Thomas Helmore

Thomas Helmore (7 May 1811 in Kidderminster – 6 July 1890 in Westminster) was a choirmaster, writer about singing and author and editor of hymns and carols.

Helmore's father was a congregationalist minister (also called Thomas). During the boy's childhood, the family moved from Kidderminster to Stratford-upon-Avon, where Helmore later trained his father's choir and taught in a school which his father had founded. In 1837, he began his studies at Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating in 1840. He was ordained in the Church of England in the same year, and took up a curacy at St. Michael's, Lichfield, where he was also a priest-vicar in the Cathedral.

Two years later, he was appointed as precentor and vice-principal at St. Mark's College, Chelsea, where the principal was Derwent Coleridge (son of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge). He soon came to be on friendly terms with his new colleague and, in 1844, he married Kate Pridham, who was Derwent Coleridge's sister-in-law.

His main duty at St. Mark's was to train the students to sing a daily unaccompanied choral service in the college chapel. In the basic musical training, he was assisted by John Pyke Hullah. The choir's repertoire grew to include such as the anthems of Gibbons and Byrd and the motets of Palestrina, Vittoria and Marenzio. Helmore's growing reputation as a choirmaster led to his appointment in 1846 as master of the choristers in the Chapel Royal, St. James's, where one of his pupils was Arthur Sullivan. He continued as precentor at St. Mark's, however, until 1877.

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