The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge

One of the good things about singing seven services per week is that over the year the Choir covers a vast repertoire. And a varied one also, such that within one week, you could be singing Spanish Renaissance, 20th Century English choral music, Bach Cantatas, newly commissioned works and a Romantic French Mass. This provides a task for the Choir to adapt to a number of different styles of singing, not just within a week, but even within a service.

The Anthem and Canticles from this week's webcast call for a similar style of detailed clarity and direction in individual lines whilst keeping in mind the overall structure of the music; whereas the Lord's Prayer (for example) in Leighton's setting of the Responses and Preces demands direction and phrasing as a unit and a greater legato and line as the impetus for the phrasing, one could say. Whatever the interpretation, it is always a Challenge to mould the Choir's unique sound and sensibilities to a whole spectrum of music, something shown in the vastly wide-ranging musical compass of the Choir's discography. In this service another side-affect of the Leighton and Philips, say, being placed alongside one another is that the ways in which different periods of composition have influenced later composers are brought to light, not least for those singing the music. Thus the clarity of texture required to give sense to the Philips can equally be applied to Leighton's response 'As it was in the beginning'. Members of the Choir are never the sort to add in false relations wherever possible (as is occasionally the case elsewhere), but one might have slipped through the net in the Weelkes...