Singing in an Oxford chapel choir

The University of Oxford has many choirs attached to its many college chapels. The oldest are known as the ‘ancient choral foundations’, and these are the Magdalen College Choir, the New College Choir, and the Christ Church Cathedral Choir. The rest of the colleges’ choirs are made of male and female undergraduates (mixed-voice), but the ancient foundations are made of men and boys.

After auditioning, I was fortunate enough to be accepted into the Keble College Choir, one of the mixed-voice undergraduate choirs. There are certain traditions in the Anglican Church regarding what services to sing each week, and it is the job of these chapel choirs to sing the required services.

For the Keble College Choir, we sing what is called Eucharist on Sunday evenings. This is essentially what Mass is in the Catholic Church, and is also called Holy Communion. This is our longest service, at about one hour and fifteen minutes. What many composers have done is take the spoken text of the Mass and set it to choral music, so we almost always sing a composer’s setting of the Mass, usually in Latin. On Wednesdays we sing Evensong, which is short for ‘evening-song’. This service is roughly forty-five minutes and includes readings, prayers, and mainly singing. Included in the singing of every Evensong are Responses, where a soloist will sing a short line and the choir responds in harmony, and the Evening Canticles, two texts from the Book of Luke that countless composers have set to music called the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis. Evensong is perhaps the most well-known service in the Anglican Church, and if you walk around any of the colleges in Oxford, you will likely see signs such as ‘Choral Evensong Tonight’ to draw people in. Finally, on Thursdays, we sing a nighttime service called Compline, also known as night prayer. This service is especially beautiful because all the lights in the chapel are turned off, and candles are placed in the walkway and by the altar. We have to use little lights on our music folders in order to sing. This service is almost entirely sung.

Compared to the ancient choral foundations, Keble has a rather open schedule – the ancient choirs sing Evensong almost every day, and rehearse much more frequently. In those choirs, you are required to be studying music in order to audition, and the boys all attend specialized choir schools. In the undergraduate choirs, however, you might be singing along with engineering or literature students who also just love to sing.

What we sing a lot of on Sundays and Thursdays especially is Gregorian chant, which is one melodic line that everyone sings in unison (or a switch-off between the men and women, for example). Our choir director will usually accompany us on the organ with simple harmony.

An example of what this sounds like can be found here: https://youtu.be/6TTJTQ24kTQ?t=4

I am very excited to be part of the music-making scene here at Oxford, and singing in a chapel choir is a great way to experience the musical traditions of England while here. If you are ever in Oxford, I would highly recommend attending a choral service at any of the chapels in the city (they’re hard not to find).