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Peter Horley

Clerk to Melbourn Parish Council from 2011 to 2015

Peter was born in Wednesbury in the West Midlands, read history at Newcastle University and taught for 38 years. He has an MBA in Church Administration. He is also a Choral Conductor of some repute. He has been singing in church choirs from the age of seven; firstly, at St Bartholomew’s Church, Wednesbury where Gurney Harper was Director of Music, and his grandson, Prof. John Harper was later the Director of the Royal School of Church Music and then St John’s, Wolverhampton under Tim Lees, his music teacher and mentor. In those early days, Gurney Harper based the music on that of King’s College, Cambridge and St Bart’s was forged into the best choir in the Lichfield Diocese. Peter’s first cathedral visit was to Lichfield Cathedral as a treble. As a tenor in St John’s, Wolverhampton he, along with a group of young singers with whom he still sings and conducts today, went on a series of cathedral visits which gave him the inspiration to try conducting himself.

In the 1980s he decided to put together a choir in the Parish of Ascension in Cambridge and called it ‘The Ascension Singers’. After a series of concerts, he decided to turn the choir, of between twenty- five to thirty singers, into a specialist choir dedicated to singing in cathedrals composed of singers in Cambridge and those formerly in St John’s Wolverhampton. The first cathedral visit was to Ely in January, 1987.

Since then they have sung in all forty-three English Cathedrals, the final one being Liverpool Cathedral in 2010. Some cathedrals they have visited more than once, Ely three times, Durham and Canterbury both twice. These visits were made during the holidays at times such as Easter, August and October. He has also conducted the choir in Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral and Tewkesbury Abbey.

The music was always carefully selected using the liturgy, readings and psalms for the appropriate season. Over the years, the composers William Byrd, Herbert Howells and John Tavener have featured most prominently.

The experience is different in each space, as the acoustic is different. It is very gratifying and moving when you can capture the building and feel it ‘come alive’. As time passes there is a great feeling of adding to and continuing the centuries old musical traditions of church music and liturgy in this country. For example, Durham Cathedral contains the Shrine of St Cuthbert and the choir, which is mixed, sang ‘The Ikon of St Cuthbert’ by John Tavener, a modern composer, in front of the Shrine which a Queen of England was not allowed to encroach further than the West Door, given his antipathy towards women.

When conducting in St George’s Chapel Windsor, with his New Abbey Singers, Peter was standing on a stone slab under which were the remains of Henry VIII and Charles I! However important or powerful one may be in life, all are mortal and but as dust!

After 2010 the original choir closed, but Peter has formed another, ‘The New Abbey Singers’, to sing in Abbeys and Greater English Parish Churches. In August they are singing in Tewkesbury.

Peter also conducted, up until this June ‘The Orlando Singers’, a Chamber Choir which meets weekly and performs in and around Cambridge. His penultimate concert took place in Melbourn Community Hub. Ed. AD

Salisbury Cathedral 1997 Westminster Cathedral 1998