On Saturday I went to Winchester (driving, as the railway service was disrupted by engineering works) to sing evensong with the Erleigh Cantors in the Cathedral. We did my favourite set of responses, the Lloyd second set. If only I could write something like that third Amen! We were also allowed to do Lloyd’s ‘final Amen’ after the blessing at the end of the service. I’ve only sung the anthem, Elgar’s ‘Give unto the Lord’ once before, with the Priory Singers at Ely last May, curiously also the only time I’ve ever previously sung the Lloyd! It’s a big sing and just running it through a couple of times took a significant chunk out of our rehearsal time. Our canticles were Wills on plainsong tones, which I think I alone of the choir had sung before, with Christ’s College, Cambridge some 15 years ago. I wish I could do them more often. The opening of the Nunc has a disconcerting resemblance to that of the first of the Seven Early Songs, which I think comes of noodling around with whole tones. We sang Dering ‘Factum est silentium’ as an introit, from the south transept.
One thing I regret, though, is the tendency of Cathedrals to patronise visiting choirs by not allowing them to do all the psalms the Cathedral choir would normally sing. I look forward to doing a decent chunk of psalmody, not the little snippets you tend to get in a parish service, and don’t like being short-changed because they assume incorrectly that I and my fellow singers can’t sing Anglican chant.
While there I gathered some information and made contacts for the Cathedral Chamber Choir’s forthcoming visit next August.
My parish choir sang at Winchester for a week in summer of 2002, and I have great memories of the place. (I sing in the bass section)
After we left there, we sang for a week at Chichester. In your reading your comments about Psalm snippets, I remembered that in Chichester we chanted a lot more of the Psalms each day for evensong. I suppose they don’t cut back for visiting choirs.
Don
Indianapolis