How shall I keep from singing?

A thoroughly good day out at Exeter Cathedral was had on Saturday. The RSCM choirs combined with the boys, girls and men of the Cathedral Choir and the Voluntary Choir to fill the quire of the Cathedral with music. Ayleward responses, ‘Cantate Domino’ (Pittoni), Mag and Nunc in Eb, no. 2 (Wood), ‘O how glorious is the Kingdom’ (Harwood) were rehearsed and conducted expertly by Andrew Millington, with Paul Morgan on the organ. This is my favourite RSCM event of the year – although it was missed by one poor lady who fainted at the end of the rehearsal and missed the service. We were all very relieved at the end to see she had recovered and had enjoyed listening, even though she was unable to join in.

Our sparkly new Common Worship psalters have arrived. They look very easy to use – words and music in one volume – and have some interesting new canticles at the back. I know this because, in my wickedness, I spent most of the sermon reading it.

The anthem, ‘View me Lord’ (Lloyd) went particularly well this morning. The conductor gave us plenty of guidance as to expressive singing and – for once? – we were all watching him carefully.

Although we now use modern words for the psalms, the Mag. and Nunc. are still sung to Prayer Book words. It would cause too much confusion to change those, thank goodness.

It was a pleasure to sing something beautifully simple for the Evensong anthem: ‘Lead me Lord’ (Wesley). The bass-singing reader managed to lift himself from his sick bed to rejoin us to sing evensong and the anthem: the best medicine you could wish for.

Low Sunday is meant to be very quiet and boring after the feel-good pageantry of Easter. But it was impossible to be bored when the organ decided to play up in spectacular fashion. The first very loud raspberry sounded just as the vicar climbed up into the pulpit to preach – good timing, or what? And another one sounded just as the vicar announced the Peace. We wished each other ‘Peace be with you’ whilst dissolving into fits of giggles as anything less peaceful was hard to imagine.
Fortunately, the organist was able to climb inside the organ casing during the spoken parts of the Eucharistic Prayer and – at least temporarily – sort out the problem. A cipher on the Tuba was to blame, and explained the indiscreet noise.
All was well for the anthem (Rutter’s ‘Gaelic Blessing’, commonly known as ‘Garlic Dressing’) as I don’t think we could have sung it with a straight face had the noise started up again.

As soon as the service ended, we packed up our robes and headed off on a coach to Bovey Tracey, on the other side of the moor, to sing at the previous vicar’s son’s wedding. It was a day of glorious sunshine and catching up with friends and the singing of a fiendish anthem, ‘Agnus Dei’ by Lauridsen (sung Full, Quartet, Full). It was probably just as well we drank the ‘Chucklehead’ cider after the singing and not before – it was gurt strong stuff!

The vicar was busy over the Easter weekend (no, surely not!) so we had to see ourselves into the services. Judging the correct time to walk in proved difficult, but we generally made it in time for the first hymn. The secret, apparently, is to look confident and as if we know exactly what we are doing…..

It was a joy to sing the ‘Gloria’ again on Maundy Thursday, together with the usual ‘A new commandment’ (Shephard).
Numbers were very low on Good Friday – down to a choir of 10, which is almost unheard of. Fortunately, there was a spread of parts to sing ‘We glory in your cross O Lord’ (Shephard), and ‘Christ has no body now but yours’ (Ogden) was sung in unison – we could have done with more Sopranos in order to have a descant. The soaring oboe accompaniment to the Ogden provided an enjoyable contrast to the unison singing.

There was a stimulating buzz in church on Easter Day, with 300 adults and 47 children in the congregation. Hallelujahs abounded, both in the hymns and in the Hallelujah Chorus (Handel) – some, but not all, of the missing choristers had returned, so we gave it our best shot.

It was good to welcome back three returning choir members who have since moved away – so there was an encouraging turn-out for Festival Evensong. The Sweeney responses and Stanford in C are, by now, well-known, and we brought out ‘This Joyful Eastertide’ (Wood) for its annual outing. There is something rather comforting about the familiarity of Evensong. That is, until the organist decides to spook us all out (the vicar included) with the rather jarring voluntary: ‘Alleluyas’ by Simon Preston.

Buckfast Abbey has a wonderful accoustic – we sang ‘The Crucifixion’ (Stainer) from the choir stalls with other RSCM choirs, last Saturday. A thoroughly enjoyable day, with afternoon rehearsal and cream tea to assist us with our practising.

Palm Sunday dawned bright and clear – just the right weather for following a donkey (led by the children of the vestry group dressed in 1st century clothing) across the road from the vicarage and into the church. The choir processed in the middle of the long line of congregation, this time, which helped to keep the singing of ‘All Glory Laud and Honour’ and ‘Ride on Ride on in majesty’ rather more together than in previous years.
We were asked to sing the chorus of ‘This is our God, the servant King’ during the children’s dramatised reading – not our usual fare, but the words were rather fitting for the theme. Various members of the congregation appeared to appreciate the communion anthem ‘Bread is Blessed and Broken’ (Iona).

After such an upbeat morning service, evensong seemed rather subdued. The highlight of the mostly monochrome service, for me, was the anthem ‘Were you there when they crucified my Lord’ (arr. Westbrook).

And on to the end (my God and my friend) to Holy Week, with daily Compline and talks on the four Gospel Passion narratives, by the guest speaker, Ven. Sheila Watson, from Canterbury. (Who more than one member of the congregation remarked was the best advert for Women Bishops that they had seen…..)

We were going to sing Byrd’s ‘Ave Verum Corpus’ as quartet-full-quartet-full; however only three of the four singers were able to turn up, so we reverted to full throughout. After a scare in the Gospel Acclamation where the remembered off-by-heart tune wasn’t quite remembered as well as we’d thought, we concentrated extra well for the Anthem, which we were told afterwards ’sounded beautiful’. We like a nice bit o’Byrd on occasion.

After an afternoon rehearsal, and a delicious tea, we joined several churches in the area to sing ‘The Way of the Cross’ (an RSCM service) at a village church a few miles away. The choir and the congregation packed the church out. It was hard work learning unfamiliar music in an afternoon. The service came together well, although the more difficult parts of the music could have done with more work. We were reminded how difficult it is for a large choir to keep in time with each other.