How shall I keep from singing?

As today was Stewardship Sunday I brought my coughs, cold and sneezes to church. I hope everyone was very grateful. The invitations to bring monetary gifts were individually named, but for some reason they left ours off the list. Obviously the church does not need our family’s money ; )
It was good to sing something not too taxing today – the simple but effective hymn ‘Be still for the presence of the Lord’, sung in unison: all, men only, all. The organist (who for this anthem played the piano) enjoyed himself between verses playing lots of improvised twiddly bits. Fortunately he toned down what he threatened to play at choir practice (florid wasn’t the word for it) as we would have laughed too much.

We welcomed back three former choristers, now living elsewhere: a soprano, a tenor and a bass. They provided much-needed reinforcements, especially for the morning anthem, Rutter’s ‘For the beauty of the earth’. Once again we were able to sing it with the descant, which sounds beautiful. Our choir baby now knows when the anthem is about to start and decides (having stayed quiet all the rest of the service) that now is the time to cry. We hope her voice may become more refined as she ages! The Vestry Group surprised us all with noisy balloons at the end of the service – causing the sound of laughter to ring out in all the pews.

A very reduced choir (of 7) went to the other benefice church for Evensong. It was a total contrast to this morning’s service, quiet and gentle. Psalms, Mag and Nunc were to Anglican chant, no anthem and three traditional evening hymns. I felt so relaxed, it was hard to stay awake.

An augmented choir for the wedding on Saturday (they provided a very useful descant in ‘For the Beauty of the Earth’ – Rutter) provided an encouraging start to our Harvest weekend. Unfortunately they were not able to join us on Sunday morning, so we were back to the usual number to sing ‘Bread is blessed and broken’ – Iona, plus a feast of traditional harvest hymns. The vestry group children had visited a farm earlier in the week, so regaled us of tales of what they had found there – fortunately we were spared the Blessing of the Animals service bravely tried at our other benefice church. The morning was rounded off with a huge bring-and-share Harvest Lunch in the parish centre. About half of the food was eventually consumed – even members of the church youth could not manage to eat it all, try as they might.

A larger than usual evensong congregation continued the hearty singing, and listened to us sing an old choir favourite (variously known as ‘The Heathens are Yelling’ or ‘The Heathen are Smelling’) Haydn’s ‘The Heavens are Telling’. Sometimes it is good to have the opportunity at Evensong to have a good rant, singing something which wouldn’t really fit into a contemplative Eucharist service. Ireland’s Mag and Nunc, plus Andrew Millington’s responses, completed the choral part of the Festival Evensong, after which we all retired for a good rest – especially the RSCM Silver Medallion award winners who had spent even more of their weekend singing than usual.

OK, I’ll admit I was dubious this year. Last year’s ‘Back to Church Sunday’ was packed out, but this year I detected a distinct lack of enthusiasm for repeating a good idea. Sure enough, I processed out of the choir vestry to see a much less full church than last year (although slightly bigger than an average Sunday) and thought ‘hmmmmm’. Still, we sang the rather appropriate ‘God so loved the world’ (Stainer) and proceeded through the service in the usual manner. It was over coffee, at the back of church, that I discovered the encouraging stories of the few who had returned – including a former chorister – and suddenly felt much more encouraged. Hundreds didn’t turn up? No matter – ten did. And what ten quality people they were.

It was all medals and dignity in the evening (well at least until the end – more of that later), for it was the town’s annual Civic Service. ‘Look at the World’ (Rutter) seemed a strange choice of anthem in the middle of Jerusalem, the National Anthem and a commemoration of the life of Horatio Nelson, but it was appreciated by the most surprising people judging by comments at the end of the service. Which just shows you never can tell. The best part, at the end of all the pomp and ceremony, was hearing the organist play his own version of a nautical medley – the sailor’s hornpipe with a bit of Rule Britannia thrown in, and hearing the congregation join in with singing Rule Britannia as we processed out. A very informal ending to a formal service – I quite expected to see some little flags being waved about!

The usual bunfight in the Town Hall ended the evening. A quite undignified scrum of dignitaries around the food table meant there wasn’t much left by the time the choir got to the front of the queue. But they were only doing us a favour really, as we’re beginning to get too wide to fit into the choir stalls these days.