How shall I keep from singing?

The Christian Faith almost came to a juddering end at Choir practice this week, when the choir master announced while we were singing ‘Ave Verum Corpus, natum ex Maria Virgine’ that we would have sung it a month ago but had to abort.
Fortunately, he was talking figuratively, so we still turned up on Sunday morning to sing ‘Day by Day’ (How) and a return to the well-loved Mass of St. Thomas (Thorne).

The evening service was very exciting, particularly for the children taking part, as it was the ‘Schools’ Songs of Praise’. Normally all the prep schools sing classical anthems and the primaries sing about wriggly worms and concrete cows, but this year the offerings were more mixed. Songs included, ‘When I needed a neighbour were you there?’, ‘I the Lord of sea and sky’, ‘Shine Jesus Shine’ and a very low (for the girls at least) ‘Whatcha lookin’ for?’ by the senior school gospel choir. It was the parish choir who sang an anthem (we normally only choose a hymn) which provided quite a contrast to all the modern music sung by the other groups: ‘O thou the central Orb’ (Wood). It was rather strange to be applauded at the end, although we didn’t get whoops, whistles and foot-stamps like some of the other groups (who had all brought their parents and grannies to cheer them along). Our performance couldn’t have been too bad though, as we had gained another alto recruit by the end of the evening. Perhaps a few more sopranos would now like to come forward?

Only one (morning) service for the choir this week, and a good old stand-by: ‘Ave Verum Corpus’ (Mozart) was pulled out of the cupboard in preparation. This gave us more time at choir practice to have a good sing of less well-known items which the choir master may spring on us later in the year.

The vicar had a surprise after choir practice – as we held a celebration of his first year in post. It was like the feeding of the 5,000 as what seemed like a tiny iced fruit cake was cut up and passed around the assembled crowd with enough to eat and more left over.

We also celebrated the vicar’s birthday on Sunday by singing the Sweeney Gloria to a Jazz rhythm (he would have liked a whole Jazz Eucharist, but this is Creamtealand where we don’t take very kindly to too many enthusiastic innovations all at once). The anthem, ‘O for a closer walk’ (Stanford), seemed very ordinary by comparison. It was the children of the vestry group who stole the show, however, with their feather-encrusted Holy Spirit doves and a rather bedraggled newly-baptised teddy bear.

We were surprised to see a congregation at Evensong, as the heavens decided to open just as people would have been putting on their coats to come to church. Those who made the effort were able to sing two Psalms (46 and 47), the first being particularly appropriate to the weather outside, and hear ‘Listen sweet dove’ (Ives) plus the upbeat voluntary, Toccata in Seven – Rutter, presumably another attempt to remind the vicar he is getting older.

All the men were back today, and about half the upper voices. We gave a rather wobbly rendition of ‘Ave Verum’ (Elgar) in the morning Eucharist and a more confident (but unison) version of ‘Eastern Monarchs, Sages Three’ at Evensong.
Hopefully we will be back to full strength by next week.