Front cover image for The English chorister : a history

The English chorister : a history

Alan Mould (Author)
Boy choristers have sung the daily liturgy in English cathedrals and collegiate churches for fourteen hundred years. They are treasured as a unique part of our religious and cultural heritage, unmatched anywhere else in the world. Yet their history, in cathedrals and monasteries, in royal and collegiate chapels, from the middle ages, through the upheavals of the Reformation, in Georgian neglect and Victorian revival, to their CD-celebrated triumphs of today and the introduction of girls, has never before been told. "The English Chorister", with its vivid, sometimes bizarre, sometimes hilarious detail, will interest musicologists, church historians and a wide general readership
Print Book, English, 2007
Hambledon Continuum, London, 2007
History
xvii, 366 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, music ; 24 cm
9781852855130, 9781847250582, 1852855134, 1847250580
71165225
Illustrations and Tablesvii
Acknowledgementsxi
Abbreviationsxiv
Introductionxv
1 Beginnings
1
2 Anglo-Saxon Choir Children
11
3 Choristers of the High Middle Ages
23
4 The Great Flowering
37
5 At Work and Play
53
6 Turmoil
75
7 From Elizabeth Ito Cromwell
93
8 Chorister Actors
113
9 Restoration
127
10 Georgian Nadir145
11 The Seeds of Reform167
12 The Fruits of Reform189
13 The Twentieth-Century Framework: Foundations, Liturgy, Music215
14 The Twentieth-Century Choir School229
15 Threats and Support247
16 Choristership259
Appendix 1275
Appendix 2277
Endnotes279
Bibliography331
Index349