It was a quick return to Winchester, this time with the Erleigh Cantors. Slightly worryingly, the place where we rehearsed in the summer was off-limits because of dodgy electrics, so we were displaced to Pilgrims’ Hall, an impressively old but rather chilly wood-framed hall now used as a school theatre. We were relieved that this autumn was mild and we did not get as cold there as we were in Ely a few years ago.
On Saturday we did a setting which was on my personal wishlist, Weelkes ‘for trebles’. There’s a reason why I’ve had to wait so long for this one: the first treble/soprano line in the full sections is relentlessly high. It is in fact a reconstruction by Peter Le Huray (once known to me slightly and rather better known to my husband), based on the organ part; were he alive today I’d take him up on whether it was seriously meant to be like that! Although the Gloria of the Nunc draws on his anthem Alleluia, I heard a voice, or is it the other way round? Either way I suspect the music got re-used because he got back from the pub and realised that he hadn’t finished composing a piece that was needed imminently.
We had further demanding singing ahead on the Sunday. Vaughan Williams’ Te Deum in G is familiar to me; I seem to be doing a lot of his music at the moment (see the next article). Our Communion setting was the Mass Congratulamini mihi by Guerrero (whose music I sang last time I was in Winchester); it is expansive and not easy to sing across the wide space between the two halves of the choir in the Cathedral crossing.
In the afternoon our canticles were another set I’d heard but never performed; the Hereford service by Richard Lloyd, written in 1982. They require quite a bit of agility and have some unexpected key changes, with more than a nod to Howells. I hadn’t realised till I looked at his Wikipedia page how prolific a composer Richard Lloyd is; positively in the Darius Milhaud league, though I suppose most of his works are short. Our anthem was Let all the world by Leighton, to use up any voice we had left. For the record, we also performed Leighton’s Responses, Sing joyfully by Byrd, They that go down by Sumsion and Justorum animae by Lassus.