Glimpses into the Music and Worship Life of a Victorian Colonial Cathedral: The Anglican Cathedral of St Michael and St George in 1900 (Grahamstown, South Africa)

Abstract

This article documents one year (1900) in the musical life of a colonial Anglican cathedral in Grahamstown (Cape Colony, South Africa), during the British colonial period. The source material for the music-lists is drawn mainly from the Saturday editions of two local newspapers: Grocott’s Penny Mail and the Grahamstown Journal. The author analyses the musical trends of the cathedral by exploring the content of the cathedral’s musical repertoire and relating it to the choir’s size and competency; commenting on the preference for certain composers and what this might imply about local musical taste; examining the precentor’s hymn choices and how they might reflect the ecclesiastical ethos of the cathedral; and discussing special services which took place and how they relate to the wider South African context of the Boer War and the fierce Anglican debates both for and against Anglo-Catholicism. Through these analyses, the author demonstrates that the cathedral reflected attributes of a typical moderate English Victorian parish church, slightly influenced by the Anglo-Catholic movement, but not overwhelmed by it