The choir of the Church of Our Lady, St John's Wood, affectionately known by the choir as 'LG' after Lisson Grove, the road in which the church stands, was formed thirty years ago by a group of friends, with Claude Crozet as director. Claude was born in France but moved to England at the age of nine, though maintaining strong links with family and friends across the Channel. Since then, Claude has remained director of the choir which has performed the Latin Mass at the church. The choir has developed, assisted not only by many enthusiastic and talented musicians but also by the priests and laity of the church, who have encouraged the choir in their exploration of music written for the Roman Catholic Church.

The choir started when Claude went to see Fr O'Dwyer, who had been appointed as parish priest at St John's Wood, having taught Latin at the nearby Quintin Kynaston school where Claude had been a pupil. Fr O'Dwyer disbanded what there was of the existing choir and a couple of weeks later, on Remembrance Sunday 1971, the choir sang its first service and LG was formed. The music in that first service was Palestrina's Missa Aeterna Christi Munera, with Mendelssohn's Beati Mortui, by special request of Fr O'Dwyer, and Victoria's Tenebrae Responsory Ecce quomodo.

From the start the Mass at St John's Wood was established as being totally in Latin every week, with the majority of the Proper in plainsong (sadly, the gradual is rarely sung) and all of the Ordinary, except the Credo, in polyphony. This rare musico-liturgical integrity had only existed in very few major churches; even there many cuts were often made and the offertory chant was hardly ever heard. This policy attracted young amateurs, particularly those interested in early music, to join the choir; a few singers, who initially defected occasionally from their original churches, came to join LG permanently. The quality and quantity of the music quickly became of a standard equalled in very few churches in the world.

Although LG is not a professional choir, it has always attracted a large number of people who were professionally trained in music, including some current or former professional musicians. There have been many high quality instrumentalists including Pauline Smith, Martin Toyer, Martin Penny, Andrew Cesana and Simon Lillystone; this has meant that an orchestra has been used to accompany the choir on high feasts. Several singers who have sung with LG left to pursue professional careers including Peter Sidhom, Twig Hall, Corinne Orde, Peter Harvey, Ian Harrison and Steven Brice.

There have also been many compositions written for the choir, some by Claude and choir members Jean-Marc Evans, Ian Harrison and Mark Williams. Humphrey Clucas of Westminster Abbey composed a Mass and motet specifically for LG. A good number of the singers are conductors in their own right and have established their own choirs, as well as conducting at St John's Wood (Jean-Marc Evans, Simon Lillystone and Mark Williams to name but three).

Within the first six months LG had performed a dozen masses and over forty motets. For many years the choir performed, during the services of Holy Week, the works that most inspired it in its embryonic stage, i.e. all of the 18 Tenebrae Responsories by Victoria. Within the first few years of its existence the choir established all the characteristics that set it apart from other Roman Catholic choirs and that in many respects made it unique: the depth of the exploration of the Latin repertoire, a search for authenticity, and the singing of the Divine Office.

The exploration of an extensive Renaissance repertoire went beyond the standard works performed. From the mediaeval and early Renaissance period the choir has performed 14 masses by Josquin, works by Ockeghem, Dufay, Machaut and a good number of the great Tudor Masses. The mainstream composers have also been explored to the full, including all 20 Masses by Victoria. The choir is still wading through the Masses of Palestrina, but they have only managed to get to 54 out of 105! The motet repertoire now stands at over 700 works.

The choir has always thrived by constantly attempting works new to the repertoire and by exploring composers whose liturgical music is first rate but is unfortunately never heard within the context intended. This has been possible, not only because of the great competence of the singers, but also because from the start, rather than limiting themselves to music that is commercially available, they have used editions of the collected works from libraries, which can often be photocopied free of copyright. Much of this music is printed in C clefs and contains other archaic features; this has never caused a problem with the open-minded singers of St John's Wood.

In recent years the choir has occasionally taken to performing music which has never been edited at all, using facsimiles of sixteenth century part books or choir books. Although the choir has made a policy of searching the wealth of Catholic polyphonic music and, in particular, works from the Renaissance, modern music has not been ignored. Works from the Paris organ school and, in particular, the two masses of Sir Lennox Berkeley, have been enacted. Sir Lennox was a regular parishioner and a strong supporter of the choir.

During the celebrations for Christmas 1972 the choir was first accompanied by an orchestra. This festive brilliance for the great feasts of the year is appreciated by the congregation and, at every Easter and Whitsun since 1973, the Latin service at St John's Wood has featured an orchestral Mass. Many of the Masses of Haydn and Mozart have been heard at LG, and performances of Mozart Masses usually include the Credo. This is in line with the wider policy of authenticity whereby all music is performed, as far as possible, as originally conceived by the composer, without any rearrangement or cuts and using the intended instrumentation. For early music, this leads to consideration of pitch, underlay, musica ficta, scoring and position within the liturgy.

An important facet of the choir at the church in St John's Wood is the occasional singing of parts of the Divine Office and the development of an important polyphonic repertoire for it. In 1972 first Vespers were sung for Whitsun and All Saints, and the Office of Readings was sung on Good Friday (this is the reformed Office of 'Tenebrae', the principal musical component being the singing of Responsories; it is likely that St John's Wood was the first church in England to introduce the revised rite in Latin). Since then 'Tenebrae' has been sung each year and Vespers two or three times a year, generally including Whitsun.

A large polyphonic repertoire for Vespers has developed, in particular 26 of the finest settings of the Magnificat with settings by Gombert, Lassus and Horwood, as well as those of Palestrina and Victoria. In 1976 the choir began singing Compline regularly on the first Saturday of the month. The polyphonic repertoire for Compline is even more uncommon since, historically, polyphony was rarely sung at this Office. Yet LG now has a repertoire of around 100 works specifically for Compline (a good deal of them Tudor), which must be the majority of the polyphonic music written for the office.

When Fr Michael O'Dwyer died in 1977 all of the characteristics and aspects of LG discussed above were fully developed. The repertoire has increased greatly since then and there has been a continuous turnover of singers. Whilst there remains a small core of regular or occasional singers who were with the choir thirty years ago, some have left (many still returning on occasion) and others have joined. There have been periods when recruitment has been difficult, in particular in the mid-eighties, when there was a serious shortage of women which lasted until the 'Scottish invasion'. The crisis was resolved when one of the choir altos, Karen Curry, a former member of the renaissance choir at St Andrew's University, managed to persuade a few of her university friends who had moved to London to join the choir. Within a short time the choir was able, in the performance of double choir music, to set up a Scottish choir against the rest!

Fr O'Dwyer was succeeded by Father (later, Canon) McGowan who fully supported the choir and its objectives, and whose most fervent wish was that the choir should continue to thrive. The retirement of Canon McGowan and the arrival of Fr Colin Davies in 1994 brings LG up to the present era. Under Fr Colin, together with several very supportive assistant priests, the music at St John's Wood has indeed thrived. Not only has the choir ventured into yet more first rate music, previously known only to musicologists, but there has been an expansion in the number of services. A Latin Mass has been sung on many of the holy days and other weekdays, and the choir now continues singing throughout the holiday period of August.

St John's Wood has also been developing a sung English mass alongside the Latin Mass in recent years, and the choir has increasingly lent its support to the sung English liturgy. During the 1990s a set of imposing music lecterns were bought by the parish for the choir, and these add status and elegance to the south transept. They are movable but usually arranged in a semi-circle in a manner resembling that of Westminster Cathedral. These large stands enable the choir to handle the numerous chant books, music copies and odd bits of paper that they require in order to sing. They are also very useful in providing a screen, as tidiness and decorum are not among the qualities possessed by the choir.

The choir has just celebrated its thirtieth anniversary. Apart from regularly singing the Latin liturgy at St John's Wood it has sung in other churches and performed in many concerts under the name of Cantores Sanctae Mariae. It has undertaken several tours in France and Holland. It produced an LP in 1973 and has more recently issued the CD Corporis Mysterium and the tape Salve Regina.