[BITList] Ernest Lough - the first famous choirboy

[John Feltham]

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Lough,  Ernest Arthur  (1911-2000), singer, was born at 56 Glenparke Road, Forest Gate, London, on 17 November 1911, the son of Arthur Henry Lough, cashier to a lace merchant, and his wife, Caroline Ellen Frisby. He sang as a treble in the choir of his local church, St Peter's, but failed an audition for Southwark Cathedral. He was, however, accepted in 1924 by the Temple Church choir, whose organist and choirmaster, Dr George Thalben-Ball, had a reputation as a superb trainer of boys' voices. At the same time, Lough became a pupil at the City of London School, where all the Temple choristers were educated.

The idea that one of the treble soloists in the choir should make a recording came, apparently, from Lord Justice Eldon Bankes, and was enthusiastically taken up by 'Doctor', as the boys all called Thalben-Ball. HMV had very recently introduced a special mobile van, which made recordings outside a studio possible. In addition, the Temple Church had a particularly fine acoustic, perfect for recording. The piece chosen was Mendelssohn's 'Hear my prayer', better known as 'O for the wings of a dove'. Ernest Lough, then aged fifteen, was chosen because his voice was, at that moment, in the most perfect condition.

'We did four or five takes', recalled Lough some sixty years later  (Daily Telegraph):

One was discarded because a child was whistling outside; another because the Temple clock chimed. I wasn't aware that I was making history. I was so small I had to stand on a couple of Bibles so the single microphone would pick up my voice.
Lough was indeed making history. Record C1329 was issued by HMV in June 1927. So many copies were sold during the first six months that the matrix wore out, and another version had to be made. Later there was a third recording. People came from all over the UK, North America, and Australia to hear Ernest Lough at the Temple Church, and tickets had to be issued for all services until his voice broke two years later.

In The Record Guide, published in 1951, Edward Sackville-West and Desmond Shawe-Taylor wrote that:

the famous record [of 'Hear my prayer'] made in 1927 by Master Ernest Lough still survives ... This was one of the outstanding best-sellers of gramophone history. The touching purity of the singer's tone can still be appreciated in spite of the age of the record.
The 78 r.p.m. version stayed in the catalogue until the late 1950s. The recording was reissued as an extended-play record in 1961, and in the following year Lough received a golden disc, though the sales of the recording had exceeded 1 million some years before. By 2000 worldwide sales exceeded 5 million. 'O for the wings of a dove' and a dozen other solos recorded by Lough as a treble were made available on CD.

Lough's own favourite among his recordings was 'Hear ye, Israel' from Mendelssohn's Elijah, recorded on the spur of the moment at the end of another recording session when two 10 inch waxes were left unused. Lough did not previously know the piece, but learned it in half an hour. After his voice broke, or 'slid down' as he himself said, Lough remained with the Temple Church choir as a baritone until 1971. During the Second World War he worked in the fire service, and in 1942 had to look on helplessly when the Temple Church was destroyed by fire bombs. Services were held in the ruins until 1958, when the church was rededicated by the archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Geoffrey Fisher.

Ernest Lough made very little money from the phenomenal sales of his recording. Royalties of 5 per cent were paid to the Inner Temple, and half the sum was shared by Dr Thalben-Ball and the twenty-four members of the choir. When he reached the age of twenty-one, Lough received £200. By then he had become tea-boy and general dogsbody in the advertising department of HMV. One of his superiors was Ethel Winnifred Charlton (b. 1912/13), known as Charlie. On 25 June 1938 he and Charlie were married. They had three sons-Peter, Robin, and Graham-all of whom became choristers. Peter, who sang at the Chapel Royal, took part, together with his father, in the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Robin and Graham sang with the Temple Church choir.

After the war Lough joined the advertising agency Mather and Crowther, which later became Ogilvy and Mather. He was not tempted to become a professional singer, as his serviceable baritone was nothing remarkable. He always attributed the phenomenal success of 'O for the wings of a dove' to the training of Thalben-Ball, and no doubt there is some truth in that, but the angelic sound of the young voice and its wonderful musicality were his alone. After he left the Temple Church choir at the age of sixty, he sang for a further ten years with the Bach Choir, conducted by Sir David Willcocks. A Radio 4 programme celebrated the recording's sixtieth anniversary in 1987, and Robin Lough made a television documentary about his father for Channel 4 in 1994. Ernest Lough died at Watford General Hospital in Hertfordshire on 22 February 2000, survived by his wife and three sons.

Elizabeth Forbes 

Sources  The Times (24 Feb 2000) + Daily Telegraph (24 Feb 2000) + The Guardian (24 Feb 2000) + The Independent (24 Feb 2000) + K. J. Kutsch and L. Riemans, Grosses Sanger-Lexicon (1987) + E. Sackville-West and D. Shawe-Taylor, The record guide (1951) + b. cert. + m. cert. + d. cert.
Likenesses  Foulsham & Banfield, photograph, 1927, repro. in The Times [see illus.] · D. Mansell, photograph, repro. in The Guardian



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