The Making of a Chorister: Class, Family and Choir Schools

Choir schools in the UK are educational institutions that, alongside standard education provision, train young choristers to provide music for an attached religious institution, usually a cathedral. Mostly fee-paying and known to be socioeconomically exclusive, up to now they have received almost no attention in the sociological literature. Through interviews with 22 former choristers, and developing the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, we explore the interrelation of class and family in producing dispositions and tastes making entry to a choir school possible. More specifically, we show how immersion within a certain field of intimate relations, where particular class-based tastes and interests were taken for granted and laced with affect, (re)produces not only a class habitus but a habitus specifically inclined toward the Anglican choral tradition. That does not mean, however, that reproduction is necessarily smooth and harmonious, as one case in particular shows.