Choir History

Music is inextricably interwoven with the 130-year history of Trinity College. It dates from the appointment of a distinguished musician, George William Torrance, as Acting Principal of the College for its first four years, 1872-76. Torrance's musical compositions, which included oratorios and opera, also included anthems and settings of the evening canticles, some of which have been sung by the Trinity Choir in recent years.

Trinity College pioneered, in the nineteenth century, a distinctively Australian collegiate tradition, with a firm creative and academic cultural base. A Trinity College Music Society was founded in 1885 and included light choral works - "glees" - as well as instumental offerings in its concerts. Dr Alexander Leeper (1848-1934) was the College's first Warden from 1876 to 1918. His famous productions of classical Greek plays, such as Alcestis (produced again by the College in 1998, exactly a century after its Melbourne debut) had extensive choral passages, for which Professor George Marshall-Hall (1862-1915) wrote the music.

For the first quarter of the twentieth century the College had an active Glee Club, which after 1923 was finally eclipsed by the resurgence, after a long interval, of student drama. In the same year, the arrival of an organ in the College Chapel, consecrated only six years earlier, ensured that, when circumstances were right, choral music would have a basis from which to grow and prosper.

In 1934, the Chaplain, T.M. Robinson, reviewed the Glee Club, and, with help from the then Organist of St Paul's Cathedral, the famous Dr A.E. Floyd, turned this into a chapel choir. Among the choir's early conductors was A.G.L. Shaw, destined to be Dean of the College and a leading Australian historian.

Choral music of the great English Cathedral and Collegiate heritage, performed to a high standard to enhance worship, came to Trinity in 1956 with the Canterbury Fellowship when they moved from St John's Latrobe St, bringing with them a rich liturgical and musical tradition. Regular broadcasts for the ABC by the Fellowship Choir, under such conductors as Peter Chapman, made Trinity Chapel, with its splendid acoustics, famous for its music throughout Australia.

The quality of the student choirs at this time varied considerably according to who happened to be available to direct them. In the late 1960's and early 1970's there were two complementary traditions both vigorously alive in student Chapel music. The Chaplain, Dr Barry Marshall, brought back from France an interest in the psalmody of Père Gelineau and the liturgical compositions of Lucien Deiss. It was not long before Father Jim Minchin and others were adding their own compositions in a jazz idiom.

The next step was to have a skilled professional Director of Music to give continuity and maintain high standards through a system of auditions and choral and organ scholarships. The first holder of this position, Professor Peter Dennison - Ormond Professor of Music at Melbourne University - began a new and continuing choir in 1976 and inaugurated the annual Festival of Lessons and Carols. His successors have included Bruce Macrae (1985-89), Professor Peter Godfrey - former Chorister and Choral Scholar (and later Guest Director of Music) at King's College, Cambridge - (1990-91), Dr Christopher Dearnley - former Organist at St Paul's Cathedral, London - (1992-93), Michael Fulcher - currently Director of Music at St Paul's Cathedral, Wellington - (1994-97) and the present Director, Michael Leighton Jones (1997>) - former Choral Scholar at King's College, Cambridge and Lay Vicar in the Choir of Westminster Abbey.