Chorister Open Day · 14 June 2008
The choir was delighted to welcome some twenty families to the chorister open day in chapel. After an introduction to chorister life from Dr Edward Higginbottom, visitors heard the choir rehearsing and solo and ensemble pieces played by choristers. Potential choristers then tried on cassocks and learned how to process into chapel to the sound of the organ, and joined the choristers in the stalls for some impromptu part-singing.
Visitors learn to process in cassocks
Current choir families talked to visitors about the chorister experience over tea, and there was a wonderfully full chapel for a festive evensong. There were games and collage activities in the Cloisters—and the sun shone!
Auditions for choristerships (to start in September 2009)
Auditions for choristerships will take place on Wednesday 1 October 2008.
If you would like to register for an audition, contact Mrs Jo Asquith at New College School on 01865 243657, e-mail: .
For more information about being a chorister, contact Dr Edward Higginbottom on 01865 279519, e-mail: .
Additional information about New College choristerships may be found on the Choristerships page.
Edward Higginbottom on Classic FM
In a Classic FM interview with Mark Forrest, Edward Higginbottom talks about three recent releases, why he loves to tour with the choir, and the processes involved in becoming a chorister. To listen to this interview in RealAudio format. You will need RealPlayer on your computer. Download this free software (which enables you to listen to audio from the BBC’s website) direct from the RealAudio site, www.real.com (opens in new window).
Latest CD releases
The Art of the Chorister
Since New College choristers have been around for over six hundred years, you might be forgiven for thinking that everything about their lives is very traditional. Happily this is not the case: being a chorister these days is cutting-edge. In recent years New College choristers have sung in many places around the globe, and have recorded on average two CDs a year, most famously the best-selling Agnus Dei.
This CD of music for treble voices is eclectic not only in its variety of repertory but also in its contexts, from church, to theatre, to music room. It includes music by Bach, Couperin, Ireland, Mozart, Mendelssohn and others, and provides a snapshot of New College trebles in the year 2005/06.
You may listen to a track on this CD by clicking on the blue link below. Tracks are streamed in RealAudio format. To listen to them, you will need to have RealPlayer installed on your computer. You may download this free software (which also enables you to listen to audio from the BBC’s website) direct from the RealAudio site, www.real.com (opens in new window).
Track 3: Mozart: Ave Maria K.554 [2:01]
Ludford: Missa Benedicta et Venerabilis
This recording has been nominated for the Gramophone Awards shortlist.
This recording was released in France in February. It presents one of the most accomplished ‘festal’ masses (Benedicta et venerabilis es) by the unjustly neglected Nicholas Ludford (c.1485-1557) together with two of his extended votive anthems. The recording was made in July 2007 while the Choir was on tour in France.
In his review for Classic FM, Rick Jones wrote: “The long wait to hear the music of the forgotten Nicholas Ludford (1485-1557) is amply rewarded on this CD by the Choir of New College, Oxford, under Edward Higginbottom. ... A must for all lovers of choral music.”
From Andrew Mellor’s interview with Edward Higginbottom:
AM: Your boy choristers seem wonderfully adept in the challenging features of Ludford’s music…
EH: It took the boys a while to inhabit the music, but soon enough you could sense them understanding it. We’d not sung the masses in chapel, only the votive anthems, so there was a sense of discovery in tackling the masses. It says something about Ludford, a composer from five hundred years ago, that his music captured the imagination of our boy choristers—even more so than much music of more recent times.
You may listen to excerpts from two tracks on this CD by clicking on the blue links below. Tracks are streamed in RealAudio format, see above.
Track 1: Ave cuius conceptio [excerpt 3:30]
Track 10: Agnus Dei [excerpt 3:52]
The Victorian and Edwardian Anthem The Choir’s most recent recording for CRD of anthems by Bridge, Elgar, Parry, Stainer and Wood, and the evening canticles in F minor by Alan Gray, is scheduled for release early in March. The CD complements an earlier recording on the CRD label, The Georgian Anthem, which includes works by Attwood, Battishill, Crotch, Walmisley and S. Wesley.
These CDs are now obtainable online via the Recent Releases page
You may listen to a track on this CD by clicking on the blue links below. Tracks are streamed in RealAudio format, see above.
Track 5: Wood: Hail gladdening light [3:36]
Bass academical clerk vacancy 2008
There is a vacancy in the Choir for a bass academical clerk for October 2008. For details, see Choir Vacancies.
Ambronay Festival 2008
New College Choir is to give the opening concert of the 29th Festival d’Ambronay on Saturday 20th September. The festival’s theme is ‘Femmes, le génie interdit’. The concert programme will include Ode to St Cecilia by Purcell and a similar Ode by Charpentier. New College Choir and Collegium Novum wll be conducted by Edward Higginbottom.
Recording of Haydn's Creation
In mid-April, New College Choir recorded Haydn’s Creation with Oxford Philomusica (leader Peter Hanson) under the baton of Edward Higginbottom. The soloists were Mhairi Lawson (soprano), Rufus Muller (ex NC clerk, tenor) and David Stout (bass). Recording session took place in St Jude’s Church, Hampstead, and were sponsored by Oxford Philomusica.
On May 22nd, under the baton of Marios Papadopoulos and with soloists Joanne Lunn, Mark Milhofer and David Stout, New College Choir and Oxford Philomusica again performed the same work in a concert in the Cadogan Hall, London.
Last summer...
In July, the choir delighted audiences in Sarrebourg and the Abbaye de Senones with a programme entitled Orpheus Britannicus, celebrating Purcell. The title notwithstanding, the evening ended with an encore of part of Allegri’s Miserere. This was greeted with rapt enthusiasm and elegiac praise by the local press:
A Saint Martin le festival avait atteint l'une de ses cimes couvertes de graces éternelles: un Miserere d'Allegri, après Purcell... leçon de chant d'Edward Higginbottom et de ses anges et angelots dans un paradis à faire dresser les poils sur les nuages! Le Républicain Lorrain (17.07.07)
The Choir in concert in Sarrebourg, July 2007
Whilst in France the choir recorded a programme of a cappella music by Nicholas Ludford in the glorious acoustic of the church of St Martin de Hoff on the outskirts of Sarrebourg. This early 20th-century church, built in pastiche roccocco style, proved a perfect environment for this extraordinary 16th century music. The disc was released on the French K617 label in France in February 2008, and will be available in the UK in April. It includes the Missa benedicta et venerabilis es with plainsong propers, and the votive anthems Domine Jesu Christe, and Ave cuius conceptio (see above).
A visitor to evensong at New College
Evensong at New College is attended not only by members of the college and Oxford residents but also by choral music aficionados who sometimes travel great distances to hear the choir in its home acoustic. Evensong on Saturday 28 January drew one such visitor who made an awkward cross-country journey to Oxford specifically to hear Giles Swayne’s Magnificat and wrote this record of his visit.
Evensong at New College · 28 January 2006
Visiting Oxford on a Saturday involves certain challenges. If you are coming by car, you know you won't be able to park. I came by train. Or rather, as there weren't any trains, by bus. This was rather fun. At Reading station there were no trains for Oxford on the screens, which is decidedly unusual—except on Saturdays. So you have to know that you have to take a train to Didcot, and on arriving there, find out how to traverse the remaining kilometers to Oxford.
There was a decidedly family atmosphere on the double-decker bus from Didcot to Oxford. Most were on their way to some sort of clubbing, pubbing, dining, wining or erotic encounter in the university city. I seemed to be alone in my quest for Choral Music. The bus trundled into the city leaving plenty of time to wander through the dimly-lit mediæval streets to Evensong in New College, a closely-guarded secret which most tourists never succeed in finding. This is a very different experience from Kings, Cambridge!
If one has time, it is worth stopping at Blackwell's Music Shop, which has enough CDs to break the budget of most members of these groups, followed by a quick intake of caffeine at Queen Lane Coffee House, which has been selling drinks based on the bean and the leaf since the 16th century. It also has decent loos.
Back to New College. The Choir is the sort one hopes to hear if one should be allowed beyond the Gates of Heaven. I can't explain it, logically, but it hits me, physically. Shivers down the spine, excess of fluid in the tear-ducts, a cold sweat. Why can a choir do this? Why do most choirs NOT do this? There is some magic at work here, and it is hard to analyze.
This was a perfectly-planned Evensong. G major was the basis: Rhosymedre by Vaughan Williams, on the organ, as the tiny congregation prayed and meditated at 18.10. Ayleward responses, Psalm 136, and then, suddenly, the most amazing performance of Giles Swayne's Magnificat. If you have never heard this, then you should. New College has recorded it twice (on a Priory disc, PRCD 596, some ten years ago, and more recently on In Excelsis Erato 0927 44657-2) but hearing it live is 100 times more electrifying. It has about 12 independent voices, and they were all sung with such precision and self-confidence as if this was the most natural thing in the world. And those boys are 11 or 12 years of age. It's incredible.
Rather than singing Swayne's Nunc Dimittis, they gave us Holst's setting, which couldn't have been bettered as a complement to Swayne. I believe this is standard practice at New College. I heard the same combination two or three years ago. I just had to come back when I saw that they were doing these again.
As if this wasn't enough, we were then served Taverner's Mater Christi, sang a hymn together with the choir in a state of near ecstasy, and then tried to listen to the voluntary: Prelude and Fugue on a Theme of Vittoria by Britten, with its wonderful low-key close in G major, balancing the Vaughan Williams. However, the other evensong-goers seemed to decide that Britten was not for them. If they have time to go to Evensong, why don't they have time to listen to the voluntary? What an amazing row and disturbance they made during the Britten! Nodody seemed to see the logic and symmetry in the planning of this wonderfully spiritual service, with English organ music in G major as the framework, and with that wonderful 12-part G major-based Magnificat as centre-piece, which showed the total professionalism of the singers to great effect.
On leaving New College Chapel, it is worth dropping in at the (also well-hidden) Turf Tavern, an ancient pub down a narrow passageway. A visit here will give you time to digest the liturgical and musical shock to the system which services in New College almost invariably cause, before heading back to wherever you are staying. In my case, that meant back to the railway station for a double-decker bus to Didcot. My fellow passengers were enthusiastic about their parties, but they hadn't heard Swayne, OR Britten!
Robert Coates
