David Baker describes how music at Halifax Parish Church had been in decline until twenty-seven-year-old John Varley Roberts was appointed in late 1868, and transformed the choir at Halifax from a small, mixed group of voices up in the west gallery with an outmoded organ to a choral establishment of some seventy robed male singers in the chancel, accompanied by a four-manual instrument.

A full listing, with links, of the Learning during Lockdown series, which ran as a series of 16 bulletins throughout 2020.

The art of accompanying a choir, and conducting (or ‘waving’) at the same time, is explored by Simon Williams, a Director of the RCO, and also Director of Music of Harrow Choral Society.

A benefit of our new reciprocal membership arrangement with the American Guild of Organists is free access to their journal The American Organist. We look at the magazine in more detail, and also preview a new addition to our choral and conducting resources on iRCO: two films on working with orchestras from conductor Nicholas Cleobury. 

Conductor Nicholas Cleobury looks at the differences between conducting a capella, and working with orchestras.  In two films he discusses conducting skills, and how to prepare a score for performance, using Haydn’s Little Organ Mass as an example.

Not all cathedral choirs are silent and choir leaders furloughed. We look at how some cathedrals and choral societies are finding ways to keep singers engaged with meaningful activities without a huge investment in equipment or new music, and investigate the practical issues around creating virtual choirs.

In a review of Timothy Day’s I Saw Eternity the Other Night, about the evolution in modern times of an English singing style, David Wright gets inside the multiple frameworks—economic, social, cultural—which help to invent and regulate traditions.

If, like many organists, you are already leading a choir, but feel diffident about your conducting technique, then join an exceptional RCO choir training workshop coming up in November.  David Hill, one of the country’s leading choral trainers, will be directing a day workshop on choral conducting on Saturday 2nd November, in St Mary’s Church in Newark. Experienced choral conductors will have the opportunity to take their conducting skills to the next level, and there are plenty of places for observers.

Dr Francis Jackson’s work at York Minster, coupled with his activities as a world famous recitalist, made it impossible for him to devote regular hours to composition. That he has composed such a large body of work in a variety of different genres is testimony to his talent as a composer and his devotion to the craft.

In this article originally appearing in the RCO Journal of 2017, Philip Moore analyses Jackson’s compositional techniques, his approach to word-setting, and gives some suggestions on the interpretation and registration of Jackson’s choral and liturgical works.