How shall I keep from singing?

Yippee – choir holiday! I’m outta here until September.

Enjoyed a good concert in church, given by one of our occasional sopranos and her sister. Lots of old favourites, including the ‘Cat Duet’ (Rossini). (They like each other really….)

Fortunately, Anna stayed on to sing with us at the Sunday Eucharist, when we sang ‘God Omnipotent’ (arranged Wood) for the first time. The ‘Amen’ still sounds strange, but I like the piece as a whole. Most of the choir then rushed out of the vestry in time to hear one of our favourite voluntaries, ‘Carillon de Westminster’ (Vierne).

A quiet, simple Evensong ended the day, with Anglican chant, Ferial responses and ‘Lead me Lord’ (Wesley). Sometimes it’s good to go into automatic mode and not have to think too much – probably rather like the monks in their daily round.

The Exeter Festival was a good chance to hear the Cathedral choir sing for an extended period. Music from the Queen’s Coronation was sung, accompanied by film footage of the event. I hadn’t realised quite how much singing was involved all those years ago – it filled a complete 90 minute programme.

We presented the Director of Music with a Kazoo this morning, so he could blow an anthem note that all could hear. Fortunately he didn’t actually use it in the service, but I think he took it home to practise. Meanwhile, the two anthems this week were accompanied – ‘Gaelic Blessing’ (Rutter) at the Eucharist and ‘Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace’ (Wesley) at Evensong, which we also heard at last night’s concert.
One of the congregation complimented us on our good diction today which was a surprise as I’d thought it was one of our failings. Perhaps we do listen sometimes to our choir master’s pleadings, after all.

Back to the Festive Eucharist (Rawsthorne) for a few weeks; fortunately it quickly became familiar again. More unfamiliar was the anthem ‘All things bright and beautiful’ (Rutter) which is surprisingly difficult to sing, especially for a traditional church choir. This week, we sang it mostly in unison with harmony only at the end of each verse. Perhaps we will know it well enough by next time to sing it all in the harmony version.

A very enjoyable visit to another Devon church (Crediton) allowed us to hear a different choir – larger than ours and very well regarded. We were very envious that they were able to sing Walton’s ‘Set me as a seal’ a capella, as well as the accompanied anthem ‘Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace’ (Sumsion).

After a very hot day and an appalling World Cup defeat for England, it was a relief to enjoy the peace of evensong. A peace only shattered by our inability to hear the starting notes for our anthem, ‘Teach me O Lord’ (Attwood). The basses consequently had to struggle down in their boots and sounded just like bearded Russian Orthodox.

A surprise visit from the Bishop of Cyprus and the Gulf today – who very conveniently was able to confirm the daughter of one of our sopranos, as he was passing. Fittingly, said soprano sang the solo in ‘Be still my soul’ (Sibelius). It was also enjoyable to sing the Rawsthorne Mass setting after a long break.

Numbers were down at Evensong, but with the vicar’s help we were still able to sing ‘Give us the wings of faith’ (Bullock), not an easy anthem to sing well even by the best of choirs. As usual our bouncy blonde reader enthused about our singing – we haven’t managed to put her off yet. Although, like many of the choir, I don’t think she was too enamoured of the Mathias organ voluntary (Toccata Giocosa).

Sadly, our deputy organist – the one who plays soft, gentle, reassuring music, has felt he has had to give up, due to health problems. We’ll have to teach our noisy organist some of his repertoire to keep the variety going, and to keep everyone happy. Not an easy task.

A little trip up the candle, while we enjoyed the drama of Corpus Christi at St. Mary, Bourne St. It was strange to hear the choir but not see them (as they sang from the back of the church, the Missa Caro Mea – Jacobus Clemens non Papa, the sequence – Laud O Zion thy creation, and two motets – Antiphon to the Magnificat, Guerrero, and Ave Verum, Byrd). It was fascinating to watch the frequent doffing of birettas, the intricate patterns on the lacy cottas and the elaborate dressing arrangements of the celebrant, alternating between chasuble and cope, requiring two assistants acting as page boys, it seemed. Fortunately, the cast revealed themselves to be perfectly normal and ‘just like us’ with glass of wine in hand at the end of the service.

It seemed strange to return to ‘normal’ service at our home church, where we received a good ‘welcome home’ by the rest of the choir. The party on Saturday was not really just for us, but it felt as if it was, especially after several glasses of sangria, plates of cheese, salad and strawberry flan. On Sunday, we sang ‘Litany to the Holy Spirit’ (Hurford), obviously a popular choice amongst many choirs and a favourite of our own vicar, in the morning and Wood’s ‘Oh most merciful’ in the evening – a lovely but short anthem, so the choir master decided we should sing it twice, first as a quartet and then with full choir. It worked very well in that format and, I think, will soon become a choir favourite.
It’s lovely to go away for a while, but you can’t beat ‘home’.

Two weeks off – a rare treat in the middle of term. Whit Sunday saw us in Llandaff inspecting their new organ (capable of playing very loudly, or accompanying young singers very sensitively) with Trinity Sunday spent at Lee Abbey, enjoying beautiful scenery and delicious food. As long as I stayed well away from the noisy-looking drum kit, it was a peaceful weekend with not too much rain to spoil the occasion. My favourite room in the house was the Library, with its triple-aspect window overlooking the bay.

My treat in the intervening week was to attend Evensong at Southwark Cathedral (no drums in sight), listening to their girls’ choir sing the Morley responses, Bairstow in E flat canticles, and the delightful ‘Litany to the Holy Spirit’ (Hurford) – a perfect fit for the confident, clear voices of an all-girl choir.

A return of several former choristers today – always a welcome sight. It was a special occasion for one of our altos – the baptism of her new baby girl. At her special request, we sang Simon Lole’s ‘The Father’s Love’ with a beautiful descant sung by one of the godparents (also a former chorister). It was a new anthem for us and appeared to be well-received.

Unusually, we sang ‘At the name of Jesus’ to the tune ‘Cuddesdon’ (chosen by the vicar and, presumably, named after his theological college) – after a short time getting used to the melody we decided it worked rather well. It’s always hard to pull off an unfamiliar tune to an old favourite – I tried not to look too closely at any grimaces coming from the congregation.

The altos helped out the sopranos at morning Eucharist, singing Stanford’s ‘O for a closer walk with God’. Which we gladly did, as there have been several instances in the past when the help has been the other way around. Instead of Evensong, we sat back to enjoy the well-regarded school Gospel Choir at the ecumenical Christian Aid service. It was a strange experience to see the united reformed minister all robed up, while our own reader wore jeans. I think they were in rehearsal for an episode of ‘Trading Places’. (Hopefully she’ll put her ‘clothes’ back on again for normal service to resume next week).

Ascension Day saw us in a rather different church – All Saints Margaret Street. We sat among the draughts from the refurbishment scaffolding (and watched the polythene billow out around the organ pipes during the loud passages). A highly competent choir sang Padilla’s Missa ‘Ego flos campi’ and Finzi’s ‘God is gone up’, after which we were amused by the descending sanctuary lamps (one of which narrowly missed an unwary acolyte’s chin).

Time goes by and I can’t keep up….
The last Sunday of April saw us singing ‘Teach me O Lord’ (Attwood) at the Eucharist and ‘God be in my head’ (Davies) at Evensong. We are missing our strongest soprano who managed to dodge clouds of volcano ash to visit her daughter in Australia.

Last Sunday ‘A new commandment’ (Aston) complemented the Gospel reading perfectly, and also the theme of the Vestry Group – where the children made up their own list of commandments, some rather funny.
Festival Evensong came at the end of the Town’s Music Festival, with guest preacher Mark Chapman (Ripon College, Cuddesdon) who gave us detailed information on the hymn ‘Jerusalem’, our last hymn of the evening. In return, he had to listen to us singing the Sweeney Responses, Moeran in D canticles and ‘Let all the world’ (Vaughan Williams). We were glad our vicar and former pupil of Prof. Chapman was singing with us – as we could blame any mistakes on him!
The evening was rounded off in fine style with Bach’s ‘Toccata and Fugue in D Minor’ – the whole congregation stayed to listen, which is quite unusual – you could tell it was a discerning bunch at this Music Festival.

I have counted the number of choir members we have had over the last 15 years and it is 86 (allowing for moves and deaths, there has been a consistent 25-ish over that period). You certainly can’t call that ‘dead wood’.