"Temple Church Choir is formed of 18 boy-choristers and twelve
choirmen, and rose to prominence in 1927 when Sir George Thalben-Ball and the treble Ernest Lough made their world-famous recording of Mendelssohn's 'Hear my prayer / O, for the wings of a Dove'.
Fifty-seven
choirmen and their supporters headed for the Lake District to sing at the Theatre By The Lake.
CATHEDRAL
choirmen have posed for a charity calendar...
James Saunders similarly shows us how individual English cathedral
choirmen moonlighted as freelance teachers and singers in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century towns.
Also interesting is James Saunders' well-written essay on "Music and Moonlighting: the Cathedral
Choirmen of Early Modern England, 1558-1649," which gives a full and amusing picture of the highly varied outside jobs of post-Reformation
choirmen, who supplemented their meager emoluments and filled the time left free by the reduced schedule of liturgical song with activities ranging from non-musical church tasks to keeping pigs and even keeping ale-houses.
Were they unbroken voices or
choirmen? How much of the liturgical Latin quotation in the texts was spoken rather than sung?
So choirs thrived, choirboys turned into
choirmen, choirmasters, organists, priests...
Two of the present
choirmen, tenors Geoff and David Cross, are founder members and most are drawn from other male voice choirs, Bolsterstone, Skelmanthorpe, Honley and Millhouse.
The talented youngsters and the
choirmen will present a programme of traditional Christmas fare and songs from the shows in a show at Holmfirth Civic Hall next Friday, December 7 (7.15pm).