Equality, History, Tradition: Gender-Political Issues in the Oxford Collegiate Choral Scene

Abstract

The focus of this chapter is the status and experience of female singers within the historically male-dominated collegiate choral tradition in Oxford. The collegiate tradition is directly linked and related to the cathedral choral tradition within the Church of England, which up until the early 1990s, was not accessible to girls and women. Until 1850, the University of Oxford and its colleges were primarily monastery-like religious institutions where fellows (all men) were forbidden to marry and expected to live in celibacy. Since the late 1870s, women had permission to read and attend classes at Oxford, but the University excluded women as fellows and students until 1920. Until the early 1990s, when girls were first admitted as choristers, the musical life at Oxford colleges and halls was historically and exclusively male-oriented, with men in the back rows (tenors, basses and counter tenors); and a boy treble line in the front rows, mirroring the cathedral choral tradition within the Church of England. During the last decades, the Oxford collegiate choirs have undergone drastic changes, with the establishment of mixed voice choirs. This text will present findings of a music-sociological study on the Oxford collegiate choral tradition, where the focus is on three main pillars. Firstly, the issue of aesthetics and preservation of the all-male voice choirs as a cultural phenomenon; secondly, the contradictory position of female sopranos and altos versus boy trebles and counter tenors; and thirdly, the institutional-based gender discrimination and lack of performance, training and career opportunities for women within the collegiate and cathedral choral traditions.