On January 2nd most of us were back again, this time for a service where I’d sung neither canticles nor anthem before (a rare thing!).
Our canticles were Stanford in F. On singing them I realised why I hadn’t done them before; apart from one or two nice moments, they just aren’t very interesting. We chose them because the Abbey observes a liturgical ‘dress-down Friday’ by asking for unaccompanied canticles. We didn’t want to do anything Tudor or Renaissance because we’d done that the previous day. There aren’t many unaccompanied later canticle settings; the only other Mag and Nunc pair I can think of is Naylor in A (Tonus Peregrinus, anyone?). [April 2004 – Add Gray in F minor. All three of these are for double choir] An alternative approach would be to take a free-standing unaccompanied Mag (e.g. Finzi, Stanford in B flat for double choir, Swayne) or Nunc (e.g. Howells, Holst) and either mix’n’match it with a setting of the other canticle or pair it with a plainchant setting.
The anthem was O magnum mysterium by Morten Lauridsen. This is one of those long, slow moving, almost wholly diatonic pieces with repeated phrases, whose notes can be learnt in less time than it takes to perform the piece (Gorecki’s Totus Tuus is another). As with other such pieces, I found it suprisingly difficult to sing.
The Abbey has already indicated that we would be welcome to come again so I hope to have another go at finding Purcell’s memorial on a future visit.