Lacock

The Lacock team has been organising courses for choral singers since 1986. The courses normally take the form of a week of rehearsal and vocal training leading to a public performance, with directors who are leading specialists in their field and often internationally-known performers. The courses are open to all ages and nationalities and the group is usually restricted to around thirty singers. The general aim is to broaden musical enthusiasm, stimulate international contact and to create an intense, memorable and enriching musical experience in a relaxed and congenial setting.

The repertoire is naturally based on the polyphonic era of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, the great age of unaccompanied choral music. In general participants are expected to be fluent readers and have had some vocal training. They should have straight, blending voices with full dynamic range, be accustomed to normal choral discipline and be able to respond quickly to direction. The aim is always to combine amateur enthusiasm with professional pace of work. With a high proportion of participants becoming Lacock regulars a club-like atmosphere has built up over the years, each course seeming like a reunion of old friends; however, we are always very pleased to welcome new faces and first-time ‘members’ are very warmly welcomed.

In September 2025 we celebrated our fortieth year with a course in Gourdon-en-Quercy in southwest France, centred on Thomas Tallis’s forty-part motet Spem in alium, sung with a single voice on each line. A performance was happily recorded on video.

A scholarship scheme awards free places to current, recent or prospective university choral scholars and other young people with a similar interest in ensemble singing. The London-based Lacock Scholars is a 12-part ensemble formed originally from past holders of these scholarships. They have their own programme of concerts and a web site at www.lacockscholars.org.

These pages give details of our forthcoming courses until October 2026. They include a course in Stirling in Scotland based on the music of Vincente Lusitano directed by Rory McCleery in May; the annual visit to Monteconero on the Adriatic: ‘After Josquin . . .’ with Rory Wainwright Johnston and   ‘. . . before Monteverdi’ with Eamonn Dougan in the first two weeks of June; the Treasures of the Spanish Renaissance with Bill Carslake in Ludlow in July 2026; a course for invited singers with Eamonn Dougan in Gourdon en Quercy in the south of France in September; a Franco-Flemish week with Patrick Allies in Tenby later that month; and a course led by Patrick Craig celebrating the patronage of the Este family in Ferrara in October.