Christ Church has the longest documented musical history of any Irish institution, providing a unique perspective on the history of music in Ireland. A deed of 1480 provided for choir boys to sing in the cathedral and a choir school was founded in 1493 by Prior David Wynchester. The cathedral choir has always been highly regarded in Dublin’s musical life and, in 1742, it took part in the first performance of Handel’s Messiah in the New Musick-Hall, Fishamble Street, just to the north-east of the cathedral. With the closure of the choir school in 1972, a new mixed-voice choir was formed and this remains the cathedral’s principal choir today. Music forms an integral part of the cathedral tradition and many musicians associated with Christ Church cathedral from the late Renaissance to the twentieth century composed anthems and services, which survive both in the cathedral archives and in other sources.

During the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the cathedral maintained a choir similar to those in the major cathedrals in England, made up of between ten and twelve men (paid an annual stipend by the cathedral) and boys, who attended the choir school. The repertoire of the choir during this time was conservative—the Anglican choral repertoire nurtured by the cathedrals from the fifteenth century onwards is specialised and self contained, a genre entirely liturgical in context. It consists not just of settings of the Ordinary of the Mass, but also of settings of the daily offices. It is thus more reminiscent of monastic traditions than the repertoire of any other denomination. The repertoire of the choir up until as late as 1970 was contained within these boundaries of traditional Anglican choral music, written primarily by English composers.

Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the choir sang an average of ten services a week. Christ Church was then one of only two cathedrals in Ireland of any denomination providing so much weekly music, the other being the Anglican St Patrick’s Cathedral, also in Dublin. Most services were either Matins or Evensong, with one weekly Eucharist. However, there were continual rumblings of dissatisfaction with funding and facilities for both choirmen and the choir school.

The fortunes of the choir hit an all-time low around 1972, with the demise of the choir school. Throughout the previous two decades, the choir had been in decline — the salaries, which had fallen behind their English equivalents, were too low to attract singers of high quality, the cathedral choir school was being run with inadequate funds and facilities, and the organ in the cathedral was in poor condition. The closure of the choir school meant that it became virtually impossible to find boy choristers of any reasonable standard and, although some resistance to this concept was expressed by traditionalists, it was decided to admit women to the choir. During a brief transition period, the last boys and the first women sang together, and the choir evolved under the direction of the newly appointed Director of Music, Peter Sweeney, into the mixed chamber ensemble seen today.

This was a significant turning point. Under the leadership of Peter Sweeney and supported by Dean Salmon, the Telford organ, which had never been satisfactory, was replaced by an instrument designed and built in Ireland by Kenneth Jones. The continuing and dramatic improvement in the breadth of repertoire and the presence of an instrument sufficiently significant to be used in an international organ festival all combined to see the cathedral establish itself as one of the finest places to hear contemporary, renaissance and traditional Anglican choral works in a liturgical setting during the 1980s. It was throughout this time, and during the 1990s that the choir began to perform concerts in non-liturgical settings, earning itself a reputation around the country as a fine chamber choir, and thus consistently attracting singers of the highest quality. When Peter Sweeney left to pursue his career as a concert organist, he was replaced by the young New Zealander, Mark Duley, who built upon the work of his predecessor and promoted the choir through international tours, concerts and broadcasts, gaining a wider reputation for its high performance standards. Under his direction, the choir made several commercial CD recordings as well as undertaking concert tours to New Zealand, Germany, Croatia, Slovenia and England.

With the appointment of Judy Martin, the choir has continued to prosper. It has remained a unique ensemble within the framework of the broader cathedral choir tradition, being one of the very few cathedral choirs with women singing the soprano and alto lines, and is committed to performing to the highest standards in both liturgical and non-liturgical contexts. This is the choir which you hear today.

(Right) Poem on the first performance of Handel’s Messiah from ‘Faulkner’s Dublin Journal’. Image © Governors and Guardians of Marsh’s Library, Dublin.

Article originally reproduced in cathedral choir USA Tour Brochure 2006, pp 6-7, with some additional material.