Cathedral choirs face funding crisis

BRITAIN’S cathedral choirs are facing a crisis as they battle stretched finances and problems recruiting and retaining young choristers.

The group Friends of Cathedral Music, which distributes around £250,000 annually to cathedral music departments, has this year received an unprecedented request for more than £1 million from 36 choirs, but will only be able to deliver around half of that.

Christopher Gower, a former Master of the Music at Peterborough Cathedral, who heads the Friends’ grant scrutiny panel, said that without funding for bursaries, choir schools are under threat. “There are considerable funding issues,” said Mr Gower. “The more major choral foundations, which previously had quite considerable endowments, don’t have what they once had. Chapters have spent their reserves and consequently scholarship levels have dropped. There is a cost involved in vocal and musical training.

“In the past we didn’t support individual choristers, but more recently we have responded to requests from directors of music. A parent might have lost their job or be in difficult circumstances and there is a shortfall so they come to us to provide any help we can.”

He said that today cathedrals were looking at new ways to run their choirs, including recruiting choristers in their local community, adding: “Having a choir school on the doorstep is becoming much more difficult to sustain and anyway parents are less inclined to send their children away to school.”

This week the Friends’ chairman, Professor Peter Toyne, was among a number of prominent figures who signed a letter in The Times asking the public to help fund their local cathedral choir.

The Catholic composer Roxanna Panufnik (pictured left) and the TV presenter Alexander Armstrong were co-signatories. They wrote: “This is an investment in the future of music in this country. Many of our finest musicians have come through the cathedral tradition.

“We urge all who cherish this enduringly relevant cultural, historical and educational tradition to support it.”