I joined the choir of St Mary’s Bathwick to sing at the Assumptiontide Festival of the C of E Catholic Societies in Bristol. Actually that is a bit inaccurate because so many of that choir were away that fewer than half the singers were from St Mary’s, the rest having been drafted in from outside.
First there was a Solemn Concelebrated Mass at the Cathedral, with movements from Byrd’s four-part setting. We sang all 10 (!) verses of Ye who own the faith of Jesus, a favourite hymn in its abridged version of the Catholic headmistress at my primary school. We must have sung it there at least once a fortnight. As yesterday, there was a mismatch between our verses and the congregation’s. Some less familiar hymns too, including one which I found myself singing for the first time while processing!
There was a less solemn moment: a huge crash during our offertory motet, Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin, as someone overlooked a DO NOT STAND ON THIS notice on a piece of staging, and it up-ended. The communion motet was Farrant’s O Sacrum Convivium which is actually a fitting of those words to Lord for thy tender mercy’s sake.
With barely a break we crossed the road to the Lord Mayor’s Chapel for vespers. I have been on the dep list here as long as John Marsh has been organist, and this was the first time I’d sung a service in the Chapel. We had the impression that the Chapel isn’t much used by visiting choirs. More Byrd (his Ave Verum) and a rather lovely setting, with moments of drama, of O salutaris hostia by Elgar in E flat. This is not the most familiar setting of these words by Elgar, but rather this one.