Dr Coco Parkinson-Huggins (Letters, 13 October) is right to highlight the severe financial pressures facing England’s cathedrals and the threat that this poses to choral music. Yet the future of choral evensong depends not just on cathedrals. Across the country, there are parish churches that sustain choirs, train young organists and offer regular opportunities for children and adults to participate in this living tradition.
I am a churchwarden and singer at St Giles’ church in Oxford, where locally recruited choirs of boys, girls and teenagers sing choral evensong every Sunday. Alongside these choirs, around 40 organ students are currently learning through the church, and we are investing in a major new pipe organ to support future generations of musicians.
Parish churches often face many of the same financial pressures as cathedrals, but with fewer resources and less professional support. However, they remain uniquely placed to recruit locally and adapt quickly to changing circumstances.
At St Giles’ church, we are developing new ways of widening access to choral and organ education that should prove just as important to the future of the tradition as preserving historic institutions themselves.
If we focus only on preserving cathedrals, we risk overlooking the wider musical ecosystem that sustains English choral evensong. This tradition will flourish only if both cathedral and parish churches are enabled to pass it on to future generations.
Dr Andrew James Sillett
Churchwarden, St Giles’ church, Oxford
