What's new
New Membership Flyer
The Campaign has brought out a snazzy, new membership leaflet. The aim is to appeal to and recruit all those who are interested in supporting our wonderful choirs of men and boys in cathedrals and churches. To obtain copies, please email the Campaign at:
Press Release
The future of the English choirboy is increasingly in doubt. At present, he clings to survival in cathedrals, famous college chapels and a handful of churches, but the questioning by the well-meaning, the politically correct and the downright ignorant of the 1000-year-old choral tradition of which he is an essential part could spell its end. Campaign for the Traditional Cathedral Choir is alone in fighting to protect our choirs of men and boys. Over the last two decades, girls' choirs were set up in cathedrals on the grounds of equal opportunity, though it was somehow unremarked that, outside cathedrals, scarcely a boy is singing any more. Most "children's" choirs are now overwhelmingly composed of girls.
Proponents of these new cathedral choirs are equivocal as to the difference between the voices of young girls and boys and say there can be no reasoned objection to having girls as choristers. Academics who have lent learned support to such views have done so while casually ignoring the many other issues involved. The media, too, generally ignored them, concentrating, instead, on the fact that it had been "proved" that there was little difference between the voices of young girls and boys and sometimes going on to declare that raising doubts about the place of girls in cathedral choirs was simply unpleasant and unacceptable prejudice.
The flimsiness of such views needs exposing. The fact is that the sound of the singing boy has been felt for century upon century to be very special and particularly appropriate for worship. Indeed, it is a sound which would have fallen soft upon the ears of Christ Himself as He prayed in the Temple. It is a sound, too, which has entranced composers both major and minor and for which they have written. Richard Seal, the former Organist and Master of the Choristers at Salisbury, who set the ball rolling for girls' cathedral choirs, declared in a debate on the issue in 1997: "I am tired of people saying, 'Ooh, you cannot tell the difference.' You can!"
In recent times, however, a few statistical studies have queried such received wisdom. In the accompanying article, Dr Arthur Saunders of Bournemouth University now analyses the published research, challenging its methodology and taking issue with its conclusions. If his analysis is correct, that can only mean one thing: the academics who carried out this research must acknowledge their errors as publicly as they have asserted their claims, and where prejudice has been imputed to those who see things differently, the accusation must be withdrawn forthwith.
Simon Lindley
Campaign Welcomes New President
The CTCC Committee is delighted to announce that Simon Lindley DUniv (LMU) FRCO(CHM), FTCL, FRSCM, FGCM has consented to become the Campaign's new President in succession to the late John Sanders OBE, MA, DMus., FRCO(CHM) FRSCM.
Dr Lindley is the long-serving Master of the Music at Leeds Parish Church, the only parish church in England still maintaining a full round of weekday as well as Sunday choral services, and whose famous tradition is of full cathedral style. He is also Chairman of the Friends of the Musicians' Chapel of St.Sepulchre-without-Newgate in the City of London, a Churchwarden of St Sepulchre's, Chairman of the Ecclesiastical Music Trust of the English Hymnal Company, Secretary of the Church Music Society and the holder of other significant voluntary positions in the musical and ecclesiastical worlds.