I’ve been making enquiries about taking a visiting choir to sing services at St. Paul’s or Westminster Abbey. We used to be regular visitors, and indeed the Abbey and St. Paul’s would sometimes turn to us if they found they needed a visiting choir for forthcoming services. But we haven’t been for a few years now, so I’m restarting the process.
I don’t know how the choir applied originally to sing, but the process at both places is now more formal than elsewhere, with forms to fill in, and in the case of St. Paul’s an optional recommendation from someone well-known in the world of church music is requested. This is a little hard for us to supply; when we visit cathedrals, the director of music is inevitably usually away, and we are heard by the cathedral clergy but not by the music professionals.
I sense that there are now rather more choirs in this market than before. While not all of them can take over a remote cathedral for a week, a day or two in central London is easy to manage and desirable, so there is more competition. I will report back on the outcome of our applications.
Alice & I are singing at St Pauls Cathedral this summer with SAS.
I’ve sung there in the past with St Catharine’s College Cambridge, the Cathedral Chamber Choir and the Erleigh Cantors.
This post might not match perfectly your topic “St. Paul’s”. It is related to managable tasks. (For our forthcoming summer stay in South-West England. )
We are five singers and loved to sing an “informal midday recital” in Canterbury Cathedral during our last summer holiday. (Palestrina, Byrd, Bach etc). Everyone was happy with that. Coming from the country of Bach and Martin Luther (with different traditions) we will not apply for a regular service as a visiting choir.
Most places I find under http://www.cathedralsplus.org.uk/index.php/front_end/map.html (Truro, Exeter and the Roman Catholic Buckfast Abbey) have web-sites with offers for visiting choirs in the summer.
But is there something like Canterbury’s informal midday recitals in churches in South-West England?
Happy about any response
and greetings to the country with a great tradition of Early (choir) music
Peter
Bath Abbey certainly hosts lunchtime recitals with visiting choirs from overseas. I think most major churches in Britain do this, so the thing to do is to contact the music department of somewhere you’d like to go. You’d probably have to submit a recording of yourselves singing.
Some churches are easier to deal with than others. In my experience in the South-West, Bath Abbey, Bristol Cathedral, Gloucester Cathedral, Wimborne Minster and Sherborne Abbey have been helpful, Exeter Cathedral and Wells Cathedral less so.
Just a note: I know quite a few Church of England churches and Cathedrals hold occasional Lutheran services. (E.g. St Mary the Virgin in Oxford). If you wanted to sing a service from your own tradition, it might be worth approaching one of these (I’m afraid I can’t remember offhand any others though).
We got offered some dates at St. Paul’s but they were close to our existing bookings in 2010 so we’re looking further ahead. Watch this space! (or the most recent postings).