Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Beginnings
2. Anglo-Saxon Choir Children
3. Choristers of the High Middle Ages
4. The Great Flowering
5. Pre-Reformation Choristers
6. Turmoil
7. From Elizabeth I to Cromwell
8. Chorister Actors
9. Restoration
10. Georgian Nadir
11. The Seeds of Reform
12. The Fruits of Reform
13. Foundations, Liturgy and Music
14. The Twentieth-Century Choir School
15. Challenge and Presponse
16. Choristership
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Bibliographies
Index

Promotional Information

This book is a fascinating history of an English musical tradition, which spans the ages - from the recruiting and educating of singers in medieval times, right up to the modern choir.

About the Author

Alan Mould is an ex-headmaster of St John's College choir school, Cambridge. His other publications include Choirs and Spaces Where They Cling.

Reviews

"...this timely history, going back to medieval times, helps explain the enduring appeal and mechanics of choirs." Unite Magazine, November 06
*Mavis Campion*

Title mentioned in Church Times, 2008.

"This book is certainly a jewel and the best on the market."   Reviewed by Andrew Palmer in Cathedral Music

"This is a book which both delights and engrosses. It is handsomely produced and is excellent value for money."   Reviewed by Karen Sell in Singing, Winter 2007

"This is an important book. The long pilgrimage from the Georgian nadir to the modern high standards of singing, music and education, is thoughtfully chronicled with a mass of useful insights and lessons from the past." Journal of Ecclesiastical History.

"Alan Mould has written a landmark book about the chorister within the English cathedral tradition, and garnered a huge range of detail to colour and inform his broader narrative, which is always clear in its purpose and expression, never dull. His wider contribution to writing on music in the English Church as a continuity from Bede to the present day should not be underestimated." Early Music, November 2009