On Tour at 900

One of the most venerable musical organizations in the world was touring the U.S. last week. For the famed Cathedral Choir of St. Paul's, London, it was the first road trip in a history of some 900 years. St. Paul's youngsters were an unmistakable hit. A month ago they jammed Manhattan's Cathedral of St. John the Divine to its Gothic gates, then went on to fill up halls and churches across the East and South. Last week they arrived in Chicago, halfway through their tour and eager for more.

The 30 boy sopranos and altos had tones as clean as their well-scrubbed faces. Moreover, they sang with ease and confidence, never wavered from pitch, and phrased with the subtlety of master musicians. With heavier vocal underpinnings from 18 grownup "gentlemen of the choir," they sang a cycle of English church music from the days of Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) and Henry Purcell to the present. Then, sometimes with the older choristers, sometimes without, they sang their way through a glowing repertory of folk songs and madrigals.

St. Paul's training is thorough. As the only English cathedral that gives a free boarding-school education in exchange for singing, it gets the cream of the youthful crop. At the last vacancy (which opened up when a member's voice gave its first adolescent croak), 72 boys applied for the position. They were given intelligence tests, scholarship tests and as many types of musical-aptitude tests as an eight-year-old can take.

"Of course the voice isn't there when they first come," says Headmaster A. Jessop Price, "but if y.ou put the right boy among the others, he will make a similar kind of noise, parrot fashion." In return for book learning, the singers give more than 500 musical services a year and practice an hour every day. It took five years of negotiations with interested Americans before the two-month tour was settled. Its expenses are guaranteed (by Columbia Artists Management), and any profits will go to U.S. charities.

Considering the fact that the choristers' earliest training includes lessons in how to keep a straight face in church, they smiled and bowed like old troupers in Chicago's Orchestra Hall. Getting used to applause, said St. Paul's Canon L. John Collins, "is like a snail leaving its house. But the boys have picked up secular work very well." They have also adapted easily to late hours; six boys are usually off each night, go to bed at 8 o'clock. "When this is over," said a choir official, "they shall all be as fit as fleas--and the rest of us will be dead."

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