Musica Vera is a Cheltenham based chamber choir founded in 1964 and currently with around twenty-four members. We all enjoy singing both sacred and non-sacred choral music, often unaccompanied.
New members in all voice parts are very welcome.
Musica Vera chamber choir was founded by Graham Smallbone, Director of Music at Dean Close School, Cheltenham. The first concert was held at Christ Church, Cheltenham, on Saturday 5 December 1964 with Graham Smallbone conducting the Choir accompanied by The Cheltenham String Players. Graham took the Choir’s title from “An Illustrated History of Music” by Marc Pincherle, who quoted the mediaeval latin tag Musica ficta est musica vera (False music is real music) – or translations to that effect.
Among the early soloists was Dame Felicity Lott, who gave what could have been her first public performance in Handel’s Messiah on 13 March 1965 at Christ Church, when she was still at Pates Grammar School. A group that included most of the founder members of what later became the King’s Singers (Martin Lane, Alastair Hume, Neil Jenkins, Alastair Thompson, Richard Salter, and Brian Kay) sang in a performance of Monterverdi’s Vespers (1610) in Tewkesbury Abbey on 26 June 1966.
Musica Vera chamber choir usually holds its concerts in Cheltenham, most recently in St Mary’s Church Prestbury. It has in earlier years ventured further afield with concerts in St Peter’s College Oxford, Tewkesbury Abbey, churches in Gloucester, Northleach, and Winchcombe, and twice at Saint Mary’s Church, Bampton.
