How shall I keep from singing?

Having sung in several choirs over many, many years, we have made good friends with other choristers across the region. It was therefore with great pleasure that we met up with several of them again at the regional RSCM ‘Meet, Eat and Sing’. The host church put on a magnificent spread, sandwiched between a rehearsal and service led by Stephen Tanner, of Exeter Cathedral, who has a real gift of encouraging amateur singers.

A male quartet (of vicar and choir members), sounding eerily like the King’s Singers, sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to our organist on Sunday morning. Of course, we had to sing the organist’s own Mass setting and also the communion anthem, ‘If ye love me keep my commandments’ (Tallis) – source of a private joke between him and the vicar. The organist then played us out to ‘Fanfare’ by Whitlock and kept right on playing until we thought the coffee would run out. Well, if you can’t do that on your birthday, when can you?

The vicar enjoyed himself during evensong by singing Alto, Tenor and Bass alternately, while one of the readers sang the Office. We had just enough sopranos to sing ‘O for a closer walk with God’ (Stanford)- as usual for our choir (but apparently unusual elsewhere) the bass section was enormous and had to pipe down a tad.

Fortunately an alert soprano spotted that we were practising the wrong anthem for the morning Eucharist. Still, it’s fun to sing and an extra practice never did us any harm. ‘The Call’ (Lloyd) – the correct anthem – never sounds quite right to me with four part harmony plus descant. We kept the SATB parts quiet this time, allowing the soprano solo to float over the top, which worked much better.

The choir had an evening off as there was no sung Evensong, so two of us took ourselves off to Exeter Cathedral to hear the men and boys strut their stuff, instead. It’s so good to sit quietly and let someone else’s hard work wash over us. We were treated to Wesley’s ‘Ascribe unto the Lord’ (the full version, not the last few pages as we normally sing), responses by Tomkins, and the Bairstow Canticles in D. As usual, there were an equivalent number of alert, more senior choir boys to balance those who were young, overwhelmed and looking as if they needed a good sleep. It was their third service of the day.

This Sunday was dubbed ‘Vocations Sunday’ and a rather nervous-looking young man from a neighbouring parish climbed into the pulpit to tell us all about his vocation to the ministry. Vicars do seem to be getting younger and younger these days, but I don’t think he’s of the tradition where he will expect all the old ladies to call him ‘Father’. It was good to have enough basses this morning for a good, firm lead in ‘Teach me O Lord’ (Attwood).

The civic service saw a much-enlarged evening congregation, with various mayors dressed in fine regalia, and a small Salvation Army band. Fortunately their harmonies were mostly the same as ours, although there was some uncertainty at the end whether they were giving us an introduction to ‘God save the Queen’ or not. Fortunately the Queen herself was not present to hear our rather wobbly start. The choir’s contribution to the evening was H. Balfour Gardiner’s ‘Evening Hymn’ plus huge appetites for the drinks and snacks in the Town Hall afterwards.

The vicar and choirmaster were both away this week so we all had a jolly time making *cough* deliberate mistakes. Nothing went badly wrong, but it did make us appreciate how well things run most of the time. Even the tenor who tried to begin ‘Ave Verum Corpus’ in English (a sackable offence?!) at choir practice remembered his Latin in time for the service. A lighter moment was provided by one of the children who came to the front in her Emmaus disguise – a large red nose and pointy green hat. Of course, we all said we didn’t recognise her

It was a very quiet Evensong, both in the choir and in the congregation. Not many of the older generation like to come out when it has been snowing. All the choir members sat on one side to sing ‘Lead me Lord’ (Wesley) – a sensible choice given the anticipated low numbers. It was also quite cosy sitting close together and made up for the chilly weather outside.