Secular singers, both male and female, inhabited a wider and less protected world than that of the exclusively male performers of English church music. More than any other branch of the profession, theatre and concert singers stirred up the national and gender anxieties that pervaded British musical life. The 841 singers in the catalogue (199 of them women) worked in a variety of settings (see table II). While many combined two or more employment categories, the educational and social differences between the singers in choirs and those in theatres made the combination of religious and theatrical employment less common.

Singing careers lay along a broad continuum of musical context and content, nationality, gender, respectability, earnings, social and professional status, and vocal style. The affective power of the voice, the combination of female and male performers, the long-standing association of theatres with immorality, and the striking contrasts between English and Italian styles of singing intensified the importance of such distinctions. At one extreme, the choir singers inhabited a respectable, religious, male musical landscape characterized by the vocal techniques specifically associated with English church music. Next along the continuum were mainly English male and female singers who performed religious music such as oratorios as well as secular works in concerts. These singers were more likely than stage singers to come from slightly more prosperous and/or professional backgrounds, to have been trained in private lessons or at the Royal Academy of Music, and to enjoy a higher social status.