I made it to the final Priory Voices weekend of the year, at Wells Cathedral. Strangely enough, this was the first time I’d ever done a full weekend of services in Wells, which has been my local cathedral for over a decade. It’s either been Good Friday concerts with the Bath Camerata or isolated services (and only two of the latter!)
Last time I sang was just before the new rehearsal rooms opened, but this time we were able to use one. They are a great improvement and very handsome, although still rather lacking in all the choir notices and memorabilia that give many of these rooms their character.
As it turned out, much of the music was pieces I’d recently performed with other groups. As a result there weren’t really musical high points, though we had lots of stuff by quality composers such as the Byrd 4-part Mass, Howells’ Gloucester Service, Morales’ O Sacrum Convivium, Stanford in C and Brahms’ Geistliches Lied. There were also some nicely chosen chants, though if I’d turned up to Saturday evensong and got only 6 verses of psalmody, I’d have felt seriously short-changed. As Ps. 119 comes in 8-verse chunks, I wonder whether it should have been 16?