Royalty. Celebrity organists. Famous former choristers. Even politicians can trace their lineage back to choristerships. The vein of choral music is rich with dazzling success and rightful pride in the achievements of those who have benefitted from its existence.
For all the excellent things they do to raise awareness of English Sacred Choral Music, however, it is not those I wanted to focus on for this piece of writing.
The Cathedral Music Trust has announced that, in collaboration with leading organisations across the sector, it is calling on the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to recognise English Sacred Choral Music as Living Heritage on its inventory list as part of the UK’s intangible cultural heritage (ICH).
They rightly acknowledge choral music's place in the cultural, historical, and social life of the country, with tendrils of excellence reaching far beyond our green and pleasant land to a global audience. From the core of daily worship, the influence of the English Sacred Choral Music living tradition has extended far and wide "by a wide network of musicians, educators, clergy, volunteers and communities".
If you will indulge me, I am going to draw on Star Trek for an analogy. (See my book for more in this vein.)
In Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) - for which spoilers follow - the crew of the Enterprise investigate the mysterius V'ger, a giant behemoth travelling through space, intent on apparently destroying Earth. With a pace slower than many a sermon, we eventually arrive at the core of this wonderful, incredible thing...and discover the Voyager 6 probe at its core, functioning as intended: returning to its base after gathering information, surrounded by the fruits of its labours, far beyond anything its creators could have expected.
(Now, the analogy is not perfect, I'll allow. V'ger was trying to absorb all of Earth, not realising it was going to unwittingly destroy it in the process. But that minor niggle aside, it works.)
English Sacred Choral Music has grown far beyond its humble beginnings as a bunch of singers brought into help a handful of tone deaf monks sing praises to God. It has grown in ways those first clerks in holy orders and their lay clerks could never have imagined, not just in musical style but in quality, quantity, and geography. Across New Zealand and Japan, in the US and Canada, across Europe and Africa, choirs spread harmony and history all born from this central core of daily worship. Of the Opus Dei. Of Evensong.
At its core, however, is this incredible creation which continues day in and day out, not just with world-class singers - though that, too - but with the every day, the committed, the still, small voice.
English Sacred Choral Music shouldn't just be celebrated and memorialised because it has global influence and excellence. It shouldn't become part of UNESCO's Living Heritage just because it is great, and brilliant, and significant. It shouldn't become acknowledged as an Intangible Cultural Heritage just because of what the Cathedral Music Trust beautifully describes as its being "a body of shared knowledge, skill, language, and artistry from the training of choristers and organists to the compositional craft of sacred music".
It is of course all of these things. Of course it is. All, and much more besides. English Sacred Choral Music is education, and worship, and a celebration of skill and artisanship. It is sheet music wet with drops of music, smudged and loved. It is notes scrawled with humour and frustration. It is community, and it is friendship.
But for all that - for all the great V'ger of choral music - it is not just these things for which it deserves recognition and safeguarding for the future.
It is the Voyager at its heart for which English Sacred Choral Music should most readily be acknowledged. That this tradition continues, day in, day out, hundreds of times a week, given for the benefit of those who have gathered to sing it (and play it), those who have gathered to hear it, and for God. (Not necessarily in that order.)
In The Go-between, L. P. Hartley describes the past as "a foreign country; they do things differently there". And yet with English Sacred Choral Music this is, with respect to Leslie Poles, categorically - wonderfully - untrue. Evensong stretches long fingers across centuries and an organ sounds. Byrd lives, his music warm again, sung by children born hundreds of years after he long grew cold, And these children, and the adult lay clerks and scholars behind them, bring Byrd back to life not for royalty, or for international tours, or for BBC Radio 3 broadcasts, or for concerts but - and this really is my point - because it is Tuesday.
A central part of the core service of Evensong is the Magnificat. Byrd definitely wrote at least two because the music at the top of this page is from his Second Service. Thousands of composers since have set these selfsame words, but the ones which struck me most in reflecting on this ambitious but necessary campaign were the ones excerpted above.
"And hath exalted the humble and meek."
It is for them, the ordinary, the everyday, those who bring this living tradition alive, who make the global acknowledgement of the living tradition of English Sacred Choral Music most deserved.
At the time of writing, January 2026, the call-to-action was still open, and you can find it here.