The English Choral Tradition

Although famously dubbed ‘das Land ohne Musik’, England has in fact always enjoyed a rich choral tradition, in large part thanks to its cathedral choirs of boys and men (now finally with female voices among them, too) who have sung daily services for, quite literally, centuries, broken only by the dictates of Oliver Cromwell and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic.

I myself am a product of this tradition—singing first as a treble in my local parish church, then as a choral scholar in Exeter Cathedral Choir when I was at university—and the music I write builds on that heritage of cathedral choirs, university chapel and chamber choirs, choral societies and, further back, Georgian glee clubs and Victorian madrigal groups.  Some years ago now, I thought it would be interesting to see what I could find to document this choral heritage and so began to look for material.  The result is a two-part catalogue—link below—which runs, roughly, ‘from the Restoration to the RSCM’ (the Royal School of Church Music, which was founded almost a century ago, in 1927). 

Alongside church services, sung by professionals, the catalogue charts the rise of amateur singing clubs in the eighteenth century, as well as large-scale choral concerts such as the 1784 Handel Commemoration in Westminster Abbey (‘in some ways the most important single event in the history of English music’, E. D. Mackerness) which in turn developed into the enormously popular provincial musical festivals of the nineteenth century and the vast choral concerts put on by the Victorians which we still know today. 

The catalogue is divided into two parts: I: The Long Eighteenth Century is available now.  Part II: The Victorians and Beyond will follow.