I joined the Cathedral Chamber Choir on and off for part of its week in Gloucester Cathedral. On the Tuesday we sang Jonathan Dove’s Seek him that maketh the seven stars. I’d guess that this isn’t in the repertoire of the Cathedral choir, because it made a great impression on a verger, who went off to find a recording on YouTube. Friday’s evensong was an early music one with Daniel Purcell’s canticles paired with Gibbons’ O Clap Your Hands, and an uncut Psalm 69: ‘Let his habitation be void’ and so on.
On Saturday things livened up a bit, as we sang at the wedding blessing of the Dean’s brother. Most of the music was standard wedding fare, but the couple requested an arrangement of Take That’s Rule the World (Stardust). This arrangement was musically quite complicated with descants etc., although the Cathedral organ was not the ideal accompanying instrument. At the end the guests applauded, which has never happened to me after an anthem before – but why not have a secular response to a secular piece? Anyway I can’t fault the taste of a couple who gave their son the same very unusual name as my elder boy. Later that afternoon we sobered up by singing Leighton’s First Service and Walton’s Set me as a seal (which was among my own choices of wedding music).
Gloucester now has a nave altar and choir stalls, so no need any more to sing Osannas directly into the ears of people walking past you on their way to and from communion. Our setting was new to me – Victoria’s Missa Simile est Regnum, sung from a combination of two editions in different keys.
Our final service was the Cathedral’s annual Royal British Legion service. I’m curious to know whether other Cathedrals have such a service, independently of Remembrance Sunday – I’ve never come across one before. It wasn’t specifically a service to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. We had a modified order of service with no chanted psalm (always the first thing to go) and extra hymns including the National Anthem and I vow to thee my country (I can count the occasions on which I’ve sung this hymn on the fingers of one hand). We were accordingly constrained in our choice of anthem and used Ireland’s Greater Love. I’ve sung Howells’ Gloucester canticles just about everywhere, but this was the chance to sing them in Gloucester. It is rather special to bring music to the place for which it was composed, but I imagine Cathedrals don’t encourage visiting choirs to do so, otherwise they’d get the same pieces all the time. At the end of the service we had a guard of honour in the cloisters.
(N.B. Visiting choirs at Gloucester need to think about how much space they might need. The rehearsal room in the visitors’ centre is not large, though this time they had made space by removing the tables – on previous visits the knees of Dec have touched the knees of Can when the choir sat down! We took care to book the Parliament Rooms, but the booking was quietly changed back to the visitors’ centre without our being consulted. So if you book the Parliament Rooms, keep checking that the booking stands before you come.)