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After a sell-out performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion in April – a three hour marathon, sung in German – the Royston Choral Society return to Royston Parish Church on 5th July to sing some lighter, suitably summery music, written by an English composer.

At a recent rehearsal, tenors in the choir were asked how they felt about singing Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell. Despite the classical theme suggested by the title, all agreed it was a fun piece and all the more enjoyable for being sung in English!

Ian said “I’m enjoying the melodies and dancing rhythms and, having first sung it with the choir in 2016, it’s familiar. After all the effort we’ve put into rehearsals, I’m looking forward to showing how much we’ve improved over the past nine years!”

For James “It’s quite different from the other pieces the choir has been performing recently - there’s a witches’ chorus when we’re being asked to cackle! I always like the summer concerts because they tend to be more relaxed.”

Another James suggests “It will be a nice contrast to the autumn and Easter concerts which tend to be requiems and longer pieces about death – not the most uplifting subject matter!”

Neil praises composer Henry Purcell as ”a wonderful composer who creates fireworks and involves drunken nymphs – the piece is really exciting.” He goes on to suggest “There’s something for everyone because there are different moods through the piece. Singing a variety of pieces is good for the audience but also for the choir – learning new things keeps us fresh for each concert.”

Tickets for the concert, at 7.30pm on Saturday 5th July at St John’s Church in Royston, are £18 and available online at https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/royston-choral-society, by phone 01920 822723 and, if available, on the door.

The most recent performance by Royston Choral Society was one of its most ambitious – Bach’s St Matthew Passion. It involved six soloists and a full orchestra and, despite a packed audience of 240, it made a financial loss. We invited our Treasurer Caroline Franks to explain the money behind our music-making.

Rehearsal costs

All choir members pay a subscription to sing in the choir and rehearse each Tuesday evening in St John’s Church in Royston. Our Musical Director and Accompanist are paid for their time, and including venue hire, each weekly rehearsal costs us £295, or about £4 per head. As each term holds between 10 and 14 weeks, you will see how those costs, plus the library costs for the music, our annual insurance, performing rights fees and Making Music [a choral societies association] subscription take up the bulk of our subscription income. Our increased choir numbers do mean that there’s a little left over to put towards the costs of our concerts.

Concert costs

Concerts are our costly activity. This spring, we sang Bach’s St Matthew Passion, the most expensive work we’re mounted to date. It is a fantastic piece to sing, and we had a sell-out audience, but the costs on the day of that concert amounted to £8,900 (more than 90% of that paid for musicians and soloists).  At £22 per ticket, that equates to 405 tickets needing to be sold to cover the concert costs. With the number of performers taking space in front of the conductor, the audience capacity of the venue is 240!

Unfortunately, despite having an experienced fund-raiser in the choir who has been able to secure amazing grant funding over the years, this time the only grants we received amounted to £100. The upshot for our March concert is that we ended up with a net loss of £3,700.

We’re committed to singing large works with orchestral support, but we need to balance those with smaller scale works, and work ever harder to sell the maximum number of tickets each time. Knowing that the Matthew Passion was coming, we performed our November concert this season with a string quartet, and we will do the same in July. In December we chose not to include the brass players who have joined us for the last few Christmas concerts.

Of related interest: https://www.roystonchoralsoc.org.uk/Articles/UnsungHeroes

Choir members were invited to share their choice of music for their funeral service. This was tenor Jason Sanderson’s selection of five pieces.

1. Finlandia for coffin procession. It's a piece of music that brings me to tears as it’s so full of emotion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE0RbPsC9uE&t=1s

2. Alla Hornpipe from Handel’s Water Music for when my coffin leaves. This was the first piece of classical music that I appreciated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRoEo7lZO6s

3. In the Bleak Midwinter for no other reason than it's my favourite Christmas Carol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb9tHjuy9Hw

4. Cantique De Jean Racine So much beauty, a true example of musical artistry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g16zSj6Ynko

5. Byrd Ave Verum The greatest of all the Ave Verums. So simple and full of passion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3vuU7XAaUM

As we prepare for the summer 2025 concert, here are my personal reflections on the experience of singing with Royston Choral Society.

Music has always been part of my life, starting with piano from a young age, working through the grades, teaching myself the guitar, then taking up the opportunity to have cello lessons so that I could play in orchestras.

Singing was something that took off in my mid-forties when I joined a small chamber choir in my local village, where I learned singing basics like how to breathe, how to produce an expressive sound, and gradually gained confidence in my voice and ability to hold a line against the other singing parts. I also enjoyed the chance to sing in many different music genres including renaissance, classical, romantic, sacred, jazz and pop.

Since then I have sung with quite a few different choirs in Sussex, Essex and South Cambridgeshire. Finding the right choir to join has been a major factor whenever we’ve moved to a different area. For the past five years I have been singing with larger choral societies tackling some of the bigger works of the choral repertoire.

I joined Royston in September 2024, and was pleased to find a good quality choir near to where I now live. The first concert in the Autumn term comprised works by Faure, Parry and Britten, then in the Spring we tackled Bach’s St Matthew Passion, sung in German!

Now for the Summer concert we are going back still further in time to the music of Purcell, in particular, Dido and Aeneas, one of the first English operas to be written.

So why do I enjoy singing? For me the benefits of singing in a choir are many: it’s enjoyable, it’s educational, it can be challenging, it’s sociable, and it’s healthy for mind and body.

1. What is your earliest memory of music in your life? 

I cannot remember a time I did not want to sing. Earliest? Probably BBC Light Programme jingles from the radio in our kitchen in the 1950s. 

2. What was your first 'public performance' of music/ drama/ or both? 

Primary school, aged about five. We had a song "Little Robin Redbreast" which the class sung, and I (with bright red hair) stood up and mimed to it pretending to be a robin. I remember it to this day. Terrifying!

3. Who is your favourite composer/ songwriter, and why? 

For classical, Ralph Vaughan-Williams. Mike Oldfield, but also classic 1970s/1980s rock/pop - The Quo, Shania Twain, Don Maclean.  

4. What composition/ piece/ song would you recommend to a friend to brighten up their day? 

I have no idea! People's likes are so individual. 

5. Do you have a musical 'claim to fame'? 

I have written and performed a few slightly silly songs for my Cambridge postgraduate classes (when I was teaching them) and ditto for the 'filk' sessions at science fiction conferences in the last few years (not a typo - see http://filk.co.uk/index.html). So if 'fame' means less than 100 people, there you go. 

In this broadcast from the Choral History of Britain BBC Wales series, Roderick Williams explores whether Britain has lost its singing culture and, if so, how it can be recovered. Have we lost our memories for the words and tunes that enabled us to sing together? Roderick Williams is worried that the future of Britain's great choral tradition might be under threat.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b0979f3z?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

Choirmaster Gareth Malone takes on his biggest challenge, coaching eight amateur singers to perform Bach’s St John Passion alongside a world-class orchestra and professional choir.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m001xpv0/gareth-malones-easter-passion

Amid the rubble, in makeshift tents, children in Gaza are singing - and practising the violin, guitar and traditional instruments such as the ‘oud. Why - and how - do they go on singing? And what does music mean to them now? Tim Whewell finds out.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0024mxc

My earliest musical memories

I’ve always loved music from the very earliest age.  I can remember singing myself to sleep, making my own songs up.  My granddaughter does the same now!  I danced at every opportunity and cried at sad-sounding music. Thanks to an enthusiastic music teacher at school, I learnt to play the piano and have some great memories of singing in school choirs and taking part in plays and musicals. I was put into competitions which I found terrifying, so since then I’ve always preferred to hide in a group!

My favourite music

I love any music that moves me in some way, whatever genre. I have thoroughly enjoyed singing in the Royston choir for nearly 10 years, discovering some amazing pieces to sing, as well as making some wonderful friends.  Highlights include the Messiah (twice), Dido and Aeneas, and Verdi’s Requiem. I think the standard of productions we put on is very high, and I feel very privileged to be part of it: I am always in awe of the soloists, both from within the choir and outside.  

A musical claim to fame

I was one of the first two female choristers in Gonville and Caius College Cambridge choir.  As a result, I was singing in Florence on the day of my 21st birthday: that whole tour to Italy is a special memory.

A happy musical memory

Before I retired, I was involved in introducing music to pre-schoolers…highlights include seeing a little boy’s face light up in awe and wonder whilst listening to Nessun Dorma during snack time.  Another time I invited my Scottish friend to play bagpipes outside the nursery, which was a bit much for one child who hid under the table!  

Quick plug: I organise voluntary monthly music groups in old people’s homes where parents and grandparents bring young children along.  If you would like to join us, please do let me know.  It’s incredibly rewarding.

Since childhood, I never expected to be any good at singing. When I was in junior school – I think it must have been about 1970, when I would have been eight – one of the music teachers told me to stop singing because I was flat. I took her at her word, and that was it for over 20 years. As a teenager I learned the piano and then the flute, and I took my flute with me to Bristol University. I never quite made it into an orchestra, although I did play in church, and I looked enviously at friends in the various choral societies.

It took a journey across the Atlantic to change me. My second post-doc was at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland, a small, friendly city about 50 miles from Washington DC. When I arrived in November 1990 I knew about half a dozen people in the whole country, and no one at all in Frederick. On my first Sunday, I went to a church that another of the young scientists had recommended to me. She introduced me to one of her friends, Denise Achey (now Berry), who was the church’s musical director and conducted its adults’ and children’s choirs. When Denise asked me to join the adult choir I accepted gratefully, but only because I thought it would be a good way to make friends. Denise, it turned out, was one of those rare people who could get music out of the most unlikely people. I sang in my first service on Christmas Eve, and that choir was a mainstay of my friendship group for the remainder of my time in Frederick. My first ‘big’ choral work was the Messiah parts 1 and 2 the following Easter.

I have sung in choirs for most of the time since my American adventure, although – perhaps looking back to that abashed eight-year-old – I still freeze at any thought of auditioning.  I have been delighted to share my husband Aidan’s hobby (he sings second tenor with the Cambridge Phil, which does audition). And Royston has been an ideal non-audition choir for me: it feels a very long way from two-thirds of a Messiah to the St Matthew Passion.