The weekend after Easter was spent in London rehearsing for and singing the Sunday services at Southwark Cathedral.
On the Saturday we (the Cathedral Chamber Choir) practised in the chapel of Guy’s Hospital, a little gem, just opposite the Shard (as I suppose a lot of things are).
One of our morning anthems was O Christ, the heaven’s eternal King by Eric Thiman, a church music composer who appears once to have been very popular but whom I have otherwise only performed at St Ann’s Manchester (which probably says something about both him and St. Ann’s). This anthem was more demanding than other pieces I’ve sung by him. The other anthem (the Eucharist at Southwark has two) was Byrd’s Haec Dies.
Just when I think I’ve sung all of Mozart’s early settings of the Mass, I get asked to do a new one. This time it was was the one in D, K194, and I really hadn’t done it before.
Evensong was a Stanford-fest with the Canticles in B flat and Ye choirs of new Jerusalem, which we also sang last year in Liverpool. There are not nearly as many anthems for Easter in the repertoire as you’d think. Sadly I couldn’t stay to sing at the BCP Eucharist later on, as the absence of Reading station meant trains back to Bath were very disrupted and I had to get the last sensible one from Waterloo.
We were made very welcome by Southwark (as I have been before) and those who sang at the 6.30 Eucharist got a bag of mini Easter eggs each!