Taxes to fund search for singers in inner-city

Despite the lure of becoming a new Aled Jones or Charlotte Church, Britain's choir schools are so short of young recruits that the Government is to fund a recruitment drive in the inner cities.

Choristers from some of the best-known cathedrals in the country, including St Paul's, Lichfield, Salisbury and Hereford, have signed up for a campaign of school visits to find fresh voices and help counter the national decline in singing, particularly among boys.

Westminster Cathedral, Llandaff, Liverpool and Truro, as well as Ampleforth College, the Catholic public school, will also be taking part, demonstrating their skills to primary and secondary students.

Cathedral choirs are a fixture in the Christmas TV schedules and their national profile has never been higher, thanks partly to the success of former child choristers Jones and Church.

Yet choir schools are struggling to find new singers, even with the promise of substantial discounts in boarding fees. Earlier this year Adrian Lucas, organist at Worcester Cathedral, complained he had not received a single candidate for voice trials and said that other cathedrals including Lichfield and Hereford had also been hit.

The shortage of choristers has been blamed on falling church attendance and the decline in boarding. Dr John Sanders, organist emeritus at Gloucester Cathedral and president of the Campaign for the Defence of the Traditional Cathedral Choir, confirmed that recruitment is a major concern.

"There is the cost of the fees, and parents are reluctant to part with children at that age," he said. And he notes: "For boys, there are many more sporting attractions arranged on a Sunday."

But there has also been a national decline in singing with musicians, composers, the National Foundation for Youth Music and even teaching unions complaining that it has been squeezed out of the timetable.

The soprano Lesley Garrett said: "Children today don't necessarily have the chances that I took for granted, whether singing in assembly or in the school or church choir."

"Many schools don't do a lot of singing, for a variety of reasons," said Richard White, director of development for the Choir Schools' Association, which is fronting the scheme with £50,000 from the music and dance fund from the Department for Education and Skills. "It is not the fault of teachers or the schools."

A few cathedrals, including Salisbury, Liverpool and Truro, have led the way by linking with local state schools, and establishing weekend youth choirs to perform a range of music, from Byrd to the Beatles. They say the work has already been an important help in finding new singers.

Mark Williams, organist and director of music at St Paul's Cathedral School, hopes to establish something similar in East End schools, describing it as part of the cathedral's mission to the capital.

Father Leo Chamberlain, headmaster of Ampleforth, said: "It's a two-way thing because it will also mean that the choir schools themselves might attract boys or girls into the choirs, while we can do quite a lot to show children what singing is about. In general there has been a very sad decline in music provision in the maintained sector. We're trying to pursue contact with primary schools to help them establish choirs."

"There's a problem all over the country finding children to sing," said Simon Lole, director of music at Salisbury Cathedral, famous for having a well-established girls' choir running alongside the boys'.

"All our great cathedrals are concerned. We're living in a society with so many distractions that Sunday isn't what it was," he said. "That's not to say that the kids can't be got. They can. But boy, we're working hard."

And he added: "It's not about us feeling 'we want them all in our choir'. This is their cathedral. This is the cathedral for this area. If they want to come and sing, even better.