This recording is a wide selection of popular anthems which will appeal to a wide range of listeners, visitors and churchgoers with music for contemplation and penitence, through to celebrations of joy and resurrection.
Rochester Cathedral is the Mother Church of the second most ancient diocese in England, and has resounded to the singing of God’s praises since A.D. 604.
From its earliest times, Rochester has been famous for the training of singers. In his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, Book IV Bede writes of Bishop Putta, enthroned as Bishop of Rochester in 669 that: “He was extraordinarily skilful in the Roman style of church music, which he had learned from the disciples of the holy Pope Gregory”.
Bede goes on to say that: “From that time also they began in all the churches of the English to learn sacred music, which till then had been only known in Kent”.
The Cathedral Choir at Rochester can therefore claim to be the heir to a very ancient tradition as it maintains the round of daily worship. The Cathedral Choir is made up of three parts: Boy Choristers, Girl Choristers and the Lay Clerks. The boys sing the majority of the Cathedral’s choral services during term and are all educated at King’s Rochester Preparatory School. The Girls’ Choir was founded in 1995 and was one of the first girls’ choirs to be introduced in an English Cathedral. The girls attend a variety of local schools, including King’s and sing regularly in the weekly schedule. The Lay Clerks provide the alto, tenor and bass parts to the chorister treble line; they are drawn from a pool of professional singers from all over Kent and London and also include three choral scholars.
