The vocation of a chorister, although of course inferior to that of a priest in ministerial power, is yet higher than that of a priest, so far as the odour of sanctity peculiar to childhood imparts a glory to the office which appertains to no other," wrote a fellow of Magdalen College Oxford in an 1848 manual called The Devout Chorister.
My early childhood was bookmarked by cathedral-choir services because my older brother, Kit Hesketh-Harvey, was a senior chorister at Canterbury Cathedral. My sister and I sat through the solemnity of it and then watched him play hopscotch on the flagstones in the cloisters. I still have a recording of Kit, aged nine, singing the page's verse in Good King Wenceslas.
When he died, aged 65, in February 2023, his fellow choristers sent their recollections. These included an account of Kit's extreme tidiness and care of his cassock. The image of angelic order was disturbed when they met many years later in the Bacchanalian haze of the Piers Gaveston Society. Most readers of COUNTRY LIFE will remember Kit as an exuberant, satirical cabaret singer, but, at heart and in his soul, he remained a chorister.
When I went to visit the composer and conductor Sir John Rutter, who had taught Kit at Cambridge, he told me, unexpectedly, that Kit was one of his most serious students, bright and sensitive. He gave an example of his acute study of sacred music. Sir John had playfully passed off one of his own pieces as a newly unearthed composition by Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924), the choral composer. The only person not fooled was Kit.
"You see," said Sir John, his eyes pools of light, "there is no such thing as an ex-chorister."
Former choristers would always wince if they saw a picture slightly askew-they understood the need for precision, for diction.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der November 27, 2024-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der November 27, 2024-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
