World tours and private education: The secret life of a King s College choirboy
The world-famous choir is looking for new recruits
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Boys from Cambridge University King s College choir make their way to rehearsals at King s College Chapel (Image: PA)
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December 28, 2020 Sixteen boys make up the treble voices of the Choir of King s College, Cambridge, which sings in the annual A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. Kevin Leighton
A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols is no longer available.
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By Colleen Phelps
Christmas Eve at King s College, Cambridge, usually follows the same routine. There s a morning sound check, a lunch break, and then once the choirs are lined up to start, a red signal light flashes. One boy steps forward, unaccompanied, singing the perennial opening tune, Once in Royal David s City.
For many listeners, this is the moment Christmas begins. And while the audience will still hear all the same readings and carols as scheduled, the service released this year will be not be live. While the people at King s had planned as recently as the week before Christmas to broadcast live as usual, albeit without a congregation, they also prerecorded elements of the service through
King s College Carols 2020: How to watch Kingâs College Christmas Eve carols this year
Carols from King s has overcome Covid challenges to deliver a traditional Christmas service
King s College Choir rehearsing in the Chapel in 2016 (Image: Cambridgeshire Live)
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At Christmas 1939, Britons had been able to maintain a semblance of normality. The blackout prevented displays of lighted Christmas trees in front windows, but there was no rationing and Britain’s key ally, France, remained unconquered behind the allegedly impregnable Maginot Line.
Following the fall of France, the evacuation at Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain, Christmas 1940 was much bleaker – the first real wartime Christmas. It took place in the middle of the Blitz. In December, the Luftwaffe attacked Southampton, Bristol, Sheffield and Leicester. Manchester took heavy pounding on the night of December 22/23 and again on Christmas Eve. Rationing was beginning to bite hard as the German occupation of Europe and blockade by U-boats cut off important sources of supply.
These 3 old churches offer a virtual Christmas experience
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These 3 old churches offer a virtual Christmas experience
These 3 old churches offer a virtual Christmas experience | Sunday, December 20, 2020
Christmas Eve at the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral. (photo courtesy of the Sacred Music of Notre-Dame de Paris) | Sacred Music of Notre-Dame de Paris
If there is one good thing to come out of the pandemic that is the coronavirus it has been the ability of so many churches to adapt with services broadcast through social media channels.
Not only has the broadcasting allowed homebound congregants to partake in socially distanced worship and obtain some of the means of grace holy communion remains a logistical and theological challenge, particularly in sacramental traditions but it has also created new opportunities for witness through virtual tours of historic churches and cathedrals that would otherwise require a tr