I Saw Eternity the Other Night

King’s College Choir, the Nine Lessons and Carols, and an English Singing Style

Timothy Day author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd

Published:7th Nov '19

£12.99

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I Saw Eternity the Other Night cover

Investigating the timbres of voices, the enunciation of words, the use of vibrato, I Saw Eternity the Other Night provides an original answer to this question and illuminates the ways in which the singing of all human beings, in whatever style, reflects in profound and subtle ways their preoccupations and attitudes to life.

'Erudite, original and surprisingly moving ... This Christmas, as at every Christmas, millions of listeners will have relished the ethereal King's choir ... Day's meticulous history of a special choral sound investigates the creation of a style, and the evolution of a tradition, that now feels as anciently English as the stonework of King's chapel itself' Boyd Tonkin

The sound of the choir of King's College, Cambridge - its voices perfectly blended, its emotions restrained, its impact sublime - has become famous all over the world, and for many, the distillation of a particular kind of Englishness. This is especially so at Christmas time, with the broadcast of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, whose centenary is celebrated this year. How did this small band of men and boys in a famous fenland town in England come to sing in the extraordinary way they did in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries?

It has been widely assumed that the King's style essentially continues an English choral tradition inherited directly from the Middle Ages. In this original and illuminating book, Timothy Day shows that this could hardly be further from the truth. Until the 1930s, the singing at King's was full of high Victorian emotionalism, like that at many other English choral foundations well into the twentieth century.

The choir's modern sound was brought about by two intertwined revolutions, one social and one musical. From 1928, singing with the trebles in place of the old lay clerks, the choir was fully made up of choral scholars - college men, reading for a degree. Under two exceptional directors of music - Boris Ord from 1929 and David Willcocks from 1958 - the style was transformed and the choir broadcast and recorded until it became the epitome of English choral singing, setting the benchmark for all other choral foundations either to imitate or to react against. Its style has now been taken over and adapted by classical performers who sing both sacred and secular music in secular settings all over the world with a precision inspired by the King's tradition.

I Saw Eternity the Other Night
investigates the timbres of voices, the enunciation of words, the use of vibrato. But the singing of...

The King's choir's glory years under Ord and Willcocks are at the heart of Day's massive, impeccably researched book. Its scope, however, is far wider. ... The sound is a 20th-century British invention, which - because it coincided with the rise of broadcasting and recording - went on to conquer the world. -- Richard Morrison * The Times *
This eye-opening - and ear-opening - book ... investigates the creation of a style, and the evolution of a tradition, that now feels as anciently English as the tentacular late-Gothic stonework of King's chapel itself. Along the way, Day's meticulous history of a special choral sound opens out into an exploration of the ever-shifting bonds between music and society, and art and faith. -- Boyd Tonkin * Arts Desk *
Magisterial but extremely readable ... full of fascinating detail and shrewd insights -- Clare Stevens * Choir & Organ *

ISBN: 9780141988597

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 24mm

Weight: 327g

416 pages