Herefordshire, according to the side of a punnet of raspberries in the fridge. I’ve returned from a weekend of services at Hereford Cathedral with Priory Voices.
On a visit some years ago, I was collared as I emerged from the Mappa Mundi exhibition by someone from the Hereford and Worcester tourist board armed with a clipboard. They asked me various questions about my visit and then invited me to rate the tourist attraction I was currently visiting out of 10 compared with other similar attractions. I thought hard, and gave Hereford Cathedral 7 out of 10. But what can they do about it? It can hardly be replaced by the cathedral and setting of Durham or Salisbury. I might have rated it a little higher if I’d been able to see the beautiful chapter house, but I was a couple of hundred years too late for that.
The music for this trip was all known to me and a mixture of some Priory Voices favourites (Kelly’s Jamaican Canticles, Mozart’s ‘Sparrow’ Mass, Alessandro Scarlatti’s beautiful Iste Confessor) with more some familiar numbers such as Howells’ Gloucester canticles and Wash me throughly. The Kelly was the trickiest piece, not so much because of syncopated rhythms as because of the irregular bar lengths in places combined with the need for fast articulation; it’s certainly harder than Kelly in C.
We were well looked after and given sherry after the Sunday morning services. It’s been a long time since I’ve sung at Hereford, and I hope it won’t be so long before I return there.