<<  -- 2 --  Roderic Dunnett    A COUNTERTENOR VIRTUOSO

Blaze later went as a chorister to Magdalen College Oxford, just as Bernard Rose handed over as Organist and Master of the Choristers to John Harper. 'Actually that was the main reason I got in. I was a bit too old to apply, they usually take boys at eight. The junior choir I was singing in at Leeds Grammar had gone down on tour to Oxford, doing a week of services at Collegiate chapels out of termtime, and the Dean of Divinity, Brian Findlay, happened to be in the chapel while we were practising. I did a short solo, not much -- only a couple of lines -- but he said to my director of music "You should send this kid for a voice trial." John Harper, he explained, had only just taken over, so he hadn't even auditioned any of the other boys yet. If I went up aged ten or eleven it would be less of a problem, because he would be working with the other boys for the first time anyway.'

'So the timing was quite lucky, really. I arrived just at the time John took over. It was an incredibly immersive exprience. I loved it -- at that stage we simply didn't realise we were away at boarding school, we were so wrapped up with the idea of singing in this chapel. It was so wonderful to be involved in all this music, a real eye-opener : even then I was completely enraptured by Renaissance and Tudor music, composers like Palestrina and Byrd; it was the first time I'd really got to sing it.

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