Pembroke College Cambridge

Life at Pembroke: The Chapel Choir

Pembroke’s Chapel Choir has been going from strength to strength. Choral music is a big part of life at Pembroke, with weekly Evensong and Compline, as well as annual events like the Advent Carol service or May Week concert.

So what’s it like to be a Chorister at Pembroke? MPhil student Conor Diamond (2018) and undergraduate historian Lily Rivers (2017) sing in the Chapel Choir. They both auditioned in their first terms and have been with the Choir ever since. Lily enjoyed singing at school and wanted to continue, while Conor found his audition brought back memories of singing as a Chorister at Magdalen College, Oxford. For both of them community is a big part of why they sing with the Choir. It’s also important to making sure the Choir sounds its best.

Conor: “I realised that the sense of community that I was getting from it, especially when I turned up for the first rehearsal, was instantaneous. Everyone was under the same banner, the same sense of purpose and unity.

You have this sense of camaraderie, community. That’s one of the things I love about it, no one’s bigger than anyone else and you’re all cogs in a rather beautiful machine. It has to be so finely-tuned and if anything falls out of place you can hear it, especially if you’ve got an ear for it.”

Lily: “There’s a very lovely sense, because we’re all working together, we end up feeling very much like a team.  We end up doing things together like a family, like we did secret Santa after the advent service. The tours were also really great for having time to bond together.  I do love the tradition and the music, being able to sing something really beautiful and be part of creating it.”

Combined Choirs of Pembroke College Cambridge, conducted by Anna Lapwood

The Combined Choirs Rehearsing for the 2018 Remembrance Day Service

The Chapel Choir sing in a lot of different contexts. Alongside their Chapel commitments they’ve also performed with Gareth Malone and Eric Idle, among others. These performances are very different to Evensong and Compline, especially because, as Lily points out, they had to learn to sway for singing ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ with Eric Idle.  This variety gives them a chance to stretch themselves musically, and build further on that strong sense of community.

Conor: “I absolutely relish that variety just because it provides an excitement that’s both predictable and unpredictable, gives a variety of music, makes its more playful I suppose. It reminds me of the King’s Singers in a way, you have the ability to do these wonderful choral pieces and then the next minute you’re pulling weird expressions while singing the oddest tunes. The Eric Idle performance was brilliant in that respect.”

Pembroke College Choir with Eric Idle at the Corn Exchange

The Chapel Choir singing 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life' with Eric Idle (1962) 

There’s something for everyone in the Choir, and both Conor and Lily had favourite moments to reflect on.

Lily: “It was particularly fun doing Fauré’s Requiem actually as a requiem mass, with all the different parts of the mass or the eucharist within the music. I’d only ever seen it performed in a concert setting so seeing it in its proper place was really moving. And again the advent services, when we sing O Come All Ye Faithful, you’ve got the whole Chapel singing and candles lit, there’s a real sense of everyone coming together to create this. It’s just really amazing.”

Conor: “Serenity, by Gjeilo was probably my absolutely favourite. I listened to that over and over again after hearing how beautiful it was. I’d never heard that piece of music before. The introduction of the cello…most performances I found used a violin or viola but there’s something uniquely powerful about the timbre of the Cello that really emotively gets to you. Even when you’re singing, when the cello is introduced it really lifts the entire piece and yet grounds it at the same time, it makes it truly magical. The cellist was fantastic, a first year undergraduate and what a performance. We couldn’t have done it without every person in that performance.”

Pembroke College Cambridge carol service 2018

The Choirs at the 2018 Carol service

One might well wonder how all of these rehearsals, performances, and social occasions fit into studying for a degree. Both Conor and Lily stressed that, far from being a hindrance to their studies, the Choir provides much-needed structure and mental space.

Conor: “The bottom line of what I’m trying to say is that the mindfulness of it is so powerful. One of the great things to do at Cambridge is to join a singing community.”

Lily: “It’s really helpful to have a space to go where you can think about something other than your academic studies. One of the really lovely things about singing is that you have to really concentrate when you’re doing it, so you don’t have space to worry about your essay, which means it’s actually quite relaxing. There’s also something very therapeutic about singing, I think it’s very good for us and we should all be singing whenever and wherever we have a chance to.”

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