Anthony Holt
Baritone and stalwart of the King’s Singers for two decades
ANTHONY HOLT, who has died aged 83, was one of the leading singers of his generation. A baritone, he combined a gifted natural vocal technique with sensitive interpretations, initially making his mark as a 12-year-old boy treble at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.
Graduating from the Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, Holt joined the BBC Singers before spending almost 18 years touring the world with the King’s Singers. The a capella group, their musicianship as immaculate as their attire, could move seamlessly from Renaissance polyphony to modern close-harmony arrangements. Formed in 1968, they are still in demand today.
Anthony Edward Holt was born on November 6 1940 in Henley-on-thames, but spent his formative years on the Sussex Downs; he was the younger son of Cecil Digby Holt, a managing accounts clerk, and his wife, Helen, née Warrington.
As a youngster he learnt the piano and violin, but it was singing in his church choir that became Anthony’s passion. He attended courses run by the Royal School of Church Music, and was one of the dozen boys chosen to represent the School at the Coronation in Westminster Abbey on June 2 1953.
A member of the Tudor Singers while a pupil at Brighton College, Holt was rejected for a choral scholarship at King’s College, Cambridge. But he did win a Choral Exhibition to study at Christ Church, Oxford, and sing in the Cathedral Choir. While in the city, he availed himself of every opportunity to make music, learning much from Laszlo Heltay, the Hungarian conductor of the Collegium Musicum Oxoniense (later the Schola Cantorum).
He began his professional career as a Lay Clerk in the Choir of Chichester Cathedral, while teaching in the Choir School. In 1969, he moved back to London, becoming a member of the BBC Singers. He also sang as a Vicar Choral in the Choir of St Paul’s Cathedral.
Twelve months earlier, a group of six former choral scholars at King’s College, Cambridge – Martin Lane, Alastair Hume, Alastair Thompson, Richard Salter, Simon Carrington and Brian Kay – had come up with a plan to form a new a capella close harmony group. Launched as the King’s Singers in May 1968, they initially got by with borrowed arrangements while performing at college concerts, in village halls and at their former schools.
It was meeting the agent Richard Armitage of the Noel Gay Organisation that propelled them to international stardom. Within two years they were appearing on Saturday-night primetime television as regular guests on The Nana Mouskouri Show. In 1969 Holt replaced Salter.
During his time with the group, amid a deceptively laidback image, they remained professional to their fingertips, working with leading arrangers and commissioning new works, including Krzysztof Penderecki’s Ecloga VIII, Luciano Berio’s setting of Ovid, Peter Dickinson’s Winter Afternoons, Stanley Glasser’s Lalela Zulu, Paul Patterson’s amusing Time Piece and Malcolm Williamson’s setting of the Grimms’ fairy tale, The Musicians of Bremen.
Their discography covered everything from German and Spanish madrigals to the songs of Noël Coward and Flanders and Swann. Particularly popular was their recording of Joseph Horovitz’s children’s cantata, Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo (with a libretto by Michael Flanders).
By 1987, having toured the world on numerous occasions and feeling that he had achieved everything he could with the group, Holt took his leave. He went on to carve out a successful career as a vocal coach in Britain and in America.
Anthony Holt was married three times. He is survived by a son and daughter from his first marriage and two sons from his second, and by his third wife, the American choral director Beverly Taylor.