The Victorian Background

Much of what is taken for granted in the musical life of the major English cathedrals in the late twentieth century was almost completely absent for most of the nineteenth century. Choirs then were ill-disciplined and musically unreliable. Lay clerks, who were paid less than the domestic servants of the clergy, were often absent from weekday services and some were aged and incompetent possessors of freehold. Choristers were poorly educated and surplices (if worn) were retrieved from beneath a seat or music stand. There was no procession of clergy and choir at the start of the service, music was often chosen during the service and, of necessity, not advertised by way of a music list beforehand, repertoire was limited and repetitious, and psalms were sung to unpointed psalters with haphazard results. Cathedral clergy were commonly pluralists and freeholders who took little interest in the cathedral’s music; there were musically illiterate Precentors and Minor Canons who were titled but unable to sing. ¹ Despite repeated calls for cathedral reform, the advice of ecclesiastical commissions, new legislation limiting the power of cathedral bodies, and the bringing into being of the new parish church cathedrals, the musical life of most cathedrals for most of the nineteenth century existed at a very low ebb.