Lichfield. I had thought of the Erleigh Cantors’ stamping ground as the south of England (I think the furthest north we’ve been other than this is Tewkesbury), but this time we took off in a new geographical direction for our Saturday evensong. Actually, if you can get to Birmingham easily by train or car, Lichfield is not far beyond. But that’s a big qualification. One set of engineering works on the railway compelled me to travel from Bristol Parkway rather than Bath. Then when I checked again nearer the time I found that a second set of engineering works near Cheltenham meant I had to set off an hour earlier than planned, passing through Worcester. On the return journey my train was partly replaced by an (unadvertised) bus between Birmingham and Gloucester. I suppose it meant I got to see some more Cathedrals than I’d expected to. Perhaps I should have eased my journey by taking advantage of the minor cottage industry in B and B’s in the Close and nearby streets, some of which are in the homes of Cathedral clergy. Would that more Cathedral cities had this!
All the music in the service was new to me, something which rarely happens now. The introit O Lord, arise by Weelkes must be (along with Bairstow’s Let all mortal flesh keep silence) one of the longest I’ve ever sung. There is now only one anthem in the Oxford Book of Tudor Anthems which I’ve never performed: This day Christ was born by Byrd. (I’ve never been within range of a sufficiently good choir at Christmas).
We made up for the long introit by only getting 8 verses of psalmody. Lichfield (like Ely) only allows visiting choirs to do a subset of the psalms on their first visit – a bit hard on choirs which like to go to a different Cathedral each time, especially when Precentors can and do compare notes with one another about their visitors. But in any case we needed plenty of rehearsal time for some of the other music such as the Piccolo responses. These (like Howells’) integrate the versicle music and the response and are one of the trickiest sets that I’ve done. We also needed rehearsal time to get used to Lichfield pitch!
Our canticles were Shephard’s Liverpool Service, new to us all and as far as we know unrecorded. They reminded me of various other pieces, in particular the Offertorium from Fauré’s Requiem. The anthem was Rutter’s Hymn to the Creator of Light, which was written for the 3 Choirs Festival about 10 years ago and is strikingly different, especially in the opening section, from the chirpy music one normally associates with him.
Next up this coming weekend it’s the Cathedral Chamber Choir at Sheffield and nearby High Bradfield Church, or as much of the weekend as the railway system will let me manage.