There was one final performance day on our Veneto choir tour: the Duomo at Asola, a small Cathedral city. Here we had a (vetted) organ at our disposal which increased our repertoire. We sang for a Mass (preceded by a very determined recital of the Rosary by some of the congregation) and then a short concert. The latter included a sequence of music by composers associated with Gloucester (quite a choice here, but we were selective).
Our Mass setting was parts of the Missa Brevis by Mátyás Seiber; I’d never come across this before but did once do his settings of Yugoslav folk songs at a May Week concert. Other pieces that we hadn’t already performed included:
To decline from sin, and incline to virtue….
- Panis angelicus, Franck
- Justorum animae/Beati quorum via, Stanford
- Lord for Thy tender mercies’ sake, Farrant
- Thou wilt keep him, Wesley
- Blessed be the God and Father, Wesley
- Magnificat in G, Sumsion
Having been trying to talk Italian at people for nearly a week by this stage, I’d got quite practised at rolling r’s and also enjoyed giving our audience some of the sounds they don’t have in their own language such as ‘wh’.
It was generally agreed that this had been a particularly successful tour all round. I’ve been on half a dozen overseas choir tours; while there have been others which were musically more ambitious, or which I particularly enjoyed socially because there were several close friends present, this one hit the mark in all the essential categories: high musical standards, organisation that worked, unbeatable venues to perform in and a good mix of people.
And the maze? A day before the performances in Asola many of us went on an excursion to the gardens at the Villa Barbarigo, laid out to point morals symbolically (but seen through Renaissance humanism so nothing explicitly religious). Take a wrong turn in the maze and you fell into the clutches of the Seven Deadly Sins, but I was given a hint on how to avoid them. I thought I’d have to retrace my steps at one point, then unexpectedly emerged at the end. I’m not really sure what that symbolised.