I sang a couple of days of the Cathedral Chamber Choir’s week at Chester Cathedral. We began with a Tudor evensong – Tomkins Second Service and Byrd’s Teach me, O Lord, in the latter of which I did the verse part (the first solos since Magnus was born).
The following day was a programme very much to my taste, of Purcell’s G minor canticles (and they really were in G minor this time) and his anthem O sing unto the Lord. I’d done this once before, with the Cambridge University Bach Society. The apparatus criticus to the score of this work proved an unexpected source of entertainment, since it records the editor’s mounting annoyance that he had been denied access to a manuscript which was once available.
An account of a weekend at York Minster with Priory Voices will follow soon.