How shall I keep from singing?

One of the curates came into the vestry, for pre-service prayers, calling ‘Order! Order!’ She will henceforward be known as ‘Betty’.
A very small, nervous group of sopranos gamely kept the show on the road today – being the First Sunday of Half-Term (that well-known date in the Liturgical Calendar) – singing the first verse of ‘Come Holy Ghost’ (Attwood) before we all came in singing SATB. People in the congregation seemed to appreciate the quiet sound though, although one person asked who was the soloist.

Quiet was not the word to be used for the organ voluntary (‘Transport de joie’ – Messiaen), which I’m sure the Director of Music played louder than usual to make up for the general air of quietness in the chancel this Sunday. He’d also had fun earlier in the service playing Prokofiev’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ as the Gospel Fanfare (as a lead-in to the other curate’s sermon theme about ‘The Apprentice’). I think these curates are having too much fun while the vicar’s away….. I expect he’ll come back and say, ‘You’re fired!’

Visiting a friend’s church in Surrey on Thursday gave me a chance to sit back and enjoy the singing of another choir. It was a small church but a very enthusiastic choir, not afraid to challenge themselves. A delightfully informative and friendly atmosphere pervaded, with laughs and understanding smiles accompanying the announcement that the service booklets were last year’s and had to be hurriedly reprinted. It brought a direct relevance to the proceedings of the phrase ‘Hot off the press’, with the service starting 5 minutes late.

The accoustic of the building was such that it gave the impression of a choir double the size. We were treated to a mixed medley of music, from Byrd’s ‘Alleluia’ through Haydn’s ‘Little Organ Mass’ (Gloria and Sanctus) to ‘Above all praise and majesty’ (Mendelssohn).
When all the individual candles were lit, the choir sang the very atmospheric ‘Veni Sancte Spiritus’ (Taize chant) with the vicar as Cantor. We then all processed out in silence, leaving only those who wished to stay in church and pray.

The choir master has obviously had a clear-out of the music cupboard and discovered some anthems we haven’t sung for a while. So we enjoyed becoming familiar again with ‘O Taste and See’ (Vaughan Williams) for the morning Eucharist (with a lovely soprano solo) and ‘Evening Hymn’ (Balfour Gardiner) for Evensong. At the end of which the organist had fun sending us out to ‘Popular Song’ by Walton, one of the pieces known collectively by the choir as ‘Giggle Music’. It made the flood on the choir vestry floor (a result of the heavy overnight rain) not seem so bad after all.

We had a wake-up call at the weekend, for Gordon Stewart came to take choir practice, run an area organists’ day, give an organ recital, use us as a demonstration choir, and conduct evensong. In his usual energetic style he demanded high standards and called us all ‘Brother’ and ‘Sister’, until we laughed our way into improving our technique. He taught us a new anthem (Stopford’s ‘O thou who camest from above’) and a new psalm setting, conducted us through Millington’s responses and anthem (‘Sing we merrily’) together with Brewer in D (Mag. and Nunc.). Altogether an inspiring day.

It would have been very easy to fall back into old habits on the Sunday, but that wouldn’t have been right. So we tried to remember the tips on technique to sing Lloyd’s ‘The Call’ as well as we could.

We relearnt a half-forgotten childhood hymn today, especially for the little girl who was to be baptised: ‘Daisies are our silver, buttercups our gold’. The simple anthem, ‘A new commandment’ (Aston) was also appreciated and commented upon.

We pulled out all the stops for our Festival Evensong (part of the Tavistock Sings Festival) and enjoyed listening to our guest speaker, Lord Harries. The chance for a ‘jolly good sing’ is always appreciated, and provided for with the Millington responses, Brewer in D, 150th psalm (confusingly with modern words) and Millington’s ‘Sing we Merrily’.

Those of us still with voices left on Monday continued the festival with a workshop and performance of ‘The Armed Man’ (Jenkins). Our own vicar sang the solos (some in counter tenor, others in baritone) and we enjoyed listening to the young trumpeter playing the Last Post.
An enjoyable ending to a thoroughly musical week.