The Erleigh Cantors started out doing day-trips from Reading but have gradually ventured further afield. St David’s was definitely the furthest we’d been, though there are rumours that the choir’s next step might be to conquer the North. And then the next stop will be St Magnus’ Cathedral.
So this weekend had the feel of a short choir tour, as we were staying nearby and kept bumping into one another around the little city when we weren’t singing. Most of us fitted in some time on the coastal path or paddling in Whitesands Bay.
Musically we extended our temporal range too, going back to Josquin’s Pange Lingua Mass, most of which we performed (apart from the Creed) on Sunday morning at the Cathedral’s monthly Choral Eucharist. The long and apparently maeandering phrases took a little getting used to, and the writing could be very exposed, especially when only one half of the choir was singing a particular section. But when it came to the performance I felt secure, because the almost unchanging tonality (Carl Orff could have learnt a thing or two from this guy about how to write choral music without changing key) left me free to concentrate on the rhythms.
The other major novelty was Bax’ evening canticles in G. The Magnificat is textually odd since it is the Authorised Version text not the BCP’s, and lacks a Gloria (and indeed an Amen, unlike Finzi’s). The notes needed a lot of work: phrases that were tricky in themselves and then were repeated in a subtly different form, along with numerous changes of tempo. There’s a big theme to latch on to, in the style of Dyson or Wood, and then suddenly you are into characteristically slithery harmonies. The Nunc, written separately is a little more conventional, with a unison minor 9th for interest. I am not a Bax fan in general but after working on them a lot these canticles did grow on me.
On Saturday we sang Blair in B minor, which I’ve done a few times before. Hugh Blair is a bit of a mystery; he was organist of Worcester Cathedral for a couple of years when he was in his thirties, and then disappears for the remaining 30-odd years of his life. None of his other compositions seem to have made it outside Worcester Cathedral, which on the evidence of these canticles is a bit of a shame, or maybe he only had one good piece in him.
There were other pieces which were new to me: Rutter’s Praise the Lord O my Soul (we are gradually working our way through Psalmfest), Gabriel Jackson’s Holy is the True Light (don’t try to sing the central section in 6/8!) and Guerrero’s Ave virgo sanctissima which gave the second sopranos the easy task of following the firsts in canon.