Kenneth Leighton
Dara Carroll (treble) - The Choir of New College, Oxford
Gerald English - Tenor
Bram Wiggins - Trumpet
Murray Somerville - Organ
Abbey Records, ABY 702 - 1971
Side One
1 - Crucifixus Pro Nobis
2 - God's Grandeur
Side Two
1 - An Easter Sequence
2 - Paen
Liner Notes: The tradition of singing at New College goes
back six centuries to the year 1379 when the College was founded by William of
Wykeham. Wykeham, who was Bishop of Winchester and High Chancellor during the
reign of Edward III, had a vision of his new college as a place where the
country's administrative class, both lay and religious, would be educated. In
the college statutes he made provision for sixteen boy choristers and a number
of clerks to have a permanent place in the College to ensure the musical
rendition of the daily office, and to pray in perpetuity for the repose of his
soul. The fourteenth-century portrayal of the College shows the Founder attended
by his fellows, scholars and choristers. Relatively little is known about the
life of the Choir during the period preceding the Reformation, though fragments
of music with concordances in the Eton Choir Book suggest that it may have had
an ambitious repertory at the time.
During Dara Carroll's first year at New College, his duties were relatively
light - a lunch-time practice four days a week and attendance at Evensong on
Thursdays and Sundays. The rest of his time was taken up with normal lessons,
violin and piano practice tone before breakfast and the other before bedtime,
orchestra on two lunch-times a week, football, hockey or cricket according to
the time of year, visits from his parents on some Sundays and invitations out
from choristers who live nearer the school on others. In December 1967 he was
promoted to the senior choir, and his time-table became fuller. Evensong and
lunch-time practices six days a week. Gradually he gained seniority. He sang his
first solo - and then many more. And eventually he was made head chorister, with
all the responsibilities that that post entailed. He is now a promising viola
player and pianist as well as still being the proud possessor of an unusually
beautiful treble voice. Music might become his career. However one thing is
certain, that no matter what profession he enters, music will always play a
large part in his life, and his experience of performing a great repertoire of
church music under so distinguished a musician as David Lumsden, Organist and
Fellow of New College Oxford, will prove the dominant influence in hls life.
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