I Saw Eternity the Other Night: King's College Choir, the Nine Lessons and Carols, and an English Singing Style

Description

An 'erudite, original and surprisingly moving' history of the evolution of England's best-loved singing style (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, a tradition stretching back to the Middle Ages. This is especially so at Christmas time, with the broadcast of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. 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? 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.

Timothy Day was for many years Curator of Western Art Music in the British Library's Sound Archive. He has written and lectured widely on English cathedral music, was a visiting senior research fellow at King's College, London 2006-11, and served on the Management Committee of the Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music. For his work on this book, he was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship. His previous books include A Century of Recorded Music- Listening to Musical History and Hereford Choral Society- An Unfinished History.

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 *