This weekend I went with the Cathedral Chamber Choir to Peterborough, a Cathedral I have not sung in for a long time (I sang evensong there a couple of times with my Cambridge college choir, there being a College connexion with Bishop Feaver). One welcome change since then is the front choir stalls now have a thick cushion on them, at least for visiting choirs with adult sopranos, so that there is room for our legs!
It was quite a strenuous weekend, with new music to learn, a lot of rehearsal time and the Peterborough organ (which, like Salisbury’s and Lichfield’s, is tuned sharp). I made a belated entry into the Mozart anniversary celebrations (having missed singing in a performance of a Missa Brevis last weekend because of a heavy cold). We sang the Gloria/Sanctus/Agnus Dei of the Coronation Mass and I was one of the soloists. I have long used the Agnus as a solo item but in an arrangement which omits Mozart’s rather dramatic link to the ‘Dona nobis pacem’, which I now got to do.
There were three pieces new to me. I’d never heard of Tomkins’ Above the skies my Saviour dwells, a verse anthem with counter-tenor solo. Perhaps it doesn’t get done much because of the non-biblical devotional text. On Sunday morning the motet was Ego flos campi by Clemens non papa, the first sacred piece I’d ever sung by him. It’s a seven-part motet and had been edited by our conductor. There is a fair amount of dissonance in it but the individual lines are strictly diatonic. I’m afraid I found myself suffering accidental withdrawal symptoms after I’d rehearsed it a bit! On Sunday afternoon we sang O sing unto the Lord by James MacMillan, a very characteristic piece in its rhythms and ornamentation, and long organ postlude. I liked it as much as anything I’ve sung by MacMillan. (For the record, our responses were Tomkins and Rose and our canticle settings Caustun ‘Short’ and Stanford in A).
We weren’t able to rehearse in the song room (we used a part of the ambulatory instead) or anywhere in the Cathedral after the (early) evensong on Saturday. At this point we were able to use the handsome St. John’s parish church in the market square. But I found Peterborough much easier to deal with than some other Cathedrals when arranging the weekend, perhaps because not so many visiting choirs are interesting in coming there. I spent a fair amount of time in the city centre and was disheartened to see only one shop that was not part of a chain – apart from the Cathedral shop!
My memory failed me – on checking, I found that I’d sung Ego flos campi before, with the Exon Singers.