Sir Stephen Cleobury

Towards the end of Stephen Cleobury’s 37-year term as Director of Music at King’s College, Cambridge, he had become known among peers and critics for both enhancing the college choir’s reputation for excellence and his commitment to contemporary choral music. Born in 1948, Cleobury was a boy chorister at Worcester Cathedral and organ scholar at St John’s College, Cambridge. While he was periodically teased by the clergy at Westminster Cathedral after his appointment in 1979 as the Roman Catholic institution’s first Anglican music master, he had a significant impact on the standards of its choir, as he did at King’s after his arrival in 1982. Cleobury commissioned a new work every year for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, a celebrated annual event at King’s, with leading composers such as Thomas Adès, Harrison Birtwistle, John Rutter, and Judith Weir all contributing. His openness to contemporary repertory, which he also pursued as chief conductor of the BBC Singers, was supported by the quiet efficiency with which he extracted the best from a choir. Cleobury was blessed with an uncanny ability to set speeds that suited voices and allowed choristers to produce clarity, warmth, and abundant emotional expression. His artistry was unassuming yet potent, as was his focused way of working with young choristers and seasoned professionals alike. Knighted for services to choral music, he died less than two months after retiring in September 2019.