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There was lots of music that was new to me in the Cathedral Chamber Choir’s sojourn at Winchester Cathedral.  One piece that wasn’t was Tallis’ Latin Magnificat, which I’ve sung with a couple of other visiting choirs.  So I was rather surprised that none of the other 36 singers in the choir, many of whom had years of Cathedral experience as choristers and/or with visiting choirs, knew it.  Possibly this is because there wasn’t a performing edition until quite recently.   Or because it’s very long (most performances of it last about 10 minutes).  It was paired with Josquin’s Nunc Dimittis, also quite long, which brings back the opening words of the canticle at the end in a way I associate with Stanford (more in a moment) but doesn’t set half of the Gloria.  And our anthem was Guerrero’s Simile est regnum cælorum, which sets the beginning of the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. I’d never sung either of these last two before.

On Saturday we had one new piece that had been on my wishlist a long time, All Wisdom Cometh from the Lord by Philip Moore. I’ve heard this so many times on broadcasts and was very glad of a chance to sing it. It’s another piece that pushes 10 minutes in length and is rhythmically quite tricky. Our canticles were Stanford’s early set in E flat. These contain hints of his mature works, as well as sounding Schubertian in places, although Stanford tends to resort to getting the choir to sing in unison when he can’t think of anything else for them to do. Much is sung by a solo verse group.

On Sunday we sang Mozart’s Orgelsolomesse K259, in which I did the solos in the Gloria and Agnus Dei (our other movements were the Sanctus and – unabridged – Benedictus). I have worked my way through a fair few of the Mozart Missa Brevis settings but not done this one. Earlier at Matins we had Gibbons’s ‘Short’ Te Deum which I hadn’t sung for a long time. The final novelty was Whitlock’s Mag and Nunc in G at Evensong, in a rather more serious style than the lighter works I associate him with. I don’t think I’d even heard of these, and while I am not in a great hurry to sing them again, I don’t really see why they shouldn’t be as well known as, say, Murrill in E.

I did a bit of casing the joint for the Erleigh Cantors’ visit in October. We were well looked after by the vergers, even though they’d been very busy with tidying up after building work at the east end (the ceiling is now sparkling white there). The south transept is currently closed for more restoration work, and we rehearsed in the Undercroft, which is now locked with a key, not a code (I remember a previous visit during which choir members repeated the code under their breaths like a mantra) and has a nice new kitchen on the first floor. The plan to build a new choir room on part of Dean Garnier’s garden appears to have been dropped – under pressure from whoever placed a large plaque there in 2016?

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