Chapter 2: Women Church Cantors in Australia

In 1967, when I first started singing as an Anglican chorister at St Peter's Cathedral in Adelaide, the Church Cantor tradition had pretty well died out in Australia. Australian Church Clergy (who were all men in those days) canted or refused to cant with varying quality, choristers sang, and soloists within the choir were called singers. The Decani and Cantoris seats still adorned Anglican Cathedral Churches, but the origin of the Cantoris seat was forgotten, except by academics. At that time in Australia, the title of Cantor was reserved for male Jewish synagogue Cantors. Then the Jewish women took up the Cantor baton, and, following the role model of Miriam, they revived the art of the Jewish woman Cantor. Their leadership was invaluable.

Throughout my childhood and youth, I sang in church choirs, and accompanied singers on the piano and organ. As a young mother I continued singing in church choirs, taught music, trained as an opera singer, and sang in stage as a soloist, and in large choirs. In 1996 I was suddenly called to solo Cantor ministry when my parish Church burned down, so I looked for contemporary female role models to follow. I found no female role models for Cantor ministry in Australian churches, but male mentors in the Royal School of Church Music and the UK Guild of Church Musicians helped me to shape and develop my female Cathedral Cantor ministry. My role models were gleaned from historical female Church Cantor traditions, the Australian Conservatorium system supplied my musical training, and a six year theological degree provided the liturgical and compositional skills I needed. I waded through a varied Church music repertoire, honed my liturgical liaison craft, and sorted out the musical wheat from the chaff. I discovered that being a woman Cantor involves not only liturgical singing, but also arranging and composing new music on a weekly basis, and constantly defusing male assumptions that men are entitled to take credit for everything a skilled woman creates or does.

Seventeen years later, the art of the woman Church Cantor is well established in Australia, with claases for female Cantors flourishing in Churches. Since the Catholic and Anglican churches have historically defined Cantor ministry as one of the two essential precursors for priestly ordination (the other being Lector ministry) the establishment of women’s Cantor ministry in Australia, has enhanced the status of Australian church women. Although the quality of Cantor and chorister instruction varies, the UK Royal School of Church Music has worked with ecumenical Pastoral Music associations to establish and promote examined Voice Syllabuses for churches, so much progress has been made in helping Australian congregations to worship through music. Clerical recognition of female Church Cantor ministry is nevertheless slow to catch up. In most mainstream Churches there is no reason why female Cantors cannot be clerically commissioned, but this seldom occurs. I was fortunate to be jointly commissioned in 2000 as an accredited ACertCM(UK) Cathedral Cantor by Rev. Dr. George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, then the Very Rev. Basil Hume.

Female Church Cantors in Australia (and worldwide) are invariably diligent, collaborative and highly skilled. All the Australian women Church Cantors I have met have a genuine desire to serve and honour God rather than themselves. A few are paid, but many are volunteers, who have paid for their own tuition. A favoured few, such as June Nixon and Kathlleen Boschetti, have achieved remarkable heights of Church music mimistry in Australia. So It grieves me (and I have no doubt, also God) when a few ill advised  Church music critics accuse female Church Cantors of impious self-aggrandizement, rail against women in ministry, and declare us unwanted. Their hostility is ridiculously unChristian and unproductive.