IN: The King's College Choir is one of today's most accomplished and renowned representatives of the great English choral tradition. It was created by King Henry VI, who founded King's College, Cambridge, in 1441, to provide daily singing in his Chapel, which remains the main task of the choir to this day. Today the choir is directed by Stephen Cleobury and derives much of its fame from the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, broadcast worldwide to millions on Christmas Eve every year, and the TV service Carols from King's which accompanies it. The choir commissions a carol from a contemporary composer for each year's Festival.

By the 1860s it was recognised that musical standards in the choir needed improvement.John Jebb's 1843 enquiry into Anglican choirs found that "in Cambridge, the Choral Service has suffered mutilation in every place where it is retained. King's College has reduced the original number of its Conduct Chaplains from three to one; and though retaining its sixteen Choristers (which evidently were intended to be proportionate to a more numerous body of adult singers), there are but a small number of Clerks, too weak for the magnificent organ which accompanies them, and for the unrivalled Chapel where they minister. The Choir indeed attends twice daily; but the prayers are not chanted (a very modern innovation), and at the Sunday morning service the Nicene Creed is not sung.". Amongst the lay clerks, whose duties were at this time divided by also singing at Trinity, indiscipline and absenteeism were common. Reform began after the passing of the Cambridge University Act 1856, which enabled the statutes and governance of the college to be altered. Two chaplains and twelve lay clerks were specified, and sharing duties with Trinity was ended in 1871. The same year a new Master over the Choristers was appointed, who was tasked with being "watchful of their moral conduct" and "maintaining disciple without undue severity at all times". Conditions for choristers were improved with the intention of recruiting boys from a higher social background. They were given instruction in instrumental music and financial assistance upon leaving. To further widen the field for selection it was decided to open a boarding school instead of paying for choristers to be lodged with local families. From 1876 it was decreed that choristerships should be open to all candidates "whether resident in Cambridge or elsewhere" with those resident outside the city lodged at the expense of the college, and a purpose-built King's College School was opened two years later. Also in 1876 it was decided that choral scholarships were to be awarded, with students replacing the permanently employed lay clerks. Existing contracts meant this was a slow process, with the last clerk leaving in 1928. 1876 also saw the appointment of a new organist on an increased salary, Arthur Henry Mann. There was little if any formal training of choir instructors at this time in England - most were organists who taught the choir following whatever technique they themselves had been subjected to as former choristers. Mann was fortunate in this regard having been a chorister at Norwich Cathedral under the renowned Zechariah Buck. Mann was therefore an outstanding choir trainer himself and greatly improved the reputation of King's College Choir. He worked on improving the diction and timing of the choir to allow them to work with the acoustic of the chapel and its particularly lengthy reverb. He also opened up services to the public, where previously visitors needed written permission to attend.

what was the reform about?

OUT: By the 1860s it was recognised that musical standards in the choir needed improvement.

IN: The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they became widely regarded as the foremost and most influential act of the rock era. In the early 1960s, their enormous popularity first emerged as "Beatlemania", but as the group's music grew in sophistication, led by primary songwriters Lennon and McCartney, the band were integral to pop music's evolution into an art form and to the development of the counterculture of the 1960s. Their continued commercial and critical success assisted many cultural movements--including a shift from American artists' global dominance of rock and roll to British acts (British Invasion), the proliferation of young musicians in the 1960s who formed new bands, the album as the dominant form of record consumption over singles, the term "Beatlesque" used to describe similar-sounding artists, and several fashion trends.

Progressive rock (or art rock) grew out of the classically-minded strains of British psychedelia. In 1966, the level of social and artistic correspondence among British and American rock musicians dramatically accelerated for bands like the Beatles, the Beach Boys and the Byrds who fused elements of cultivated music with the vernacular traditions of rock. According to Everett, the Beatles' "experimental timbres, rhythms, tonal structures, and poetic texts" on their albums Rubber Soul and Revolver "encouraged a legion of young bands that were to create progressive rock in the early 1970s". Academics Paul Hegarty and Martin Halliwell identify the Beatles "not merely as precursors of prog but as essential developments of progressiveness in its early days". After the release of Rubber Soul, many "baroque-rock" works would soon appear, particularly due to its track "In My Life". Citing a quantitative study of tempos in music from the era, musicologist Walter Everett identifies Rubber Soul as a work that was "made more to be thought about than danced to", and an album that "began a far-reaching trend" in its slowing-down of the tempos typically used in pop and rock music. Although the Kinks, the Yardbirds and the Beatles themselves (with "Ticket To Ride") had incorporated droning guitars to mimic the qualities of the sitar, Rubber Soul's "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" is generally credited as sparking a musical craze for the sound of the instrument in the mid-1960s -- a trend which would later be associated with the growth of raga rock, Indian rock, and the essence of psychedelic rock. In terms of bridging the relationship between music and hallucinogens, the Beatles and the Beach Boys were the most pivotal. Revolver ensured that psychedelic pop emerged from its underground roots and into the mainstream. Author Carys Wyn Jones locates Sgt. Pepper's, along with Pet Sounds, to the beginning of art rock. Both albums are largely viewed as beginnings in the progressive rock genre due to their lyrical unity, extended structure, complexity, eclecticism, experimentalism and influences derived from classical music forms. For several years following Sgt. Pepper's release, straightforward rock and roll was supplanted by a growing interest in extended form. Several of the English psychedelic bands who followed in the wake of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's developed characteristics of the Beatles' music (specifically their classical influence) further than either the Beatles or contemporaneous West Coast psychedelic bands. AllMusic states that the first wave of art rock musicians were inspired by Sgt. Pepper's and believed that for rock music to grow artistically, they should incorporate elements of European and classical music to the genre.

Anything else interesting in the article?

OUT:
For several years following Sgt. Pepper's release, straightforward rock and roll was supplanted by a growing interest in extended form.