B & W society of Sound the choir of the king’s college...
Stephen Cleobury / Choir of King’s College, Cambridge
Producer & editor: Simon Kiln
Recording & mixing engineer: Arne Akselberg
Technical engineer: Richard Hale
Recorded at 96kHz 24-bit PCM in the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, by kind permission of the Provost and Fellows, 16, 17, 18 & 20 March 2014.
The record label of King’s College, Cambridge – managed in co-operation with LSO Live – is chosen for this month’s release, to take advantage of their rich seasonal catalogue.
King’s Choir has been singing services in the College’s Chapel for over 550 years, making it one of the oldest singing ensembles in the world. But, despite having observed Christmas annually in the Chapel with choral services – with the exception of the dark years of Cromwell’s Commonwealth in the 1650s – it was not until the early 20th century that the strong association with Christmas was forged. In 1918, a former Chaplain of King’s, Eric Milner-White, returned from the First World War, where he had acted as an army padre, to become Dean of Chapel. He took up an idea from Truro Cathedral and introduced to King’s A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols as a gift to the city of Cambridge and in memory of the many Kingsmen who had not returned from the War.
Courtesy of the BBC, who began broadcasting the service in 1928, the service soon reached audiences both in the UK and beyond, and carols sung from King’s became part of Christmas for people throughout the world. The tradition would not have lasted but for the continuously high standards maintained by King’s College Choir, an achievement which, given the high turnover of members of the Choir (the boys spending five years in it and the undergraduate men only three), must largely be attributed to the Organists / Directors of Music who have presided over the Choir since 1876: A. H. Mann, Boris Ord, David Willcocks, Philip Ledger, and Stephen Cleobury. Each has striven to develop the service to ensure that it does not stagnate, with the introduction, for example, of carols in foreign languages in 1978 and, in 1983, the inauguration of the practice of commissioning a new carol annually. David Willcocks’ dual role at King’s, and as editor of the OUP’s hugely influential Carols for Choirs series, served to reinforce the close association of King’s with Christmas carols and to take that tradition to other choirs across the UK and beyond.
