How shall I keep from singing?

Another long marathon at church today – the usual Eucharist (with Elgar’s Ave Verum Corpus as the anthem) followed by a meeting with the Archdeacon about the Interregnum. All sorts of issues were discussed, but ‘it’s likely to be a long one’ was the dominant theme.
Several excited teenage choristers were in church this evening, not just because of the service or the chance to sing ‘My eyes for beauty pine’ by Howells, but because the Youth Group pancake evening immediately followed. Even tonight’s preacher talked about a way to a man’s heart being through his stomach.

Only a morning service for the choir today. The new choirmaster’s plan to trawl through the vestry cupboards finding anthems we don’t normally sing produced another gem which was tried out on the congregation this morning. I didn’t hear any complaints over coffee. Harper’s ‘Spirit of Love’ was initially included in an RSCM booklet by its esteemed director but, after the Festival in Exeter Cathedral, it was put away and not brought out again until a couple of Fridays ago. The anthem uses the theme and rhythm of a weaving loom (6-8 followed by 2-4) to show how the Holy Spirit can ‘weave us into one’. It’s the first time I can remember singing an anthem where the first word (sung by the men) is ‘N-n-n-n’. The top line responds later with ‘ah-ah-ah-ah’, a much more familiar sound to choristers and congregations alike.

A long session in church this morning, not mainly due to the length of the service but because there was a meeting about the interregnum afterwards. I was rather shocked to hear the proposal that we join with four other parishes to form a very large team ministry. Positive spin cannot disguise that numbers of clergy in the diocese are (like lifts) always ‘going down’ when you really want them to be ‘going up’.
The anthem, ‘Litany to the Holy Spirit’ (Hurford) was sung beautifully as a soprano solo, followed by full soprano, then full choir. Sometimes the simplest arrangements are the best.

It was hard to sleep through the evening service, with children hanging out of every pew. Education Sunday comes but once a year and there are rather a lot of schools in Tavistock. We had the usual ‘wriggly worms and cute caterpillar’ type of songs from the youngest children, through to Vaughan Williams’ arrangement of ‘All people that on earth do dwell’ played rather well by a school orchestra plus organ. The choir contribution was rather long, so thankfully the congregation joined in the refrain – some syrupy modulated thing by Rutter, the name of which escapes me. I couldn’t quite decide on which side of the line bordering ‘kitsch’ it should go, but it was fairly close if not actually over the line. The service was also longer than usual due to a rather interesting new liturgy for the commissioning of a new headteacher to a church school. It sounded slightly awkward due to its newness, but I expect that will soon disappear as it becomes accepted practice in the schools of the diocese. There seem to be a lot of headteacher posts vacant at the moment.

There was no choir practice on Friday so I was very glad of the quick run-through in the vestry before the morning Eucharist. We had sung ‘Spirit of the Lord’ by Harper at the Exeter RSCM Festival a couple of years ago, but I think this was its first airing in a service in our own church. I enjoyed hearing the clash-resolve-clash sequence whilst we were singing it: as if hearing it for the first time. I hope the congregation didn’t find it disturbed their meditations too much – it was rather different music to that which they are used to hearing.

Evensong tonight was a quiet affair, partly because there were not many altos. Consequently, the choirmaster asked everyone to tone down ‘O Lord increase my faith’ by Gibbons to get a better balance. That sort of a capella music should always be sung in a quiet, relaxed style in my opinion anyway, so it was all the better for the advice. However, a small choir split into two facing sides treads a thin line between quiet and weak’n'weedy. I think it’s true to say we oscillated between the two at various points.