Specialists in early vocal polyphony
Specialists in early vocal polyphony
Specialists in early vocal polyphony
About Us
The Clerks is a specialist vocal ensemble, focusing on vocal music from the 12th to the early 16th centuries. As a professional extension of the Cambridge Early Music Consort, our repertoire and approach to performance is developed in the context of regular sessions of rehearsal, informal performance, talks and symposiums. Much of our performance is from period sources, engaging with and exploring parameters such as pronunciation, tempi and vocal timbre; and much of our repertoire is rarely if ever heard in live performance.
Recent projects developed with CEMC have included:
Over the coming months, the group will be preparing a recording of the music of John Dunstaple, supported by the Musica Britannica Trust.
THE CLERKS | (formerly The Clerks Group) was founded by Edward Wickham in 1993, and over the course of more than two decades made an incalculable contribution to our knowledge of 15th century vocal music, through recordings, broadcasts and concerts. Its award-winning survey of the sacred music of Johannes Ockeghem remains the definitive account of this most important of early Renaissance composers, while recordings of Josquin, Obrecht, Regis, Barbireau, Machaut, Dufay and others are essential to the discography of that repertoire. The Clerks performed in many of the great concert halls of Europe, including the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Royal Albert Hall, and toured extensively in Europe and the United States.
In 2017, Edward Wickham made the decision to pause work with The Clerks; and has now refashioned the ensemble as a professional arm of CEMC – the Cambridge Early Music Consort. In this new formation, The Clerks brings together singers of many years experience with graduates from the CEMC programme; thus ensuring that the qualities which characterised the original Clerks – of scholarly integrity, artistic excellence and imaginative programming – continue to be fostered in the performance of vocal music from the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.
The Clerks is an affiliate ensemble of The Cambridge Institute for Renaissance Studies.
EDWARD WICKHAM (Founder/Artistic Director) has pursued throughout his career a number of complementary interests: in performance, academia and music education. In 1993 he established the vocal ensemble The Clerks, with which he made over two dozen recordings, and received many plaudits including the Gramophone Early Music Award.
Since 2003 he has been Fellow and Director of Music at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge; and an Affiliate Lecturer at the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge. In 2008 he formed the St Catharine’s Girls’ Choir, the first college-based choir for girls in the UK; and his work with children also includes direction of The Oxford and Cambridge Singing School, which runs vacation singing courses for children around the UK and internationally.