Choirs
There are five choirs: the Schola Cantorum, the Junior House Choir, the School Choir, the Chamber Choir and the Girls' Choir.
Schola Cantorum
The Schola sings at the Oratory Church every week during the term and also in the school Chapel during the week: it is formed mainly from boys who have joined the school at the age of seven and who have been selected by audition, examination and interview.
Chamber Choir
Is open to all pupils with choral ability and specialises in more demanding music, particularly the traditional liturgical music of the Church. The Choir tours annual and performs concerts in Churches across Europe, most recently to Germany, Italy, Portugal and Malta.
Girls' Choir
This is open to Sixth Form Girls and numbers 20 in all. They perform a varied repertoire ranging from scared works by Archer, Rheinberger, Faure and Britten. They have performed several new commissions by Howard Skempton, David Terry and Danny Lesdema. Concerts have taken place at Brompton Oratory, Westminster Cathedral, Hampstead Parish Church and in Ealing. They have also performed in Krakow and Paris.
School Choir
This is set up to allow as many pupils who wish to sing to do so and includes some Junior House boys (J3 and J4, non –Schola). It numbers about 80 pupils and rehearses once a week. It joins the adult Choral Society in a termly concert of Oratorio at different London Churches, with professional orchestra and soloists.
Choral Society
is open to pupils, parents, staff and friends and performs a concert each term in venues in London. Recent works include Verdi's Requiem, Orff's Carmina Burana, Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, Mozart's Mass in C minor and Duke Ellington's Sacred Concert.
In recent years singers from the choirs have taken part in the school's productions of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and King Arthur, Britten's Golden Vanity, Noye's Fludde and The Children's Crusade, Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors, Richard Rodney Bennett's opera All the King's Men, The Ballad of Solomon Pavey, an Elizabethan ballad opera about the children of the Chapel Royal, Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe, The Mikado, Patience, Trial by Jury and The Pirates of Penzance, The Beggars Opera by John Gay, Mozart's The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro and Cosi Fan Tutte, Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld, Bizet's Carmen and South Pacific by Rodgers and Hammerstein.The choir regularly gives concerts of sacred and secular music at the school and also out of school and has performed at Oxford and Cambridge colleges, the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal National Theatre and the Purcell Room on the South Bank, and some of the boys sing at the English National Opera, and the Royal Opera House. |
