I am beginning to feel that at the moment something happens to drastically cut rehearsal time every time I have to sing some Howells. At Birmingham Cathedral it was a loss of power, at Canterbury Cathedral with Priory Voices it was that our rehearsal venue (All Saints chapel) was audible inside the building during a service.
This sort of occurrence has featured in just about all my visits to Canterbury (about five in all, though none within the lifetime of this blog), while being relatively rare in Cathedral visits in general. I recall on other occasions eating lunch at 3 p.m. because we could rehearse in the choir-stalls only at lunchtime, and having to climb over some iron railings because we’d been locked away from the mini-bus which was due to take us back to our lodgings. (These lodgings – which were not run by the Cathedral but were possibly on their list of places for choirs to stay! – were condemned as unfit for people to stay in not long afterwards.)
Canterbury is not the only Cathedral which no longer puts visiting choirs in its own song school, and this does create problems. Ideally the choir needs a room that is: soundproof from the main part of the building but convenient for access to it, equipped with a reasonable practice piano, large enough to accommodate the choir in a sensible rehearsal formation, not likely to be wandered into by the public and secure for leaving possessions in during the service. Even in a complex building with many spaces, such a place may not exist. I hope that the new visitors’ centre Canterbury is planning to build will include a rehearsal room for visiting choirs, if they can’t use the song school. (Exeter, Gloucester and Peterborough might also look into this!)
On a more positive note, we visited during the time when the nave is cleared of chairs, so the eucharist was in the quire and there was no need for the usual ‘build your own choir stalls’ on the steps at the east and of the nave.
So which was the Howells piece which lost out? It was the St Paul’s Service, which I rarely get to sing (Gloucester seems to be the favoured set of Howells canticles at the moment). A shame as it is my favourite among his settings, but it seems to have the reputation of being harder than the others. Perhaps this is because it does require a bit more stamina (being written for a very large acoustic) or because the parts are highly rhythmically independent of one another.
We paired this with Purcell’s Jehova, quam multi sunt hostes mei, for which we had appropriate soloists but again not a lot of rehearsal. Our organist (Paul Carr) was able to use the Cathedral’s chamber organ.
I won’t go through all the rest of the music, but it included Mozart’s Coronation Mass and a new piece to me, Alma redemptoris mater by Palestrina. We didn’t have time in the end during communion for ‘King John of Portugal’s’ Crux Fidelis. The composer of this, whoever they were, deserves some credit, as it’s too good for them to need to lurk modestly behind a pseudonym.
Next up: evensong at Bristol Cathedral on Saturday including (it had to happen) Hear my prayer by Mendelssohn.
Yes the St. Paul’s service is a powerful piece which I enjoyed as a chorister. I can’t have played or sung it for over 25 years. Interesting what you say about Song Schools. I don’t know where the current one is at Peterborough; it has moved several times since I was a chorister. It used to be in Becket’s Chapel but they moved it out and turned that into a cafe. Sadly, when I went to Peterborough last Saturday the cafe was shut and they had no idea if it would be open again So they might as well have left the Song School where it was.
I think visiting choirs do need to know their music BEFORE they arrive to sing a service as it would seem that venues for note-bashing are not easy to come by. One cannot really sing the Howells on a single rehearsal to any decent standard.
We were sent our music in advance with a CD, so I refreshed my memory with that (though I didn’t need to refresh it much, as my Cambridge college choir used to sing the St. Paul’s service every year).
Even a choir such as the Erleigh Cantors, which has several rehearsals in advance of a visit, benefits from some rehearsal at the venue in advance of the usually very limited time in the choir stalls themselves. For one thing, it will usually be the first time all the choir has been present, so there may be a need to adjust balance. Sometimes music such as Communion responses doesn’t get to the choir in advance of its arrival, or there is a last-minute change of hymn (this happened at Canterbury too!)
At Peterborough a couple of years ago we were put in a chapel at the east end of the Cathedral, so there was no privacy. After Saturday evensong we decamped to rehearse Sunday’s music in a church in the market square nearby. However, my worst experiences recently have included competing with the setting up of a buffet lunch in the chapter house at Exeter, and the very cramped room in the Gloucester visitors’ centre with an out of tune 5 1/2 octave piano. It’s hard to put service music together under such conditions.
I wasn’t suggesting that visiting choirs should not rehearse at the venue. I was making the point that they must assume there will only be time to top and tail. Sadly too many choirs think they must offer adventurous music simply because they are going to sing in a cathedral and, when they arrive, too few of them actually know how the music goes. As you say, they may have some last minute sight-reading as it is!