The Cathedral Chamber Choir was at Canterbury for their summer week this year. We rehearsed in All Saints’ Chapel because the song room was unavailable for ‘health and safety reasons’. As one of our singers fell on the steps leading to the chapel and broke her leg in two places, I hate to think how dangerous the song room itself must be. A more welcome change, also for health and safety reasons, was that the choir no longer has to build its own stalls for the Nave Eucharist (something no other cathedral made you do!)
I joined the choir for the latter part of the week, staying at Lanfranc House nearby. There was nothing new to me in the music (and a disappointingly small amount of psalmody), but a welcome opportunity to renew my acquaintance with some pieces I hadn’t sung for a while: Byrd’s Second Service, Francis Jackson’s Evening Canticles in G and O sing unto the Lord by Purcell (paired with his canticles in G minor). Purcell seems a bit out of favour these days – the only reason I can think of being a swing away from him after his quatercentenary in 2009.