A week ago, during a brief visit to Cambridge, we were able to go to Corpus’ May Week concert. For anyone there, we were the couple with the baby! Here I should thank Dan Soper, the senior Organ Scholar, and Brenda Wright and Simon Smith in the Bursars’ Office, for getting tickets to us at short notice. As in my time the event was divided into a formal concert in the Hall and a sequence of unaccompanied partsongs over refreshments in Old Court afterwards. The balance seems now to have shifted towards the first part; I recall once singing half a dozen partsongs in Old Court and then rounding off with Britten’s Hymn to St. Cecilia (!).
The first part was almost entirely music by Elgar and Purcell giving a chance for a head-to-head comparison: which has the better claim to being the greatest English composer? I know many might also make a claim for Britten (to say nothing of others such as Byrd), but somehow I can’t put him in the same league as the other two, though I’d be hard put to say why. I once sang Elgar at a Corpus May Week concert – From the Bavarian Highlands, which was an inspired choice. This time he was represented by partsongs and his Serenade for Strings, which of course are relatively minor pieces in his output. But even adding in major works, I’d still award the title to Purcell, though I wouldn’t argue with anyone who wanted to give it to Elgar. (I am in company with the presenter of ‘Composer of the Week’ this week on Radio 3, available for a week on ‘Listen Again’ to anyone who wants to test Purcell’s claims). My only reservation about Purcell is the inconsistent quality of the words he sets, but the same is true of Schubert.
Corpus chapel choir has varied in standard over the years, but seemed on the evidence of this concert to be in one of its better phases.
Went to the concert again this year, with a programme of Beethoven, Handel, Haydn and assorted anthems. Thanks to Kate Williams in the Bursar’s office.