a return to Bradford

Bradford Cathedral was famously the last of the English Church of England Cathedrals that I performed in. I wasn’t expecting to return so quickly but the Cathedral Chamber Choir’s Artistic Director is now Director of Music there, so we were invited up to sing a half-term weekend. With more time to inspect the building than before, I noticed the similarities of the more recent parts to both Guildford (designed by the same architect) and St Edmundsbury Cathedrals.

There were some discoveries in the repertoire chosen. For Saturday evensong our canticles were Purcell in B flat, which were described to us as being unfairly neglected compared with the G minor set. And this is indeed unfair – how has a Purcellian like me missed these? – although they are rather harder than the G minor setting. I sang in some of the verse sections. Our anthem was another piece I’d never sung, although I’d heard it a few times: Bach’s O Jesu Christ meins Lebens Licht, often designated as a seventh motet. Its performance context, intended to be sung in procession with litui, seems to me to put it in a category of its own; at any rate it sounds to me like a cantata movement that got away.

On Sunday morning we teamed Jonathan Dove’s Missa Brevis with Libera nos by Sheppard, which we sang from the Lady Chapel at the extreme east of the building. I’ve not done much Sheppard at all, and very little recently but on the basis of this I would like to do more. Sunday evensong was Stainer’s I saw the Lord for the second time in two weeks for me, with Howells’ Westminster Service, one of my favourites of his canticle settings.

We had a block booking to stay at the Midland Hotel nearby. It’s a rather grand example of the ‘railway hotel’ for a railway station that now no longer exists. If you are ever there, do check out the ‘back door’ entrance that once led to the platform.

This entry was posted in singing at services and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.