How shall I keep from singing?

The parishioners of Tavistock don’t get out much, so it was with great excitement that we boarded a coach first thing on Saturday morning to take us to our namesake church in a little village in Dorset. It was a cross between ‘Day trip to Bangor’ and the Famous Five spoof film ‘(Twenty)-Five go mad in Dorset’, with lots of cake and lashings of ginger beer. Well, beer anyway. We stopped off for coffee and lunch in Sherborne, with time to look round their beautiful abbey and then arrived on top of a large hill overlooking the village of Ibberton. The hardy ones of us walked down the footpath to the church while the others took the coach. It was bright, sunny weather, so perfect for a walk, although we felt rather jealous of the lazy ones who spent their spare time,waiting for us, in the pub. After Evensong in the tiny church of St. Eustace (the other spelling of Eustachius) we continued down the hill to the village hall for hearty refreshments. The parishioners were so friendly we asked them to come to our church next year, where I hope we can manage to feed them as well as they fed us.

Some of our choir, plus organist, were singing in Brecon Cathedral for the weekend, so the remainder just about managed four parts (with one tenor, plus a bass who was persuaded to come over to the dark side) for ‘Ave Verum Corpus’ (Mozart). The service included another baptism, so there was more cake and chocolate biscuits to be had at the back of church. It’s a hard life being a chorister, sometimes.

A very traditional Trinity Sunday, with all the obligatory ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ hymns and Tchaikovsky’s ‘Hymn to the Trinity’ as the anthem. The children presented us with lots of ideas for things which are three-in-one, which they had been preparing in the vestry: including a three-leaved clover and three-layered Trinity cake. There was more cake to be had at the back of church as it was a celebration of Maria’s first birthday.

I like cake.

The Eucharist part of the two-part Pentecost service finally got under way after 11 am – nearly an hour late. The first part was a free-form open-air service, which became very loud and very carried-away. Consequently, the Eucharist happened at breakneck speed, so the Holy Spirit needed a rocket pack as well as tongues of flame to keep up. We determined to get as much singing as possible into the second half, having been kept waiting so long – so we managed the Alleluias, if not the Gospel Acclamations; the St. Eustachius Mass, two hymns and ‘Spirit of the Lord’ (Harper). The last hymn was ‘Shine, Jesus, Shine’, but by then everyone was too exhausted to sing with much enthusiam. A few hardy souls stayed for the whole 2 1/2 hour service, so coffee was sorely needed and gratefully drunk.

The vicar joked that the 6pm Evensong would be delayed until 8.30pm and then promptly ran out of the vestry before we could whip him. Strangely, the music was the same as Saturday evening in the cathedral – Stanford and Ives, but this time with our choir singing the Sweeney responses. To extend the day even further, two psalms were sung (67 and 133), both fortunately short.

Thank goodness we get the next two Sunday evenings off to recover.

I can’t decide whether the anthem ‘Veni sancte spiritus’ (Harper) is incredibly atmospheric or incredibly boring. I guess the difference is in the expression, which we probably didn’t pay enough attention to last week.
‘Tavistock Sings!’ (the town’s music festival) came to an end last weekend with a Festival Evensong in church, attended by guest preacher the Revd Canon Perran Gay, Precentor of Truro Cathedral. We sang the Sweeney responses, Brewer’s Mag. and Nunc. and one of my favourite anthems, ‘Locus Iste’ (Bruckner).
I much preferred the evening organ voluntary (‘Grand Choeur in D’, Guilmant) to this morning’s offering (‘Transports de joie’, Messiaen), which was painful on the ears.

This Saturday saw us in Exeter Cathedral for another RSCM event (there haven’t been any for ages and then two come along at once). It was a pleasure to sing Evensong with the cathedral choirs: good old Stanford in C, with the anthems: Listen Sweet Dove (Ives) as an introit, and ‘The Spirit of the Lord’ (Elgar). Most of the choristers had not sung the Elgar before, so we were very glad of a confident lead from the young professionals.