Carols from Chichester Cathedral

Info & track listings

Christmas is a special time for Chichester Cathedral Choir. In addition to a run of concerts at the Festival Theatre and services for radio and local organizations, the Choir sings the traditional services on Christmas Eve and Day, and three Cathedral services of lessons and carols. The selection of music for Carols from Chichester Cathedral is intended to capture the spirit of these services, which are popular with the young and old alike.

Some of the usual congregational carols, with the familiar David Willcocks descants, sit alongside other Christmas favourites such as In the bleak mid-winter and Tomorrow shall be my dancing day. Mark Wardell’s Rocking was specially written for the Choristers for this CD, and like David Hill’s Away in a manger demonstrates the power of a good tune in the hands of a skilful arranger.

The Lay Vicars sing one to a part in Brian Kay’s version of Gaudete, and at the other end of the spectrum is the atmospheric full choir work Lux aurumque by the contemporary American composer, Eric Whitacre. The Sussex Carol is particularly appropriate for Chichester Cathedral Choir: the melody is reputed to have been collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Cecil Sharp in the West Sussex village of Monk’s Gate.

The Cathedral Choir is accompanied on the Hill organ by Mark Wardell, who also plays three contrasting settings for solo organ of In dulci jubilo and J.S. Bach’s Chorale Prelude Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her – ‘From heaven above, to earth I come’.

Chichester Cathedral Choir is one of the most respected Cathedral choirs in the country, and is particularly noted for its wide-ranging liturgical repertoire, which forms the backbone of the daily offering of worship in the beautiful acoustic of the Cathedral. The statutes at Chichester provide for eighteen trebles and six Lay Vicars.

The Lay Vicars are all professional singers and live in or near the Cathedral Close. The Choristers are educated at the Prebendal School where they start as “Probationers” in Year 3 or 4 (age 8-9), and usually after one year they become full Choristers.