It’s been nine years since I sang Duruflé’s Requiem which was something of a cult piece when I was a student. And then I am invited to take part in two performances with different choirs in the space of nine days. The first of these was part of a weekend with the Erleigh Cantors (and Philip Aspden on the organ) in Winchester Cathedral – a rather special weekend, because rather than just celebrating the Nth Sunday after Trinity we had the privilege of singing at the Eucharists for All Souls and All Saints (the latter transferred to the Sunday, so they came in reverse order).
The All Souls’ service, sung in a dimly-lit nave, was very atmospheric and I think we did the Duruflé justice. We performed it in its entirety and in order (though the Libera Me got accidentally displaced and was sung immediately before the In Paradisum).
Our setting for the Sunday Eucharist was Jackson in G, which was a standard setting in my Cambridge student days, I think probably because it goes well in a traditional-language service. At any rate, it has stayed embedded in my memory. Other Sunday music included some other relatively unfamiliar pieces: Jonathan Dove’s I will lift up mine eyes (hard work to sing this one, with its long, sustained high notes), Byrd’s O quam gloriosum (one of the less often performed pieces in the Oxford Book of Tudor Anthems) and Richard Drakeford’s Vaughan Williams-esque canticles in E minor. These are no longer in the repertoire even at Worcester College Oxford (for whose choir they were written); everyone I know who has sung them seems to have done so because of a link to Judy Martin.
We had good-sized and appreciative congregations, including some people I knew, and it was good to chat to them about the music afterwards.