#earley
The Erleigh Cantors’ concert in St. Peter’s Earley (a new venue for us) had a dual theme of Venice and Shakespeare, though we didn’t actually sing anything connected to The Merchant of Venice.
The first half was Venetian, and began with motets by Andrea Gabrieli and his nephew Giovanni, who developed his uncle’s style considerably by writing for multiple choirs and more voices. We ended with Ronald Corp’s Missa San Marco which we sang in Ely Cathedral last year, including the Kyrie which we didn’t do at Ely.
The second half contained the Shakespeare pieces. Vaughan Williams’ In Windsor Forest is a suite of music from his rarely-staged opera Sir John in Love. This grew on me as we rehearsed it (from some of the worst laid out vocal scores I’ve encountered – I would guess the typesetting was unchanged from the 1950’s). Though I’d rather have been able to sing the shanty-like drinking song (tenors and basses only) than the bit about fairies dancing around in a ring – not I hasten to say because of the subject matter, I just think the music is better!
More Vaughan Williams followed, his three Shakespeare songs for unaccompanied choir, which I sang once with the Brandon Hill Singers. Then came George Shearing’s Songs and Sonnets. These seven pieces make use of all sorts of styles: close harmony, Victorian part-song, lute song, stride piano, fox-trot, ragtime etc. The jazz rhythms are mostly in the accompaniment and felt more natural than in some other similar pieces, perhaps because Shearing was an actual jazzman (Jack Kerouac celebrates his playing in On the Road). Not all the lyrics are actually by the Bard, and they concealed various doubles entendres and other ribaldry. I did some research using the OED, which revealed that an apparently Wodehousian line about ‘me and my aunts’ was not as innocent as it sounded.
We slipped in an encore, Psalm 23 from Rutter’s Requiem, a piece I’ve never sung though most others in the choir appeared to know it. We were ably accompanied on piano by Sally Goodworth, and Rachel Porter played oboe pieces by Vivaldi and Elgar (I never knew that he had sketched but not competed an oboe concerto – we heard the intended slow movement). Merry Evans read some texts which complemented the music, including an extract from Cider with Rosie and Byron on Venice.
St. Peter’s Earley is a handsome Victorian church which clearly had some very dedicated needlepointers a few years ago, as I estimate it has at least 300 handmade kneelers in it. Our concert was in aid of research into Alzheimer’s disease, and drew a healthy audience which drank the wine supply dry in the interval (and they hadn’t even heard the drinking song at that stage!) More soberly, in the morning I’d gone to the apple juice stall at Bath farmers’ market and there was only one variety of apple that would do: Falstaff. I drank a glass in honour of the fat knight on my return home after the concert.