Southwark Cathedral Merbecke Choir

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Southwark Cathedral Merbecke Choir was created in late 2003 to give former cathedral choristers a place to keep singing. It also welcomes other young singers, including ex-choral scholars from university choirs and student singers based in London. It is the only amateur chamber choir attached to a London cathedral.

The choir is named after John Merbecke, a 16th‑century English writer and musician who published a song‑noted edition of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer. He was tried for heresy in 1543 at Southwark Cathedral but was pardoned after the intervention of the Bishop of Winchester.

The Merbecke Choir is part of Southwark Cathedral’s music department. It sings at the monthly Compline and Eucharistic Devotions during term time, and sometimes at Evensong. It also performs at special services and gives three concerts each year at Christmas, Passiontide and in the summer.

The current director is Emily Elias, who took over in September 2016 from Huw Morgan. Morgan had combined the post with another music job at St Laurence’s, Catford, and had previously led All Saints, Blackheath. He later joined St Peter’s Cathedral in Hamilton as Director of Music. The founding director was Ian Keatley; he was followed by David Pipe in 2006, who left in 2008 to work at York Minster and later at York again.

The choir mainly sings early European liturgical music, but for concerts it also includes new works, such as Huw Morgan’s The Word of the Cross, Michael Bonaventure’s Doxology, and Ian McQueen’s English Requiem.

In December 2006 the choir was broadcast worldwide performing Ding Dong Merrily On High as the finale to the Queen’s Christmas message. In July 2009 they gave a concert called “I Sing of a Rose” with Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu in attendance to celebrate two new varieties of rose and the 800th anniversary of the first stone-built London Bridge. In August 2009 they sang at a special evensong to mark the 20th anniversary of the Marchioness disaster; the BBC recorded the service and later showed parts of it on BBC One.

In October 2009 they sang for the Archbishop of Canterbury at the Operation Noah lecture on the climate crisis. In March 2011 they toured France, performing in Rouen Cathedral and the Madeleine in Paris to mark the 400th anniversary of Tomás Luis de Victoria, ending with a concert back in Southwark. Since 2011 they have sung Crisis’s annual carol service, in the presence of Princess Alexandra, the charity’s patron.