It was a long time since I’d sung at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle – previous visits were quite social affairs with a drinks party for us in the conference centre next to the Chapel. This time the Erleigh Cantors had heightened security, having to give personal details in advance and show ID if we came in individually. The rehearsal room for visiting choirs is still the former dungeon, which isn’t as oppressive as it sounds, although you can still see where the cell doors used to be.
We had a busy schedule (especially for me, having sung Mahler 8 the day before) with three services on the Sunday (we were allowed to sing Elgar’s Te Deum at Matins). But we got only very short snippets of psalmody (as do the Chapel’s own choir) – because of the presumed attention span of tourists? [I’m told that isn’t the reason, but also that it was only a short-term policy]
I’d sung some of our repertoire (Pärt Magnificat, Chilcott Downing Canticles, Purcell I will sing Unto the Lord) for the same conductor earlier in the year, but one new piece was Francis Jackson’s Missa Matris Dei, a large-scale setting written for Farm Street Church, which was new to all of us. There were some very characteristic phrases, with leaps of fourths and slightly modal harmony. I also had not sung Gretchaninov’s Nunc Dimittis before.
There was an Ascensiontide feel to some of the music with Maurice Greene’s O Clap your Hands (transposed up a tone) and Patrick Gowers’ Viri Galilæi. Gowers’s son Tim, a distinguished (Fields Medallist) mathematician, is slightly known to me and in fact was a guest at our engagement party, Perhaps the mathematical connection explains the particularly complicated way in which the score of Viri Galilæi represents duple time, and the 18/4 time signature at one point.
For the record, the other pieces were the Tunnard Responses, Sing Joyfully by Byrd and Britten’s Jubilate in C.
The Chapel is of course strongly associated with the Order of the Garter, with rows of elaborately coiffed helmets behind the choir stalls. If they ever strip anyone of the honour and reinstate the ceremony, it would be good to be invited back for the occasion (provided the choir was seated elsewhere). According to Wikipedia ‘While the Garter King of Arms read out aloud the Instrument of Degradation, a herald climbed up a ladder and removed the former knight’s banner, crest, helm, and sword, throwing them down into the quire. Then the rest of the heralds kicked them down the length of the chapel, out of the doors, and into the castle ditch.’ Now that’s what I call liturgy!