In fifty years, New College Choir has recorded over a hundred discs and has a number of Gramophone and other industry awards to its name. In this section you can read about the Choir's recording history and its new own label Novum, and you can view a comprehensive discography list. We don't sell our entire discography, but well over fifty of our releases are available in our shop.

New College Choir has been making records since the 1960s. There is a pre-history, anthologized in a special issue entitled Archive Recordings 1927–1951, including William Harris directing Byrd’s Justorum animae (1927), and Kenneth Andrews Byrd’s Laudibus in sanctis (1953). The first consistent activity was set in train by Sir David Lumsden, and involved Abbey Records, a pioneering company dedicated to making a sound archive of the widest possible range of collegiate and cathedral choirs in the 60s and 70s. With this company New College issued LPs of music by Benjamin Britten, Byrd (the Great Service) and Kenneth Leighton. From Abbey, New College passed on to CRD, an enterprising independent label with whom it has subsequently made some 25 CDs, mostly of English repertory. From this moment, an important strand in the Choir’s work was to record material not yet available on disc. Thus, if you look at the Gibbons project (1988) you will see that it includes the first recording of the complete Second Service of Gibbons (in a reconstruction by Edward Higginbottom). The Byrd Cantiones Sacrae recordings (1983 and 1986) contain many motets new (then) to the catalogue. The same is true of recordings of music by Tye, Tomkins, Taverner, Tallis, Boyce, Greene, Croft, Wesley, Stanford and Howells. The interest in new material also took the choir to Malta for a recording of music from the Mdina Cathedral archives, and in 1985 an anthology of Josquin motets (for Meridian) preceded the current vogue for the music of this remarkable composer.

In the 1980s a relationship developed with Hyperion and the King’s Consort, leading not only to involvement in the complete Purcell church music series, and many Handel oratorios (both projects involving ‘premier’ recordings), but also some early French music in editions prepared in Oxford (grand motets of Mondonville, sacred music of Le Jeune). With Hyperion, New College also recorded for the first time music by Matthew Locke. A French connection had been made some time earlier in a project with Erato to record grands motets by Desmarest (again a first recording), and subsequently with the same company for a Lalande project. However the important phase with Erato came in the mid 90s with the issue of ‘Agnus Dei’, a choral anthology, which went to the top of the charts, and sold over 300,000 copies worldwide. Agnus Dei II inevitably followed, plus an anthology of folksong. The last of the projects with Erato was the world-premier recording of music for Vespers by Pergolesi, alongside which Edward Higginbottom co-edited the musical text for Baerenreiter. 

A connection with Decca also arose at this time, with a CD of music for coronations, including premier recordings of music by Boyce and Croft edited by Higginbottom. This relationship continues to this day with a choral anthology in preparation for release in 2011. Another strand of activity at this time was developed with Collins Classics, including two ground-breaking recordings of music by Eustache du Caurroy and Philippe de Monte. For some time the Choir has been sponsoring its own recordings independently of other companies. This was how its very successful versions of Bach's St John Passion and Handel's Messiah came into being, both recordings placed subsequently with Naxos. Other releases have been on the Avie label (these of 20th-century choral repertory, including a North American anthology), and an English version of Haydn’s Creation with the Oxford Philomusica (an earlier involvement with this work was with Christopher Hogwood and Decca). These, and other recordings, have garnered many citations, and been nominated for and won a number of industry awards, from Hogwood’s version of Handel’s Athalia to a Gramophone award in the early music category for the sacred music by Nicholas Ludford (2008). 

The Choir’s CDs number over one hundred (many of which are available to buy directly from the Choir). They are, if you will, the public voice of the Choir, accessible across the globe. More than anything else they have established the reputation of the Choir, and given it its international profile. Today’s hope is that this legacy can continue to be replenished. In response to the challenges of today’s market for recorded music, New College Choir has inaugurated its own label, Novum, marking this move in 2010 with a highly successful release of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610. Not all of its current recording projects are in-house though: in 2012 the Choir worked with classical label Decca on a new release, Illumina: Music of Light, which includes Barrington Pheloung's famous Morse Theme.