Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge explained

Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge
Founding:1553
Music Director:Steven Grahl
Members:
  • c. 34 choral scholars
  • 2 organ scholars
Website:http://trinitycollegechoir.com/

The Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge is a mixed choir whose primary function is to sing choral services in the Tudor chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge.[1] In January 2011, Gramophone named the choir the fifth best choir in the world.[2]

The choir has taken various forms since its foundation, and has existed in its present form since 1982 when, shortly after the admission of women to the college, female voices were used for the first time for the choir's top lines. Three regular services are sung per week in full University Term, and the choir sings Latin grace from the minstrels' gallery in the college's Great Hall at a number of feasts.

In addition, the choir undertakes projects outside term-time such as recordings, concerts, radio broadcasts and tours.

The choir is typically made up of 36 members, many of whom are students in Trinity College.

Directors of Music

The director of music is Steven Grahl, who succeeded Stephen Layton in January 2024.[3]

History of the Choir

Trinity College's choral associations date back to the establishment of King's Hall by Edward II in 1317 (Chaucer's "Solar Hall" in The Canterbury Tales). This college, incorporated by Edward III in 1337, was amalgamated with an adjacent early 14th century foundation, Michaelhouse, when Henry VIII created Trinity in 1546. From the time of Edward II, Chapel Royal choristers, on leaving the Court, customarily entered King's Hall to continue their academic studies, alongside other undergraduates training for service in the royal administration.

The constitution of the medieval chapel choir remains obscure, but the choral foundation which Mary Tudor established in 1553 (ten choristers, six lay clerks, four priests, an organist, and a schoolmaster) survived essentially unchanged for over 300 years. Among the musicians associated with the choir during this time were the Tudor composers Thomas Preston, Robert White and John Hilton the elder; Robert Ramsey was organist just before the English Commonwealth; the lutenist and writer Thomas Mace was a lay clerk for around 70 years from 1635;[4] and Thomas Attwood Walmisley was organist in the early 19th century.

In the 1896/97 academic year the college choir school was closed down and incorporated into The Perse Grammar School.[5] Thereafter, the choir of boy trebles, lay clerks (some of whom shared their duties with the choirs of King's and St John's Colleges) and students continued the regular pattern of choral services until the 1950s. This traditionally-constituted body then gave way to a choir of undergraduate men during Raymond Leppard's tenure as Director of Music, to be replaced with a mixed choir by Richard Marlow in 1982.

Tours and Concerts

The choir has toured to destinations such as Australia, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the United States, Canada, the Canary Islands, India, South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe, Peru, and Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Particularly notable events include singing mass at the installation of Abbot Martin Werlen, O.S.B. as Abbot of Einsiedeln, Switzerland, and becoming the first western choir to tour India.

The choir also performs concerts in the UK, at home in Cambridge and in London (South Bank Centre, St John's Smith Square, Spitalfields Festival), and around the country. ‘Livings tours’ allow the choir to visit parishes around the country of which the college is patron and sing services and concerts; these include villages in the Isle of Wight, North Yorkshire, County Durham, Norfolk and the Lake District.

May Week

On the final Sunday of the academic year the Choir performs two outdoor concerts. At midday the choir sings antiphonally from two of the towers in the college's Great Court, with a brass ensemble performing from the third. In the evening the choir inaugurates May Week with the traditional River Concert, in which the madrigals and part-songs are performed upon punts moored at Trinity Backs. The evening's entertainment concludes, as dusk gives way to darkness, with Wilbye's madrigal Draw on, sweet night performed as the choir is punted down the river and out of sight.

Recordings

Under Richard Marlow

Under Stephen Layton

Directors of Music of the College

Organ Scholars

[6]

TCCA

In 2004 the Trinity College Choir Association ("TCCA") was formed by a group of choir alumni. It provides a framework for all current and past members of the choir, organists and clergy to keep in touch, meet up and make new acquaintances, and to keep abreast of the current activities of the choir. It also comprises a body of people to help and support the interests and the future of the choir.

Awards and nominations

Year Award and category Work Result Notes
2011 Deserts of Exile
2012 Choral [7] [8]
Beyond All Mortal Dreams - American A Cappella

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Trinity College Choir - About. Trinitycollegechoir.com. 2020-06-21.
  2. Web site: Composer Eric Whitacre on why British choirs are best | gramophone.co.uk . 15 December 2011 . https://web.archive.org/web/20111229083405/http://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/focus/composer-eric-whitacre-on-why-british-choirs-are-best . 29 December 2011 . dead .
  3. Web site: fionaholland . 2023-08-09 . Trinity appoints Steven Grahl Director of Music . 2024-01-25 . Trinity College Cambridge . en-GB.
  4. Book: Holman, Peter . Peter Holman

    . Life After Death: The Viola Da Gamba in Britain from Purcell to Dolmetsch . Peter Holman . 2010 . Boydell & Brewer . Woodbridge . 67–68 . 978-1-84383-574-5 .

  5. News: Perse Grammar School. Cambridge Chronicle and University Journal, Isle of Ely Herald, and Huntingdonshire Gazette. 30 July 1897. 8.
  6. Web site: Trinity College Choir - Past and current organ scholars. Trinitycollegechoir.com. 2020-06-21.
  7. News: Stephen Layton at the Gramophone Awards 2012. Classic FM. 28 September 2012.
  8. News: Trinity College Choir wins Gramophone Award. trin.cam.ac.uk. 4 April 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160417174747/http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/news/trinity-college-choir-wins-gramophone-award. 17 April 2016. dead.

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