The mixed-gender St John’s Voices (SJV) was axed last year despite the College budgeting nearly £1 million for its male-dominated choir, Varsity can reveal.

In the 2023-24 academic year, St John’s College spent £972,288 on its College Choir (SJCC). By contrast, the recently disbanded SJV received only £48,516.

SJV was axed in March, after the College decided to redirect the “significant resources” spent on the choir to “new opportunities” in the College’s musical community. Despite this financial reasoning, this investigation finds that the College was spending over 20 times more on its College choir than on the SJV.

Funding disparities between the SJV and SJCC have widened since 2022-23 when the College spent over 17 times more on the SJCC.

While the SJCC began admitting women and girls as full members in 2022, it is still male-dominated as the choir does not permit women to join as sopranos. There are currently only three women in the choir.

A successor choir to SJV, called the Cambridge University Schola Cantorum, was launched last month. The new choir includes former members of SJV, along with singers from other colleges, with the group claiming it will be a “truly University-wide ensemble”.

The Varsity investigation also revealed large disparities between the funding for college choirs. A summary of the findings for the 2023-24 academic year can be found below. Where applicable, expenditure on choir tours have been added to the overall choir budgets, since in some cases the majority of choir funding goes towards such tours. The outlying high figure for SJCC has been excluded, in order to optimise graph viewability.

At just shy of £1,000,000, SJCC received the greatest amount of funding. Trinity, Clare and Christ’s all spent over £100,000 on their choirs, when tour expenditure is accounted for.

By contrast, St Edmund’s College Choir received just £150 in collegiate funding during the last academic year. Robinson College Choir was not allocated a budget, but instead received funding for its tour to Milan through contributions from donors and choir members themselves.

Some colleges, such as Jesus, do not separate their choir and chapel maintenance budgets. As a consequence, it is not possible to identify how much was spent on the individual choir alone.

In addition to regular chapel services, Cambridge college choirs frequently undertake tours, both nationally and internationally. The expenditure for these trips can be covered through a variety of means, such as contributions from colleges and choir members themselves, as well as alumni gifts and concert ticket sales.

A tour by the Christ’s College choir to New Zealand in July 2024 cost £61,147.61 overall. Tours by the Trinity College choir to Switzerland and France and Clare College Choir to the United States cost over £40,000 and £30,000 respectively.

The funding disparities between different choirs can have a financial impact on their members. While some college choirs do not seek contributions from their members for tours, this is not the case for all. Choir members at Christ’s, for example, were each asked to contribute £600 for their tour to New Zealand some of which were met by College bursaries.

Some choir members expressed frustration at these inequalities. A member of the St Catharine’s College choir told Varsity that “it is frustrating to hear that there’s such financial disparities between different college choirs.

“We rehearse on average four times a week, which I think is a much larger commitment than what people expect a ‘lesser known’ college choir to have,” the choir member continued.

A member of the Downing College choir echoed these sentiments, telling Varsity that “Downing feels smaller and more broke than other choirs, which was most apparent when we went to Magdalene for a formal this term after doing a joint evensong. The Magdalene choir got the formal for free, but the Downing choir paid.”

This investigation comes after female choral scholars at King’s criticised their College for a lack of investment in the mixed-gender King’s Voices choir, compared to the all-male King’s College Choir.

While King’s College Choir singers can receive £70 per concert, £300 per studio recording session, and are provided with free long-term accommodation at King’s, singers at the King’s Voices perform without compensation. Frustration at these imbalances has led some women to leave the King’s Voices.

The budget for the Downing College choir excludes funding received from students, while the figure for the Christ’s College choir includes such funding.

The budgets for the Sidney Sussex and Gonville & Caius College choirs both exclude donations.

A full list of figures were not obtained for Peterhouse, Trinity Hall, and Churchill, Corpus Christi, Fitzwilliam, Jesus and King’s Colleges.

Downing and St John’s Colleges were contacted for comment.