When we speak of a great British choral tradition, it's not just hot air. Bear in mind that the UK has eighty cathedral and university choirs, more or less all of which perform at the international level; as well as hundreds of small parish choirs, to say nothing of thousands of amateur choirs singing anything it is possible to sing, from Gregorian chant to musicals, from Bach to the Beatles. "Thousands" is not just a figure of speech: according to "British Choirs on the Net", there are no fewer than 3,400 in England, 350 in Wales, 260 in Scotland, three dozen in Northern Ireland...
As the reader will have guessed, British musical life would be much poorer without this choral tradition "for everyone", which surely can trace its roots back to the Renaissance, when royal and aristocratic courts would keep full-time choirs on the books, which meant that they could offer the faithful a choral backing to the liturgies. Further back, the practice originates in the medieval monastic foundations, in which boys and lay singers would join monks in performing their cultural duties. As time went on, in spite of the religious turmoil including the break with Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, the constant abrupt reversals and the train of massacres that followed in their wake over the following decades - to say nothing of Oliver Cromwell's religious dictatorship under the Commonwealth under which practically all public music was banned - choirs continued to attract more and more lay singers, or in other words: enlightened amateurs.
Today, cathedral choirs are made up of adult professional singers and children, who sing at services throughout the week, giving young choristers a fantastic musical training, as they rehearse and perform almost every day. Until 1991 – the UK is a country where traditions die hard, for better or worse – cathedral choirs were only open to boys, but since Salisbury Cathedral led the way and started accepting girls, others have followed suit.
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