If Dr Edward John Hopkins, the founder of the choir of boy choristers and gentlemen in 1841, were to step into Temple Church today, he would find much of the music and many of the traditions in the church familiar. He would no doubt be suitably proud and interested in the way our music programme continues to adapt to the needs of London today, striving to balance tradition and innovation to stay relevant. The principal role of the church choirs is to perform at Wednesday and Sunday services during the legal year, an hour or so of music and word at the start or end of the day. The choirs also promote several ambitious concert programmes each year and sing for important weddings and memorial services. Here, our musicians have the honour of working with families and couples to make music fit perfectly into poignant moments. In the past year, the choirs’ concert repertoire has included programmes of Britten (A Ceremony of Carols), Bach cantatas, Purcell odes, and themed concerts around the Song of Songs and Lamentations, spanning five centuries of musical history.
Opportunities for all
Now in its third year, the church is proud of the sixth form scholarships for sopranos, offering talented students the chance to sing alongside our professional singers and develop their skills to the highest level. Our team provides a yearlong programme of workshops, singing lessons, coaching sessions and performance opportunities, offering a unique opportunity to experience life as a professional singer in a supportive environment. Our team of professionals offer advice and insight from their own varied musical careers.
This year, as we audition new choristers in year three (aged seven), the Temple Church Choir will be open to girls as well as boys, an exciting development for the choir and the Inns, and one which will open the opportunity up to more children. People often ask if this will make a big difference to the way we teach and the sound of the choir. The simple answer to this is ‘no’! There will be very little difference in our day-to-day teaching; we have a first-class team of teachers working with our choir, and we will continue to create a stimulating, supportive and enriching teaching environment for all our choristers. Healthy and well produced singing in children is the same for girls and boys and central to our ethos is the nurturing of a vibrant, expressive, and flexible sound which can be adapted to the needs of different styles of repertoire. As part of our educational programme, we provide a variety of enriching opportunities for the choristers including an internal singing competition, organ and composition workshops, and study trips. Being a chorister in a collegiate style choir is a unique learning experience: receiving expert tuition from our teachers, and then performing alongside professional singers in a huge range of music. We train our choristers to be young professionals from the start and the training itself is very much learning ‘on the job’, and after five or so years in the choir, young teenagers emerge with a professional level skill set and the ability to perform with true confidence and poise. In 2023 one of Temple’s final year choristers, Ivo Clark, performed at the Royal Opera House in their production of Handel’s Jeptha.
The church’s organ is renowned for its English romantic character and plays a key part in the musical identity of the church. Originally built by Harrison & Harrison of Durham for Glen Tanar House in 1927, it was gifted to the Temple Church and its then organist, George Thalben-Ball in 1953. This year, our organist Charles Andrews will record music by Stanford and Parry on the organ, marking the 100th anniversary of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. In the past year we have offered organ experience workshops to our choristers, scholars, visiting groups of organ students, and the organ class from the St Thomas Aquinas Multi-Academy Trust in Leicester. Their students played for the weekly Wednesday organ recital and then enjoyed a workshop discovering sounds on the largest organ they will yet have encountered!
Music in the community
The music department’s choral outreach programme to primary schools, set up and piloted in 2022, is now a key element to our educational programme. With music provision in schools becoming more and more side-lined, our ‘Sing Out’ project is designed to give musical opportunities to primary schools and demonstrate the power of community singing. Each school taking part receives a series of workshops led by our teachers and singers in their schools, leading to an interactive concert in the church for the schools together. For many children, this is their first time in a church, and the first chance they have to hear the organ and professional classical singers. Class and whole singing, once a mainstay of primary schools, is now all but a forgotten art in many primary schools and we are committed to sharing our resources and expertise generously, working alongside partner institutions to bring music back into schools as a core activity. One school taking part this year said afterwards:
It was a truly fantastic day. The children learned a variety of classical songs that they would never have had the opportunity to hear before and we were also very lucky to hear the church organ being played alongside some outstanding classical singing from the tutors. For school children from the East End of London, this was an amazing cultural experience, one we won’t forget in a hurry.
Our small and dedicated team of staff offers a wealth of experience and skills to the varied activities of the choir and music department: Susan Keeling (administrator), Charles Andrews (organist), Emily Elias (chorister tutor), Jane Maben and Parnell Beesley (chaperones) and two part-time singing teachers: Benjamin Williamson and Michael Smith. From our location in the Temple, we benefit from a team with expertise and experience from across many areas of the music industry. As a department we believe it important to be leading the way in our sector in terms of maintaining staff training and development, this year including training in SEN support, mental health awareness, and music pedagogy.
Watch out for a number of new musical initiatives taking place in the church in the coming months, from moments of sublime tranquillity to high ceremony and celebration, to rousing carols and sparkling concerti. There really is something to suit all tastes and we look forward to welcoming you.
Thomas Allery was appointed Director of Music at Temple Church in 2023 and is responsible for leading the music and choral programme. He has a wealth of experience as a director, organist and harpsichordist, and is a specialist in 18th Century music and performance practice. As a director, he is known for drawing on his experience as a chamber musician, for his energy and direct communication with audiences. In regular demand as a continuo player on organ and harpsichord with a number of orchestras and groups, he also teaches basso continuo at the Royal College of Music and gives regular masterclasses. He is a founding member of the award-winning period music group, Ensemble Hesperi with whom he has performed widely, recorded and broadcast. Thomas recognises the important responsibility of all musicians to teach and inspire younger generations, and to make music a core part of communities. As a community practitioner, he has worked extensively with the charity Live Music Now, including leading residencies in care homes and SEN schools in London. He is currently undertaking research into historical continuo treatises from the 17th and 18th Centuries, exploring how they can be used in education today. In 2023, he was assistant conductor and lead continuo player for Grange Opera’s productions of Dido and Aeneas and Gluck’s Orfeo with The Sixteen and Harry Christophers.
