- Title: UK: CHOIR OF NEW COLLEGE OXFORD RELEASES THEIR LATEST CD 'BLUEBIRD'
- Date: 23rd October 2000
- Summary: MCU DOMINIC BURNHAM SINGING IN CHOIR
- Embargoed: 7th November 2000 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: OXFORD, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
- Country: United Kingdom
- Topics: Education,Entertainment,Education
- Reuters ID: LVACX2FNEZHHDSUZ9Q1TZOL2Q9GP
- Story Text: The exquisite Choir of New College Oxford in England have just released their latest CD, 'Bluebird,' twenty tracks of secular and religious choral music and they're hoping to repeat the success of their first foray into the music charts 'Agnus Dei' which sold a phenomenal hundred thousand copies around the world. For the boys of the choir it's a disciplined life but there's always time for football.
New College, Oxford, despite the name is actually more than six hundred years old.
It was built in 1379 by William of Wykeham, who also established a choir. Its main function is to accompany services in the chapel, but the singers also tour, and have now recorded seventy commercial discs.
The older choir members are university students, but the younger ones are pupils at the New College school.
Their director is Dr Edward Higginbottom, who has had varied career as a conductor, including performances at the Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw, and the London Proms.
"Our founder, William of Wykeham, who was High Chancellor of England, decided to set up a choir here,"
Dr.Higginbottom says.
"It was his decision. And for that choir he need choristers - the boys - and he needed the men. And that's the format we have had since then.
"About thirty voices, comprising men and boys."
This onth they've released their latest album - 'Bluebird,' after the title track written by Charles Stanford, who died in 1924.
The choir are hoping to match the success of their previous release, Agnus Dei, which went to the top of the classical music charts, and sold more than a hundred thousand copies around the world.
"This was a great success; it's a lovely recording that touched a lot of people," Dr. Higginbottom says of 'Bluebird.' "It's got a programme with something for everybody.
Beautifully recorded, lovely singing.
"And I think that people like a recording where they can move from one piece to another without having to concentrate on a single composer or concentrate perhaps too hard; it's music that can drift across them."
Oxford is known as the "Dreaming City of the Spires"
because of its beautiful skyline of gothic towers and steeples, most of which belong to the various colleges which make up the university, the oldest in England.
The entrance to the city is marked by Magdalen College's Great Tower, which overlooks the bridge across the River Cherwell.
Oxford may be a premier university city, but relationships between the academic institution and local people have not always been harmonious. In 1355, a mob murdered a group of university staff.
The city played an important part during the civil war, when King Charles retired to Oxford after suffering a defeat at the battle of Newbury in the neighbouring county.
Parliamentary forces laid siege to the town, and its fall to Lord Fairfax's army proved to be one of the most significant developments in the battle between King and Country.
Later, Oxford became a stagecoach stop, and, in the nineteenth century, an important junction for the railway.
In the early 20th century, the city became a centre of light engineering.
But today, as ever, Oxford is famous for its university - and its students who traditionally have travelled from lecture to lecture on bicycles.
The New College School has a full range of lessons and activities for the children, not just music, in order that all the scholars can become well - rounded adults.
"The boys between nine and 13, they have a normal school day," Dr. Higginbottom says.
"They are very bright, they get good exam results. Many of them go to the leading universities - Oxford, Cambridge. So what we do doesn't narrow them. It adds something; it broadens them.
"And the research has been done; the relationship between making music, and particularly singing, and your mental and emotional development is established.
"We know it has a powerful and beneficial effect. So it's an enormous plus for their work."
Twelve year old Dominic Burnham is one of the trebles in the New College school, who likes to play hard, work hard, and sing sweetly, until his voice breaks, at least.
"It's great being a chorister, because you get to travel around the world singing and you get to play football, too!"
It's all about using modern approaches to stay true to the traditions established six centuries ago.
"I think it's immensely important, this choral tradition," Dr. Higginbottom says.
"Because it's one of those areas where we not only stay faithful to our tradition, but we are continually responding to the contemporary forces of the market place.
"We are taking this music out and presenting it to a broad public using all the modern technical things that we can use these days."
The haunting music, which has its traditions in medieval England, is according to its makers, just the solution for the pressures of today's modern world - a claim it's hard to disagree with. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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