The King’s Singers: Four Decades Of Close, Sweet Harmony

by Fred Child

It’s nothing new for a vocal ensemble to draw from a wide range
of influences. But few do it with the combination of technical
skill and carefree panache of the King’s Singers, as you can hear
in this concert they gave in our studio.

The group got together in 1965, half a dozen choral singers at
King’s College in Cambridge, England. They were students of
organist and choral director David Willcocks, who instilled the
idea of a bright, clear vocal sound — vibrato only as a color
choice, not standard operating procedure. They sang with those
lovely straight tones at the college chapel, and soon booked a few
local gigs, doing an eclectic mix of music.

At those first performances they went by the catchy name Schola
Cantorum Pro Musica Profana in Cantabridgiense. And their
eclecticism wasn’t so much an artistic choice as an imperative:
They didn’t know enough of any one kind of music to fill a concert
program. So Renaissance madrigals, English folk songs, jazz
arrangements, pop tunes, glee club favorites and barbershop songs
all happily tumbled out.

Their unwieldy name soon gave way to the generic Six Choral
Scholars of King’s College Cambridge. When they landed a big
concert at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1968, they needed
something that would fit on the marquee. The King’s Singers were
officially christened. (The reference is not to any monarch, it’s
to their former school.)