Strolling around college quads certain evenings of the week, you’re likely to catch a glimpse of a sea of waist-high gowns and ruffled collars clustered outside. Almost every day, dressed in white cassocks, a select few boys break the silence of college chapels as they lead services in both song and in prayer.
Christ Church Cathedral Choir, Magdalen College Choir, and New College Choir are Oxford’s three choral foundations – so called because a choir and a school were part of their original founding statutes. At the age of seven or eight, young boys can apply to their prestigious choristerships so that if successful, and until their voices break, they are given access to extensive music training as well as generous bursaries to help cover school fees and the cost of their music lessons. Usually, two-thirds of school tuition fees are paid for.
The 16 boys in each choir typically sing four to six days a week, up to three times a day in the week’s most popular services – Evensong, Sunday services, and Communions. Most also learn two instruments and sing in the choirs’ official recordings, broadcasts, concerts, and tours.
Oxford choral foundations’ choristerships are some of the most prestigious in the country. They are also the only British choirs outside of London that don’t include girl choristers.
Historic and modern background
The tradition of boys and men singing in parish choirs existed in Oxford as early as the 14th century, long before it became popular in the wider Anglican church in the early 19th century (fueled in part by the Oxford Movement, which introduced Catholic liturgical practice in Anglican churches). The tradition “played a part in making UK choral music the envy of the world,” Mark Williams, Informator Choristarum (music director) of Magdalen College Choir, told Cherwell.
One argument in favour of boy choirs is that only boys can have the desired pure treble voice – that the discrimination is not based on gender, but rather on sound. Yet most music critics say the differences are barely noticeable and that if young male voices sound unique it is simply because they have benefitted from more intensive training.
More strikingly, the vast majority of adult female sopranos can emulate boy trebles. If the issue were only about sound, it would be preferable to employ adults, who are more experienced and competent, than eight-year-old boys.
Cathedrals across the country struggling with the cost of educating their choristers have increasingly replaced them with adult sopranos. “Education is an expensive business,” Williams observed, but Oxford choral foundations “hold fast to the value of educating young singers.”
Tradition, today
Tradition is one reason why foundation choristers have kept all-male choristerships. Boys have sung for New College Chapel since the College’s foundation in 1379, as originally provisioned by the founder of the College, William of Wykeham. Magdalen College Choir have worked with boy choristers since the foundation of the College in 1480, and Christ Church Cathedral Choir since Henry VIII founded the College in 1546.
Salisbury Cathedral became the first-ever cathedral to introduce girl choristers in 1991. Since then, most across the country have followed. In 2022, St Paul’s Cathedral in London announced the establishment of a choir of girl choristers who will share the singing of services with the choir of boy choristers. In 2023 Westminster Abbey established a choir of girl choristers to sing some services, separately to the boys choir.
All three of Oxford’s choir schools which educate the choristers – Christ Church Cathedral School, Magdalen College School and New College School – are boys’ schools, with Magdalen College School accepting girls in the sixth form only.
Williams told Cherwell: “Those schools’ understanding, flexibility and support of the choristers is intrinsic to the success and wellbeing of children … but, for the time being, the schools continue … educating only boys in a city and area where, for whatever reason, there are far more single sex schools than in most parts of the country.”
Current research
A research paper on Oxford’s choral system also found that “construction costs and difficulties in putting up girl’s toilets and facilities” have been cited to justify their reluctance to accept girls to choirs.
Another argument for protecting boy choristers is that these positions have become less and less popular amongst boys, and so if girls were allowed to sing in them fewer boys would join choirs. In 2019, The Times reported that the number of girl choristers was higher than the number of boy choristers in the UK for the first time.
Mark Williams agrees that people must be careful not to discourage young boys from singing. “Boys [need] a safe space in which to sing and to be proud of singing at a high level, in a world where dressing up in robes and singing in church doesn’t align with preconceived stereotypes of what boys should do.”
Elisabeth Stenlake, a first-year lawyer, is one of the two female singers in Magdalen College Choir this year. She joined Magdalen after singing as a chorister in Durham where there was both a girls choir and a boys choir. She told Cherwel: “Young girls should have the opportunity to be a chorister [just like the] boys do… but it should be done in a way that is an addition rather than replacing the boys with girls, as all children should have this chance.”
Two years ago, St John’s College Cambridge admitted its first girl choristers to sing alongside the boy choristers in a mixed soprano line. St John’s College School Cambridge is one of many choir schools that provide education for both boys and girls. Last month St John’s faced criticism after ending funding for a separate mixed voice choir, the St John’s Voices, in a move called “fundamentally regressive” by the former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.
In Oxford, Christ Church’s Frideswide Voices, created in 2014, and the Choir of Merton College both include more than 20 girls aged seven to 14 singing around twice each week. But the programmes are not nearly as intensive as those accessible to boys, who sing almost every day.
Obstacles for older singers
The gender imbalance in top choirs permeates past youth. The three choral foundations choirs were all-male until 2016-2017 and today there are between one and three women in each of them. Some other college choirs have only a few female singers.
One reason for this is that some men – countertenors – sing the same line as the altos, who are typically women. Traditionally the female voice was associated with the soprano role, and male countertenors were chosen over female altos, irrespective of musical skill and voice quality. The Choir of St Paul’s Cathedral, for example, which has existed for almost a thousand years, appointed its first female alto in 2017.
Women in Oxford choral foundations told Cherwell their experiences have been positive. Stenlake said: “There have been few female altos in this choir before me, but I have found, especially as there is one other [woman], that it has been a very welcoming and supportive environment. It’s a very fun and social choir where I’ve made so many friends. [I] never feel as if my gender impacts my role within the choir.”
Magdalen College Choir is also unique among Oxford Choral Foundations thanks to its Consort of Voices, as it is the only one which gives the opportunity to adult sopranos to sing with the choir. It is made up of clerks from the College Choir and from sopranos from all over the University, and it sings evensong every Saturday during term time. They occasionally also sing extra services during school half-term.
There are also active mixed choirs around the University which advocate for gender inclusivity. Many college chapel choirs, including all of those that are non-auditioning, are mixed. Quintin Beer, the Director of Music of the Choir of St Peter’s College, told Cherwell: “Our choir is 50/50 gender and it’s important that it remains that way… SPC is dedicated to providing equal opportunities to male, female, and non-binary singers.”
Professional musicians
The gender imbalance persists in professional choir music, as well. Out of 29 Oxford choirs studied by Cherwell, 25 are conducted by men. Of the four remaining ones, two are conducted by women professionally – Christ Church College Choir and Hertford College Choir. Trinity College Choir and Lincoln College Choir are conducted by a pair of student organ scholars, with one female and one male student in each.
A study conducted by the Church of England also shows that in 2020 in Church of England cathedrals 350 choral scholars and lay clerks – that is, professional adult singers – were men, against only 70 women. This means 80% of professional singers were male. These figures are very different to those for voluntary choirs, where 410 adult singers were men and 710 were women.
There is hope that as choristerships are becoming more accessible to girls and as choirs are starting to appoint female singers, women will begin to gain more choral experience, and more will choose to pursue music at university or even professional level. While timelines for change remain unclear, inclusion at early ages will accelerate long term evolution in choral gender integration.
