By Carol P. Bartold 

Oct. 28, 2015:  Philip Stopford, composer-in-residence at Christ Church Bronxville, has made a significant musical journey from his earliest memories of "picking out tunes" on the family piano as a small child to working full-time as a composer of choral music. 

"One of my pieces is being sung somewhere every week," Stopford said. His "Ave Maria" was included in the mass that Pope Francis celebrated at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia in September. 

Stopford, who arrived in Bronxville in September, is directing the church's music program and conducting its choirs through Christmas. "I left my church job at Belfast Cathedral in Northern Ireland in 2010 and I've technically been a choral composer and conductor since then," he said. 

He considers his position at Christ Church to be "within my freedom to be a composer and conductor." He added that he enjoys the variety within the music program, with choirs ranging from a semi-professional adult choir to the Young at Arts ensembles for students to the treble choir with the youngest children. 

"I feel that I can work with adults and children, so it's a good situation for me," Stopford noted. "I'm doing much more choir directing than composing. It's quite a lot of balancing of things." 

Stopford considers the Anglican choral tradition to be the greatest influence on his compositions. "I grew up with Charles Villiers Stanford, Herbert Howells, John Rutter, and more recently Bob Chilcott," he said. "I love the tradition of it all, the heritage and the history of the music." More recently, he added, American composers such as Eric Whitacre and Morten Lauridsen have added to the church's choral tradition. 

"The thing that the music does," Stopford explained, "is punctuate and bring a sense of spirituality and depth to the words of the liturgy that reading them purely alone is more difficult to do." Through the use of major and minor keys, texture and color, accompaniment or no accompaniment, "we're able to say a bit more about the words than we can if we just read them." 

The liturgy can bring a real sense of joy or healing through the music. "And that's why it exists, really, I think. That's why we've been given that gift, I guess," Stopford offered. 

Philip Stopford began exercising his musical gift at age five or six, he recalls, when his father began to give him formal piano lessons once a week. Within a year, he had progressed through enough of the pedagogy that his father felt Stopford should see a more experienced piano teacher. 

His first compositions were songs for his mother's holiday club, similar to vacation Bible school in the U.S. "She would write some words and I would put a little tune together and then we'd learn it as the holiday club song." 

Just before he turned nine years old, he entered Westminster Abbey as a chorister, where he began to play organ at age twelve. He won a major music scholarship to Bedford School and served as organ scholar at Truro Cathedral. 

At Oxford University, Stopford studied music at Keble College and served as organ scholar. In 1999 and 2000, he was organ scholar at Canterbury Cathedral and then, until 2003, he was assistant organist at Chester Cathedral. In 2003, he was appointed director of music at St. Anne's Cathedral in Belfast, Northern Ireland, a position he held until 2010. 

Born in Bletchley in Buckinghamshire in southeast England and raised in Leighton Buzzard, also in Buckinghamshire, Stopford now lives in Chester in the northwest of England. A recording of Truro Cathedral Choir singing Philip Stopford's song "Do Not Be Afraid" is available on iTunes.

Pictured here:  Composer Philip Stopford.

Photo by N. Bower