How shall I keep from singing?

The children stole the show today with their (St. Paul’s) visions of Jesus – stare at this image for 15 seconds, close your eyes, who do you see?  Look through these binoculars, who do you see?  We older folk obviously need more faith as today’s anthems clearly indicated: ‘Lord Give me Faith’ (Robson) in the morning, and ‘Give us the wings of faith’ (Bullock).  However, we did have the faith to sing them well.  We were grateful to have the assistance of the vicar at Evensong to sing the alto part, especially in the Brewer canticles.

The first of our ‘guest speaker’ services (for the Week of Christian Unity) saw a Salvation Army colonel take to the pulpit.  I wondered whether they were used to speaking from such a high and lofty position?  She seemed entirely comfortable up there, however, and spoke with an assured authority.

We enjoyed singing ‘O taste and see’ (Vaughan Williams)  a capella, as solo, SATB, solo, SATB – the choir master seemed pleased with how it went and the fact that it stayed perfectly in tune.  Apparently some keys are easier to do this in than others, which is a great source of fascination to him.  I’m not sure whether ‘O taste and see’ was chosen as an invitation to the soup lunch after the service, but as we had other plans we didn’t follow our own advice.

The choir master was on a jolly to Cornwall today, but all went smoothly in his absence.  We reverted to Thorne’s Mass of St. Thomas (our choir master usually makes his own Mass accompaniment up as he goes along) and an old, familiar anthem ‘Ave Verum Corpus’ (Mozart).  The deputy organist then enjoyed himself, ending with ‘War March of the Priests’ by Mendelssohn.  Deputy organists can get away with all sorts when the chief boss is away.  But we won’t tell.

It was cold in the choir stalls today – on one of the coldest days of the year the heating wasn’t working properly.  The congregation in their thick, fur coats looked fairly cold, but our thin cassocks and surplices were even less protection.  Still, the vicar warmed us up by making us laugh – announcing the first hymn as ‘As with Gladness men of old, Never did what they were told’.  A glass of sherry at the end of the service while we listened to a presentation by the church architect, followed by a delicious baked salmon lunch in the parish centre (where it was lovely and warm) helped to completely unfreeze the toes.

Numbers were still low as it is still the school holidays.  So we took it easy today – singing ‘Day by Day’ (How) in the morning and ‘Eastern Monarchs’ (Lang) this evening.  Rousing organ voluntaries at the end of both services helped to warm up the organist’s hands – ‘Nun danket alle God’ (Karg-Elert) and ‘Trumpet Tune’ (Carter).