Description
There were an estimated 150,000 boy choristers in fin-de-siècle Britain, yet the great corpus of literature about them has largely been ignored by scholars. In Singing with the Angels: Innocence, Death and Boy Choristers in Victorian Popular Literature, Lynn Schoch re-approaches neglected stories, poems, newspapers, magazines, parlour songs and memoirs, providing a fresh perspective on nineteenth-century boyhood, family and emotion.
Schoch has spent fifty years exploring Victorian literature and music. Supporting his children touring and making audio recordings in a university choir, he learned that choirs are not limited to Sunday attendance. Victorian choristers played, studied, and often spent holidays together; moreover, as school stories gravitated towards a tough and competitive masculinity, choir stories helped preserve the belief that deep feeling could thrive in a boyish world.
As ever more parishes adopted surplice choirs, choristers in popular literature were perceived as something close to heaven on earth. The choirboy became a symbol of consolation and hope: bereaved parents could imagine their children in a better place, believing in a heaven which amplified the best of what they could see—and hear—on earth.
