Paul Spicer looks at Britten’s music that is performable in church, and suggests that choir directors have a treasure trove of wide-ranging music, from a great musical mind, which needs to be explored beyond the familiar.

The organists and choir-trainers who founded the College of Organists created a new kind of singing voice, which has had a tremendous influence right up to the present day.  Just before the Second World War, music critics from around Europe remarked that the outstanding contribution of England to the music of the world was the […]

The ‘essence’ of the cathedral choir said one authority in 1952 is ‘the boy’s voice’, and its men are ‘at their best when they blend with that clean white tone’. If asked to give an example of a choir which exemplified this ideal in 1952 many music-lovers and many cathedral musicians too would have unhesitatingly […]