I had doubts about arranging a choir weekend for 27-28 December, because I wasn’t sure how many people would be able or willing to interrupt their family Christmases for a couple of days. However I needn’t have worried, and members of the Cathedral Chamber Choir arrived to sing in Birmingham Cathedral – to find that the power supply had been disconnected: no heat, no electric light, and no organ! So our Saturday evensong had to be amended so that we sang Gibbons Short Service instead of Stanford in B flat (I will happily take Gibbons over Stanford anyway).
Our anthem remained unchanged: Frohlocket, ihr Völker by Mendelssohn, new to me. The service was totally candle-lit apart from a torch trained on the conductor’s stand, and (as one of the choir remarked) this showed up how reliant on artificial light many so-called ‘candle-lit’ services actually are. Birmingham Cathedral looked more like a jewel-box than ever.
By Sunday morning power had come back thanks to an emergency generator outside and we were able to perform Schubert’s Mass in G with Warlock’s Bethlehem Down as the anthem. Sunday evensong was focused on Howells. We had lost planned rehearsal time on the Saturday as without light it wasn’t possible to use the practice room after evensong. So we rather had our work cut out with Howells’ ‘New College’ service and Long, long ago. The New College service (a favourite of founders of this choir, many of whom were at that College) suited the dry acoustic, being less expansive than some of Howells’ others; the anthem seems to anticipate in various ways Take him earth for cherishing, written a decade later. Now I know it I would like to do it again with time to really familiarise myself with it. A performance can be heard until 7 January 09 on Radio 3’s ‘Listen Again’ as part of the Choral Evensong broadcast.