The Girl Choristers And Lower Voices of Merton College , Oxford & Benjamin Nicholas
Biography The Girl Choristers And Lower Voices of Merton College , Oxford & Benjamin Nicholas
Benjamin Nicholas
is Reed Rubin Organist & Director of Music at Merton College, Oxford and Principal Conductor of The Oxford Bach Choir. As a conductor, he has appeared with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Mozart Players, The BBC Singers and The Holst Singers in works such as Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony, Holst’s Savitri and Duruflé’s Requiem.
During Benjamin’s time at Merton, the annual Passiontide at Merton festival has been established, the Dobson Organ has been installed, and the College Girls’ Choir has been founded. He was elected a Bodley Fellow of Merton in 2018.
Benjamin Nicholas has been involved in the commissioning of a great many works, and conducted the premieres of Charlotte Bray’s Bach Re-imagined in Southwark Cathedral with the City of London Sinfonia, Howard Goodall’s Veni Sancte Spiritusin Westminster Abbey and numerous choral works by Kerry Andrew, Birtwistle, Chilcott, Dove, Jackson, Martin, Muhly, Tabakova, Weir and Wilby in Tewkesbury and Oxford.
Benjamin was a chorister at Norwich Cathedral before holding organ scholarships at Chichester Cathedral, Lincoln College, Oxford and St Paul’s Cathedral. After a period as Director of Music of St Luke’s Church, Chelsea, he was Director of Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum and Director of Choral Music at Dean Close School. From 2011-2016 he served the Edington Music Festival, firstly as conductor of the Schola and then as Festival Director.
The Choir of Merton College
consists of 30 undergraduate and graduate students at Oxford University reading for degrees in a variety of subjects. The choir's primary duty is singing at regular services in the famous 13th-century Chapel.
Since the establishment of Merton’s Choral Foundation in 2008, the choir has gained an international reputation for offering the best of choral music through tours, recordings and broadcasts. In 2020, the choir won the award for best choral album at the BBC Music Magazine Awards for its recording of Gabriel Jackson’s The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. The choir’s discography on the Delphian Label has seen numerous five star reviews and many recordings have been named ‘Editor’s Choice’ by Gramophone magazine.
The choir has appeared at The Three Choirs Festival and the Cheltenham Music Festival, and recent London appearances include the concert series at St John’s Smith Square, Cadogan Hall and The Temple Church. The choir is regularly heard in concert with orchestra, and recent collaborations have seen the choir perform with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Elgar’s The Apostles), Instruments of Time and Truth (Bach’s St Matthew Passion) and Oxford Baroque (Bach’s Mass in B minor). The choir’s annual festival, Passiontide at Merton, has an established place in Oxford’s musical calendar, and has led to exciting collaborations with such groups as The Cardinall’s Musick and The Marian Consort.
Merton College Choir regularly tours overseas, and has recently visited the USA, Hong Kong and Singapore, France, Italy and Sweden. In 2017, the choir sang the first Anglican Service in St Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
The choir’s commitment to contemporary music has seen numerous composers write for the choir. In recent years the choir has premiered works by Kerry Andrew, Birtwistle, Chilcott, Dove, Ešenvalds, Kendall, MacMillan, McDowall, Rutter, Tabakova and Weir. In July 2021, the choir gave the world premiere of a new work by Daniel Kidane.
Merton College
the first fully self-governing College in the University, was founded in 1264 by Walter de Merton, sometime Chancellor of England and later Bishop of Rochester. Mob Quadrangle, the oldest quadrangle in the University, was built in three phases: the Treasury c.1288-91; the north and east ranges and the Sacristy c.1304-11; and the Library on the south and west sides 1373-8. Mob Library is the oldest continuously-functioning library for university academics and students in the world. The Gatehouse dates from the early fifteenth century, when Henry V granted a royal 'licence to crenellate', which allowed for the construction of the battlement tower above the present-day Lodge.
What is now the quire of Merton Chapel was begun in the late 1280s, as part of the Church of St Mary & St John. It was built to replace the Parish Church of St John the Baptist which stood on the site now occupied by the north wing of Mob Quad. The transepts (what is now the Ante-chapel) were added in the 14th and early 15th centuries, and the tower was completed in 1450. To this day, the Chapel contains one of the finest pre-Reformation lecterns surviving in England, originally given to College in 1504. A screen by Christopher Wren was added in 1673. Edward Blore, William Butterfield, and Sir Gilbert Scott contributed to its restoration during the Gothic revival of the 19th century.
Merton College was originally founded for 20 fellows, with undergraduates being formally admitted in the early 1380s. It was then that John Wyliot, a former Fellow and Sub-Warden, endowed a number of scholarships known at Merton as Postmasterships. Over the centuries, many eminent scholars and cultural leaders have called Merton home. They include four Nobel Prize winners, the mathematician who solved Fermat’s Last Theorem, the physician who discovered the circulation of blood, and the founder of the Bodleian Library.
