Trinity College Choir, Cambridge

The Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge is a mixed choir whose primary function is to sing choral services in the Tudor chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge. The choir has taken various forms since its foundation, and has existed in its present form since 1982 when, shortly after the admission of women to the college, female voices were used for the first time for the choir’s top lines.

Three regular services are sung per week in full University Term, and the choir sings Latin grace from the minstrels' gallery in the college’s Great Hall at a number of feasts. In addition, the choir undertakes projects outside term-time such as recordings, concerts, radio broadcasts and tours.

The choir typically numbers between 25 and 35 members, most of whom are students in Trinity College.

In January 2011, Gramophone named the choir the fifth best choir in the world.

The constitution of the medieval chapel choir remains obscure, but the choral foundation which Mary Tudor established in 1553 (ten choristers, six lay clerks, four priests, an organist, and a schoolmaster) survived essentially unchanged for over 300 years. Among the musicians associated with the choir during this time were the Tudor composers Thomas Preston, Robert White and John Hilton the elder; Robert Ramsey was organist just before the English Commonwealth; the lutenist and writer Thomas Mace was a lay clerk for around 70 years from 1635; and Thomas Attwood Walmisley was organist in the early 19th century.

At the turn of the 20th century, shortly after Ralph Vaughan Williams had graduated from Trinity and Alan Gray had succeeded Charles Villiers Stanford as Organist, the College choir school was closed down. Thereafter, a choir of boy trebles (holding scholarships at a local grammar school), lay clerks (some of whom shared their duties with the choirs of King's and St John's Colleges) and students continued the regular pattern of choral services until the 1950s. This traditionally-constituted body then gave way to a choir of undergraduate tenors and basses during Raymond Leppard's tenure as Director of Music, to be replaced with a mixed choir by Richard Marlow in 1982. Wikipedia