A choir is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which spans from the medieval era to the present, or popular music repertoire. Most choirs are led by a conductor, who leads the performances with arm, hand, and facial gestures.
A countertenor (also contra tenor) is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range is equivalent to that of the female contralto or mezzo-soprano voice types, generally extending from around G3 to D5 or E5, although a sopranist (a specific kind of countertenor) may match the soprano's range of around C4 to C6. Countertenors often are baritones or tenors at core, but only on rare occasions they use their lower vocal range, instead preferring their falsetto or high head voice.
Alfred George Deller, CBE, was an English singer and one of the main figures in popularising the return of the countertenor voice in Renaissance and Baroque music during the 20th century.
A sopranist is a male singer who is able to sing in the vocal tessitura of a soprano usually through the use of falsetto or head voice vocal production. This voice type is a specific kind of countertenor. In rare cases an adult man may be able to sing in the soprano range using his normal or modal voice and not falsetto due to endocrinological reasons, like Radu Marian, or as a result of a larynx that has not completely developed as is allegedly the case of Michael Maniaci.
A boy soprano or boy treble is a young male singer with an unchanged voice in the soprano range, a range that is often still called the treble voice range when talking about children.
Vocal range is the range of pitches that a human voice can phonate. A common application is within the context of singing, where it is used as a defining characteristic for classifying singing voices into voice types. It is also a topic of study within linguistics, phonetics, and speech-language pathology, particularly in relation to the study of tonal languages and certain types of vocal disorders, although it has little practical application in terms of speech.
Alan Ridout was a British composer and teacher.
William James Mathias CBE was a Welsh composer noted for choral works.
Geoffrey Alan Burgon was a British composer best known for his television and film scores. Among his most recognisable works are Monty Python's Life of Brian for film, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Brideshead Revisited for television, the latter two earning Ivor Novello Awards in 1979 and 1981 respectively. He also won BAFTAs for his themes for the remake of The Forsyte Saga and Longitude.
The Choir of King's College, Cambridge is an English choir. It is considered one of today's most accomplished and renowned representatives of the great English choral tradition. 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.
Mark Deller is an English conductor and countertenor, now retired. He is the son of the first modern countertenor, Alfred Deller.
A voice type is a group of voices with similar vocal ranges, capable of singing in a similar tessitura, and with similar vocal transition points (passaggi). Voice classification is most strongly associated with European classical music, though it, and the terms it utilizes, are used in other styles of music as well.
There is no authoritative system of voice classification in non-classical music as classical terms are used to describe not merely various vocal ranges, but specific vocal timbres unique to each range. These timbres are produced by classical training techniques with which most popular singers are not intimately familiar, and which even those that are do not universally employ them.
The Scholars is the name of an English a cappella group of four to five solo singers active 1968-2010, mainly in the field of classical music. In the United States they were also known as The Scholars of London and The Voices of London.
Grayston Burgess (Cheriton, Kent 7 April 1932 – 6 March 2019 was an English countertenor and conductor.
Meane is a vocal music term used by English composers of polyphonic choral music during the English pre-Reformation and Reformation eras. At this time choral music written for the Church of England was often voiced in 5 parts, with MAATB or TrMATB being frequent voicings utilized by William Byrd, Thomas Tallis and their contemporaries. The meane part was typically sung by boys whose voices were not as high as a treble or boy soprano but were not as low as a countertenor. Occasionally the meane line would be sung by a combination of treble and countertenor voices.
The Voice Project is an open-access singing project, based in Norwich, England. It is a Registered Charity and a Limited Company. It was created by singers Siân Croose and Jonathan Baker in 2008 and since then it has involved hundreds of singers in performances of new vocal music as well as workshops designed to build vocal confidence and explore a wide variety of uplifting and inspiring vocal music. In 2018, it established a choir in Brighton and has run two projects with performances in Sussex since then.
John Anthony Whitworth was an English countertenor, organist, and teacher of music. He was a lay vicar at Westminster Abbey and a Professor at the Guildhall School of Music.
Canticle IV: The Journey of the Magi, Op. 86, is a composition for three male solo voices and piano by Benjamin Britten, part of his series of five Canticles. It sets the text of T. S. Eliot's poem "Journey of the Magi", retelling the story of the biblical Magi. The work was premiered in June 1971 at the Aldeburgh Festival by James Bowman, Peter Pears and John Shirley-Quirk, with Britten as the pianist. It was published the following year, dedicated to the three singers.
