The Rector of Bath Abbey, Simon Oberst, has just resigned with immediate effect. I can’t comment further on this but I am sorry to see him go and I hope it doesn’t take as long to find a new Rector as it did last time (the job had to be advertised twice). When he arrived a couple of years ago I hoped that he would be good for the choral life of the Abbey, as he is himself a singer of professional standard.
The Abbey maintains a couple of choirs and over the last few years the pattern of choral services has changed to accommodate them. I am still waiting for the long-promised Friday evensongs sung by the Abbey girls’ choir. However, they have at least now learnt some psalms other than no. 67, which for a long time was the only one I ever heard them sing!
Recently the mixed choir which used to sing at the Abbey evening prayer service on Sundays disbanded. Maybe it was felt that 3 choral services on a Sunday was enough, but it reduces still further the already very limited opportunities in Bath’s parish churches (of which the Abbey is the principal one). I wonder where the girls in the girls’ choir will sing the church music they’ve learnt when they grow up?
I don’t get to Sunday services at the Abbey much now, but when I can I go to Saturday Evensong with visiting choirs, which I’ve sung myself a couple of times. For an account of such a service, see this. Here I hope that I’ve caused an improvement. For a long time, the hymn ‘The day Thou gavest’ was sung at at least half of these services; I suspect that it was being routinely suggested to the choirs at the last minute by the vergers, as this happened when I was visiting the Abbey once with a choir. When I went one January hoping to sing a nice Epiphany hymn which can only be sung on a few weeks in the year and got ‘The day Thou gavest’ yet again, I emailed the Abbey pointing out how boring it was for people who attended Saturday evensongs regularly, and suggesting they might consider printing it on the service sheet rather than giving out hymnbooks! Since then it’s been given a rest.
I used to go to Matins about once a month, but now when I go to a service at Bath Abbey it’s usually Evensong. My most recent attempt to do so, to hear the RSCM Cathedral Singers last Saturday, failed because the Abbey’s website said the service was an hour later than it actually was.
I have sung your words but as a hymn, not as an anthem. Glad you like the site. Perhaps our paths will cross one day at the Edington Festival – it’s not far from here and each year I think it would be nice to go but never do!
I thought at the time of Ps. 67 that the choir was quite capable of a wider range of psalmody, and that congregations were also capable of noticing that they were getting the same psalm each time! I have since heard them sing other psalms, and to Anglican chant. (I’ve never understood the attitude that women/girls can’t sing Anglican chant.)
As for the promise of Friday evensongs, my source is nothing less than the Abbey’s own website! I notice that the site also implies in a couple of places that the mixed-voice Sunday evening choir still exists. I reported this in an email back in October, but I suppose that there has been too much else to worry about in the intervening months.
I am happy with the sound of the girls’ choir. Bath Abbey requires strong voice projection (as visiting choirs often fail to realise) and I don’t subscribe to the view that a good choral sound is produced by mumbling indeterminate notes into your copy (a view that I encountered more than once in my time in Manchester, for example). Not that I wish to suggest that the boys’ choir does this, or make any other comment about them, as it’s over a year since I heard them sing.
When I was a sixth former I had the rare (then) opportunity to sing services each week in a context other than parish church or school. Another time I may explain how this happened.
Perhaps those who go to Bath Abbey more often than I do could prod whoever runs the Abbey website into updating it? (The online music list at the time of writing dates from three months ago). Also:
– if I wanted to hear the girls’ choir in particular, how would I find out in advance which service(s) they were singing on a given Sunday? Other foundations I know with boys’ and girls’ choirs put this information on the music list.
– what happened to the proposal to put some glazing behind the choir stalls? Is this still on the cards, or was it in the end not thought to be a good idea?
– why was there from April until early June a sign warning ‘DANGER – KEEP OFF ICE’ outside the NE corner of the building? (It was amended to KEEP OFF MICE which made at least as much sense). Was there a freak microclimate round there? Or was the real danger that some of the stonework might come down, but there wasn’t a suitable sign?
I’ve deleted a lot of comments from this article; some idea of the content can be inferred from my replies.
Bath Abbey gets a new Rector, a former music teacher, in less than a week (and for those who asked, I don’t have any information about his predecessor beyond what is public knowledge!) Encouraged by the up-to-date music list on the Abbey’s website, I went to evensong yesterday and heard the girls’ choir perform Howells’ ‘St Paul’s’ canticles with a nice smooth tone.
I was also very pleased to see that the installation of screens behind the choir stalls (which I referred to above) has now begun. I look forward to finding out (by sitting in the congregation) whether choirs will come over better in the nave, and (when I next sing a service there with a visiting choir) whether it will be easier to hear singers in the stalls opposite. I will report back in due course, but in a new article.