mood suddenly becomes more animated in 2/4 before the tune returns in 6/8 in exquisite variation. No. 9 is in the form of an extended dialogue, with a trumpet cadenza. Meanwhile the Pièce pour trompette (1971), in

virtuoso style, is a full-length sonata in four movements.

Trumpet and organ are made for one another. A lovely disc, at budget price and highly recommended.

BRET JOHNSON

Marie-Joseph Erb: Organ Works, Vol 2

Jan Lehtola (organ)

Toccata Classics TOCC0698

Marie-Joseph Erb is a name almost completely forgotten today but his significance to the musical culture of the Alsace was considerable. Like his father before him, he was organist of St Jean in Strasbourg, eschewing professional opportunities in Paris following the end of his studies at the École Niedermeyer to return to his native city. An exceptionally prolific composer (16 masses, various opera, plentiful organ music), his status is perhaps one of ‘local hero’, even if such an epithet was at least partly the result of personal choices. The often-rhapsodic music heard here, a Sonata and six liturgical pieces all based on Gregorian themes, and a Suite pour Grand Orgue, show some obvious synergy with Widor’s two final organ symphonies, written shortly beforehand; indeed Erb studied with Widor and remained a close friend. Like Vierne, a certain darkness cast by personal tragedy and near-blindness also seems to hang in the air. Jan Lehtola’s advocacy for lesser-known Romantic repertoire deserves admiration; his playing is typically eloquent. The large Kangasala organ at Tampere Cathedral, Aarne Wegelius’s eccentric insistence on Italian nomenclature in evidence, sounds splendidly balanced for an instrument of the period.

CHRIS BRAGG*

The Classical Organ

Robert Costin (organ)

First Hand Records FHR173

Robert Costin offers a charming recital of music from the organ’s unfashionable period between Bach and Mendelssohn. Five of CPE Bach’s Princess Amalia sonatas (why not all six?) are heard alongside music for mechanical clock; a selection of Haydn’s ever-popular miniatures and Mozart’s Andante in F, K 616. The Gray and Davison/Tickell organ at Sherborne Abbey maintains, recognisably, a significant portion of its mid-19th century tonal character. It transpires that the music presented here shows up Gray and Davison’s choruses and flutes most favourably. Costin meanwhile plays with sensitivity and grace. Sometimes his staccato touch is too short for either the pipework or the room to respond satisfactorily and I miss some gestural souplesse in the slow movements of the sonatas. An enjoyable disc nevertheless.

CHRIS BRAGG

Dobrich: A Bulgarian Odyssey

Gail Archer (organ)

Mayer Media MM25060

Gail Archer’s exploration of Bulgarian organ music reveals a wealth of contemporary styles across nine works written since 1972. Some pieces clearly have more traditional roots, especially Radosveta Hurkova’s Variations on a Traditional Bulgarian

Folk Song. Many of the other composers write with typical atonal neo-classicism, though not without charm. Neva Krysteva is regarded as the ‘matriarch’ of the Bulgarian Organ School and her Victimae Paschali Laudes, the largest work here, is a daringly brutalist and powerful work. Archer has to work hard in the dry acoustic of Dobrich’s Concert Hall but delivers these compositions with great conviction. The really poor tuning of the organ though is a rather unwelcome distraction.

RUPERT GOUGH

The Organ of Lincoln Cathedral: Vierne and Tournemire

Colin Walsh (organ) Guild GMCD7833

A ‘Father Willis’ instrument, a distinguished recitalist and two large works of the French organ repertoire. Louis Vierne (1870-1937) was the blind organist at NotreDame de Paris. The monumental First Symphony (1899) pays homage to Franck and Guilmant: he had not yet fully emerged from their shadow, but technical facility and inventive power are amply displayed. Density of texture, especially in the first movement is a drawback: the succeeding Fugue lets in more light and points back to Mendelssohn. The Allegro Vivace foresees the lighter stylistic gestures of Pièces de Fantaisie from the 1920s, and the famous ‘Final’ is justly celebrated for its rousing pedal theme and ebullient mood. It’s a real wake-up call to conclude the Symphony.

Charles Tournemire (1870-1939) recorded some improvisations on Gregorian themes in 1930 at SainteClotilde where he was organist. His harmonies are more modernist and less chromatic than Vierne, the open textured simplicity of Gregorian

melody being transformed by complex note clusters, elaborate tone colours and double pedalling. After his death the gramophone records languished until in 1958 his pupil Maurice Duruflé embarked on the delicate task of notating them and we now have some 35 minutes of published music.

These improvisations vary greatly, from the brief and placid Petite Rhapsodie Improvisée to the very grand Te Deum. The longest, Ave Maris Stella, is a sustained series of exquisite paraphrases which gradually evolves into a tranquil and reflective epilogue, aglow with shimmering colour. Victimae Paschali provides a fitting and powerful ending: it is good to hear all five recorded together.

Colin Walsh’s renowned playing is at its very best in the Tournemire, the best music on the disc.

BRET JOHNSON

and Tournemire

Peter Stevens (organ)

Ad Fontes AF013

The vast liturgical encyclopaedia of organ music that comprises L’Orgue Mystique stands apart from the other works of Charles Tournemire, not just by virtue of its scale but because of its unique musical language. Here the ancient rites of the Catholic Church are embellished with exquisite arabesques and paraphrases of Gregorian chant and plainsong. Many of the pieces in each suite are interludes heard as background to key points in the Mass, such as an offertory or communion, but it is with the postludes that Tournemire ‘lets himself go’, as it were, not into a triumphalist Toccata or Sortie (although there are some of those)

but into an extended meditation intended to captivate the audience and sustain the mood and atmosphere of worship. Often these longer pieces become animated and Tournemire maintains his ‘extempore’ approach, treating freely the Gregorian melodies which are so integral to every piece. Of the three postludes here, the final one (from Suite No. 11 for the Feast of the Purification) is notable for its ethereal passages of chiming motifs and multi-layered textures.

Tournemire was César Franck’s youngest pupil (and eventual successor as Organist of SainteClotilde) and his devotion to Franck’s musical ethos is abundantly evident. Franck did more than anyone to fashion and develop the French symphonic organ tradition, and his final pieces, the Trois Chorales of 1890, bear testament to his legacy. Each one glows with rich variegated harmonies and liberal dramatic flourishes, building (in Nos 1 and 3) to a powerful maestoso statement of the chorale theme on full organ. No. 2 in B minor is the least known, but Albert Schweitzer admired its often austere Baroque format, reminiscent of Bach and Buxtehude. This music is brilliantly performed on the great Willis organ in Westminster Cathedral, a remarkable example of the English Romantic organ built a century ago. This comes highly recommended.

BRET JOHNSON

CHORAL CD s

Anton Bruckner & Carlo Gesualdo: Motets

Monteverdi Choir / Jonathan Sells Monteverdi Productions SDG736

More than 400 years lie between the birth of Gesualdo and the death of ▷

L’Orgue Spirituel: Franck

Bruckner, but running through their music is a red-and-black thread of interwoven ecstasy and selfabasement. It requires surprisingly little strain for singers to cover the obvious stylistic differences, more so to give a convincing rendition of those expressive ambiguities. But the Monteverdi Choir has achieved that magnificently under conductor Jonathan Sells, in a very fresh live recording, and the initial device of including Palestrina’s Stabat Mater at the beginning and a fragment of Antonio Lotti a little later has the effect of pulling the whole chronology together, Bruckner’s unreachable destination already implied in his earliest influences. Wagner’s arrangement of the Palestrina dots the i’s and crosses the t’s in a most elegant way.

BRIAN MORTON*

Jessica Curry: Shielding Songs

London Voices / Ben Parry

Available from the composer’s website jessicacurry.co.uk

Jessica Curry made her name as co-founder, with her husband Dan Pinchbeck, of gaming studio The Chinese Room. Some of the tracks on this album originated in soundtracks for video games, so it’s unsurprising that there is an immersive feel to the sequence, even though their composition spans more than a decade. Curry revisited them and made new a cappella arrangements for Shielding Songs, adding one brand new piece, Rest With Your Dream, a setting of a sonnet by Pablo Neruda which expresses the pain and grief of Curry’s particularly traumatic pandemic experience. She watched her father’s last months and his funeral on Zoom, and lost other beloved family members, while self-isolating for longer than most

people had to because she suffers from a degenerative disease. But the piece also offers consolation and the possibility of acceptance, as does the whole album, which is exquisitely performed by London Voices.

The recording includes movements from Perpetual Light: A Requiem for an Unscorched Earth, written to commemorate victims of nuclear holocaust; Home, a compassionate reflection on the motivation of refugees who travel long distances in small boats; and Close Mine Eyes, a beautifully crafted response to Gibbons’s setting of The Silver Swan

CLARE STEVENS*

The Music of Calvin Hampton Jeremy Filsell (organ) / The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys Signum Classics SIGCD945

In the 1970s and early 1980s, when New York City’s loft music scene was in full swing, an organist brought that adventurous spirit to weekly midnight concerts at a Gramercy Park church. Those concerts could feature solo Bach, symphonic transcriptions, and even an appearance by the organist’s rock band. The organist in question: Calvin Hampton, now remembered as one of the leading composers for organ of the 20th century, despite a life tragically shortened by Aids.

This portrait album includes plenty of that virtuosic music – the blistering one-movement Concerto for Solo Organ, his unapologetically splashy Pageant and Fanfare for the New Year – all played with unsparing clarity by organist Jeremy Filsell. But the soul of this recording is Hampton’s work for choir. It’s put across with luminosity and polish by the Saint Thomas Fifth Avenue Choir of Men and Boys, which Filsell also directs. My Country ’Tis of Thee is

just harmonically reimagined enough to sound like an exhortation, not a declaration – a hope that freedom may someday ring, though it may not today. A stark, monophonic arrangement of America the Beautiful for boys’ choir displays the same lightly sceptical spirit, giving way to a stormy organ prelude on the same tune.

The only quibble for this otherwise superb release is the overprioritisation of Saint Thomas’s acoustic, which leads to a rather remote miking of the adult choristers. But to evoke the feeling of listening to Hampton’s music in a New York City church much like his own? That is essential and to be embraced.

HANNAH EDGAR*

Herbert Howells: Psalms and Psalm Preludes

David Hill (organ solos), Choir of Durham Cathedral, Joseph Beech (organ) / Daniel Cook Regent REGCD586

The spiritually inspiring language of the Psalms proved to be a life-long powerful creative stimulus to Herbert Howells (1892–1983). This imaginatively programmed recording pays tribute to that stimulus by juxtaposing Howells’s six Psalm Preludes for solo organ and the six psalms that inspired them, all sung to chants composed by Howells. Indeed, psalm texts were the impetus for many of his compositions, not least his largescale Hymnus Paradisi (1950).

David Hill is probably best known as a conductor (Musical Director of The Bach Choir among others) but he was originally an organist of huge distinction. To him falls the Psalm Preludes plus Master Tallis’s Testament, all of which are delivered with supreme virtuosity and

authority. It’s hard to imagine them better played, especially on the organ of Durham Cathedral where Hill was sub-organist in the 1980s.

Equally impressive are Durham Cathedral’s current choral forces and sub-organist Joseph Beech, who perform the psalm chants, some of which receive their premiere recording, under Master of the Choristers and Organist Daniel Cook. Psalm-singing is a refined skill in Anglican worship and these Durham musicians, well-attuned to the cathedral’s cavernous acoustic, are impressive and ever-responsive to the text.

The album is a fascinating experience, completed by Jonathan Clinch’s authoritative liner notes.

PHILIP REED*

Rowan Pierce (sop); Choir of Royal Holloway / Rupert Gough; Orchestra Nova / George Vass Resonus RES 10359

Cecilia McDowall has a gift for dramatising those stilled and frozen moments in ordinary life when infinity seems to intrude into the everyday, eternity stalls the ticking of the clock. Lockdown in the pandemic is the backstop to at least

a couple of these recent cantatas, The Ice Is Listening (2023), with its historical echo of the ‘late great frost’ and Bird of Time (2022), which also seems to come out of that trafficfree time when the birds were suddenly visible and audible (and freer than us) again. The other main piece, also exquisitely sung by The Choir of Royal Holloway is Music of The Stars (2022), which contains astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson’s meditation on light and distance. Texturally and harmonically McDowall is in full command. The only minor quibble is the inclusion of the older A Winter’s Night (2014) which is slightly out of place and interrupts the flow of recent work.

BRIAN MORTON*

In the past several years, Florence Price’s music has been the subject of such lavish attention from symphony orchestras and instrumentalists that it’s a stretch to say she remains ‘overlooked’. But her vocal music certainly is – a shame, as it may be her strongest genre. This release with the Malmö Opera Chorus and Orchestra is the most comprehensive recording to date of the late African-American composer’s choral music. Leading them is conductor John Jeter, whose symphony in Fort Smith, Arkansas, two hours north-west of Little Rock, where Price lived for the first half of her life, has made many a reference recording of not only Price’s music but that of William Grant Still and Native American composer Louis Wayne Ballard.

Cecilia McDowall: Cantatas

Florence Price: Choral Works

Sara Swietlicki (sop), Lindsay Grace Johnson (mezzo), Jonas Samuelsson (bari); Malmö Opera, Malmö Opera Chorus / John Jeter Naxos 8559951

Cecilia McDowall is texturally and harmonically in full command

Karina Lyburn

By far the greatest revelation here is Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight, an oratorio rediscovered in 2009 and receiving its premiere recording. The work sets a 1914 poem by Vachel Lindsay which imagines President Lincoln rising from the dead, only to find that the world is just as violent and divided as the one he tried to heal. (Though this poem clearly sparked Price’s imagination, it must be mentioned that Lindsay’s attempts to depict African-American life and culture were slammed even in his day for trafficking in stereotypes – thankfully absent in this poem.) Price writes in rich, Brahmsian harmony and ends with a solemnly sweeping choral-orchestral fugue. A prolific spiritual arranger, she weaves Go Down Moses in and out of the texture of the overture.

As is the case with many a world premiere recording, and a great many of Jeter’s, the interpretive nuance across the oratorio and the album’s 11 other choral works is somewhat lacking. These are clean, faithful, and serviceable interpretations but not necessarily sensitive ones. However, in terms of ensemble and sound quality, this album is leagues above any other Price choral recordings currently commercially available. May it stoke her ongoing renaissance – long deferred and greatly deserved.

HANNAH EDGAR*

John Rutter: Missa Brevis

The Choir of York Minster / Robert Sharpe

Regent REGCD576

This is a very commendable release featuring recent music (since 1997) with a York connection, and there are two substantial offerings, by Sirs John Rutter and James MacMillan. Rutter’s Missa Brevis (2021) with organ

accompaniment, in memory of a stalwart of the York music scene, Richard Shephard, has a pleasant if, dare one say, not especially memorable lyricism in four of its movements, while the Gloria indulges in jazzy rhythms rather reminiscent of Kelly in C. One really could not imagine a stronger case being made for this music than the splendid performance we have here.

MacMillan’s unaccompanied The Short Service (2019), a reimagining of Tudor short services, is rather severe in tone: largely homophonic, but with some typical Scottish-inspired ornamentations for the trebles. It’s by no means easy, but again it’s very well sung here.

Director of Music Robert Sharpe is keen to champion the work of female composers and no fewer than 14 of the remaining 15 tracks provide welcome evidence of this. I was very impressed by Cecilia McDowall’s fine anthem with organ, O Sing Unto the Lord (2019) which comes across as a significant work with a great variety of choral textures – the choir rising to its somewhat hair-raising challenges with brilliant panache. Another anthem by McDowall, The Loving Memory (2016) is equally interesting in its scoring and harmony.

Also challenging is Judith Weir’s Love Bade me Welcome (1997) , again really well sung, and I enjoyed Kerry Andrew’s always involving O Lux Beata Trinitas (2005). Two works by Kerensa Briggs, Set me as a Seal (2018) and Media Vita (2015), have complex textures and rich harmonies, well negotiated by the choir with secure chording and intonation.

Philip Moore’s Lord Jesus Christ is hauntingly simple and effective. Scored for lower voices, it is one of a number of works commissioned at the end of the pandemic, before the choristers were allowed back, and is somewhat reminiscent of his early works for lower voices requested by Dr Allan Wicks, when Moore was assistant organist at Canterbury.

The finale is a rather jokey Rutter organ solo, Celebration – also in memory of Richard Shephard –expertly thrown off on the newly restored York organ by Ben Morris.

The choirs (boys and girls) are clearly on top form at the moment and York’s famous commitment to new works is obviously in safe hands.

MARK BELLIS

Be Still, My Soul:

Hymns From Magdalen

The Choir Of Magdalen College, Oxford / Mark Williams

Coro Magdalen COR 16213

They say that even republicans dream of the monarch, while non-churchgoing secularists and football fans can usually make a fist of ‘Abide With Me’ (an FA Cup final staple) and ‘Bread of Heaven’. Heart-warming as that can be, it doesn’t come close to the unforced vocal artistry of the Magdalen Choir, backed by that magnificent organ. They save the latter hymn for last and present ‘Bread of Heaven’ more formally as ‘Guide me, O Thou Great Redeemer’, bookending a set of performances that this time doesn’t so much evoke a formal recording session so much as the daily work of the choir at college worship. English hymn-singing at its best.

BRIAN MORTON*

Everlasting Light

Choir of Bath Abbey / Huw Williams CRD CRD3556

This CD is a welcome celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Boys’ Choir at Bath Abbey – trebles were

added to the existing lower voice choir in 1875. Naturally, the boys take centre stage, though Director of Music Huw Williams allows the girls’ choir (founded in 1997) and even choir alumni to join in on two tracks – Parry’s Hear my Words, Ye People and the Stanford Te Deum in B flat –both effectively done. The items for boys alone work well, including John Ireland’s It is a Thing Most Wonderful which is very nicely done.

Of the full anthems, I enjoyed Harris’s classic Strengthen Ye the Weak Hands (1949) and its extremes of contrast are well realised, with a lovely opening tenor recitative by Alastair Comery, and William Mathias’s familiar Let the People Praise Thee, O God (1981) is suitably upbeat, and in the case of the boys, appropriately ‘luminous’ (as directed in the score) at the words ‘God be merciful unto us, and bless us’. All in all, a lovely sound in the generous Bath Abbey acoustic.

James MacMillan’s modern classic A New Song (1998) is sensitively realised, and Richard Lloyd’s evergreen View Me, Lord amply demonstrates the choir's lovely blended tone. Organ accompaniments by Dewi Rees are uniformly excellent, not least thanks to Bath’s famous and versatile Klais organ (1997).

Overall, perhaps the repertoire here could have been slightly more adventurous given we have several old favourites and only a few modern offerings, but despite this, the performances are very good indeed, the choir adapting well to a very wide variety of styles.

There is one (very) bright point however, and a further nod to the boys’ anniversary: Williams programmes not only an effective anthem, Spirit Divine, by the (then) 15-year-old chorister (now Organ Scholar) Gavin Phelps, but also a free-form organ improvisation by him from a graphic score, A Pale Blue Dot written to complement Luke Jerram's Gaia installation. Phelps, while still young and finding his voice, clearly feels he has something to say, compositionally. Williams’s point is that, going forward, today’s choristers will be the professional

www.cathedralmusictrust.org.uk

REGENT RECORDS Recent Releases

A YEAR AT BIRMINGHAM

The Choir of Birmingham Cathedral directed by David Hardie, Ashley Wagner (organ)

REGCD590

The newest release in this series takes us to the glorious baroque church of St Philip in the heart of Birmingham, renowned for its graceful Italianate architecture and the remarkable late nineteenth-century stained glass windows, many by Edward Burne-Jones. Alongside the great festivals, Birmingham Cathedral celebrates the cultural and demographic diversity of Britain's 'Second City', and has a special mission to support the vulnerable and marginalised in society, a mission reflected in the choice of repertoire here. This first recording from Birmingham under musical director David Hardie includes music by Humphrey Clucas, June Nixon, Mitchell B Southall, Mendelssohn, Holst, Price, Ben Ponniah, Ireland, Stanford, Dubois, Harris, Wood, Franck, Judith Bingham, Mathias, Bruckner, Bullock, Philip Moore, James MacMillan, and Bairstow.

HERBERT HOWELLS

Psalms and Psalm Preludes

David Hill (organ)

The Choir of Durham Cathedral directed by Daniel Cook

The inspiring poetry of the Psalms was a powerful creative stimulus to the composer Herbert Howells (1892–1983), throughout his life. This recording is a unique project combining the six Psalm Preludes Howells wrote for solo organ, preceded by the six Psalms which inspired them. The Psalms are sung to ten chants by Howells, several of which are receiving their first recording. The Psalm Preludes are played on the organ of Durham Cathedral by the renowned organist David Hill, who has a long-standing association with Durham Cathedral, and the Psalms are sung by the Choir of Durham Cathedral, in their first recording on the Regent label, under their director, Daniel Cook.

‘Hill’s mastery is total...’ ★★★★ BBC Music Magazine ‘...delivered with supreme virtuosity and authority.’ Choir and Organ ‘An absolute triumph.’ Organists’ Review ‘The playing and singing are without fault.’ American Record Guide

SASHA JOHNSON MANNING A YEAR AT THIRD

Music for Third Baptist Church, Saint Louis, Missouri

Garik Pedersen, The Perseid String Quartet, Philip Barnes (conductor)

Manchester-born Sasha Johnson Manning spent eight years as Composer in Residence with the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus. Well-known as a composer of choral works, this new recording is something of a departure, and is a collection of beautiful instrumental works written for Third Baptist Church, Saint Louis, covering the calendar year in twelve studies for solo piano, together with two more extended works for Christmas for string quintet and piano.

REGENT RECORDS, PO Box 528,Wolverhampton, WV3 9YW 01902 424377 www.regentrecords.com (with secure online ordering).

Retail distribution by RSK Entertainment Ltd, Tel: 01488 608900, info@rskentertainment.co.uk. Available in the USA from the Organ Historical Society www.ohscatalog.org. Scan QR code to sign up to our mailing list

REGCD586

REGCD579

church musicians of the not-toodistant future, so how commendable of him to encourage this talented young musician.

MARK BELLIS

Lament & Liberation: works by Panufnik, Marsh, MacMillan et al

The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge / Christopher Gray Signum SIGCD893

What a calling card this album is for Christopher Gray’s first recording as Director of the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge; and what a smooth and successful handing over of the baton there seems to have been from his predecessor Andrew Nethsingha, now at Westminster Abbey. Lament & Liberation follows on seamlessly from the previous outstanding discs released by this remarkable choir, sharing both the thoughtful choice of repertoire that is challenging both musically and thematically, and the fabulously rich, flexible, beautifully blended and controlled sound.

The opening track, ‘Deus, Deus meus’ from Roxanna Panufnik’s 1997 Westminster Mass, features an extraordinary treble soloist, Montague Tatnell, ably supported in the trio by two characterful fellow trebles, Kevin Ke and Samuel Smith.

The triptych Echoes in Time by Joanna Marsh, a recent St John’s commission, is an absolute masterpiece, setting three beautiful sonnets by Malcolm Guite that link the Biblical narratives for Advent, Epiphany and Lent with evocative contemporary imagery, and it’s superbly performed.

A dense setting of The Annunciation by Edwin Muir is another John’s commission, from Helena Paish, a chorister under Christopher Gray in his former post

at Truro Cathedral. The choral works are punctuated by a fine performance by Herbert Howells Organ Scholar Alexander Robson of a dramatic prelude by Martin Baker, Ecce ego Ioannes, referencing John’s vision of the world’s annihilation with the opening of the seventh seal. This leads into James MacMillan’s 1989 Cantos Sagrados, intended as an expression of Liberation Theology and solidarity with the repressed people of Latin America. Choir and organist present the searing pain of this work – another triptych, as a foil to which the Marsh sequence was commissioned – with total assurance and commitment. For a relatively small choir, including a lot of very young boy and girl choristers, this is a remarkable achievement.

The final track, Dobrinka Tabakova’s Turn our captivity, O Lord, was chosen to offer much needed comfort after the anguish of all that has gone before. It brings this perfectly crafted programme to a radiant conclusion. This is not just a five-star recording, but five stars summa cum laude. CLARE STEVENS

The Living Fire: works by Briggs, Hurford, Mathias, McCann, Moore et al

The Choir of Jesus College, Cambridge / Benjamin Sheen CRD CRD3558

Jesus College, Cambridge is unusual in having two choirs: a Chapel Choir of boy choristers and adult singers and a College Choir in which the soprano and alto parts are sung by women. On the evidence of this recording, both choirs are clearly on very good form at the moment.

The Director of Music is Benjamin Sheen, who arrived in January 2023 from Saint Thomas Church, Fifth

Avenue, New York, and the ‘concept’ is works associated with Jesus College, and the programme features a fair number of first recordings of works by emerging composers.

Two Jesus College Services are included, the most famous being the splendid 1971 setting by William Mathias. This is in his ‘serious’ style, similar to his spiky, discordant anthem An Admonition to Rulers (1969) and the performance of the Magnificat is nothing less than totally gripping in its dynamism and energy, the choir brimming with confidence. The largely unaccompanied Nunc Dimittis is quite exquisitely done – lyrical and musical – in short, a definitive performance of this very fine piece.

The other Jesus College Service is more of a rarity – David Briggs’s 2008 setting for boys’ voices and organ – but very worthwhile, nevertheless. As is often the case with Briggs, one is rather in awe of the extraordinarily inventive organ textures and harmonies, while the melodic lines float above in longer rhythms and are rather plainsonglike at times. This is all delightfully realised, the boys shaping their lines very sensitively.

Since 2020 Jesus College has had an annual competition for young composers, called the Max Hadfield Competition, and commendably, several pieces from that are recorded here. For my money the most interesting of these pieces, and the winner in 2023, is Dónal McCann’s Source and Fount of all Creation. It’s an anthem with delightfully varied and always engaging choral and organ scoring and again, it’s terrifically sung.

Finally, we have a real treat: Philip Moore’s Impromptu for organ (1987) first performed on the organ of York Minster, in celebration of Dr Francis Jackson’s 70th birthday and based on themes by Jackson. This is an ebullient scherzo-cum-toccata quite brilliantly played by Michael D’Avanzo, and it brings to a rousing conclusion a disc which is very highly recommended.

MARK BELLIS

Missa Aedis Christi: Sacred Choral Music

The Cathedral Singers of Christ Church, Oxford / Hilary Punnett Convivium Records CR107

I absolutely loved this programme, built around works commissioned to provide singable, seasonal, contemporary music for the very accomplished voluntary mixed voice choir that sings services at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, when the flagship choir is unavailable. It takes its title from an exquisite Christ Church Mass in Latin, Missa Aedis Christi, commissioned by Grayston Ives, full of expressive tenderness, which builds to an ecstatic climax in the Agnus dei. The movements are interspersed with two gorgeous motets: Bertie Baigent

setting the George Herbert poem Rise heart, combined with the Second Responsory for Matins on Easter Monday in Latin, while Ben Rowarth’s A New Year Carol is the highlight of the disc for me, a jewel-like masterpiece with a shimmering setting of Sing levy-dew...

The choir’s former director James Potter’s two Alternative Canticles ‘Cantate Domino’ and ‘Deus Misereatur’ for evening prayer, beginning with plainchant but expanding into sinuous harmony, really appealed to me; and anthems by Sarah Rimkus, Alison Willis and David Bednall are also very impressive. Simon Hogan finds some delicious colours on the Tickell organ of Keble College, where the recording was made, in his accompaniments and in a movement from Anthony Gray’s An Aquinian Sequence for solo organ, and concludes the album with a stirring performance of a Toccata by Cheryl Frances-Hoad.

CLARE STEVENS*

The Music Never Ends

Jocelyn Somerville (sop), Jennifer Griffin (alto), Daniel Burges (tenor), Matthew Wood (bari); Vasari Singers / Jeremy Backhouse Naxos 8.574699

The Vasari Singers prove to be as able with a programme of LennonMcCartney, George Shearing, Ward Swingle, Michel Legrand, Stephen Sondheim and Duke Ellington, as with Bach motets. These arrangements make more coherent thematic sense than the eclectic programme might suggest. The Beatles took their music from music hall and community singing as much as from rock’n’roll. George Shearing perfectly combines jazz and English pastoral in his Songs & Sonnets From Shakespeare and Michel Legrand ▷

Mike Cooter

The Cathedral Singers of Christ Church, Oxford recording their latest album

always insisted that his music should be singable by ordinary people – not just professionals. And maintaining the thread is Romance by Ward Swingle (1927-2015), the genius of close harmony singing and the man who did more than anyone to make that sudden cliché ‘Bach to the Beatles’ a reality.

BRIAN MORTON*

O Sacrum Convivium!

Music for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi

The Choir of Buckfast Abbey / Matthew Searles

Ad Fontes 01401

In a time-honoured liturgical sequence sacred music finds its essential meaning: here it can be experienced as a Mass and Benediction for Corpus Christi. Since the middle ages the veneration of the Blessed Sacrament has inspired the

hearts and minds of the faithful, and this album invites listeners to steep themselves in the tradition with Gregorian chant, organ works and polyphony, both ancient and modern. Martin Baker’s Missa O Sacrum Convivium! is complemented by works from Palestrina, Guerrero, Laloux, Stanfield, Terry et al. Devotional through and through, beautifully shaped and sung with profound sincerity, here is a taste of heaven and Buckfast Abbey Choir’s most impressive recording so far.

REBECCA TAVENER*

Orchestral Anthems, Vol 2

Choir of Merton College Oxford, Britten Sinfonia / Benjamin Nicholas Delphian DCD34351

Five substantial anthems feature on Merton College’s second foray with the Britten Sinfonia into orchestral versions of famous pieces from the

liturgical repertoire. Elgar’s chorus ‘Light out of darkness’ from The Light of Light and Bairstow’s Lord, thou has been our refuge are as originally scored; Wesley’s Ascribe unto the Lord, Ireland’s Greater love hath no man and Walton’s The Twelve are orchestrations by their composers of versions originally written for organ. At the heart of the programme is Vaughan Williams’s Prelude on ‘Rhosymedre’; and the album also includes Stanford’s Evening Service in A, as it was originally written for the 1880 Festival of the Sons of the Clergy at St Paul’s Cathedral. The Bairstow and Wesley anthems are recorded in their orchestral versions for the first time; the score of the Bairstow was found among Francis Jackson’s papers at York Minster, and the link between the two composers is clearly audible. The first few tracks (Elgar, Stanford and Bairstow) didn’t wow me quite as overwhelmingly as the repertoire on the first volume did, but I can’t quite work out why, as there is nothing to fault in any of the performances. The scurrying strings certainly lend a completely unfamiliar character to the Stanford, and there’s a wonderful burst of organ too.

But the second half of the disc left me in no doubt that it deserves a full five-star recommendation. Ascribe unto the Lord was orchestrated for the 1867 Hereford Three Choirs Festival. It is wonderful to hear a thoroughly rehearsed performance of a piece so often belted out by phalanxes of ex-choristers at reunion services and the orchestral accompaniment works so brilliantly that it is extraordinary to think it has not previously been recorded. The instrumental colour really brings out the drama of this mini-cantata and inspires the choir to some of its most reflective, beautiful singing.

The orchestral brass bring a suitably military character to Greater Love, while The Twelve undergoes the greatest transformation, taken into the opera house by the opening bass solo by Florian Störtz, characterful percussion and some expressive and dramatic choral singing.

CLARE STEVENS

The Vasari Singers, one of the UK's leading chamber ensembles, founded in 1980

Matt Pereira

Pott

Performed by Alexander Pott, this first recording of the 2023 Eule Organ of Magdalen College, Oxford features a wide range of music from Wagner to Delius, showcasing the instrument’s German Romantic heritage as well as its suitability for English 20th-century transcription, thanks to its distinctive voice, colour, breadth and sensitivity.

OTHER NEW RELEASES FROM CONVIVIUM RECORDS

Clive Osgood’s enchanting Christmas anthology gives a contemporary twist to ancient festive texts, performed by Polyphony and Britten Sinfonia, conducted by Stephen Layton.

Modern and traditional carols performed by Jervaulx Singers with Charlie Gower-Smith and pianist Alison Frances Gill, drawing listeners into the remarkable story of Christ’s birth.

Lux Stellarum, Oliver Tarney’s requiem for choir and organ, blends plainsong, scripture & poetry. The Choir of Royal Holloway with Andrew Dewar, conducted by Rupert Gough.

Soprano Amy Carson and pianist Nicola Rose perform Hugh Benham’s seasonal songs, setting poetry by Blake, Hardy, Brontë, Rossetti, and de la Mare with sensitivity and lyricism.

CHRISTMAS SELECTION

A festive feast includes Baroque rarities, contemporary discoveries and brilliant brass fanfares, as well as music to mark Sir John Rutter’s 80th birthday

By REBECCA TAVENER

Like the fabled long-awaited bus, two seasonal albums bookended by tremendous fanfares for brass and organ have come along at once. Both establishments give their finest, but I will begin with the Choir of Portsmouth Cathedral. It dramatically deploys its not so secret weapon, The Band of His Majesty’s Royal Marines Collingwood, to bring the smartest of spit and polish to fanfares by George Richford for Once in Royal David’s City and Hark, the Herald Angels Sing The First Nowell (Signum Records SIGCD943) carries the listener in 18 tracks of spiritual authenticity, with lovely tone from both boy and girl trebles and tenderly shaped interpretations. Among the usual suspects there are lesser-known lovelies such as June Clark’s Let us light a candle and the numinous Nativitas: Reflection 8: O magnum mysterium by Philip Moore for solo organ.

More fanfares follow but first a diversion to Italy and France for two remarkable Baroque releases. The 300th anniversary of Alessandro Scarlatti’s death is celebrated vigorously in an album of (mostly) his Christmas music from the brilliant Coro e Orchestra Ghislieri. Christmas Night in the Bethlehem of the West – Music for Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome (Arcana 587) features Scarlatti’s Messa per il Santissimo Natale and his glorious solo Cantata Pastorale, sung with vivid expression by soprano Carlotta Colombo. Essentially an opera composer, Scarlatti shows off all his dramatic talents but also reveals his technical mastery of ecclesiastical traditions. Compelling contrasts, expert chiaroscuro and impeccable style inform an intelligent programme. Style, subtlety, imagination and clarity also adorn Charpentier: Baroque Christmas (SDG737) from the

Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, directed by Christophe Rousset. The delightful and engaging Cantata In Nativitatem Domini Canticum is a substantial curtainraiser for the celebrated Messe de Minuit which is framed with two groups of Noëls, the traditional French carols from which Charpentier drew his melodies. Playing and singing of the highest order makes this a must-have.

An anthology dedicated to a living composer ought to be a superb callingcard. A Christmas Offering (Signum Records SIG953) from The Choir of King’s College, London, features seasonal works by a PhD almuna, Kristina Arakelyan. The title work is an effective ten-movement tribute to Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols for harp with mixed voices, unashamedly derivative but fun. The singing throughout is committed, emotional and enthusiastic.

Directors of accomplished choirs will find programme inspiration in Clive Osgood’s works as showcased in a 25-minute anthology, Christmas Collection (Convivium CR106),

performed by the stellar forces of Polyphony. Osgood’s music is genuinely excellent end engaging, offering a fresh and expert spin on standard seasonal texts.

Back to more varied fare and the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge's O Holy Night (Signum Records SIGCD913) which includes many beloved standards, notably the Three Carol Anthems by Howells and Poulenc’s Quatre Motets pour le temps de Noël, plus some unexpected treasures. The unaccompanied singing is most impressive, and there’s a very fine treble for the title track.

And what about the Christmas favourite that is the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge? We are back to fanfares: this time Hark, the Herald Angels Sing and O Come all ye Faithful get the treatment in All the Stars Looked Down (KGS0075). A celebration of national treasure Sir John Rutter’s 80th Birthday, the album features mostly his music but also tracks by his musical inspirations. Is it like eating a box of crystallised fruits all in one go? You decide.

ABOVE The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge sings yuletide favourites

Leon Hargreaves

CHORAL SELECTION

New scores include discoveries old and new from the Church Music Society, a mass that speaks to the modern age, and music for Morning Prayer

By RUPERT GOUGH

For this autumnal selection, I thought I’d start with new publications from the Church Music Society. If you thought this august institution, founded in 1906, was only for early music, then you could be missing out. Recent offerings include a range of British church music, spanning 500 years. It is good to see David Trendell’s Preces and Responses (SATB; CMS Publications) published for the first time a decade after his death. Composed during his student days in Oxford, these relatively simple responses are harmonically inventive and worthy of being a regular part of Evensong repertory. The CMS has also unearthed some interesting historic treasures including the Restoration Canticles: Magnificat & Nunc dimittis (SATB (SSA verses) & org; CMS Publications) by Daniel Roseingrave. Beyond Purcell, it is hard to find many good canticle settings from this period. Much of the music has been reconstructed very convincingly by the CMS General Editor Geoffrey Webber. Another offering that caught my eye was Two Eucharistic Motets (SSAATTBB; CMS Publications), adaptations of Pearsall madrigals by Patrick Russill. There is good precedent for making such contrafacts – Pearsall himself adapted his own Lay a garland to a setting of Tu es Petrus. There is also evidence that he tried to make the text of O salutaris Hostia fit the same music. That didn’t work out, but Russill has found that the Tantum ergo fits Pearsall’s Tu es Petrus version brilliantly. Conversely, where O salutaris Hostia does work successfully as an alternative text is with another of Pearsall’s eight-part madrigals: Great God of love. These

two settings make a brilliant pairing for a Benediction service or motets for any occasion where Pearsall’s skilful and expressive counterpoint shines through.

A new larger choral work worthy of attention is Mark Buller’s Mass in Exile (SATB (div) & chamber orchestra; Schirmer). This new work from 2023 reshapes an ancient form to respond to the issues of the modern day or, in the words of the librettist: ‘our mutual struggle toward a new kind of faith within this broken world’. The collaboration between librettist Leah Lax and Buller produces a 45-minute work containing seven movements in a pseudo-liturgical form.

The newly published score allows for a performance with baritone solo, choir and piano but it is hard to imagine it being effective without the full accompaniment of guitar, percussion and string orchestra (or string quintet). The guitar introduces the fifth movement ‘Mercy’ by quoting from the Liber Usualis and this beautiful movement is available as an offprint. The ‘Earth Sanctus’ brings Christian and Jewish prayer together before the final movement seeks mercy and renewal. This autumn also sees the release of a recording of the work from Conspirare.

Another reimagining of the Sanctus (SATB (div) & org, pno; Morning Star) comes from Kyle Pederson. The hymn tune Nicaea (Holy, holy, holy) is woven into the rhythmic interplay between organ and piano. With its two-bar harmonic ostinato and overlayed choral fragments, the work is constructed more like a pop song or film track, but the result is fresh and effective. Ostinato also dominates Spiritus omnium (SATB (div); Schirmer). Pederson’s music here,

particularly in the dreamy refrain of ‘miraculum’, may be more from the Whitacre school of a cappella writing, but it is evocative and effective.

My final recommendation is The Gift of this New Day (SATB; RSCM).

Following the recent publication of music for Night Prayer (Compline), this second collaboration between the Royal School of Church Music and St Martin-in-the-Fields, London collates music for use at a service of Morning Prayer or just for daily worship. The impetus for this collection of music was a series of daily podcasts. Simplicity and serenity predominate, with adaptations of traditional chant, reworkings of existing liturgical music, and original compositions by composers including Cecilia McDowall, Lucy Walker, Owain Park and John Harper. Naturally, this resource is particularly designed to align with Common Worship and provides links out to other similar resources. However, anyone needing to find liturgical music for services based on spiritual reflection will find a wealth of useful material.

RUPERT GOUGH

Rupert Gough is director of choral music and college organist at Royal Holloway, as well as organist and director of music at Saint Bartholomew the Great. He is also a published composer, arranger and editor.

ABOVE Composer Mark Buller’s Mass in Exile uses an ancient form to respond to the issues of the modern day

Lynn Lane

BOOKS

Choir Training with Colin Mawby: The Warmth, Wit and Wisdom of the Great Choirmaster and Composer

Colin Mawby

Edited by Beverley Courtney Quilisma Books, 2024

ISBN 9798302409041

Paperback; 600 pages; RRP £29.99

Colin Mawby (1936-2019) was a major force in choral and organ music as a conductor and composer. From 1961-75 he was director of music at Westminster Cathedral (where he had been a chorister under George Malcolm), and thereafter Mawby was choral director at RTÉ in Dublin, founding the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir in 1985. This anthology has been assembled by Mawby’s widow, Beverley Courtney, and as the subtitle suggests, it is indeed full of warmth, wit, and wisdom.

Three-quarters of the book comprises reprints of Vivace!, a newsletter for church choirs produced by the Mawby family (the newsletter ran from 1994 to 2017). Vivace! covered historical, technical, and personal topics relating to choirs, liturgy, composition and the organ. Most entertaining and instructive are the Q&A sections where Mawby adopted the persona of musical agony aunt. Questions ranged from the best way to get rid

of a singer who can’t blend, through the ideal length of a choir practice, to the effect of temperature changes on the organ. Mawby’s responses are informed, focused and pragmatic.

While not all of the material in this collection is about actual choir training, there are passages where the choral conductor can learn much. Advice includes: bring a pencil and eraser to rehearsals; don’t overdo consonants; make aural training a game between you and the choir; re-audition all choir members every two years and always start a rehearsal on time. Some of what Mawby preaches is unprovocative, while some of it is actively controversial, but it all needs stating: everything that

Mawby expounds is born of a lifetime of coal-face experience. Passages concerning music education, the liturgy (old and new), composition for choirs and the organ, managing weddings and funerals, plainchant and hymns are packed full of outspoken and intriguing views. There are some potted histories of genres and lists of the best hymns (but where is Coe Fen?), and there is never a dull moment as Mawby (to use BBC imperatives) educates, informs and entertains. Some will read the whole book, while others may only dip into it – but we’ll all learn a lot, and willingly at that.

JEREMY SUMMERLY

The late Colin Mawby – a major force in choral and organ music

Evensong: Notes from the Choir Timothy E Popple

Quires and Places, 2025

ISBN 9781068427428

Hardback; 214 pages; RRP £16.99

Paperback; 214 pages; RRP £12.00

Members of the Anglican-churchmusic-loving social media community will probably be familiar with the ‘In Quires and Places where they meme’ Facebook account; it has 12,000 followers at the time of writing, so Timothy Popple must have known he would have some fairly certain sales when he decided to produce this paperback volume of wisdom he has accumulated from singing in cathedral and church choirs since boyhood.

Evensong: Notes from the Choir epitomises an approach to musicmaking that is characteristic of many lay clerks, vicars choral, and organists of my acquaintance. It presents itself as a light-hearted guide, but in fact takes the subject of Anglican church music as performed at Evensong very seriously indeed and explores it with love, as well as with humour. Popple successfully balances genuinely useful information that should help newcomers to cathedral/collegiate worship or prospective chorister parents to understand what is happening at a typical service of Choral Evensong with anecdotes and in-jokes that will have experienced church musicians and clergy nodding in recognition – and sometimes, I’m sure, laughing aloud. That’s quite a difficult tightrope to walk.

Popple explains how his Facebook page dedicated to sharing memes about choral music was set up in August 2020, when singing together was forbidden, in response to the loss of not just the music but the camaraderie of vestry banter and post-service pub chat. The book is suffused with the pain of that long pandemic silence, and a running theme is the importance of the sense of belonging that characterises church choirs.

The format is three consecutive journeys: through the component parts of the service of Evensong; through the life of a choir member,

from chorister to director of music, with explanations of the different roles; and through a typical academic year in a choir’s life. If you’ve ever puzzled over the meaning of ‘Tone V’ on a cathedral music list or wondered about the difference between Sermon Bingo and Sermon Cricket; if you’re trying to decide whether or not to send your child for a Chorister Voice Trial; or if you just want to have a chuckle at some deliberate mistranslations of well-known anthem titles, you should probably buy this book.

CLARE STEVENS

Timothy Popple’s guide to Evensong has been described as ‘laugh-out-loud’ funny by Sir John Rutter

As well as being a lay clerk at St George’s Chapel in Windsor, you’re an oil company analyst. How do you juggle these two identities? Getting this job at Windsor represented the crest of the singing world for me. But from an early age I didn’t want to be a full-time singer as I thought that would take the joy away. I’ve always been obsessed with the earth and science, so it was important to me to carry on the two in tandem. I’m lucky that I have a supportive employer who allows me to dovetail it nicely. When I had my installation service, three of my bosses came along from work, and they could see how special it was. I’m also doing a PhD in carbon storage, in every tiny bit of spare time I have.

You’re also a Future Leader for the Cathedral Music Trust. Why did you want to become involved?

I started being a lay clerk at Derby Cathedral in 2021 and that was eye-opening for me. Derby was engaging with schools’ outreach, subsidised by the Cathedral Music Trust, and reaching people in the North and the Midlands who just would not have the opportunity to perform at this level or get the level of free musical education I enjoyed as a chorister. Being a Future Leader is an opportunity for me to give back. The group is focused on

DAVID WHITWORTH

‘Young teenagers come to the cathedral for friendship and camaraderie but at the same time they’re building professional skills that I’d liken to the Duke of Edinburgh scheme’

Interview by REBECCA FRANKS

improving the industry for young people who are lay clerks, organists, singers and teachers. If we can improve our own environment, then we have more to give when it comes to getting younger people involved.

How did you get into singing? I started as a parish church chorister in Grimsby, and I went to a small local choir school, which eventually stopped being a choir school because it didn’t have the money or kudos to attract enough choristers to keep that daily service going. Then I did a couple of concerts as a treble soloist for a local choral society, and a lady there heard me and asked me to sing in a concert she was putting on, which opened a door into the world outside Grimsby.

How have you benefited from being involved with choral music? It’s helped me become a wellrounded, well-travelled person. I see Derby Cathedral as an example [of what being a chorister can offer]. It’s about investing in yourself for the future. Young teenagers come to the cathedral for friendship and camaraderie but at the same time they’re building professional skills that I’d liken to the Duke of Edinburgh scheme. It’s also a digital detox – an opportunity to get out and do something different. The

other thing is that choral music is timeless and will be there long after we’ve gone. It’s a chance to engage with something historic.

What pieces would you pick to introduce someone to choral music? My favourite choral composers are Howells and Elgar, so I’d probably pick some huge choral anthem like Take him, earth, for cherishing, Finzi’s Lo, the full, final sacrifice or Walton’s The Twelve. You see that down on the music scheme for a rainy Tuesday night and you remember why you do it. At my wedding recently, [to Isobel Chesman, also pictured above], I had Parry’s I was glad and Jonathan Dove’s Seek Him that maketh the seven stars. I think these are the seminal pieces that kids should sing in choirs as well.

And do you have a favourite cathedral?

I’ve been a lay clerk at Derby Cathedral, Tewkesbury Abbey and St George’s Chapel, as well as a choral scholar at Truro Cathedral. I really learned my craft at Truro, standing next to a lay clerk who had been doing it for 30 years.

Tewkesbury Abbey is probably the best building in the country I have sung in. The reverb you get there is brilliant, without being too much. It’s a phenomenal place to sing.