brecho cheapchic

A church choir in gold robes. Read our Terms of Use before downloading this  Christian  Choir Clip Art.

      Choir; that part of a church, or cathedral, where the singers, or choristers, chant, or sing, divine service. The word according to Isidore, is derived a coronis circumstantium, because, anciently, the choristers were disposed round the altar. It is properly the chancel.

      In the first common-prayer book of king Edward VI, the rubric at the beginning of morning prayer ordered the priest, "being in the choir, to begin the Lord's prayer:" so that it was the custom of the minister to perform divine service at the upper end of the chancel near the altar. Against this, Bucer, by the direction of Calvin, made a great outcry, pretending "it was an anti-christian practice for the priest to say prayers only in the choir, a place peculiar to the clergy, and not in the body of the church among people who had as much right to divine worship as the clergy." This occasioned an alteration of the rubric, when the common-prayer book was revised in the fifth year of king Edward, and it was ordered, that prayers should be said in such part of the church, "where the people might best hear." However, at the accession of queen Elizabeth to the throne, the ancient practice was restored, with a dispensing power left in the ordinary of determining it otherwise if he saw just cause. Convenience at last prevailed, and by degrees, introduced the custom of reading prayers in the body of the church, so that now service is no longer performed in the choir or chancel, excepting in cathedrals.--Hend. Buck

A church choir in deep burgundy robes.

A church choir in navy robes.