This is the inscription outside the new song room at Norwich Cathedral, which I visited for a weekend with the Erleigh Cantors. It was good to be somewhere with plenty of space, proper replica stalls and a decent accompanying instrument, after a couple of Cathedral visits where the rehearsal facilities really weren’t up to the job. I wonder though whether the song room gets very hot in summer; we had to open all windows and skylights to prevent overheating.
This weekend contained a lot of music that was new to me. Somehow Monteverdi’s Christe, adoramus te had eluded me. Gabriel Jackson’s Responses were also new, and later in the same service came Andrea Gabrieli’s Magnificat for three choirs. We brought choir 3 out and put them between Dec and Can with their backs to the screen. The logistical problems of the piece were compounded by an edition that was determined to fit two systems on a page, and achieved this by small print and two parts sharing a stave throughout. This was paired with Rachmaninov’s setting of the Song of Simeon (sung in English). A good moment to say goodbye to a long-standing 2nd bass who is retiring from the choir and who was thanked for his ‘deep commitment’ to it. Our anthem was In Exile by Sumsion. I’m not a Sumsion fan, but this piece takes the rambling meanderings which I normally find irritating and makes them into a feature, illustrating the lamenting of the Psalmist. However it also lets the performers in for descending-semitone hell.
At the Eucharist our setting was Walton’s Missa Brevis. A curious piece which has turns of phrase from lots of other works by Walton (we had fun spotting some of these and comparing notes). And he clearly wasn’t sure whether it should be accompanied or not. The motet was Mawby’s Ave Verum; both pieces were again new to me.
At Sunday evensong we brought out Richard Shephard’s Liverpool Canticles, which we did a few years ago. I couldn’t help noticing echoes of both Luonnotar and Fauré’s Requiem in these. Finally yet another new piece for me: Howells’ Thee will I Love. This was written a few years after Take him, earth, for cherishing, but avoids some of the difficulties of that piece because it’s accompanied, with difficult chords prepared in the organ part. It’s still long and tricky though.
Choir members got a discount in the refectory which was useful as my usual way of fixing lunch in a Cathedral city on a warm day – to go to the market and buy something savoury – failed totally. Norwich has a large market but all the savoury food seemed to be of the greasy spoon variety, and the only bakery stall did only loaves and cakes. Nor could I find a bakery elsewhere. Where do people in Norwich buy bread? (Maybe it’s an East Anglian problem in particular, as when we spent a few months in Cambridge some years ago, it was impossible to buy decent, non-Chorleywood bread in the city centre.)
I noticed a peculiarity about this Cathedral: memorial tablets in the triforium (the ‘first floor’ level gallery which runs down each side of the building alongside the quire). These cannot be deciphered from below. Was the triforium once put to practical use? Were the tablets moved from elsewhere? Or did people not mind that the inscriptions on them could not be read?