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The Harvard University Choir, more commonly referred to as the University Choir or simply UChoir, is Harvard University's oldest choir. It has provided choral music for the Harvard Memorial Church and its predecessor church for over 180 years, and is Harvard's only professional choir. Each year, a select group of choristers also make up the Harvard Choral Fellows, who sing at the church's daily Morning Prayers service in Appleton Chapel.
The University Choir is the only professional choir on campus. Singers are paid a significant stipend each year. The Choir is directed by Edward Elwyn Jones, the Gund University Organist and Choirmaster at Memorial Church, and David von Behren, the Assistant University Organist and Choirmaster. In fall 2009, UChoir performed in the 100th Carols Services, the oldest carols service in the country, and in that spring performed J.S. Bach's St. John's Passion.
While the first mention of choral performance at Harvard comes from the eighteenth century, a formal constitution of the University Choir was not seen until 1834; the constitution makes it clear, however, that the choir had existed before this date. One of the attractions of joining the choir at the time was the lack of supervision during compulsory Morning Prayers services.
The Choir sat in the Gallery and were left alone until it was time to sing; often they would sleep or read, paying little attention to the service. After the appointment of John Knowles Paine as the first University Organist and Choirmaster in 1862, the Choir attained the status of a professional performance choir.
The annual Christmas Carol services, the longest continually running services of their kind in the country, were founded in 1910 by Archibald T. Davison, who soon invited the women of Radcliffe College to participate, a tradition maintained by Davison's successor, Professor G. Wallace Woodworth.
John R. Ferris, who served as Choirmaster from 1958 to 1990, won high praise for performances of a wide variety of sacred choral literature by incorporating women into the previously all-male University Choir.
Under the directorship of Dr. Murray Forbes Somerville between 1990 and 2003, the choir began touring and recording CDs on the Koch International, Northeastern, Naxos, Centaur, Gothic, and ASV labels and, with the Boston Camerata under Joel Cohen, for Erato Records of France.
After his leadership during the 2003–2004 academic year, during which he served as Acting University Organist and Choirmaster, Edward Elwyn Jones was appointed the seventh Gund University Organist and Choirmaster. The first year of his appointment saw a Spring concert entitled "Choral Evolution" which featured Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, Roxanna Panufnik’s Westminster Mass, and Libby Larsen’s Missa Gaia. The tradition of new commissions for the choir has continued under Jones; with the choir has featured a new commission each year at the Carol Services and most recently[ as of? ] premiered three new works by Carson P. Cooman, Emma Lou Diemer, and Tarik O'Regan, written to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Memorial Church. Jones has also led the Choral Fellows on two spring tours to Montreal, Quebec and San Francisco, California, and took the Sunday Choir to Mexico City, Querétaro, and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico in the spring of 2007.
Approximately 40 singers form the Sunday Choir, a group that performs a wide range of choral literature for the Sunday services of Memorial Church in Harvard Yard. In recognition of their commitment, all members of this group are paid. Auditions for positions in the Sunday Choir are held early in the Fall Term. The choir attracts singers who like a challenge, singing a wide variety of music at a professional standard with a weekly performance deadline. This group performs in the annual Christmas Carol services and spring concert, and collaborates with other musical groups, both on and off campus. The Sunday Choir also undertakes both international and domestic tours.
The weekly schedule of the Sunday Choir involves rehearsals from 5 to 6:30 PM on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in addition to a rehearsal and service on Sunday mornings. Weekday rehearsals are preceded by an hour-long tea.
In addition, the Sunday Choir goes on retreat to the St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire on Columbus Day weekend each year where, among other things, they celebrate "Carols in October" and begin to learn the repertoire for the Christmas Carol services in December. The choir also presents a spring concert each year and often performs at the Harvard ARTS FIRST festival in early May.
Sixteen selected singers from this ensemble form the Choral Fellows.
The Ferris Choral Fellows (formerly known as the Choral Fellows and before that as the Morning Choir) are a group of sixteen dedicated singers drawn from the Sunday Choir who additionally perform in the daily Morning Prayers services in Appleton Chapel; this is one of Harvard’s oldest traditions. This ensemble also represents the University Choir on tour and at special events. These singers are appointed for the full academic year after extensive auditions held the previous spring and receive free voice lessons as well as a significant stipend.
The Choral Fellows program employs a select group of singers who are dependable and committed members of the University Choir. The Choral Fellows as a group are responsible for between 6 and 8 services a week and their preparation and attendance are considered a given. Their presence is intended to help the choir develop the consistency and polish that comes from singing together often.
Conceived by Dr. Murray Forbes Somerville (Gund University Organist and Choirmaster, 1990–2003) the program is designed to provide a select group of students with a performing opportunity they would not find elsewhere as well as raise the standard of musical performance within the choir.
The Choral Fellows program was made possible by a gift to the Memorial Church at Harvard University, with the support of the Reverend Professor Peter J. Gomes (1942–2011), Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in The Memorial Church.
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Nine Lessons and Carols, also known as the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols and Service of Nine Lessons and Carols, is a service of Christian worship traditionally celebrated on or near Christmas Eve in England. The story of the fall of humanity, the promise of the Messiah, and the birth of Jesus is told in nine short Bible readings or lessons from Genesis, the prophetic books and the Gospels, interspersed with the singing of Christmas carols, hymns and choir anthems.
Sir John Stainer was an English composer and organist whose music, though seldom performed today, was very popular during his lifetime. His work as choir trainer and organist set standards for Anglican church music that are still influential. He was also active as an academic, becoming Heather Professor of Music at Oxford.
Sir David Valentine Willcocks, was a British choral conductor, organist, composer and music administrator. He was particularly well known for his association with the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, which he directed from 1957 to 1974, making frequent broadcasts and recordings. Several of the descants and carol arrangements he wrote for the annual service of Nine Lessons and Carols were published in the series of books Carols for Choirs which he edited along with Reginald Jacques and John Rutter. He was also director of the Royal College of Music in London.
James Litton was an American musician, who directed the American Boychoir from 1985 to 2001, and is widely recognized as one of the leading choral conductors of the day.
W. Benjamin Hutto was an American musician who specialized in writing, producing, and directing choral music. He served as Director of Choral Activities and Director of Performing Arts at St. Albans School for Boys and the National Cathedral School for Girls in Washington D.C. He was also Director of Music and Organist at St. John's Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square.
Harold Edwin Darke was an English composer and organist. He is particularly known for his choral compositions, which are an established part of the repertoire of Anglican church music. Darke had a fifty-year association with the church of St Michael, Cornhill, in the City of London.
The Choir of King's College, Cambridge is an English Anglican choir. It was created by King Henry VI, who founded King's College, Cambridge, in 1441, to provide daily singing in his Chapel, which remains the main task of the choir to this day.
St. Thomas's Church, Huron Street is a parish of the Anglican Church of Canada in Toronto, Ontario. One of the earliest Anglo-Catholic congregations in Canada, it was established in 1874, moving twice before settling into its present building, adjacent to the Annex on the western edge of the University of Toronto's downtown campus.
George Guest CBE FRCO was a Welsh organist and choral conductor.
William Ifor Jones was a Welsh conductor and organist. Born into a large coal-mining family and raised in Merthyr Tydfil, Jones studied at the Royal Academy of Music as a scholarship student in London from 1920 to 1925. He studied the organ with Sir Stanley Marchant at St. Paul's Cathedral, London; orchestral conducting with Ernest Read and with Sir Henry Wood, ; and harmony with Benjamin Dale. He was for a time organist at the Welsh Baptist Church in Castle Street, London, worked at the Royal Opera House, as a vocal coach at Covent Garden, assisted with the British National Opera Company in the role of prompter, and was the Assistant Choir Master at St. Paul's Cathedral, London.
Edward Elwyn Jones is a Welsh conductor and organist.
René Clausen is an American composer, conductor emeritus of The Concordia Choir, and professor of music at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. His works are widely performed by high school and church choirs while his more technically demanding pieces have been performed and recorded by college and professional choirs. Among his many accolades, his recent recording, "Life & Breath: Choral Works by René Clausen," received three Grammy Awards at the 55th Grammy Awards in 2013.
Sir Philip Stevens Ledger, CBE, FRSE was an English classical musician, choirmaster and academic, best remembered as Director of the Choir of King's College, Cambridge in 1974–1982 and of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama from 1982 until he retired in 2001. He also composed choral music and played the organ, piano and harpsichord.
John C. Walker, more familiarly known as John Walker, is an American concert organist, choirmaster, and CD recording artist. He is also a former president of the American Guild of Organists, elected in May 2014 to a two-year term of the 16,000-member organization. Walker has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Asia, and Europe. He is "widely recognized for his flawless technique and execution as well as his controlled and passionate playing," said Duke University in announcing a John Walker recital at Duke Chapel. Since 2006 he has served on the faculty of the Peabody Institute and George Mason University.
Alfred Melville Cook was a British organist, conductor, composer and teacher.
George Vern Barnett was an Australian organist, choir master and accompanist. He was an important figure in the musical and cultural life of Sydney for many years in the early twentieth century.
The Toronto Choral Society was founded in 1845. Music was a popular form of entertainment for a rapidly growing and prosperous population, so a group of citizens formed a choral society in order to give concerts and foster the development of the local musical community. F.W. Barron, the headmaster of Upper Canada College, became the choir's first president, and James P. Clarke, organist at St. James Cathedral, was its first conductor.
Peter Christian Lutkin was an American organist, choral conductor, and composer.
The Service in B-flat major, Op. 10, is a collection of Anglican church music by Charles Villiers Stanford for mixed choir and organ containing the canticles for each of the principal services of the Anglican Church. Stanford set the traditional liturgical texts in English in 1879 when he was the organist of Trinity College, Cambridge. They were published by Novello in 1902. Stanford orchestrated the work in 1903, with additional organ.
Norman Chinner OBE LRSM was a South Australian organist and choirmaster.
