On Saturday I went to hear the Bath Choral Society perform the Messiah in Bath Abbey. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone else sing this work live before as I get to perform it myself every three years or so. This time a colleague had a ticket and couldn’t go herself.
The performance was a traditional one, with modern pitch and a large chorus; at the Hallelujah Chorus the entire audience stood up (rather than just a bold few), the choir sang from memory and the soloists joined in, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
There were also some standard cuts in parts 2 and 3. Uncut performances are commoner than they were (maybe faster speeds have something to do with this?) but I’ve done the work with a variety of omissions, the most bizarre being all but the tail end of ‘All we like sheep’. I’m always rather sorry not to have ‘Let all the angels of God worship him’, a punchy little number which is the first thing to go if anything is cut. I once sang in a performance on limited rehearsal time where the conductor had included ‘But thanks be to God’ because he liked the words. To his horror he found that practically no one knew it because it’s usually cut, and it’s not easy; it then took over a large chunk of the rehearsal time.
Meanwhile the Cathedral Chamber Choir has secured a date at Westminster Cathedral in April 2004, and I note with regret that I won’t be able to sing in the Erleigh Cantors concert in February. They are doing the Giles Swayne Magnificat which I’d certainly love to do; I’ll have to hope that it gets programmed for an evensong some time.
It is an interesting thing to see how these works are treated on opposite sides of the Atlantic. He in Chicago, Messiah Sing-Alongs are fairly commonplace during the holidays. It used to be, long ago, that every church large enough would find a way to do at least part of it during the season. One intrepid group will perform it at Easter.
I have actually never sung the Messiah. I know, I am a heretic. You can stone me after I post this. I have been singing professional calibur choral literature for 15 years or more and have somehow avoided it.
Beethoven? Yes.
Mahler? Yes.
Walton? Yes!
Byrd, Tallis, Rorem, Rutter, Bach (ah…Bach), Vivaldi etc…but never the Messiah.
What is this world coming to?
Some time next year I will post my list of ‘Things I’d like to sing (2)’, listing larger choral works that I haven’t done or not done properly. It will show that I am just as heretical!
The performance I sang last weekend cut from ‘But thou didst not leave’ to ‘The Lord gave the word’, which generated a rather unfortunate shift from A major to B flat.
I thought I’d heard it all – but last night’s broadcast (with the BBC NOW and its chorus) cut ‘He trusted in God’ ! I was all primed with my score to test my memory of it.