The Choir out & about in Cambridge with Mr Rutter hisself!

[Roger Judd]

I think St Thomas 5th Av. is NOT finding it easy to raise the necessary $8 million for the badly-needed new organ. I believe that the decision was taken that the order would not be placed with Dobson until St Ts had the money in the bank - several years on from the start of the campaign, the contract still has not been signed, as I understand.
RJ

[DracoM]

Roger Judd

That is dead right, despite the fact that the congregation is based in the very heart of the richest areas of NYC. The foundation's overheads are formidable.

And ref singers, boys' voices are boys' voices wherever, and if they did not have the talent - and the choir regularly has to tour to different parts of USA to recruit - and the management by John Scot and the team did not have the alchemical skills, there would be no choir. That place - an for many others in UK - in a sense is only as good as the boys [or boys/girls in UK] they recruit, otherwise there would be far less of a USP and finances would suffer.

Sorry to put it so starkly.

[ardcarp]

Sorry folks; I'm going on-topic again. Having now listened to the programme (as opposed to pontificating without doing so upthread) I thought it was a gentle and pleasant canter through the colleges, done as a tourist might...but without paying the entrance fees. (OK, I know attending services is free.) John Rutter sounded just a tad stilted when reading from a script, but he was pleasantly unassuming and talked in relaxed fashion to the DoMs. The programme was very much aimed at the general music listener (perhaps folk who enjoy Kings at Xmas) and I guess most would have enjoyed JR's genial manner and the information he elicited. I do, however, tend to agree with those who found Michael White's gushing about the Oxbridge scene at the end distinctly OTT. It came over as highly elitist, though it probably wasn't meant to. The programme would have been better without it....and I can't imagine whose idea it was to include him.

[mopsus]

I thought there were a couple of questions the programme could have addressed or at least alluded to. Firstly, why has the choral tradition flourished more at Cambridge than at Oxford? Is it ultimately because the right people were at Cambridge at the right time at some point in the past, larger Colleges in Cambridge, or a greater involvement of Fellows in College life in Cambridge (which in turn comes from the difference between being employed by the University and by a College)?

And secondly, why has more money been put into Cambridge choral foundations in recent years than before? I have a sense of a general recent raising of the game - for example, my old College now has a professional director of music, whereas until a few years ago chapel choir was just run by the organ scholars.

I don't have an answer to these questions, but I'd have been interested to hear theirs. (And yours!)

[Simon]

QUO

Seven Oxbridge choirs broadcast Choral Evensong in 2011: New; King's; St John's; Sidney Sussex; Magdalen; Merton; Caius. Seven broadcast in 2012: King's; Keble; St John's; New; Magdalen; The Queen's; Clare. Christ Church Cathedral also broadcast in 2012. Is this really "CE bias towards Oxbridge throughout the year?"

Yes, of course it is. Do the maths. Nearly 15% - nearly one in six - of all broadcasts coming from just two cities, when there are getting on for fifty odd other recognised cathedral/choral foundations in the country elsewhere, is an enormous bias. Moreover, those figures are conservative given that several of the 52 weeks are given over to regular special slots. Further, it ignores the usual services at Advent and Christmas, which I accept aren't CEs in the normal sense but which are still choral services from Oxbridge.

This 1967 recording was remastered in 2007 in EMI’s Great Recordings of the Century series where the sound is considerably improved. We probably heard a pressing which predates this.

Thanks. Yes, I'm sure we did - a rather over-smoothed one, I thought.

Well, 100 or so recordings since its first one in 1958 is a good achievement. And your point is?

My point is that they are very fortunate to have been able to do this. An average approaching two releases a year is far beyond the reach of most foundations, however good they are.

"And why do we have this? We have this because of the Oxbridge choral tradition...”

And how wrong he was! We have this because of the British choral tradition, kept alive over the centuries in many places other than Oxbridge!