We now enter a mini Dark Age in the choir’s history, with gaps in the records caused by mould damaging some documents beyond redemption. The main victims were Annual Reports and Committee Minutes but enough of these survive to give us an outline of what was going on during this decade, and more details can be gleaned from surviving concert programmes.

At the end of 1975, at the age of 33, Murray Brown had taken over the reins from David Plummer. In his letter of application for the position of conductor, Mr Brown had confessed to a liking for a broad range of music, ‘depending on quality, from plainsong to heavy rock’. The concert programmes from his time at the helm reflect this. While no heavy rock appears, in a concert with the title ‘America!’, in honour of the United States’ bicentenary, we find negro spirituals, plantation songs, ballads, works by Stephen Foster and Aaron Copeland, and Broadway musicals (Assistant Conductor, George Hadwen, was the soloist in ‘Ol’ Man River’). …

Read more about the fourth decade of the choir here.